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What Are You Reading?
Throughout August we’ve been featuring kids across the country, talking about the books they’re reading this summer.
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A Gesture of Generosity Inspires Picture Book
In 14 Cows for America, Carmen Agra Deedy, in collaboration with Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah, tells the true tale of Kenyan villagers after the horrific events of 9/11. Naiyomah was in New York City on the day of the terrorist attacks. He later relayed the story of the tragedy to his fellow Maasai. In response, tribe members donated 14 cows, revered in Maasai culture, which they asked the tribe elders to bless before symbolically offering the animals to Americans to help them heal.
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Drawing Comics Is Easy! (Especially When You’re Alexa Kitchen)
When Alexa Kitchen says that she started drawing at age three, but didn’t start to get good until she was six or seven, you don’t need to take her word for it. Her first book, Drawing Comics Is Easy! (Except When It’s Hard), was composed of illustrations done when she was just seven years old. Now 12 and about to start seventh grade, Alexa says that her new book is "basically about kids and how adults frustrate them."
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The Phenomenon of Fandom: An NYPL Panel
Whether one is actually part of the fan community or not, the impact of the Twilight and Harry Potter worlds are inescapable. Melissa Anelli of The Leaky Cauldron and Laura Byrne-Cristiano of the Twilight Lexicon witness firsthand the intensity of the online fan community, and spoke about it at a recent New York Public Library panel.
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In Brief: August 6
Stephen Colbert comes to the rescue of a seven-year-old library patron in Pennsylvania, Click Clack Moo takes to the stage, Sophie Blackall illustrates Craigslist's Missed Connections, and Tomie dePaola turns 75.
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Q & A with Gennifer Choldenko
Q: When you finished writing Al Capone Does My Shirts, did you think Moose’s story wasn’t finished? How did this second book come about?
A: Actually, while I was working on the first book, there was so much material and I tried to shove it all in the first book. But honestly, it was so challenging to write the first book. So when I finished the first one, I did not want to do a second one. I knew there was a lot more to Moose’s story, but I needed time away from it. -
Maple Street Children’s Book Shop Closes After 34 Years
After 34 years in business, New Orleans’s Maple Street Children’s Book Shop is closing. Owner Cindy Dike made the decision after "running out of cash and credit." The factors that contributed to the store’s demise form a kind of perfect storm. Hurricane Katrina forced many of the middle-class families out of New Orleans. "Customers with young children moved on to places where they felt more secure," Dike said, "and that population hasn’t bounced back."
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Amanda Project Web Site Goes Live
After much industry hoopla over HarperTeen's ambitious web/book series, The Amanda Project, the site built around the books has gone live. On the site—the first thing unveiled by Lisa Holton's new company, Fourth Story Media—kids can find out who the character of Amanda is (a high school girl who has gone missing) and register to join the conversation about where Amanda might be.
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Children's Book Reviews: 8/3/2009
This week, new picture books from Michael Rex and Jan Thomas, as well as YA fiction from David Levithan, Libba Bray and Maggie Stiefvater.
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Crocodile Pie, Other Chicagoland Closings
The children's bookstore Crocodile Pie is closing later this summer along with Prairie Avenue Architecture Bookstore.
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Former Firebrand Agents Hangs New Shingle
Michael Stearns, a former editor at HarperCollins Children's Books, who recently left his agent position at Firebrand Literary, is starting a new endeavor called Upstart Crow Literary. Chris Richman and Danielle Chiotti, who worked with Stearns at Firebrand, are joining him in the new venture. Stearns and Richman will focus exclusively on representing children's book authors while Chiotti will handle a range of fiction and nonfiction authors.
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Sylvan Dell Launches New E-Books with Giveaway
Children’s book publisher Sylvan Dell debuted its second-generation picture book e-books this week and is celebrating the launch by offering a free trial of its 45 e-books. The new e-books include Auto-Flip and Auto-Read features; the text of each book can be listened to in either English or Spanish, and the publisher plans to add additional language options in the future.
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S&S and LivingSocial Partner for E-Promotion
Margaret K. McElderry Books is running a three-week online promotion, offering a free web-only version of Cassandra Clare’s City of Bones, the first book in the author’s Mortal Instruments trilogy, which has more than one million copies in print. Via a partnership with LivingSocial, Simon & Schuster is making a version of the book available for reading on a LivingSocial landing page, through August 5.
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'Ranger’s Apprentice' Hits the Road
Having toured the U.S. last year, Australian author John Flanagan isn’t coming stateside for the release of The Siege of Macindaw (Philomel, Sept.), the sixth book in his Ranger’s Apprentice series. Soon readers in 27 U.S. cities will be able to see a theatrical performance entitled “Escape to Araluen,” based on the first Ranger’s Apprentice book, The Ruins of Gorlan, thanks to a national bus tour Penguin has put together.
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Q & A with Jerry Pinkney
Q: You’ve illustrated so many classic tales, including The Ugly Duckling, Little Red Riding Hood and Aesop’s Fables. What is it that draws you to these timeless stories?
A: A while back I started to think about those stories that have stayed with me over the years. I don’t remember when I first heard these stories that were read to me when I was growing up in the 1940s, but they have been coursing through my veins for all these years. -
Galley Talk: ‘Candor’ by Pam Bachorz
Emily Fear, manager of children’s books, Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Pittsburgh, Pa., talks about a fall favorite, Candor by Pam Bachorz. Candor is a Stepford Wives-esque tale. But instead of a novel about the brainwashing of wives, this is about brainwashing an entire community, especially its teenagers. The founder of the town of Candor tries to shape what he believes should be model teens—down to what they should eat and how they should dress.
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In Brief: July 30
This week, three Chicago authors team up, an author launches a contest for lookalikes for her book jacket, and the Wiggles go on tour and promote literacy.
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Betsy, Tacy, and Meg Meet in Deep Valley
The Betsy-Tacy books were written between 1940 and 1955 by Maud Hart Lovelace, a resident of Mankato, Minn. Novelist Meg Cabot, a huge fan of the books, wrote the foreword to a recent Betsy-Tacy reissue, and was the keynote speaker at the recent Betsy-Tacy Conference in Mankato. Our photo-essay reveals all the stops on her Betsy-Tacy tour.
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Clarion Celebrates Two Decades of Monkey Business
It’s a rhyme that very easily gets stuck in one’s head: "The mama called the doctor. The doctor said, ‘No more monkeys jumping on the bed!’ " And, brought to life in Eileen Christelow’s 'Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed,' it is a refrain that has been delighting young readers for 20 years. One day Christelow's daughter, Heather, came home from preschool chanting the rhyme. "It occurred to me that this might make a good picture book," Christelow says.
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San Diego Comic-con 2009: Not Just for Grown-ups
The annual San Diego Comic-Con International ended July 26, leaving 125,000 attendees alternately dazzled and exhausted by the four-and-a-half day marathon of comics, movies, panels, signings and parties. More than ever, the show has become the biggest marketing platform of the year for film and TV as well as comics—including comics material aimed at children and teens.
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