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Kids' and YA Authors at the Brooklyn Book Festival
More than 200 authors and illustrators participated in the Brooklyn Book Festival this past Sunday, many of whom were creators of books for children. The one-day festival drew 30,000 attendees, according to the Village Voice; more than 150 booksellers, publishers and other organizations were on hand as well. See our photos from the event.
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Harry Potter Heads to Orlando
From tasting Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans to visiting Ollivander’s wand shop, Potterphiles will soon be able to live out fantasies of life in Hogwarts. Universal World Resort has revealed some advance details about The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a Potter-themed addition to Universal’s Islands of Adventure in Orlando, Fla. Scheduled to open in spring 2010, the 20-acre attraction will feature shops, food and entertainment drawn from J.K. Rowling’s books as well as...
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Happy Birthday, Tomie!
Tomie dePaola celebrated his 75th birthday this past Tuesday, and Penguin Young Readers Group threw a birthday party in honor of the beloved author and illustrator last week at New York City’s Valbella Restaurant. Numerous friends, writers and publishing folk turned out to wish dePaola well; see our photo-essay from the party, after the jump.
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Amulet Series Delivers Good News to Nerds
Five geeky fifth-graders-turned-spies transform issues they’re coping with—among them asthma, hyperactivity and allergies—into superpowers, in a new middle-grade adventure series by Michael Buckley, author of the Sisters Grimm series. Out this month from Amulet with a 100,000-copy first printing is the inaugural book, NERDS: National Espionage, Rescue, and Defense Society, Book One. In this novel, the popular captain of a peewee football team gets kicked off the squad...
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A Pooh Party: Eeyore, Piglet and Pooh Return
“Promise me you’ll never forget me because if I thought you would I’d never leave.” --Christopher Robin
But will those who have never forgotten A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and The House on Pooh Corner be pleased with the first authorized sequel in 80 years? Dutton will find out on October 5, when it releases 300,000 copies of Return to the Hundred Acre Wood. -
Q & A with Julia Donaldson
Q: In 'Stick Man,' you introduce a humble stick that is taken far from home and almost becomes kindling. How did you invent this unusual hero? A: It was two things coming together. In my book 'The Gruffalo’s Child,' the child drags a stick doll everywhere, and that must have sparked it. And I fully remember my own children, 20-odd years ago, loving sticks. When we would go out for a walk, they would find a stick, and it wouldn’t always become a weapon. A stick could be anything to anyone.
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Getty Brings Politi Classics Back to Life
Four works of Leo Politi, who wrote and illustrated dozens of children’s books primarily set in the Latino communities of Southern California, are being made available again in October from Getty Publications. John Harris, Getty’s children’s book editor, was approached by Politi’s heirs at last year’s Bologna Book Fair about republishing the books, long out of print. Although the four titles represent a slight departure for the Getty...
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Ripple’s First Content Partner Is Charlesbridge
Last month PW reported the upcoming debut of Ripple, a Web-based platform that will allow loved ones to record personalized audio versions of children’s books and send them to the children in their lives. The site is set to debut this fall, but the company was still working on contracts with content partners, recordings of whose books would be sold through the site. Ripple has just announced that Charlesbridge is its first content partner....
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Hot Topic: Love at Stake
Teenagers and adults across the country have never had a more diverse array of romantic partners available. Zombies, werewolves, angels, ghosts—they're all fair game these days on bookstore shelves. Given the popularity of novels from Anne Rice, Stephenie Meyer, and P.C. and Kristin Cast, among others, as well as a steady stream of guidebooks, it's safe to say that vampires have held read...
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Children's Book Reviews: 9/14/2009
In this week's reviews: new picture books from David Lucas and Molly Bang; novels from Pete Hautman and Gena Showalter; a round-up of picture book sequels; plus starred reviews for a pair of debuts: Il Sung Na's A Book of Sleep and Jennifer Brown's Hate List.
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Namelos Editions to Publish Electronic and POD Books
In January, Stephen Roxburgh started namelos, a consortium of editors, art directors and designers who work with authors to develop projects for placement with publishers. He began the second phase of his company, namelos editions, on Labor Day—"because it’s a lot of work," he said. Namelos editions will publish one-color children’s and YA fiction, nonfiction and poetry in electronic and print-on-demand editions. The company’s tagline...
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Flux to Issue 40th-Anniversary Edition of Seminal John Donovan Novel
Released in 1969, John Donovan’s I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip tread on turf previously considered taboo in young adult publishing. Widely regarded as the first YA novel to touch on the topic of homosexuality, the book centers on a 13-year-old whose efforts to cope with his estranged mother lead to a close friendship with another boy. Originally published by Ursula Nordstrom at Harper & Row, I’ll Get There will be reissued in fall 2010 by Flux...
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Candlewick Goes Hi-Tech with DiCamillo
Kate DiCamillo has come a long way from her debut author tour in 2000, which consisted of only two bookstore appearances in Minnesota: the Red Balloon Bookshop in St. Paul, and Wild Rumpus in Minneapolis. While the turnout at both events promoting DiCamillo’s first novel was "nice," the Twin Cities resident recalls, it was only "because my friends all came." This fall, DiCamillo’s publisher is making sure the bestselling author reaches more readers than ever before.
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Reynolds Book Inspired by Rose Kennedy Moved Up
With the recent death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Candlewick Press announced that it is moving up the on-sale date for Rose’s Garden, Peter H. Reynolds’s tribute to Kennedy’s mother and to a Boston park named after her, from February 2010 to October 13. The picture book, which tells of a girl named Rose who gathers seeds from around the world and comes to Boston, "poignantly captures my mother’s enduring spirit," wrote the Senator...
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Calling All Paperboys and Girls
With this month’s publication of Sue Corbett’s novel The Last Newspaper Boy in America, the author says she’s been surprised at how many people have told her, "Oh, I had a paper route!" Here at Bookshelf we found that interesting, and we’d love to hear from any readers with their own paper route memories. To kick things off, we’ve asked Corbett to share hers.
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Q & A with Shannon Hale
Q: What made you decide to write Forest Born? A: I really just go where the story takes me. It’s funny—with every one of the Bayern books, I thought each one was a stand-alone. The character of Enna was so different from Ani in Goose Girl, and after writing about Ani who was so quiet, the idea of writing about a character so fiery, so outspoken and dangerous was what attracted me to Enna Burning.
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Penguin Young Readers Shares Its New Point of View
Five backlist novels and two new titles are featured in Point of View, a fall marketing initiative from Penguin Young Readers Group. The campaign, which focuses on literary books with strong, somewhat challenging themes, entails consumer and trade components and aims to connect readers who embraced such novels as Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher and Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson to new books with a similar appeal.
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Ounce, Dice, Trice Times the Charm
This month, The New York Review of Books is releasing the latest title under its Children’s Collection imprint: Alastair Reid’s Ounce Dice Trice. Originally published by Little, Brown in 1958, Ounce Dice Trice is an unconventional, exuberant poetry book; it features illustrations by celebrated artist Ben Shahn, and is one of just two children’s books ever illustrated by Shahn.
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In Brief: September 10
This week, Feiwel and Friends go to the ballpark, a YA author is feted at her hometown's Labor Day festival, Peachtree sets up a Book Hospital, and Sterling hopes readers will get up and do the Chicken Dance.
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Children's Book Reviews: 9/7/2009
This week's reviews include picture book collaborations betweeen Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, Mem Fox and Leo and Diane Dillon, and Ted and Betsy Lewin; new fiction from Nick Bruel, Avi, Frances Hardinge, Katherine Paterson and Walter Dean Myers; and cookbooks and other food-related titles for gourmands of any age.
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