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design studio 'a fresh bunch' have been busy working on patterns with a winter theme which i thought would be perfect to showcase on print & pattern today. a fresh bunch work with a creative team of freelancers on licensing projects and have a full range of designs available for sale. for more information see online here.

designer emily isabella has just launched her newest collection of notecards with a coordinating tea towel. emily created the idea with a housewarming gift in mind. the collection is called 'a day with the dishes, inspired by the imaginings of what a day in the life of a dish or utensil might be like. as seen online here at emily isabella. 

katy clemmans is a surface pattern designer based in sussex, england. katy studied on rachael taylor’s  ‘art & business of surface pattern design’ e-course and has recently launched her own product range based on her lily of the valley pattern, which includes canvas bags, tea towels, notebooks and notecards. the range is all manufactured in the UK to a high standard, and is available to

Nice branding system from lg2boutique, the Canadian-based advertising and branding agency. I really like the contrast between bold and playful here. Very nice work, and it’s all for a benefit.

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By Nina Schuyler, The Children’s Book Review
Published: November 28, 2012

Lunch Lady and the Picture Day Peril: Lunch Lady #8

By Jarrett J. Krosoczka

As if you need one more reason to start reading the Lunch Lady series. After a near collision with a grocery employee who was mindlessly rolling a train of carts straight at me, I mumbled, “What an idiot,” or something like that.

To which my nine-year-old said, “Remember Lunch Lady.”

“What?”

“She looks normal, but she’s got supernatural powers.”

He’s right, of course. The extraordinary parading around as ordinary. You never know. Besides, it’s good to be kind. There’s enough of that other stuff going around to last you a life time.

Number eight in the series is now out, Lunch Lady and the Picture Day Peril, by Jarrett J. Krosoczka. Lunch Lady and Betty are trying to figure out why nearly the entire school has come down with a case of acne on picture day. Things get messier when Stefani, the photographer, persuades one of the students that she could be a model, only it will cost $1000 to do the head shots. Betty runs some tests on the photography permission slips and finds they were tainted with acne-inducing chemicals. To get to the bottom of this, Lunch Lady has to use a lot of her fancy tools—the ketchup packet laser, mustard grappling hook, the serving spoon crowbar.

Ages 9-12 | Publisher: Random House Children’s Books | September 11, 2012

A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel

By Madeleine L’Engle; Illustrated by Hope Larson

Can it be done? Should it be done? Why not? If the point is to get kids reading, then why not turn the classics into graphic novels? It’s the fiftieth anniversary of Madeline L’ Engel’s A Wrinkle In Time, and Hope Larson has paid homage to the book by putting it in graphic novel form. Larson, an award-winning graphic novelist, says she fell in love with the book as a girl, and you can see that love poured into her illustrations. Larson brings her talent, imagining the likes of Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which and the Happy Medium.

Ages 10 and up | Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux | October 2, 2012

All-Action Classics No. 4: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

By L. Frank Baum, Ben Caldwell

Marvel comic artist Ben Caldwell teams up with L. Frank Baum to bring to young readers, The Wizard of Oz. Baum has gone a step further in reimagining the classic by jazzing up the dialogue. When Dorothy lands in the Land of Oz, she looks around, “Huh. I’m pretty sure I remember Kansas having more prairie and less blue houses.” When she comes across the talking scarecrow, Dorothy says, “Oh, this is just silly. Scarecrows can’t talk!” To which the scarecrow answers, “Hmm. I have so much to learn, you see, I was born yesterday.”

Ages 10 and up | Publisher: Sterling Children’s Books | September 4, 2012

The City of Ember: The Graphic Novel

By Jeanne DuPrau

First published in 2003, then turned into a movie, now The City of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau, is a graphic novel. Adapted by Dallas Middaugh and illustrated by Niklas Asker, the graphic novel follows the same plot, but comes alive with the pictures. The city of Ember is the last light in a dark world. But with the lights flickering and supplies running low, the world may fall into complete darkness. As the threat becomes more real, the beautiful illustrations become darker, full of brown and black tones. Fortunately Lina and Doon find a mysterious document that may hold the answer to retaining the light.

Ages 8 and up | Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers | September 25, 2012

Original article: 4 New Graphic Novels to Love

©2012 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.

The cover by Otterville students

First I want to give a BIG THANK YOU! to the students, teachers, and administration at Otterville R-VI School. They made me feel so welcome–almost like a celebrity. The photos you see with this blog post were made by the third through sixth grade students. A group of students created one drawing for each chapter of my book, portraying what happened in that chapter. Then Mrs. Nolting (otherwise known as my good friend Jill) copied them and bound them together to make a book for me. Aren’t these great? Plus the children presented me with drawings and cards. I also want to thank Kimberly and Karen at the Boys and Girls Club in Sedalia for inviting me to come!

The antagonist, Mrs. Franklin, as seen through the eyes of Otterville’s students!

Best of all, the Otterville Elementary teachers read Finding My Place to the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade classrooms before I got to the school. The kids knew my story, and they were excited to learn more from me. So excited, that I never even got to my prepared presentation because they had so many questions, including, “Are you going to write a sequel?” or “Why does the mom have to die?” Excellent questions, as a matter of fact.

Even in the Otterville Middle School, where they had not finished my book, but their teacher had prepared them for my arrival, the students were attentive and had a lot of questions about writing and publishing. The same was true in Sedalia with the Boys and Girls Club after-school program. Of course, all the students, from kindergarten to eighth grade, liked to hear about how the citizens of Vicksburg had to eat rats and live in caves to survive. It’s a real-life adventure story!

Mrs. Franklin causes Anna to do something she never thought she would with her journal!

Happy reading, everyone! Enjoy the illustrations by the Otterville Elementary students!

And last but not least in my week of thanks, is my husband.  He is very thankful for technology.  He loves his computer, ipad, movies, gaming system, and other fun toys like most techno geeks.  But in addition, he's also thankful for technology because it allows him to go to school long distance to get a 2nd masters in statistics, and allows him to stay at home with his family while he works a 2nd job - high school math teacher by day, online college math grader by night.

I have a lot of movies, games to post about that were supposed to be broken up in to several days worth of posts.  But because of our unplanned sick break, prepare for an onslaught of technological entertainment posts.

With all that's going on, we are incredibly busy.  Sometimes its nice to be able to put in a nice, clean show that holds the kids attention.  That being said, first up is Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups.

New Series from Stewart & Riddell

The Bookseller:

Macmillan Children's Books has bought world rights for three books in a futuristic new series by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell. The pair, who have previously written The Edge Chronicles and won a handful of awards between them, have now written a series called Scavenger which revolves around a boy, his spaceship and a hundred robots "bent on his destruction". Rights were signed from Philippa Milnes-Smith at Lucas Alexander Whitley.

Hachette releases new children's eBook titles

as reported on kidscreen.com:

Hachette Children's Books has announced that 21 of its top picture books including David Melling's best seller The Kiss That Missed are now available in digital eBook format.

Additional titles, which are available from November 26 from Amazon and Apple, include I Love My Daddy from acclaimed UK author/poet Giles Andreae (Purple Ronnie and The Interesting Thoughts of Edward Monkton), David Melling's Hugless Douglas, and The Twelve Days of Christmas by Jane Ray.

eBooks from authors such as  John Hegley (Stanley's Stick), Daisy Meadows (Rainbow Magic: The Complete Book of Fairies), and Adam Blade (Beast Quest: The Complete Book of Beasts) are also included in the initial launch.

The transition to the new digital format comes as eBook sales for kids, especially the YA demo, are on the rise, growing 89% in July 2012

First Time: The Legend of Garison Fitch "What if history didn't happen that way ... the first time?" Garison Fitch was one of the most revered scientists in the Soviet Americas until he left fame behind to work on a secret project in his log cabin in the mountains of Marx. But something went wrong. Instead of traveling interdimentionally, Garison has traveled through time ... twice. Now, he's in something called "The United States of America" and a woman he's never met before is calling herself his wife. It it a hoax? Or, has he somehow changed history? If so, can he return the world to what he believes is "normal", or must he live in this strange world he created? Continue reading →

The documentary – A journey through Africa and Asia through the documentary.

‘Half the Sky’ written by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist couple Nicholas A Kistof & Sheryl WuDunn

at the Australian Human Rights Centre , Law Faculty University of NSW.

It brought me to tears -

child prostitution, rape,  genital  circumcision, killing of girl babies, killing and disfiguring women – the powerless.

A young doctor working for medecins sans frontieres in Papua New Guinea told of the rape and beating of approx 80% of all girls in PNG.

A young social worker talking of the courage of indigenous mothers fighting rape and child abuse in indigenous communities.

And the passionate Jennie Orchard talking about Room to Read – www.roomtoread.org

bringing hope and empowerment to girls in poverty through school scholarships.

and the courage of these girls who work, are abused, walk for hours to get to a school so they can have a future.

The courage of mothers and women who survive and build towards a future for their children and other women.

I am proud and humbled to be an author ambassador for Room to Read – support them.

Support medecins sans frontieres

Read Half the Sky: How to Change the World

‘Investment in girls’ education may well be the highest return investment available in the developing world.’ The World Bank.

Thankyou to talented photographer Diane MacDonald for her organisation.

The Hughenden Hotel is proud to support the Australian Human Rights Centre and the Human Rights of women and children.

Support Room to Read – www.roomtoread.org

I don't know if you've noticed, but I recently discovered how to make Wordles and now I want to Wordle everything! I was looking at your book recommendations on the Reading Buzz Board and I knew they would make an awesome word cloud.

Check this out! YOUR book recommendations in glorious word-cloudy color!

Cool, right? Have you read all of these? Are your favorites on this list?

I need your help for next month's Book Wordle. Leave a Comment with the title of the book you are reading right now. In December, I will make a Wordle of all our reads for the whole month. If everybody on the STACKS leaves a Comment, it's going to be an epic Wordle!

— Sonja, STACKS Staffer

Given my infamous obsession with all things underpants, and considering that I pride myself on being relatively across Australian illustrated book royalty Jackie French and Bruce Whatley’s oeuvre, I’m not sure how knowledge of Queen Victoria’s Underpants slipped past me.

Nonetheless, I’m rectifying that now. I mean, really, what’s not to sell you on a book about underpants like an illustrated cover featuring a windswept dog? Two windswept dogs if we’re going to argue semantics.

Queen Victoria’s Underpants is a whimsical tale with an important historical bent. Until Queen Victoria popularised wearing underpants, few women wore them (something that is, these days and to a underpants connoisseur like me, almost inconceivable).

Her championing of underpants meant—and here’s the kicker—that girls then had the freedom to engage in activities otherwise considered, without the modesty aid of underpants, to be unladylike or risqué. Cue horse riding and bike riding and dancing and archery …

Queen Victoria ruled half the world, the book’s un-named protagonist tells us, but she, like most people of her time, was underpants-less. ‘What if the wind blows the Queen’s skirt up?’ is the question that’s posed to refute the archaic claim that the Queen had no need of undies.

Broken down, the Queen Victoria’s Underpants’ premise is my friend’s someone did something incredible [insert heavy-hitting historic figure and their claim to fame here]. But her mum (as in the protagonist’s mum) made Queen Victoria’s underpants. This is the moment that the ‘My dad, picks the fruit …’ celebrating-the-everyday Cottee’s cordial jingle entered (and still hasn’t left) my head.

The tributes at the book’s beginning are whimsical, with double meanings set to deliberately sail over its target audience’s heads. French’s reads:
To Bruce, Lisa, Jennifer and Natalie, with love and enormous gratitude … playing with royal underwear has never been so much fun.

Whatley’s reads:
For Lisa, who keeps me busy enough to afford clean underwear every day.

The illustrations are, as always with this pair, complementary and complimentary all at once. The dogs’ facial expressions are, hands down, my fave elements.

I’ve got to say, though, that Queen Victoria’s Underpants is a bit light on substance—I expected more and better from such an accomplished, well-oiled writing-illustrating team as French and Whatley. I’m admittedly not in this book’s target readership, but I’d still argue that it doesn’t cater well to either kids’ imaginations or wink at adults—or do both, as most seriously good children’s books do.

For example, beyond bringing the quirky Queen Victoria creating an underpants trend trivia to our attention, the book doesn’t include enough historical matter to warrant inclusion on educational reading lists. Nor does it include story elements exciting or out-of-the-box enough to hook kids into reading it (or adults reading it to them) for free-time fun either.

Which kind of makes you wonder when—or rather, if—anyone’s reading it. Which in turn may explain why I hadn’t heard of this book, first published in 2010, until now. Which is why I think I’ll be sticking to re-reading French’s and Whatley’s back catalogue. Diary of a Wombat, anyone?

At the Free Craft Day this month, I gave a workshop on Marketing Yourself.  Author Katia Raina attended.  Last week she wrote an article on editor Sara Sargents workshop to share with you.  This week, she wrote an article about my workshop, so the rest of you might benefit from some of the things I shared.

Here’s Katia’s article:

Never Too Early To Start Building Your Online Presence: Kathy’s 5 Ways To Do It Right

No matter what stage of the writing process you find yourself braving at the moment, it’s always a good time to think about marketing, promotion and social media.

Not published yet? Use that to your advantage. Take the time to write, that comes first, for sure. But also take the time now to think about the marketing strategies for your future or current book and start building your online presence. That’s the advice of many these days, including the former Regional Advisor, author, illustrator and a local kidlit force in her own right Kathy Temean.

During the New Jersey SCBWI craft weekend on November 10, Kathy gave the attendees lots of advice on how to make social media work for authors, be they established, or those trying to break in.

Here is her list of 5 ways to get the right start: (she actually offered the participants a handout with 25 of those, but I have condensed them in the interest of online brevity)

1. Identify your strategy

Kathy calls this step the most important one of all. Before you get too involved in online marketing, take a moment to think: what are you trying to achieve? Formulate your own vision, Kathy advises, something to measure your success by as you go along. “Your social media strategy should become an interesting and relevant voice in the conversation,” she says. Make that your focus and your goal, and you can’t go wrong.

2. Start a blog

A blog used to be an optional thing for writers. Over the last few years, however, it seems to have become a “must,” Kathy says. Think of your blog as “a hub” for your online marketing activity – a place where all your marketing efforts ultimately go back to. Kathy recommends WordPress as a great, easy, free place to start a blog. Don’t wait for when you are published to do this. If you make friends along your journey, then your success will mean all that much more to them when at last you have some good news to announce on your blog.

Many people ask, “what should my blog be about?” Think about your site’s reader: why would she want to visit your blog? What would she get from it? A blog doesn’t always have to be about writing, either, Kathy says. Everyone reads and buys books. You can build your networking list no matter what you choose to blog about. Think about your hobbies. What are you good at doing? Do you knit? How about a blog on knitting? Are you someone who loves to find a good shopping deal? Is your child on the swim team? Everyone has knowledge they can share, other than what they do each day. No one cares, unless you end up being a big star.

The bottom line: don’t just try to promote yourself. Don’t be a diva. Or, as Kathy puts it, “add value to your community.”

3. Give more than you receive, build quality relationships, respect the community and stop pushing.

“You can’t burst onto a social media scene with a sense of entitlement,” Kathy says. “You have to earn respect from others.” In social networking terms, “giving” means visiting other sites, commenting there, participating in other virtual conversations. Think about what you truly have to give to others online, and they will appreciate you for it.

As your online relationships build and deepen, people you interact with will be more willing to help. Just make sure you don’t pepper them with requests for favors. Keep your relationships strong, but keep your expectations low. Don’t keep reminding people that your book is available, don’t keep “shouting” about your content. Begging for comments or tweets is a sure way to alienate the very visitors and potential readers you’re trying to attract. Just let things evolve naturally. Don’t react too vehemently to someone disagreeing with you online. “Instead of constantly fighting back, take the time to listen to what they’re really saying,” Kathy says. “You don’t know everything, and you can learn from others if you take the time to listen.”

In the end, Kathy asks everyone to “just be nice.” Whatever you do, “do not hard sell!” Kathy warns. “If you want to act like a used car salesman… go work for one.”

4. Focus

Between MySpace, Pinrest, Goodreads and Tumblr, social sites are multiplying like mushrooms under the rain these days. Kathy recommends not trying to be everywhere, or you will become overwhelmed and “anti-social.” She recommends choosing four sites to focus your energies on. Facebook is good for sharing details of family life, which can lead to deeper, more personal connections. Twitter can be a great tool to drive traffic to your blog, especially if you post on it daily. Posting on twitter doesn’t – and probably shouldn’t – be all about your blog, however. Re-tweet other people’s tweets. Tweet about other people’s blog posts. And, Kathy advises, though it might be a little overwhelming, if you choose twitter, try to drop in every day.  And if you are blogging set it up to automatically Tweet when you add a new post.  You can also have you post go driectly to facebook, too.

5. Engage your readers and remember the quality vs. quantity balance.

Don’t just talk at your readers on your site, Kathy recommends, but engage them. Weave in your personal experiences, or share how you have solved a problem. “Tell stories on your blog,” Kathy says. “People engage in stories. They connect with stories.” Try to keep your posts short enough to maintain the readers’ attention – Kathy recommends to keep it to 450 words or less. Ask a question at the end of your post. When someone new comments on your blog, email them a thank you. Place a poll on your blog. Or add a video. Also, sharing other people’s videos might be a great idea.

Also, think about how often you’d like to post. Posting daily as Kathy does, or even three times or week would attract more visitors, Kathy said, but it takes a huge time investment and commitment to produce quality content with such frequency.

Finally, if you just can’t see yourself committing to a blog, then Kathy says offer to write a guest post, or invite someone to post on your blog. Kathy’s own blog, with over 1200 daily visitors is not a bad site to write for once in a while. At the end of her presentation Kathy said she welcomed guest posts from other bloggers, that would be relevant to her site. After the workshop, I came up to her and took her up on it!

Good luck with your marketing efforts, everyone!

Katia Raina is the author of “Castle of Concrete,” a young adult novel about a timid half-Russian, half-Jewish teen in search of a braver “self” reuniting with her dissident mother in the last year of the collapsing Soviet Union, to be published by Namelos. On her blog, The Magic Mirror, http://katiaraina.wordpress.com Katia talks about writing and history, features interviews, book lists and all sorts of literary randomness.

Thank you Katia for another well-written article.  We look forward to reading the next one you send.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy

Welcome to DAY VIRGO of 13 Days of THE 13^TH SIGN Preorder Contest! I am happy to host Day Six of this contest for my friend and awesome author, Kristin Tubb who's new book THE 13TH SIGN comes out Jan 8th!.

So. What is this contest all about?

• key charm
• signed THE 13^TH SIGN swag
• $10 itunes gift card
• signed TIMEPIECE by Myra McEntire poster
• signed paperback of AUTUMN WINIFRED OLIVER DOES THINGS DIFFERENT by Kristin O’Donnell Tubb
• a 13^th SIGN tshirt

• Each preorder of THE 13^TH SIGN = 10 entries into grand prize drawing and 10 entries into that day’s drawing
• Each person who blogs about the contest = 10 entries into that day’s drawing
• Each person who changes Twitter or Facebook avatar to cover = 5 entries into that day’s drawing (for each day it is present)
• Each Tweet or Facebook status mention of the book and contest = 2 entries for that day’s drawing (must include hashtag #the13thsign)
• Each RT of book and/or contest = 1 entry for that day’s drawing

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Faeriality?alt=rss

I'm headed to New York finally next week to meet with my publishers and see some dear friends. A new Hugo sculpture will be coming along, and soon he'll be going on a few solo trips.

Did I lose you already? Well, hang on for a moment and let me clear this up. I've had a quite a few people ask me how I stay motivated in the face of rejection. I do actually have a secret. I'm competitive and I have a bit of a need-to-prove-people-wrong complex. 

Let me take you back to my junior year in high school. I was on the varsity tennis team and my coach went around the team giving his predictions of what kind of individual records we'd each have. He got to my doubles partner and I and said, "You'll win more than you lose." Ouch! We got mad. Really mad. That's insulting! (So insulting I remember those exact words all these years later!) So what did we do? We worked our tails off and broke the school record for most wins. We still hold it.

I haven't lost that need to prove people wrong. But don't misunderstand me. When I get a rejection, I get upset first. I may even cry. But then I work harder because I need to prove I can make it in this industry. And do you want to know something? When you get that acceptance, the rejections that came before it don't matter anymore.

What about you? Can you turn rejection into motivation?

3 Stars Nelson ‘N Deck: How the Adventures Began C. M. Gillott Stacey Roscoe 48 Pages   Ages: 4 to 8 ……………………… Back Cover: London is a magical city with big, bright lights and wonderful, historical, places and sights to visit and enjoy all year round. These are the stories about and eleven-year-old boy called Jack and [...]

Hey there, PiBoIdMo-ers. Hope you’re all well nourished and ready to roar through these final days! This post is about two things: perseverance and truth. The way I see it, there really aren’t many truths in life at all. There’s Death. There’s Taxes. There’s the fact I will wash every load of laundry at least twice because I will forget to put it in the drier and discover it days later…but I digress.

There’s also another:

“Stopping before you reach your goal guarantees you will not reach your goal.”

Now, that may sound like a bit of “duh” phrase. But is it, really? It’s one of many things I take from this incredibly inspirational cartoon about perseverance:

What do you take from it?

Oh, and here’s a little rhyming pep talk for ya, too:

You’re near the end it’s getting tough.
You’re all tapped out of clever stuff.

You may be thinking, this is it.
I’ve done enough. Who needs this s—?

So give it up. Admit defeat.
Or better yet, just lie. Or cheat!

Who needs blood or sweat or tears.
Respect from who? A bunch of peers?

And who needs real integrity.
Who needs a contract? Eh. Not me.

Empty pages float my boat.
27? All she wrote.

30 is for suckers, dude.
Embrace that downer attitude.

Writing’s hard, you’re filled with dread.
Let other people write instead.

Grab your towel. Throw it in,
and let the giving up begin!

BUT….

if you choose to persevere…
to fight and push, then listen here:

To you, I bow. I bow down low.
You’ll win the battle. Blow by blow.

Your quest to find the best of you
will dominate the rest of you.

Your goals and dreams are yours to lose.
And yours to harness….if you choose.

So choose the challenge. Choose to win!
Dig down deep for what’s within.

And one day gaze upon a shelf,
filled with books,
you wrote
yourself.

You never know!! That little idea on day 30 could be the next NYT Bestseller!!

GO PiBoIdMo-ers….GO!!

.

Tiffany Strelitz Haber has eaten fried bugs, jumped out of airplanes and lives for adventures. Tiffany grew up in NYC, but is now located in central NJ, and available for workshops everywhere.

Her debut picture book, THE MONSTER WHO LOST HIS MEAN (Holt/Macmillan) was recently featured in the NY Times Sunday Book Review and the art will be featured in the Society of Illustrators 2013 Original Art Show Traveling Exhibit.

Her next book, OLLIE AND CLAIRE (Philomel/Penguin) is due out April, 2013.

Please visit Tiffany at her website: ItsRhymeTime.com, on Facebook, or Tweet her @TiffRhymes.

Tiffany is giving away a signed copy of THE MONSTER WHO LOST HIS MEAN (which is very NICE)! Leave a comment to enter (one comment per person). A winner will be randomly selected in one week. Good luck!