Here are some literary events to pencil in your calendar this week.
To get your event posted on our calendar, visit our Facebook Your Literary Event page. Please post your event at least one week prior to its date.
Author Hubert Crouch will discuss his new thriller The Word at Parnassus Books. Hear him on Tuesday, April 28th starting 6:30 p.m. (Nashville, TN)
Young adult novelist Melissa Grey will celebrate the release of her new book, The Girl at Midnight. Join in on Wednesday, April 29th at Books of Wonder from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. (New York, NY)
Writer Robin Newman will headline a signing session at The Corner Bookstore. See her on Thursday, April 30th starting 7 p.m. (New York, NY)
Children’s books creator Marissa Moss will appear at Great Good Place for Books to talk about the final installment of the Amelia’s Notebook series. Meet her on Saturday, May 2nd starting 12 p.m. (Oakland, CA)
The Powerhouse Arena will host the launch for artist Krzysztof Poluchowicz’s book, Brooklyn ABC: A Scrapbook to Everyone’s Favorite Borough. Check it out on Saturday, May 2nd starting 4 p.m. (Brooklyn, NY)
Here are some literary events to pencil in your calendar this week.
To get your event posted on our calendar, visit our Facebook Your Literary Event page. Please post your event at least one week prior to its date.
Writer Marissa Moss will celebrate the release of Amelia’s Middle School Graduation Yearbook at Folio Books. Join in on Friday, April 17th starting 6 p.m. (San Francisco, CA)
Horror master R.L. Stine will appear at BookCourt to discuss the latest installment of the Fear Street series, Don’t Stay Up Late. Meet him on Saturday, April 18th starting 7 p.m. (Brooklyn, NY)
Four children’s books creators will participate in the April Storybook Showcase panel at Books of Wonder. Check it out on Sunday, April 19th from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. (New York, NY)
Darlene Beck-Jacobson debut middle grade book contract was listed this past week in Publisher’s Marketplace. Congratulations Darlene! Here is the announcement:
Darlene Beck-Jacobson’s THE CARRIAGE MAKER’S DAUGHTER, set in the early 1900s in Washington, DC, racial intolerance, social change and sweeping progress create a turbulent stage for a twelve-year old, who prefers Papa’s carriage barn and the symphony of the blacksmith’s hammer to the proper expectations of females, and finds the strength to defend what she believes in when her comfortable way of life is threatened by racist neighbors, pitched as reminiscent of Little House on the Prairie, the girl to Marissa Moss at Creston Books, in a nice deal, for publication in Fall 2014, by Liza Fleissig at Liza Royce Agency (World English).
Gayle Krause’s YA Historical Romance, “The Storyteller’s Daughter” is the lead story in the Timeless Anthology, released this month from Pugalicious Press. It’s a mash-up of Scherazade, Aladdin and the real ancient Iranian Queen Homay. Love stories that transcend time. From a thousand years ago to the unknown future, Timeless will show how love is timeless. This anthology of love stories contains “The Storyteller’s Daughter” by Gayle C. Krause, “And The Nightingale Sang” by Kip Wilson, “A Light Of Victory” by Jennifer Carson, “The Angel Of The Bastille” by J.R. Sparlin, “Stella’s Hero” by Kristine Carlson Asselin & Ansha Kotyk, “In This Moment” by D. E. Atwood, and “It Lies Beneath” by Magda Knight. Congratulations, Gayle!
Associate editor at Simon & Schuster Michael Szczerban has won the Ashmead Award, designed to nurture the career of a promising young editor in the field of book publishing. In receiving the award, Szczerban will attend the Yale Publishing Course: Book Publishing: Print and Digital.
Kristin Ostby has joined Simon & Schuster for Young Readers as editor. She was most recently a senior editor for Albert Whitman.
Longtime president and publisher of Viking Children’s Books Regina Hayes will relinquish that position and serve as editor-at-large, just as she celebrates her thirtieth anniversary at Penguin. Writers House agent Ken Wright will take over as vp and publisher of Viking Children’s on August 27, reporting to Penguin Children’s president Don Weisberg.
Keating Literary and Brick House are “formalizing what has been organically emerging over the past few years as a strong alliance” between the two and joining together to form Union Literary. Trena Keating and Sally Wofford-Girand are joined by Brick House senior agent Jenni Ferrari-Adler and newly promoted agent Kezia Toth under the new banner.
Kathy tomorrow,
Kathy
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This month I am taking a break from blogging. In my slot, I am proud to present my friend and collaborator (on G Is for Googol: A Math Alphabet Book), an esteemed author and illustrator of both fiction and non-fiction, Marissa Moss. You may be familiar with Marissa's popular Amelia's Notebook series or her other fictional series including Max Disaster and Daphne's Diary. She is also the author of several highly-praised (and highly-researched) journal-style historical fiction novels and a half-dozen non-fiction biographical picture books telling the remarkable stories of remarkable women. Here, Marissa shares the backstory of the history she writes.
I love stumbling on little-known stories that grab my imagination and sense of history. Those are the stories I turn into books, the tales of courage and achievement against the odds that deserve to be widely known. Is it a coincidence that many of these undiscovered gems are about women?
Women have mostly been absent from the grand epic of history. The ones that are recognized are an elite few, Queen Elizabeth I, Cleopatra, Marie Curie. Much more fascinating to me are the ordinary women doing extraordinary things.
Maggie Gee is one such woman. I found her in a local newspaper story about WWII veterans, published naturally on veteran’s day. I didn’t know that women had flown warplanes in WWII and it seemed like an important story for kids (and adults) to know about.
I looked Maggie up in the phone book, called her and asked for an interview. That interview and the many conversations that followed became SKY HIGH: THE TRUE STORY OF MAGGIE GEE. What impressed me about Maggie was her drive, her optimism, her courage. She didn’t see barriers, but opportunities. Sure, there was discrimination against her, both as a woman, and as a Chinese-American, but she barely mentioned such problems when she talked about her life. Although her mother had lost her U.S. citizenship when she married Maggie’s father, a Chinese immigrant, that didn’t deter her from working as a welder on Liberty ships during the war, nor from encouraging her daughter to join the Women’s Army Service Pilots. After the WASP were disbanded, Maggie went on to charge through more doors, becoming a physicist and working on weapon systems at the Lawrence Livermore labs, another job that was rare for a woman, let alone an Asian-American woman.
I thought of Maggie’s grit, her enthusiasm for taking risks and follow
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Bianca Schulze,
on 9/27/2011
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By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: September 27, 2011
Sometimes our children need encouragement—especially when they’re feeling a little shy in a new environment. Let’s face it; sometimes we all need a little bolstering to confront new experiences. The following books may help your children do so with grace and boost their confidence. After all, offering gentle words of support can go a long way. Just ask Mr. Bear.
The Next Door Bear is the perfect book for a child who is just starting a new school or moving to a new neighborhood. When the playful children outside Emma’s new apartment are less than welcoming, she feels terribly lonely. Everything is blue in Yelchin’s painted illustrations, until Emma meets a debonair bear on the elevator. After Mr. Bear invites her to tea, Emma’s world becomes a technicolored rainbow of trees and flowers and she feels encouraged enough to try and make new friends. Together talented husband-and-wife duo Eugene Yelchin and Mary Kuryla have created a balm for children who must learn to overcome their fears. (Ages 5-8)
Dan Yaccarino recounts his big Italian family’s true immigration story in All The Way to America. His great-grandfather embarks on the great journey from Sorrento to Ellis Island with a handy shovel and these parting words of wisdom, “Work hard, but remember to enjoy life, and never forget your family.” Through four generations the shovel is industriously used in food stands and bakeries, for gardening and even to pour rock salt over snowy sidewalks. Now it resides safely perched on Yaccarino’s shelf, a proud reminder of how far his family has come and what they have achieved in their adopted home. (Ages 5-8)
Ida Lewis was known as The Bravest Woman in America when she became the first woman to receive the American Cross of Honor. Determined to become a lighthouse keeper like her father, Ida learns “to pull her weight” by observing and following his careful instructions and courageous feats. Keeping watch over the harbor, young Ida rescues a boatload of boys whose sailboat capsizes. This beautifully written (by Marissa Moss) and illustrated (by Andrea U’Ren) book will light the way for brave girls to face their fears and reach for their aspirations. (Ages 5-8)
Add these books to your collection by clicking on the book cover images.
Nicki Richesin is the editor of four anthologies,W
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Nurse, Soldier, Spy: The Story of Sarah Edmonds, a Civil War Hero
By Marissa Moss
Illustrated by John Hendrix
Abrams Books for Young Readers
$18.95
ISBN: 978-0-8109-9735-6
Ages 6-12
On shelves now.
If I want to depress myself on a given day I’ll compare the list of biographical subjects that kids in school are handed to pick and choose from with the biographical subjects that I had to pick and choose from when I was a kid some twenty odd years ago. It’s disheartening. Essentially, it’s the same list. Teachers always include Edison, Einstein, Washington, Tubman, Keller, etc. Once in a while someone will fall out of favor (Benjamin Banneker) to be replaced with someone new (Matthew Henson) but that’s just the way of things. How I long for the day when the core biographical subjects are thrown out the window and kids can take full advantage of the range of amazing stories in their libraries’ biography sections. That’ll be the day when a kid has an assignment to find a historical female hero who fought in a war and I can hand them Nurse, Soldier, Spy: The Story of Sarah Edmonds, a Civil War Hero. Until then, I’ll just have to hawk the book on its own merits. Fortunately, this is not too terribly difficult to do.
I’m sure you’ve all heard stories of those women who cut their hair, donned men’s clothes, and joined the armed forces during the Civil War. Many a woman did this, but few were as brave and inventive as Sarah Edmonds. Having run away from home at the age of sixteen to escape an arranged marriage, Sarah had been living as a man for three years when she returned to Michigan to join the Union cause. On the field she proved a brave nurse, soldier, and eventual spy. When told to spy on the enemy, Sarah became a believable black male slave and managed to extract some much needed information across enemy lines. An Author’s Note at the end explains how the rest of Sarah’s life went and how she became “the only woman invited to join the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), the association for Civil War veterans of the Union Army.”
Marissa Moss is best known for her Amelia’s Notebook series, an early chapter book grouping of titles that served as the precursor to the current Diary of a Wimpy Kid journal boom we’re now in. I was under the distinct impression that fiction was Ms. Moss’s one and only bag, and this feeling was helped in no small part by the biographical sketch of her that appears on this title’s bookflap. Dig a little deeper, however, and you see that Ms. Moss has a longstanding appreciation of history that has manifested itself in a variety of different ways over the years. Penning everything from historical novels like Galen: My Life in Imper
Wow, it seems “Congratulations” and “Good Luck” are in order! Yay everyone
Thanks so much for the publicity, Kathy.
If you ever need me to return the favor please let me know.
Gayle