How to use this Page

Author Steven Clark Bradley is a multifaceted professional published author. Because of Steven’s unique experience as a world-traveling author, he is able to very vividly and authentically write about place that many have only read about and few have actually seen.

Steven simply loves writing, and he has been blessed to travel extensively and loves to see the world. His travels around the world to 35 countries give him a really interesting amount and unique ways of explaining the characters in his stories. The driving force of his life is to tell the world around him what he has seen and how it impacts our lives today, how yesterday brought us to where we are now, and how it will certainly affect us all in the future.

Many of Steven’s fans have said that his books could make riveting and extremely powerful movies as well. Take a look at the novels that Author Steven Clark Bradley has authored and you we see the labor and excellent skill he has exhibited. I am sure you will agree that they are too close to reality for comfort. You will see immediately that they are as real as it gets.

Steven Clark Bradley Author Profile

The Ghost of Opalina, or Nine Lives, by Peggy Bacon (1967), is an utterly charming cat ghost fantasy story.

It starts in my most favorite way: "Phillip, Ellen, and Jeb Finley lived in the city until young Jeb was five years old. Then their parents bought a house near the village of Heatherfield, and, in late August, they all went to live in the country.

The house was large, rambling, and very old, set down on thick soft lawns like green fur, with wads of moss under the big old trees. There were old barns, old gardens full of box, a lily pool, old-fashioned flowers and shrubs."

I love books about children moving to old houses with lovely gardens, so I was predisposed in the book's favor from the get go.

And then I met Opalina--an cat whose opinion of herself is worthy of an E. Nespit magical creature. She is the ghost of a cat who met an untimely end in the 18th century, and she manifests to the children, who are delighted to make her acquaintance. She regales them with tales of her various lives spent living in the old house, keeping a keen eye on its inhabitants, and haunting when necessary.

The book is episodic, in that each of Opalina's stories is its own self-contained unit of historical fiction, but that being said, the story of the house through time as told to its new inhabitants (who have their own difficulties to face fitting in to their new schools) makes a satisfying whole. Something of the same sort as happens, for instance, in The Sherwood Ring, by Elizabeth Marie Pope.

In addition, I was charmed (unexpectedly, cause often I don't notice these things) by the illustrations (which are the author's own). This one, in particular, tickles me tremendously:

That's Opalina, haunting the dog that killed her in comet-like form.

I highly recommend it to any reader of children's books who is both a cat lover and old house lover! I'm awfully glad it was still in my state's library system (too expensively out of print to buy--$800 on Amazon!), and thank you, those commentors who recommend it to me when I reviewed Caterpillar Hall!

To follow up on an earlier post, my favorite writing magazine, The Writer, has been purchased by Madavor Media and will continue to be published. No news yet about the staff's future.

Print, a photo by bob ostrom studio on Flickr.

Another free coloring page from children’s book illustrator Bob Ostrom. Updated each and every Friday. Today’s coloring page is in honor of September, National Chicken Month.
Happy Coloring!!!

bob ostrom studio

Announcing the Carson Prize in Poetry or Prose

Mixed Fruit is pleased to announce the Carson Prize in Poetry or Prose, a writing contest that will present one winning writer with a $100 award and publication in our first print issue, to be published in early 2013.

The Carson Prize is open to all writers in all genres. We’ll read work from established or emerging authors. We welcome submissions from writers of any nationality. As with our general submissions, we will judge entries on merit alone–all submissions should exclude names or any other identifying information.

This contest is free to enter–there is no reading fee whatsoever.  

We welcome entrants to submit up to five poems of any length or up to two prose pieces (8,000 words or less per piece). If you feel that your submission blurs the line between prose and poetry, select one of the categories and we assure you it will be passed on to the appropriate editors.

The author whose work is deemed most worthy of the Carson Prize will be awarded $100 and publication in the print issue, along with two contributor copies. Only one monetary award will be given, but three finalists will be published in the print issue and will receive one contributor copy, and all entries will be considered for publication in either the print issue or a future online issue. We do accept simultaneous submissions, but if your piece is accepted elsewhere, you must withdraw it immediately. This contest is only open to writing that has not been previously published.

The deadline for this contest is November 15, 2012.

To enter, visit our submissions manager and submit your piece under the Carson Prize category. We will not accept entries via email or post. This contest is fee-free, but we will have two options at the time of submission: you may enter with no fee at all, or you may choose to include a donation with your entry. Donations will in no way influence the judges’ decisions. Please ensure that your entry does not include your name or other identifying information at any point, even in the file name. We’ll know who you are when the time comes–we promise.

To learn more about our magazine, visit our website.

CFP – 21st Biennial Congress of IRSCL: Children’s Literature and Media Cultures

Contemporary children and adolescents divide their time over many different media. These media do not develop in isolation. Rather, they shape each other by continually exchanging content and modes of mediation. This conference addresses the exchanges between children’s literature and adjacent media (oral narrative, theatre, film, radio, TV, digital media).  

Media are best defined as cultural practices that forge specific links between senders and receivers of messages, facilitating certain types of communicative behavior. As newer media tend to imitate, if not absorb, older media, they force older media to reassert their uniqueness and indispensability in a rapidly changing media landscape. How has children’s literature staked out its own niche in these historically variable ‘mediascapes’ in the course of time? How do electronic and digital media affect children’s emergent literacy and literary competence? How have children’s books and the newer electronic and digital media impacted on children’s play? What sort of communicative behaviors are facilitated by the diverse media available to children and adolescents nowadays? Which ethical and political issues are raised by the fact that children’s literature has to share its claim to the audience’s attention with a whole gamut of alternative media? These questions are central to the 21st biannual conference of the IRSCL.  

The aim of the conference is to strengthen the ever closer ties between children’s literature scholars and media experts, and to bridge the gap between hermeneutic methods from the humanities and empirical, experimental methods from the social sciences.

You’ve probably heard of the story of the princess and the pea.

You know.

The one about the prince looking for the perfect, sensitive princess to be his bride. The one about how the perfect princess would be so delicate and dainty that she would be kept awake at night by the presence of one tiny pea under 20 mattresses.

Well, The Princess and the Packet of Frozen Peas (Peachtree, 2012), a picture book written by Tony Wilson and illustrated by Sue deGennaro, sets that idea on its head.

Yes, there’s a prince in search of a wife, but he’s seen enough fragile, high-maintenance princesses. His own brother is married to one, and they don’t seem on their way to a “happily ever after.”

Prince Henrik wants a girl who likes to camp and play hockey.

So he develops his own test and is very surprised by the girl who passes.

Let’s hear more from today’s guest reviewer.

——————————————-

Today’s reviewer: Cora

Age: 9

I like: Football, dancing, drawing and prairie dogs.

This book was about: A prince who is trying to find a princess who likes camping and hockey. He doesn’t care for a beautiful princess!

The best part was when: Pippa and the prince go play hockey.

I laughed when: It said, “Once upon a time there was a prince called Henrik who wanted very much to fall in love and get married. He was an outdoorsy type and hoped that the princess he married would like hockey and camping!”

I was worried when: Prince Henrik couldn’t find a princess.

I was surprised that: Pippa liked the peas in her bed.

This book taught me: Don’t love someone because of who they are on the outside, love them because who they are on the inside.

Other kids reading this book should watch for: The part when Prince Henrik put a whole pack of frozen peas instead of 1 single pea under the bed.

Three words that best describe this book are: “Hilarious.” “Outstanding.” “Curious.”

My favorite line or phrase in the book is: Many young girls visited, but none passed the test.

You should read this book because: It teaches you a big lesson that will help you in life.  (See my answer above about what this book taught me.)

——————————————-

Thank you, Cora!

If you’d like to learn more about Tony Wilson, you can read this interview. Or, you can read his blog.

If you’d like to learn more about illustrator Sue deGennaro, you can read this interview. Or, you can watch this video of Sue discussing how she works.

2012 Wabash Prize for Nonfiction: Sycamore Review is now accepting entries for its inaugural Wabash Prize for Nonfiction judged by Mary Karr and open to previously unpublished works of nonfiction of 7,500 words or fewer.

The author of the winning piece will be awarded $1,000 and publication in the 2013 Winter/Spring issue of Sycamore Review. All entrants receive a year's subscription to Sycamore Review.  

Entry fee is $15 and $5 for each additional entry. Submissions are accepted via the online submission manager. All entries are considered for publication.

Deadline: October 1. Visit our website for more information.


2012 Wabash Prize for Poetry: Sycamore Review is now accepting entries for the 2012 Wabash Prize for Poetry judged by Nikky Finney and open to previously unpublished works of poetry. Each entry may contain up to three poems (no more than six pages total).

The author of the winning piece will be awarded $1,000 and publication in a 2013 issue of Sycamore Review. All entrants receive a year's subscription to Sycamore Review.

Entry fee is $15 and $5 for each additional poem. Submissions are accepted via the submission manager. All entries considered for publication.

Deadline: November 1. Visit our website for more information.

The Missouri Review Editor's Prize Competition: Over $15,000 in prizes.

Deadline: October 1st, 2012

First-place prizes of $5,000 each are awarded in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Winners will be published in The Missouri Review and will be awarded an all-expenses paid trip to our Editor's Prize gala. Our contest is open to both established and emerging writers. Runners-up also receive cash prizes and will have their work published in TMR.

Your entry fee of $20 includes a one-year subscription (4 issues) to The Missouri Review, in print or digital. Winners will be announced in January, 2013.

For further information, or to submit online, please see our website.

The worldwide artist network known as Bluecanvas has just released an exclusive interview that I did with them.


(Video Linkhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcuOUmz8KxA&feature=plcp) The interview explores how Dinotopia came into being and the relationship between art, science, and imagination. Interview by Shana Nys Dambrot.
----
Visit the Bluecanvas website
Subscribe to the Bluecanvas magazine
Dinotopia: The World Beneath 
Dinotopia exhibition at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum.
To read the complete interview, and to see the full range of images, you'll have to pick up Issue 14 of Bluecanvas magazine, which will be available in late November.

I found identical an interesting idea for a topic. Even when things are close in look that are rarely identical. I found these beautiful onions at the farmers market and HAD to paint them. This is oils on canvas.

Here I am, ready to continue my exploration of book trailers used to sell e-books. Do trailers work? If they do, what makes a book trailer effective? If they don’t, what makes them ineffective? Today’s trailer is for the novel, Before I Fall: How did I select this book trailer to use as an example? [...]

Here I am, ready to continue my exploration of book trailers used to sell e-books. Do trailers work? If they do, what makes a book trailer effective? If they don’t, what makes them ineffective? Today’s trailer is for the novel, Before I Fall: How did I select this book trailer to use as an example? Well, with the first trailer I looked at I went through sales figures in the Kindle bookstore and selected a title from the top 50 in the paid bookstore. The title I selected was Brad Thor’s Black List. It turned out, however, that the trailer had only been viewed by around 600 people, so couldn’t have impacted much on the best seller’s sales statistics. This time, I reversed the process and selected a trailer based on views on YouTube and then checked to see how it was selling in the Kindle Store. Before I Fall, written by Lauren Oliver Before I Fall is written for the YA market, however, current research indicates that in e-books there’s really no separation between what adults and young adults are reading. Everybody is reading YA these days: http://paidcontent.org/2012/05/04/why-are-kids-e-book-sales-surging-partly-because-adults-are-reading-them/ This was author Lauren Oliver’s first novel, released in March of [...]

If you are a regular devotee of the kidlitosphere, you have no doubt come across Debbie Ridpath Ohi‘s inspiring writing and cartoons, whether on Inkygirl or another of her various and varied blogs, or indeed her website.  We are delighted to welcome Debbie to our online Gallery, with a selection of artwork that includes the first page spread from her short story for the Tomo anthology, our current Book of the Month; illustrations from her imminent picture book I’m Bored (written by Michael Ian Black and published by Simon & Schuster on 4 September…); and a selection of personal pieces.

Here’s a taster from our Q&A, in which Debbie’s excitement about illustrating I’m Bored is infectious:

So hard to choose just one part! The most exciting in terms of specific moments:

My meetings with Justin Chanda (editor/publisher) and art director Laurent Linn at the Simon & Schuster offices in NYC. I remember that for the first few minutes, all I could think was OHMYGOSH OHMYGOSH I’M AT SIMON & SCHUSTER!!! To talk about a book that *I* was illustrating!! But then I realized that I needed to focus, so forcibly dragged my thoughts out of gush nirvana and back to the meeting.

Seriously, though, I learned so much from Justin and Laurent, and it was incredibly exciting to see I’m Bored progress from early sketches to the final proofs.

Another highlight for me: the first time I read Michael Ian Black’s manuscript. I laughed out loud and was so delighted….and then it hit home. *I* was going to be illustrating this story.

Yeay!  And we are excited that Debbie has two more books with Simon & Schuster in the offing.  So head on over to Debbie’s PaperTigers Gallery now – and keep an eye out at your local bookstore on 4 September – we’re sure you won’t be bored and you may never be able to look a potato in the eye in quite the same way again!

For some of us, it’s an uphill battle advocating for the teens in our libraries. Budgets are never quite large enough, there’s never enough time to do everything, so if any group gets the short end of the stick, it’s our teens. We all know how important it is to have teen programming and teen spaces and an excellent teen collection, but it can be difficult getting the higher-ups to see it our way. You might find, as I have, that you need to justify your teen programs beyond getting teens in the door.

No one really questions the benefits of Storytime for the kids. It’s fairly obvious how it fits in with the library’s mission. A teen Halloween party, on the other hand, might be subject to more scrutiny. Recently, I found out that the Halloween party I’d been planning for our teens didn’t pass muster in its current state. It wasn’t enough to try something to increase our program attendance. Our circ starts are awesome, but we have an unfortunate floor plan for our teens, so they don’t really have a place of their own to hang out. They get their books and go, which has made it a lot harder in creating relationships and encouraging them to come to programs. There was no way I was giving up on this party. Instead of a Halloween party, it’s now a Favorite Character party, where you must come dressed as your favorite book character (and act the part, if you’re really good).  The activities we’ll have will tie in to our collection, like YA horror trivia, and we’ll be more book-focused than Halloween-focused.

The key to justifying a program or a service for teens is two-parted. First, tie it to your library’s mission. Say that your mission statement includes words like informational and enriching your community. There you go. Teens are part of the community and the Favorite Character party will enrich their lives by widening their exposure to the YA collection and allowing them to use their creativity to enhance what they’ve read to a tangible form while testing their knowledge and sparking their interest to seek more information about the horror genre.

Second, beyond the direct result of such a program, look for other possible objectives. For example, providing a program for teens not only accomplishes the objectives of the program, but also gives teens a feeling of being welcome in the library. Teens who feel welcome in the library may be more interested in volunteer opportunities at the library. Teens who volunteer can take over tasks, such as shelving or shelf reading, from staff members, who are then free to complete other tasks. This in turn can lead to improved customer service because staff members will be able to spend more time with patrons and will be less stressed about helping someone with a particularly difficult or time-consuming problem because they will know that they have the time to devote to the problem.

It would be great if we could have teen programs just because they’re fun and it’s what our teens want, but a lot of us are under constraints that are out of our hands. Being prepared to justify your programs might mean that you’ll need to broaden your focus to find the positive outcomes.

Here are some cheap reads to feed your Kindle or Kindle app for the weekend!  Today I am spotlighting one of my favorite Regency lines.  InterMix is reprinting a selection of Signet’s Regency Romances.  Much like Random House’s Loveswept imprint, the Signet Regency Romances will always be near and dear to my heart. Many of my favorite authors wrote for the line.  These are all preorders for September and October.

The Errant Earl: Signet Regency Romance (InterMix) by Amanda McCabe

Libby’s London Merchant: Signet Regency Romance (InterMix) by Carla Kelly

The Jilting of Baron Pelham: Signet Regency Romance (InterMix) by June Calvin

The Wagered Heart: Signet Regency Romance (InterMix) by Rhonda Woodward (Kindle Edition – Oct 9, 2012)

The Golden Feather: Signet Regency Romance (InterMix) by Amanda McCabe

       This is pretty awesome: Kopinor (the Norwegian copyright-handling agency) and the Norwegian Nasjonalbiblioteket (National Library) have announced they're comprehensively putting Norsk Litteratur fra hele det 20. århundre på nett -- making some 250,000 20th century works of Norwegian literature (essentially all of it), freely accessible online (big caveat: only to Norwegian IP addresses ...) at Bokhylla.no.
       Some 50,000 works -- from 1690s, 1790s, 1890s, and 1990s -- are already available there -- and soon it'll be a whole lot more.
       In-copyright titles will only be accessible online (i.e. you can't download them -- as you can the out of copyright ones), authors and publishers will be remunerated (presumably much like the British Public Lending Right) -- and books can be withdrawn from circulation upon request (don't do it, authors, don't do it !).
       See also, for example, Kaja Korsvold's summary article in Aftenposten, 250.000 bøker blir tilgjengelige i Norges digitale bibliotek; no doubt the English-language media will pick story this up pretty soon too ..... Read the rest of this post

       I'm a bit late with this -- nobody tells me these things -- but the 'Norwegian festival of international literature', Bjørnsonfestivalen, runs 29 August through 2 September (so you still have time to go !).
       Among the participants: African Psycho-author Alain Mabanckou, My Struggle-author Karl Ove Knausgård, and she's-way-too-young-to-get-it-too-but-Ladbrokes-have-her-at-50/1-for-the-Nobel-Prize Merethe Lindstrøm
       And, as Phayul reports, Gagged by China, Tibetan writers find voice in Norway, as one of the panels, Kneblet av Kina, will focus on the mangel på ytringsfrihet i Tibet.

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Essays and Other Writing by Neal Stephenson, Some Remarks.

       They've announced the recipients of the 2012 PEN Literary Awards.
       Among the awards of interest: the PEN Translation Prize went to Bill Johnston for his translation of Wiesław Myśliwski's Stone Upon Stone (which, you'll recall, also won the Best Translated Book Award earlier this year) and Margaret Sayers Peden gets the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation (which is only awarded every three years).
       My new favorite American literary award, however, has got to be the PEN/Edward and Lily Tuck Award for Paraguayan Literature, which goes: "To the author of a major work of Paraguayan literature not yet translated into English". It went to Versos de Amor y de Locura by Delfina Acosta (though unfortunately they don't note who the runner(s)-up were ...). (Judge for yourself: you can read Versos de Amor y de Locura (in the original) online.) I think we can all agree that Paraguayan literature gets way too little attention -- quick, name your top three Paraguayan authors ... (okay, we can all agree on Augusto Roa Bastos as number one, but after that ... ?) -- so this is great in getting it a tiny bit of attention.

       Malta Today has several pieces on the Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival, which starts today: an overview, Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival explores the recession, Catalan author Marina Espasa on Negotiating these strange days and Teodor Reljic's Q&A with Greek author Kallia Papadaki, Literature under duress.