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We’ve got a MASSIVE sack full of books worth over $2000 to give away to one lucky customer! And we’re not talking about a pile of slow-moving titles; we’re talking 40+ new release, best-selling titles, including books by Ian Rankin, Geraldine Brooks, Donna Hay, Jo Nesbo, Tom Keneally, Shaun Tan, Bill Bryson, Peter FitzSimons, Adam Spencer, […]

What does Christmas mean to you? Is it the sound of excited squeals on Christmas morning? Is it the smell of freshly baked cookies? Is it the sight of twinkling fairy lights around your Christmas tree? Or perhaps that satifying feel of a bloated belly after you’ve tasted every gourmet delight! Here are a few […]

In The Story I’ll Tell a young child asks where he came from. His mother tells him fantastical tales with a kernel of truth that piece together his journey across a wide ocean to his new family. The Story I’ll Tell was released this month and received a starred review from Publishers Weekly which called it “an unabashed love letter. . . [that] many families will treasure.” In this guest post, author Nancy Tupper Ling discusses where the idea for The Story I’ll Tell came from.

I have binders that are two or three inches thick for many of my stories. They are picture book manuscripts, under 1000 words, and yet the binders are full of revision after revision of those few words. And then there are those rare stories that come to me like a gift. My poem, White Birch, was like that, and it became the winner of the Writer’s Digest Grand Prize out of 18,000 entries. Published this month by Lee & Low, The Story I’ll Tell had a similar beginning. It was a gift.

The story idea came to me in the form of a question as I was driving down the highway one day. If a baby landed on someone’s doorstep in the hills of Appalachia, what kind of story would the parents tell their child about how he/she came into their lives? The story sounded like a poem to me, as I wrote a number of far-fetched scenarios in my head. Still, there was one line that pivoted the story, and that’s my favorite line in the book today: “. . .there are times when I think I will tell you the truth, for the truth is a beautiful story too.”

With that line I came to a realization. There would be a nugget of truth in each of the fantastical stories that the parent would tell her child, and this patchwork of truths would be stitched together to reveal the most beautiful story in the end.

Somewhere along the way I began to think of The Story I’ll Tell as an adoption story. I am not an adoptive parent, but I am a parent who waited years for her first child. I know the ache and the longing that many parents experience while waiting for a child to enter their lives. My husband and I had filled out all the paperwork in order to adopt a child from Korea when we learned that I was pregnant with our first daughter, and this experience certainly influenced my story.

That said, I have several friends who had a tremendous influence on my story as well. One couple has ten children who came into their lives through domestic and international adoption. Another friend adopted her daughter through the foster care system. As The Story I’ll Tell was coming together I thought of their stories, all of which were unique, and how the parents would reveal them to their children in due time.

Certainly adoption stories include heartache as well. It was important for me to touch upon this sentiment, without making it overwhelming. One of the last lines in the story is “When we brought you home in dawn’s early light, you cried for things lost and new.” One mother’s loss is another mother’s gain. The child feels this, too. An adoption story has both longing and love. Hopefully this leads to a forever home where the child is treasured beyond compare.

In the end, it was Lee & Low who asked me to focus on a certain country of origin for the character, and since my husband is Chinese-American, I gravitated toward that heritage. As Eurasians, my own children know the push and pull of looking like one culture, and blending in as Americans. Jessica Lanan brought all these threads together with her gorgeous illustrations, so that the reader, like the child, feels the warmth of a new home and the reminder that she, too, has a story to tell.

 Nancy Tupper Ling  is the winner of the Writer’s Digest Grand Prize and the Pat Parnell Poetry Award, and is the founder of Fine Line Poets, a website for poets who live in New England. She was inspired to write The Story I’ll Tell by the multicultural background of her own family and the experiences of friends who have adopted children from all over the world. Ling resides in Walpole, Massachusetts, with her husband and their two young daughters.

Deciding which book to read next can be a minor nightmare. (There are so many! They must all be read! How do we make the decision! Help!) But my mind can quickly be made up if the book has an epic first line. That first mouthful of words is so important. It sets the tone of the book […]

Looking for great Christmas gifts to buy for your loved ones? Books make fantastic gifts at Christmas time! And to make your job easier, we’ve released our annual Christmas Catalogue. If you order from our Christmas Catalogue before midnight on Sunday 15 November, you’ll get FREE shipping on your order when you use the promotional code […]

This month, The Children's Book Review's book trends indicate that you're all still loving our giveaways—who wouldn't want to win a Kindleor an iPod nano! Plus, with Thanksgiving right on the horizon, readers have been digging into our list of books for Thanksgiving.

As our readers know, LEE & LOW BOOKS focuses on publishing books that are about everyone, for everyone. Our books feature a diverse range of characters and cultures, and we strive to work with and publish authors of color with our New Voices Award and New Visions Award.

This is why we’re very excited to announce a new partnership with Simmons College. We have teamed up with The Center for the Study of Children’s Literature at Simmons College and established a scholarship to increase diversity in the world of children’s literature. The new Lee & Low and Friends Scholarship will provide opportunities for students of color to enroll in the most prestigious children’s literature graduate program in the United States.

The scholarship initiative is a partnership between two organizations committed to diversity in children’s literature. LEE & LOW BOOKS is the largest multicultural children’s book publisher in the country and a leader in the movement for more diversity in the publishing industry. The graduate programs in children’s literature at Simmons College are dedicated to bringing a wide range of voices into books for children and young adults, and to providing students access to careers that diversify the field of children’s literature.

“Lee & Low is excited to be partnering with Simmons College to provide a meaningful way to address one of the most challenging obstacles in bringing more equity to publishing: the pipeline problem,” says Jason Low, publisher of LEE & LOW BOOKS.

Unpaid internships and costly graduate programs, combined with low entry-level salaries, are significant barriers for many hoping to work in publishing. The Lee & Low and Friends Scholarship will support students for whom the traditional entrances to publishing remain closed, and thus create a pathway for diverse graduate students to positions in which they can influence what and how children’s literature is created.

The $100,000 scholarship fund was created through donations from LEE & LOW BOOKS and Simmons College alumni. The first recipients will be chosen for fall 2016. “Children’s Literature at Simmons welcomes this collaboration with Lee & Low as we team up to create venues of access that lead to lasting change,” says Cathryn M. Mercier, Director of the Center for the Study of Children’s Literature at Simmons. For more information, contact [email protected].

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ABOUT THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE AT SIMMONS COLLEGE: Established in 1977, the Center for the Study of Children’s Literature supports the advancement of the study of children’s and young adult literature through nationally recognized partnerships and graduate programs, including the nation’s
first Master of Arts in Children’s Literature and Master of Fine Arts: Writing for Children, as well as several innovative dual degree options. To learn more, visit simmons.edu/academics/graduate-programs/childrens-literature-ma.

ABOUT LEE & LOW BOOKS: Established in 1991, LEE & LOW BOOKS is the largest children’s book publisher in the United States specializing in diversity. Under several imprints, the company provides a comprehensive range of notable diverse books for beginning readers through young adults. Visit leeandlow.com to learn more.

If you’re anything like me you’ll love a good dog story, especially those feel-good ones of friendship, courage and love. Typically known as our best mates, the canine variety so often teach us about loyalty, responsibility and maintaining a zest for life, and these three picture books certainly contain these elements in their own gorgeous […]

The annual Kids’ Reading Guide has been released! Handpicked and reviewed by Australia’s leading booksellers, the Kids’ Reading Guide showcases all the very best recent-release, in-stock books for kids. It’s a fantastic guide for Christmas Gifts! Follow the links below to order your books from Boomerang Books today: Use the promo code krg15 to receive FREE […]

The Martian by Andy Weir has a fabulous back story. Initially published chapter by chapter and made available for free on the author’s website, readers soon fell in love with the story. First, they asked him to make it available as an ebook, so they could enjoy it on their e-readers rather than having to read it […]

What a bonus it is to have a new David Mitchell book only a year after the incredible The Bone Clocks. David Mitchell started this story on twitter but became obsessed with the story he had started and needed to see it through. The result is a ghost story in the hands and imagination of […]

Released this month, Amazing Places is a collection of original poems hand-picked by acclaimed anthologist Lee Bennett Hopkins that celebrates some of the amazingly diverse places in our nation. It has received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly, which calls it “a broadly appealing testament to the American landscape and people.”

The gorgeous illustrations in Amazing Places are a uniquecollaboration between artist Chris Soentpiet, who created the rough sketches, and Christy Hale, who brought those sketches to life by adding color and detail. We asked Christy to take us behind the scenes and show us her process for working with Chris Soentpiet’s illustrations to make Amazing Places come to life:

Christy: I have selected the longhouse piece to show the art process used for creating the art for Amazing Places:

1. Chris Soentpiet’s rough sketch

2. The editor and art director requested modifications. Below is Chris’s tight sketch reflecting those changes.

3. The printer scanned Chris’s sketches and then I received the digital files and my work on the art began. I made some additional changes to the original sketch based on editorial suggestions.

4. I changed the pencil line to sepia to give it some richness.

5. To add color to the art I needed some reference for longhouses. I did some image research. Here are two of many pictures I found.

6. I added colors in transparent layers in Photoshop. I wanted to simulate the beautiful watercolor effects Chris is known for. Each layer was a different color. Sometimes there were multiple layers of the same color in varying transparencies for more subtle effects.
Below you see the sepia line with one color added.

7. Here is the sepia line with seven colors added.

8. Here is a screen shot showing the many layers in the Photoshop file.

9. Here is the final image with all the colors. For each piece in the book I worked with a limited palette. In the long house piece there are many, many different neutral colors in varying values. I used color value, intensity, and hue to help direct the eye in each composition.

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Christy Hale is the author and illustrator of The East-West House: Noguchi’s Childhood in Japan, a Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year selection, and Dreaming Up: A Celebration of Building, winner of a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor. As an art educator, Hale has written about artists for Instructor magazine’s Masterpiece of the Month feature and workshops. Hale lives with her family in Palo Alto, California. Visit her online at christyhale.com.

Purchase a copy of Amazing Places here.

Katrina McKelvey started life in a little country town in New South Wales, where she was fortunate to be able to soak up the charming facets of nature. Nowadays, Katrina is soaking up the well-deserved praise for her gorgeous debut picture book, ‘Dandelions’. Having had embraced the pleasures and joys through her roles as mother, […]

There’s nothing like a good, solid murder mystery to curl up with in the evening. After — you know — you’ve double checked all your doors are locked and armed yourself with with a deathly looking lampshade and a fearsome whisk for protection. (Sometimes books feel real, okay?!) And if you like the Young Adult […]

I am thrilled that the news has now been released that Meg McKinlay’s A Single Stone (Walker Books Australia) has won the Griffiths University Children’s Book Award in the 2015 Queensland Literary Awards. I hope it becomes a contemporary classic.  Thanks for speaking to Boomerang Books Blog, Meg.               […]

I have a deep love for all books about the end of the world and the apocalypse. It’s exciting! I love the speculation of what could happen. Because zombies could totally happen. Or angels. Or destruction by walking trees. WHO KNOWS. Today I have a list of Young Adult books about the apocalypse and the end of the world. […]

If you’re looking for picture books exploring friendships of massive proportions, then these two latest delights are for you. Perfect for melting any sized heart!  Blue Whale Blues, Peter Carnavas (author, illus.), New Frontier Publishing, 2015.   On first glance, I noticed something different about Peter Carnavas‘ most recent creation compared to his previous works. […]

Are yooouuuuuu ready to NOMINATE? ...for the Cybils Awards? Nominations are officially open to the public (that means YOU, readers) for ten categories of children's and young adult books. You have between Oct. 1-15 to nominate your favorite book in... Read the rest of this post

  Each month we bring you the best new release books in our Book Brief. Get FREE shipping when you use the promo code bookbrief at checkout Fiction Books The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks This is a story about war, murder, sex, romance, betrayal and incest. King David is a man we think we […]

Each month we bring you the best new release books in our Book Brief. Get FREE shipping when you use the promo code bookbrief at checkout Fiction Books The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks This is a story about war, murder, sex, romance, betrayal and incest. King David is a man we think we know […]

A subliminal message about how much you would like to pay for each book. :)

A week ago, Diana and I decided to try an experiment: All the e-books in the Renegade Writer Store (except one) would become Pay What You Want, meaning you, the reader, decide what to pay for each one.

The minimum price was $1 because that’s the minimum my order processor allows. (And they do charge me for each download!)

The deal was this: We would try this experiment for one week, and if we liked how it turned out, we would keep this pricing structure.

Here are the results:

• Around 330 writers took advantage of the Pay What You Want offer.
• The average order was $6.50.
• Sometimes an order was for a single book, but mostly they were for multiple products.
• Many, many people scooped up every book we have at $1 apiece. (Now you need to READ them all, LOL!)
• The lowest order amount was $1. The highest order amount was $30 (for multiple books). (That was pretty exciting!)
• Most writers paid below retail for the books…but some paid around retail, and just a few paid higher! (And this is not a judgement in any way…readers paid what they could afford or according to how much value they thought the books would bring.)
• We got orders from all over the world, including Canada, the U.S., Serbia, and Nigeria! (Discovered one reader from Serbia went to the same high school as our Serbian exchange student!)
• Several writers emailed me to say they hope to make sales based on what they learned in our books, so they can come back and pay more for them. Aw! (I’m actually thinking about creating a way for writers to come back and add more to their payments if they feel they’ve gotten a ton of value from the books. )

So what’s the verdict?

Of course we, the authors, feel we deserve to be compensated well for the value we provide in our books. We worked hard on them, and they cost us beaucoup cash for design, editing and so on. I also pay the order processor, and need to pay for tech help—for example, I paid $500 to have the books pages set up, and another $500 to get them converted to PWYW.

And of course, these books are meant to get writers gigs and change their lives! We think that’s worth at LEAST the $5-10 most of the books were originally priced at.

On the other hand, once we eat the sunk costs, it costs us very little to provide these e-books.

AND…since our mission is to help as many writers as possible reach their freelancing dreams, having 330 people get their hands on our books is excellent news! We want to reach EVERYONE—including those who can’t yet afford to hire help, take classes, or buy full-priced books.

So…drumroll…we decided to keep the PWYW pricing structure!

That means from now on, YOU choose what to pay for each book, e-course book, and checklist…including Write Your Way Out of the Rat Race…And Step Into a Career You Love, which comes with a boatload of downloads (originally $9.99), The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success (also $9.99), and the Write for Magazines E-Course book (originally $29).

(And soon, very soon, I’ll be posting a meditation I created called Positive Thinking for Writers as a PWYW product. I wrote the meditation and it was produced and voiced by a former public radio reporter! It has everything…soothing music, nature sounds…IT’S AWESOME.)

Yep, you can get all these goodies for as little as a buck each.

Don’t have much cash? Pay the minimum. You’re rich? Pay more than retail and reap the karma that comes from covering a less advantaged writer.

Here’s where you can do that:

http://www.therenegadewriter.com/store/

Please do spread the word to all your writing friends! You can post it on forums, share it on Facebook and Twitter, and let your writing groups know they can now get these helpful, valuable books for a minimum of $1 each. (BTW, we reserve the right to change our minds in the future…but for now we don’t foresee getting rid of PWYW.)

Here’s a tweet you can use if you like:

Renegade Writer e-books are now Pay What You Want…permanently! That means YOU choose what to pay! http://www.therenegadewriter.com/store/

Thank you, thank you for helping us make this experiment a success! We’re so excited to get our books into as many hands as possible!

There really is something for everyone in Ford Street Publishing’s latest collection of Australian stories, poetry and artwork for teens – Rich and Rare. With pieces from almost 50 fab authors and illustrators, including Shaun Tan, Judith Rossell, Susanne Gervay, Gary Crew, Justin D’Ath and Michael Gerard Bauer (to mention a few), the anthology delivers […]

I absolutely fell in love with Talon by Julie Kagawa, as you might recall from this gushing review of mine last month. What’s not to love?! Dragons! Guns! Missions! The occasional delicious summery smoothie? Consider me 100% hooked. So of course I had to get my hands on the sequel: Rogue. And of course I must gush about […]

After its recent tumultuous history, the Qld Literary Awards are growing from strength to strength under the banner of the State Library of Queensland and a bevy of eminent sponsors. The 2015 shortlists have just been announced and the winners will be revealed at the Awards Ceremony on Friday 9th October in Brisbane. Some categories […]

Oh this book is utterly glorious! I picked up Are You Seeing Me? by Darren Groth on impulse and am totally glad I gave it a chance. This book is so special and I’m squawking with the effort of writing a review to give it justice! It’s about Australian twins, Justine and Perry (who has autism), who […]