A Revealing Visit

While on tour for The Land of Stories, Book Two: The Enchantress Returns (Little, Brown), Chris Colfer announced the title of the third book in his series. Fans were invited to vote for which city Colfer would visit for the last stop on his tour. Since the votes for the top two cities were neck and neck, Colfer visited both the Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston and Books-A-Million in Kissimmee, Fla. Here, Colfer poses at Blue Willow with a poster for book three, A Grimm Warning, which is due in 2014. There were close to 500 fans in attendance for each of the events.

Miss Adventurers

Seven debut middle-grade authors celebrated the finale of their Ventures and Misadventures book tour at the Haverford Township Free Library in Havertown, Pa., on November 18. The authors traveled the mid-Atlantic states with a blue vase belonging to Elisabeth Dahl (back row, far l.), which served as a centerpiece for several games. In one, the vase was stuffed with slips of paper containing sentences from the authors’ books. Children were invited to pick a sentence, read it aloud, and guess which book the sentence was from. The vessel has been used at several literary events, and was given the moniker “the blue vase of literature” by Baltimore County Public Library librarian Paula Willey following one of Dahl’s previous panels. The recent Sisterhood of the Traveling Vase comprised (front row, l. to r.): Kit Grindstaff (The Flame in the Mist, Delacorte) and A.B. Westrick (Brotherhood, Viking). Back row (l. to r.): Dahl (Genie Wishes, Amulet), Caroline Carlson (Magic Marks the Spot, Harper), Kristen Kittscher (The Wig in the Window, Harper), Melanie Crowder (Parched, HMH), and Jennifer Ann Mann (Sunny Sweet Is So Not Sorry, Bloomsbury).

For the Love of Reading

Friends and fellow authors Gordon Korman and Jude Watson attended the 30th annual Miami Book Fair International, which took place from November 17-24 in downtown Miami. Korman (The Hypnotists, Scholastic) and Watson (The 39 Clues Unstoppable Book 1: Nowhere to Run, Scholastic) spoke on a middle-grade panel with Michael Buckley (NERDS Book 5: Attack of the Bullies, Abrams) and Soman Chainani (The School For Good and Evil, Harper) on November 23. The week-long festival also included two days of children’s events called Genius Days, during which children’s authors toured Miami-area schools, and many classes made field trips to the fair.

If You Give a Mouse a Book

Barnes & Noble launched the holiday shopping season in advance of Black Friday with the inaugural Discovery Friday on November 22. Representatives at nearly 700 stores across the U.S. featured guest authors, celebrities, giveaways, and a variety of other book-related activities. Duane Butler, a B&N bookseller, joined in the festivities at the Upper East Side store location in New York City. Shown here, Butler read from Laura Joffe Numeroff and Felicia Bond’s If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (HarperCollins), while the furry star of the book took center stage.