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I’ve been asked in the past why it is that I don’t write up the online librarian previews by folks like those at Scholastic.  The reason is simple.  I figure that if you have access to the online previews you don’t need a recap from someone like me.  You can see them for yourself!  That said, some of you may have missed the Fall 2011 Scholastic preview that came out last month.  I didn’t think to blog it before, so go wild!  It’s up and ready for your attention, such as it is.

Book trailer time!  My respect for this one hinges on the fact that the kids in the video are as good as they are.  They’ve cultivated a kind of dead-eyed calm that I admire.

Speaking of trailers for books, here we have Liz Scanlon and Kathi Appelt discussing Scanlon’s newest title Noodle & Lou.  In it a worm and a blue jay are buds.  Any time I see a book where folks who eat or are eaten by one another are friends I think of that moment in Charise Mericle Harper’s Fashion Kitty where the main character explains how hard it is to be friends with something you want to eat.  She then shows a boy with a pet chocolate cake saying, “I love you.  But I really want to eat you.” Love that book.

Anywho, enjoy!

Thanks to Kathi Appelt for the link.

A new Harry Potter trailer was released this week.  I have resigned myself to not seeing it until it comes out on DVD.  Le sigh.

Thanks to Early Word for the link.

And finally for the off-topic video, I know that Stephen Colbert briefly linked to this video once.  It’s just so doggone Russian and so doggone cheery (two phrases I don’t tend to pair together) that I can’t help but make it my song of the day. La la la la la!

Saying that one is spoiled in New York City is sort of like saying that water is wet or snow is cold.  There are tradeoffs, of course.  The filth.  The crowds.  The teeny tiny apartments.  But for all of that, you instantly forget your previous discomforts when you get to visit gorgeous landmarks as part of your daily job.  One such example is the Flatiron Building where Macmillan holds its previews and far too tasty treats.  The treats are a bit of a problem, particularly the brownies that are small and delicious and very easy to cram in your mouth with both hands.  Prior to entering the building I had killed some time in a park that lies across the street from the building where I watched for, perhaps too long a period, a squirrel eat a gigantic muffin that was twice the size of its own head.  I took this as a sign that I should partake of the edibles.

In the past the Macmillan previews would consist of small groups of librarians leaping from office to office.  There was a great deal of fun to be had in this, since you got to see where folks like Neal Porter or Frances Foster worked.  The downside is that it meant that sometimes one group would still be speaking while another group waited around outside.  Now they’ve streamlined it a tad.  So while you don’t get to sink into Nancy Mercado’s couch, say, you do get to sit down while the editors and such come to you.

So it was that my group was led to a large and comfy conference room with big framed covers of popular books published by Macmillan (Generation X, All Creatures Great and Small, etc.) loomed above us as we discussed what the hashtag for the day should be (this is the advantage of attending a preview with the #1 preview Twitter-ers Jennifer Hubert-Swan and John Rocco).  Each chair held a bag with some galleys inside and the bags… the bags!  They were canvass and small with these thick ropy straps.  They’re fantastic.  I hope they have them at ALA for you guys this June.  As for the handouts, they were full color and contained (and this is marvelous and perhaps unprecedented) a Table of Contents.  Wow!

Before we begin, I will note that I had to split halfway through the preview to cover the reference desk at work.  As such, you’ll be hearing about what I encountered, albeit briefly.

Farrar Straus & Giroux

We’ve always had minimalist children’s books, though the number increases and decreases depending on the trends of the day.  2011 is shaping up to be a particularly shape-driven year, though.  Look on the New York Times bestseller list and you’ll see that Herve Tullet’s Press Here is selling like hotcakes.  Check out Harper Collins and Perfect Square, that loveliest of the lovelies.  And here at FSG there’s Dot by Patricia Intriago.  The book is not only Intriago’s own debut, but it will be one of the first titles launched with the Margaret Ferguson imprint that’s coming out this fall.  We were told that this was a case where the agent sent

I just searched my archives to see if I ever made a “monted eggs” joke in conjunction with Egmont USA.  To my chagrin, I did that very thing during the last Egmont preview.  Gah.  I hate being so predictable that even I can figure out what old jokes I’ll be pulling out at a given moment.

In any case, Egmont recently hosted the Summer/Fall preview of all their upcoming titles for the librarian hoards of New York.  And while their children’s offerings pale in the face of the YA fare, they provide me with cheese and so I go.  On this particular day the temperature was swelling well into the 90s in New York, giving me a brief glimpse of what pregnant women must normally endure in August.  An unpleasant sensation.

Picture Books

Just as it was at the last preview, Egmont has all of one picture book to their name per season.  And this year, that would be Little Lost Cowboy by Simon Puttock, illustrated by Caroline Jayne Church.  The book was introduced with the joking caveat, “We only want to do animals that you can cuddle and are cute.”  Crayfish, you are outta luck.  In this book a rolly-poly coyote cub is separated from his mommy.  He manages to indulge in a couple key “Aroooo”s, which reminded me of the Aroooos of one of my favorite picture book readalouds Katie Loves the Kittens.  A well placed Aroooo is worth its weight in gold.  Trust me.

And that polished off the picture books right there.  No time lost, eh?

Middle Grade

Y’know, for a supervillain Vordak the Incomprehensible sure seems to align himself with some pretty up-and-up causes.  Our attention at this point in the preview was directed to a nearby Reading Rules poster, as created by ALA.  There you may see Vordak tearing up just a little over The Velveteen Rabbit.

For fans of Vordak, a sequel was announced at this time.  I can count on one hand the number of children’s books written with adult protagonists that are human.  The general rule when it comes to making adults your heroes in books with kids is that they have to be a furry animal or no ten-year-old will be interested (call it The Redwall Conundrum).  Vordak flips that theory neatly on its ear . . . or at least he did until the book Vordak the Incomprehensible: Rule the School was announced.  Voluntarily

A publisher is like a delicate cheese. Each one has their own flavor. Their own specific style and substance. After years of watching one publisher or another, you get a sense of what they do and do not like. In some big publishers like Candlewick or Chronicle you detect a kind of personality. Slightly smaller pubs, however, are generally better known for cultivating their lists with a closer hand. Blue Apple Books, for example, displays this in various ways. If you get your paws on their Fall 2011 catalog you will find a nifty section at the start that discusses how author and publisher and Blue Apple President Harriet Ziefert started the company in 2005. It then highlights various titles on the Blue Apple list for each of the intervening years.  Using one’s own catalog as a more than just the usual meet n’ great is unusual.  I like it.  I wish I saw it more.

I sat down with Harriet and Elliot Kreloff (the Associate Publisher and Art Director) for lunch the other day in the Bryant Park Grill, where I remain convinced that Julie & Julia filmed the “Cobb salad” scene. In this far more intimate setting than the usual librarian previews I attend, I got a firsthand look at what 2011 has been offered, is offering, and is about to offer.

Let’s talk spring first.

Spring 2011

When graphic designers are allowed to make children’s books, the hair on the back of my neck starts to rise. A well-designed picture book can either be over the moon gorgeous or so self-involved that no self-respecting child will give it so much as a second glance. Back in 2009 the duo of Sharon Werner and Sarah Forss hedged far further into the former rather than the latter category with Alphabeasties and Other Amazing Types. Now they have returned. In Bugs by the Numbers we see an array of insects represented by numbers. These numbers, however, aren’t arbitrary. Each one corresponds to some kind of fascinating fact about the insect in question. For example, images of leaping fleas are composed of the number 150. That’s how many times a flea can jump its own height. These facts have also been vetted by someone in the Harvard University Museum, so no worries there. Boy, it would have come in awfully handy yesterday when fifty first graders descended on my library, desperately seeking any and all bug/insect books we had on hand. Awfully handy.

My sudden interest in board books has felt strange to me. To go from .003% interest to 110% is enough to give a gal whiplash. New as I am to the world of board books, I take what I am given with great interest, and not a little trepidation. That’s when I sort of met the DwellStudio line. Producing books like Good Morning, Toucan and Goodnight, Owl, the books are these strange, beautiful, somewhat iconic but very simple looks at saying good morning and saying goodnight. There are flaps to be lifted and monkeys to find. I shall have to test these out thoroughly when the ti

Previews, previews!  Lovely little previews!

And we find ourselves back at the Yale Club, across the street from Grand Central Station, and a whopping 10 minutes away, on foot, from my library.  There are advantages to living on a tiny island, I tell ya.

As per usual, Little Brown pulled out all the stops for the average children’s and YA librarian, in order to showcase their upcoming season.  There were white tablecloths and sandwiches consisting of brie and ham and apples.  The strange result of these previews is that I now seem to be under the mistaken understanding that Little Brown’s offices are located at the Yale Club.  They aren’t.  That would make no sense.  But that’s how my mind looks at things. When I am 95 and senile I will insist that this was the case.  Be warned.

A single day after my return from overseas I was able to feast my eyes on the feet of Victoria Stapleton (the Director of School and Library Marketing), bedecked in red sparkly shoes.  I would have taken a picture but my camera got busted in Bologna.  I was also slightly jet lagged, but was so grateful for the free water on the table (Europe, I love you, but you have to learn the wonders of ample FREE water) that it didn’t even matter.  Megan Tingley, fearless leader/publisher, began the festivities with a memory that involved a child’s story called “The Day I Wanted to Punch Daddy In the Face”.  Sounds like a companion piece to The Day Leo Said “I Hate You”, does it not?

But enough of that.  You didn’t come here for the name dropping.  You can for the books that are so ludicrously far away in terms of publication (some of these are January/February/March 2012 releases) that you just can’t resist giving them a peek.  To that end, the following:

Liza Baker

At these previews, each editor moves from table to table of librarians, hawking their wares.  In the case of the fabulous Ms. Baker (I tried to come up with a “Baker Street Irregulars” pun but it just wasn’t coming to me) the list could start with no one else but Nancy Tafuri.  Tafuri’s often a preschool storytime staple for me, all thanks to her Spots, Feathers and Curly Tails.  There’s a consistency to her work that a librarian can appreciate.  She’s also apparently the newest Little Brown “get”.  With a Caldecott Honor to her name (Have You Seen My Duckling?) the newest addition is All Kinds of Kisses.  It’s pretty cute.  Each animals gets kisses from parent to child with the animal sound accompanying.  You know what that means?  We’re in readaloud territory here, people.  There’s also a little bug or critter on each page that is identified on the copyright page for parents who have inquisitive children.

Next up, a treat for all you Grace Lin fans out there.  If you loved Year of the Dog and Year of the Rat then you’ll probably be pleased as punch to hear that there’s a third