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It's been pretty quiet around here lately, but not for lack of work. The designers are all swamped, getting covers ready to present for approval today. We're working on 80 new books for Spring '10, including seven or eight new series. So the design staff has been in a flurry of concepting and designing.

In the meantime, editorial work continues apace, at least for this editor. I'm actually done with the initial editorial work for the Spring '10 list, so I've been focusing on Fall '10. There are some REALLY fun books coming in our next few seasons. One series I'm especially excited about is a spin-off from our wildly successful Claudia Cristina Cortez series. The new set will focus on Claudia's best friend, Monica. Also written by Diana G. Gallagher, the new books follow Monica through middle school and introduce some new characters to the Pine Tree Middle School universe.

I've only edited two manuscripts so far, and the series designer and I have yet to meet to talk concepts for the interior. So right now, the books are really a blank slate--we've got the story, but the package could go any of a number of ways. It's exciting. I love working on an established series--it's like hanging out with old friends--but new series have so much potential, so much opportunity. I love the blank page (so to speak--the page is full of words!).

Now I'm going to get back to Monica. Enjoy your Wednesdays. I hope you all get your own blank pages today!




More soon!
--Beth

Here's what I found on my desk this morning.


You probably can't tell from the not-great-quality pic, but that's all 12 new Jake Maddox books for Fall 2009. Four copies each, to be checked to make sure all is in order before they're released. Oooh, exciting!!! While checking over these finished copies isn't my favorite job in the world (it takes a while!), it is so thrilling to see the fruits of many months of labor.

Plus, that new book smell? Intoxicating.

more soon--
Beth

When I was 8 years old, I purchased a 12-cent (!) DC comic with the book-length story “The Last Days of Superman.” This was not the amazing graphic-novel blockbuster of 1992, but the earlier Superman, issue 156, October 1962. I must have read that story about 35 times, weeping during the first 20. Of course, Superman didn’t die. How could he? Superman is invincible (except for kryptonite, but that’s not the point).

I thought of that story when I read a recent article in the December issue of School Library Journal. It was titled “Wanted: Male Models” and lamented the lack of male reading models for young children, especially for boys. We definitely need more men to read to their children, to spend more time curled up with a book rather than with a warm TV set or computer monitor. I agree with the writer —we need more male mentors. But I have seen them, and it’s usually at a comic book shop or in the graphic novel section at the local big-chain bookstore.

Wednesday is “new comic book” day across the country. Several of us from the Stone Arch office often visit one of our favorite comic book stores in the middle of the week, either to browse or to get that special issue we’ve been itching for. (For me, it was the new Metal Men by DC artist Duncan Rouleau.) Often, we see other guys there with their kids, all gazing at shiny new covers or vintage editions wrapped in protective plastic.

I frequent another comic shop in downtown Minneapolis, usually on the weekends. I always see dads, and often moms, accompanied by their bright-eyed kids, all of them excited and talking about some new manga adventure or superhero tale. The male models are out there. They are reading, although they may not be in the library. Yet.

Which, I guess, answers the question I posed at the beginning of this posting. Superman isn’t dead. He has a growing horde of new fans. And that makes me hopeful—about reading in general, and in particular, about the imaginations of the young. It also thrills me to partner with DC Comics in our new Super Hero line of original stories about Batman and Superman. This could pull back into the library some of those kids who were looking for their favorite reading material elsewhere. And for me to help create books with the same people who gripped me with their caped crusaders when I was 8 years old . . . wow!

Pastimes and hobbies and ways of spending time will change over the years, but we’ll always need stories. Kids are still reading about superheroes. Maybe they’re hidden in the back corner of a comic book store, or behind a spinner rack blooming with manga, but they are there, and they’re very much alive.


Michael Dahl
Editorial Director, Stone Arch Books

If you’re not on our catalog mailing list, you haven’t been able to take a peek at our latest books. Well, the wait is over—our Fall 2008 books are now available on our website. Take a look at all of our new products, including brand-new series (Graphic Spin, We Are Heroes) and fresh additions to old favorite series (Claudia Cristina Cortez, Jake Maddox, and Graphic Flash, among others!). While you’re there, you can also check out our vast repository of educators’ resources, including free Reader’s Theater scripts, book report forms, and create-your-own-graphic-novel pages. Check it all out at www.stonearchbooks.com!

What a fun and exhausting weekend we had in Anaheim, meeting up with old and new friends to discuss future plans for Stone Arch Books. As busy as it was, the real buzz was in our booth! Of course the fact that we have safe graphic novels continues to draw attention. A well-known graphic novel illustrator told us that his son searches for our “Safe Graphic Novel” symbol to find graphic novels that are as cool as the books Dad creates and wholly accessible for younger readers. Maybe someday Dad will illustrate a graphic novel for SAB!

Another hot topic in our booth was our new We Are Heroes series. Everyone wants to show kids how to be active in their communities and be good citizens. These books show how kids can get involved. Several librarians were especially happy to see that all the proceeds from our book Kids Against Hunger are going to the Kids Against Hunger organization. We’re excited that educators can use our books to show kids that they can influence their communities and at the same time, the proceeds will directly benefit an admirable community activity.

Watch for photos of our Newbery Dinner table, coming next week!


--Maryellen Gregoire
Director of Product Planning and Public Relations, Stone Arch Books

ALA is this week in Anaheim, CA. This is one of the biggest library events of the year, and we can’t wait to attend. We’ll be in booth 2478—please stop by, pick up one of our popular Jake Maddox or Library of Doom posters, preview our brand new books for Fall 2008 (hot off the presses!), and grab a new catalog so you can browse our complete list of contemporary fiction once you’re back at home. We’re featuring our new We Are Heroes set—come by and take a look. And we love to hear from and talk to librarians. If you have thoughts about our books or books you’d like to see, come on by and let us know.

Maryellen will have a recap of events next week—hope to see you in Anaheim!

Our new catalog is here! The marketing team finished working on it just two weeks ago, so it was a great surprise when finished copies showed up on our desks on Thursday afternoon.

This season, our catalog is full of tons of new books we’re really proud of. Our new series, Graphic Spin, does for fairy tales what Graphic Revolve did for classic stories—in each Graphic Spin book, a fairy tale is lavishly told in graphic-novel format. You’ve never seen fairy tales like this before!

In Graphic Sparks, we have new books in our Eek and Ack, School Zombies, Time Blasters, and Buzz Beaker series. We also have the first two books in a brand-new series, Zinc Alloy, written by our own Donald Lemke. Kids will love the escapades of Zack Allen, the world’s newest superhero.

Our Graphic Flash set has grown by four new books—all stories of war that will fit in wonderfully to American history classes. And Graphic Revolve contains four new classic stories.

Jake Maddox is back with twelve new books—four boy stories, four girl stories, and four new extreme outdoor adventure books. Our bestselling and well-reviewed Claudia Cristina Cortez set is back, too—with four more stories from Claudia’s point of view. We also have four new Vortex mysteries (including Curtains!: A High School Musical Mystery by our own Michael Dahl) and six new Shade Books, perfect for the kid who’s looking for a little bit of creepy suspense (that’s still safe!)

And we’ve mentioned the We Are Heroes series before on this blog. This new series contains six high-low books about ordinary kids making extraordinary changes in their communities. Whether it’s planting trees at school or painting a room in a house built by Habitat for Humanity, these books show real ways kids can make differences. (And, of course, proceeds from the book Kids Against Hunger will go to the nonprofit organization Kids Against Hunger™.)

These books aren’t available yet, but they will be on July 15. Keep your eye on this blog for more information about all of our new products over the next couple of months! Take a look at all of our books, or request a catalog of your own, at www.stonearchbooks.com.

On Friday, Krista Monyhan and I drove to Mankato, MN to take part in a really special opportunity. We headed to Franklin Elementary School, where the school principal had contacted Kids Against Hunger and organized a special volunteering day for the kids there. As we’ve mentioned before in this blog, we have a book (which I edited) coming out this summer about Kids Against Hunger, and it was my first chance to get to see for myself what the organization does.

When Krista and I arrived at Franklin Elementary, the day was already in full swing. We entered a noisy, crowded gym, where five long tables had been set up. Ten kids (and two adult supervisors), each wearing a special Kids Against Hunger apron and a hairnet* were at each table. The tables were covered with big plastic containers, each full of a different component of the special rice-soy casserole. As we watched, the kids scooped up rice, soy, dried vegetables, and “chicken” powder**. Each scoop went into a funnel, which led to a plastic bag with cooking instructions and nutrition facts. Once the bag was full, one of the kids brought it to the weighers, who made sure that the package was the right weight. If it wasn’t, they’d add or subtract some ingredients. Then another kid sealed the package using a special heat-sealing machine, and passed it on to be packed into a box.

None of these jobs sounds particularly thrilling for a kid, but it was incredible to see how all of the kids in the room were working together. They’d race, trying to fill more boxes than the table next to them. They’d relay orders--"less rice! More soy!"--and box counts down the line. Every so often, they’d trade jobs, so that everyone got a chance to try different parts of the line. And they kept saying “Come on, it’s for the kids! Hurry up, it’s for the kids!”

As I helped one fifth-grade girl learn to use the sealing machine, another girl looked at me and said, “I’ve been helping Kids Against Hunger for like, longer than I can remember.” I smiled and said, “That’s great! Today’s my first time.” But I have the feeling it won’t be my last—it was such a fun experience, made even more fun by a really great group of kids and their teachers, and other volunteers for Kids Against Hunger.

While Krista and I were there (and we were only there for half of the day!), the kids packaged enough food to make more than twenty thousand meals. That’s a lot of good, filling, healthy food for people who don’t have enough to eat—and all it took was one afternoon, a gymnasium, and a bunch of really great kids. These are exactly the kind of kids we had in mind when we came up with our series We Are Heroes (which includes the book Kids Against Hunger)—everyday, ordinary kids doing extraordinary things.

You can learn more about Kids Against Hunger at their website. And we’ll give you more information about our book Kids Against Hunger when it’s available for purchase.


--Beth Brezenoff
Senior Editor, Stone Arch Books

* I thought the kids would be embarrassed to be wearing hairnets, but no! At first, they seemed hesitant—when we handed out the hairnets to a new group of kids, one of them said, “Well, we look dumb, but at least we ALL look dumb.” But by the end of each session, they were begging to be able to keep their hairnets.

** The chicken powder is vegetarian, to accommodate the needs of various diets throughout the world.

Krista Monyhan and Beth Brezenoff at Franklin Elementary School.

This season, we worked on a book about a really special organization, Kids Against Hunger. Kids Against Hunger (KAH), which works to eliminate starvation worldwide, was featured on the Minneapolis ABC affiliate last night (May 11). You can watch the story here. In this powerful, moving segment, Emmy Award-winning reporter Jason Davis travels to a KAH feeding site in Haiti with KAH founder Richard Proudfit and the director of KAH's Mankato, MN division, Tim Stromer.

Stone Arch Books will publish Kids Against Hunger in Fall ‘08. The book, part of our “We Are Heroes” series, is one of six new books that focus on kids making a difference in their communities. Stone Arch Books will donate the profits from the sale of our Kids Against Hunger book to the organization.

Keep an eye on our website and this blog for more information. We’ll tell you more about our Kids Against Hunger book and the other books in the "We Are Heroes" series when the books are available in August.

Our new Spring 2008 catalog is now in mailboxes and on desks all over the country. Receiving the newest catalog is always a moment of pride for the staff. We always comment that there’s no one moment to stop and look back on a recently completed season—once we’ve finished one season, we’re already well into our next one. Receiving the new catalog is a great way for us to take a minute and look back on a season of hard work on great books. Additionally, the catalog is a group effort. Though there’s one designer and one project manager, everyone ends up being involved in some way, whether it’s providing copy, proofing the order forms, or photographing interior spreads.

We’re really proud of our Spring ‘08 list. We’ve got old favorites, like new sports books from Jake Maddox, new David Mortimore Baxter, a fresh set of Graphic Revolve retellings, and a new book in the Eek and Ack series. There’s plenty of new stuff, too: some Jake Maddox books featuring girl athletes; a cool new series, The Adventures of Sam X, in our Pathway set; and in our Keystone set, six hi-low novels for girls. You can browse all of our books or request a catalog of your own at www.stonearchbooks.com.

Last night when I was playing City of Heroes (the only game I am currently addicted to) I was on a team with a toon name Blazing Billy. I can’t remember now how the conversation started but he said, “I love sifting through entrails.” My creativity sensor went off and I had the opening sentence [...]

This morning I woke up and started reading my e-mail as I usually do. There were a couple of posts on one of my mailing lists that got my attention. One talked about motivation and the other about an incident with some high school kids up in Canada and the dumb things they wrote about [...]

New books added to the Master List of Books about Books and Reading. Thanks, sanam.

New blogs added to the blogroll:

Brotherhood 2.0 -- vaguely related to children's literature. Mostly for fun.

NYC Teacher: Mentor Texts -- great stuff going on in this writing workshop! Check it out!

New blog name:

The SLJ Blog is now Bowllan's Blog, and she wants to know if handwriting still matters. Go weigh in.