Rowling Trial Wraps Up on Day Three

Despite Judge Robert P. Patterson’s calling the lawsuit a “so-called three-day trial" at one point during Tuesday’s proceedings, on Wednesday the remaining witnesses took the stand—including J.K. Rowling once more—and closing arguments were delivered in Rowling and Warner Brothers’ trial vs. RDR Books.

Time Books Releases Diary of 'Polish Anne Frank'

Time Inc. Home Entertainment has collaborated with Yad Vashem Publications in producing Rutka’s Notebook: A Voice from the Holocaust by Rutka Laskier. Rutka was a Jewish teenager incarcerated with her family in the Bedzin ghetto in southern Poland, and later killed by the Nazis at Auschwitz in 1943. Her diary is being released in the U.S. with a 55,000-copy initial first print run on May 2

Day Two Brings Fresh Drama at Rowling Trial

As new witnesses took the stand on the second day of the Rowling/Warner Brothers trial against RDR Books, discussion moved to the usefulness of the Harry Potter Lexicon, the potential advantages of its being first to market, and the degree to which the book might affect sales of Rowling’s own long-planned Potter encyclopedia.

Marvel, Harper Debut Spidey Kids' Books

Marvel Comics and HarperCollins Children's Books are teaming up to launch a reading program based around Marvel's popular character Spider-Man. The new line, called simply, Spider-Man, will release its first titles in winter 2009; it will focus on a variety of children's formats, including beginning readers, story books, chapter books, phonics sets and novelty publications.

Weak Dollar Makes For Tricky Show

The weak dollar was a key factor at this year's Bologna Fair, as American publishers found the market tough for buying, but great for selling. Francesca Dow at Puffin said, “The state of the dollar certainly makes buying anything from Europe even tougher.” On the other hand, as Chris Boral of Chronicle Books put it, “It did seem like there were a lot of shoppers, and we were t...

News Briefs: Bray, Balzer form HarperCollins Imprint

Summer: Breaking Records?

Indiana Jones! Batman! The Mummy! Need we say more: it's summer at the movies, and box-office hordes will be more congested than the lines at Disney. The aforementioned heroes are alive and kicking (well, one's only kicking), and Hollywood moguls are hoping they'll shatter the 2007 numbers, when the total gross from May 1 through August 26 was a whopping $4.

Children's Book Reviews: Week of 4/14/2008

Picture Books Willow Buds: The Tale of Toad and Badger Mary Jane Begin . Little, Brown , $14.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-316-01352-9 Begin, who illustrated Chronicle’s 2002 edition of The Wind in the Willows, invades that classic to produce a new series, billed as “friendship stories inspired by The Wind in the Willows”; she rewinds Kenneth Grahame’s narrative chronology and ...

Wrapping Up Bologna

The state of the U.S. economy hung over this year’s Bologna Fair, as American publishers found the market tough for buying, but great for selling. Despite the sunshine and a busy schedule, Francesca Dow, managing director at Puffin, said, “The underlying mood felt quite sober. The state of the U.S. dollar certainly makes buying anything from Europe even tougher.”

Balzer and Bray to Launch New Children’s Imprint at HC

Top Hyperion publishing execs Donna Bray and Alessandra Balzer are leaving the company to launch their own imprint at HarperCollins. Balzer & Bray is expected to release its first list in fall 2009.

Children's Book Reviews

Picture Books The Grasshopper's Song: An Aesop's Fable Revisited Nikki Giovanni , illus. by Chris Raschka. Candlewick , $16.99 (56p) ISBN 978-0-7636-3021-8 “Every year the same thing happens. The Grasshoppers sing, the Ants work in rhythm, the crops come up smoothly, and when winter comes, the Ants turn their backs.

Licensing Hotline: April 2008

There’s lots of licensing news to report, some of it from last month’s Toy Fair, including word on new Clone Wars tie-ins, Uglydolls books from Random House and Yo Gabba Gabba titles from Simon & Schuster. Also news about Kim Parker, Thunderbirds and Playhouse Disney, along with a sheaf of briefs.

Riordan Talks Up Clues in Bologna

Bestselling author Rick Riordan was brought to Bologna by Scholastic to introduce The 39 Clues series, a multi-platform middle-grade adventure series, which launches this September. Hyperion also announced a million-copy print run for the fourth Percy Jackson book, The Battle of the Labyrinth, as well as two new series from the author.

At 50, MadLibs Continues to ( verb )

What began as nothing more than a party game for adults has, over time, become a household name and a publishing sensation. For 50 years, kids and adults have mined their imaginations, throwing out nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs to fill in the blanks and create wacky Mad Libs stories. Self-published by Leonard Stern and Roger Price in 1958, the original Mad Libs has spawned 71 subsequent ...

Children's Book Reviews

Picture Books What to Do About Alice? Barbara Kerley , illus. by Edwin Fotheringham. Scholastic , $16.99 (48p) ISBN 978-0-439-92231-9 It’s hard to imagine a picture book biography that could better suit its subject than this high-energy volume serves young Alice Roosevelt. Kerley (The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins) knows just how to introduce her to contemporary readers: “Theod...

Julie Andrews Moves Children's Line to Little, Brown

Julie Andrews has relocated her children's publishing venture, the Julie Andrews Collection, from HarperCollins to Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. The first title LBBYR is set to release from the Collection is due in fall 2009.

Audible Gets Into Children’s Market

Expanding into downloadable children's audio, Audible is launching a companion site to its flasghip, AudibleKids.com. The site, which goes live on Monday, will feature community aspects and nearly 4,000 titles; offerings will vary, from early reader titles to YA books.

Roaring Brook’s Web Wonder

One of the hottest things on the Internet right now is a one minute 20 second video of someone flipping through a children’s book. Pretty heady stuff in the age of Britney Spears and Twiggy the Water Skiing Squirrel. The bookish star of the clip is ABC3D (Roaring Brook/Neal Porter), a pop-up by French artist Marion Bataille.

Children’s Book Week Springs into New Territory

For the first time in its 88-year history, Children’s Book Week moves from its traditional home in November to early May this year.

Q&A with Philip Pullman

Children's Bookshelf spoke with Philip Pullman about his new novel, Once Upon a Time in the North (Knopf).