In Brief: April 14

On April 7, author T.A. Barron received the USM Medallion at the 44th annual Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival on the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Miss. The award honors a “lifetime contribution to children’s and young adult literature.” Barron is the author of 20 books, including the Lost Years of Merlin series and the Great Tree of Avalon trilogy, both published by Philomel. Here, Barron received the medallion from Dr. Martha Saunders. Photo: Karen Rowell

Twenty-one authors—including Ellen Hopkins, Lauren Myracle, Blake Nelson, and Doug TenNapel—and more than 750 teens and adults attended the second annual Greater Houston Teen Book Convention last Saturday at Alief Hastings High School. The daylong event, for which Blue Willow Bookshop is the major sponsor, featured a keynote by Deb Caletti (Stay) and panels entitled “The Lighter Side, with Some Bumps Along the Way” “A Walk on the Dark Side,” “Here There Be Ghosts... and Werewolves and Everything Else,” “Guys Write Good Stuff,” and “Graphic Novels Galore,” as well as book signings.

Writer Ty Drago launched his new middle-grade series, The Undertakers, with an event at Children’s Book World in Haverford, Pa. The first book in the series, Rise of the Corpses, is out this month from Sourcebooks Jabberwocky. The event featured “appearances” by the young hero of the series, Will Ritter, as well as the zombie villains of the first two books—Kenny Booth (l.) and Lilith Cavanaugh, seen here taking a break from wanton destruction to do a little reading.

Last week, the Secret Garden Bookshop in Seattle hosted a launch party for debut author Carole Estby Dagg’s The Year We Were Famous (Clarion, Apr.), based on the true story of Dagg’s great-aunt and great-grandmother, who walked from Washington State to New York City in 1896. To research the book, Dagg and her daughter drove parts of the route that her ancestors walked, picking up period items from antique stores and reconstructing that 232-day journey. Dagg also created the 1890s-style costume, which she’s wearing here, at the Secret Garden event.

Eleven-year-old author/artist Olivia Bouler spoke to an SRO crowd at an event this past Sunday at Book Revue in Huntington, N.Y. Bouler is the author of Olivia’s Birds: Saving the Gulf (Sterling, Apr.), a guidebook to birds that features her paintings. Sales of Bouler’s artwork helped raise more than $200,000 for Audubon’s Save the Gulf campaign, which began in the wake of the 2010 oil spill. Here, Bouler signs copies of Olivia’s Birds at the bookstore.