One of our upcoming books that I’m most excited about is a new middle grade novel in verse called Etched in Clay, out this January. Etched in Clay, by Andrea Cheng, explores the life of Dave the Potter, an enslaved man from South Carolina who learned how to read and write. Dave is famous for inscribing his own poetry and thoughts on the pottery that he made – a very daring thing in light of the harsh anti-literacy laws for slaves in place at the time.
Author and artist Andrea Cheng used woodcuts to create the delicate spot art for Etched in Clay. Here’s how she did them:
“After carving the wood blocks, I roll them with ink…
…and print them by placing paper on top of the block…
…rubbing it…
…and then pulling the print off the block.
I usually print several times because each print is different, and I’m trying to get one that is evenly inked.
Then, when I have a couple of good prints, I ‘clean’ the block by printing with scrap paper (green tissue in picture). I sometimes use these light prints for collages or other artwork.”
Here’s what the final image looks like in the book:
Kirkus Reviews has just given Etched in Clay its first starred review, calling it “at once intimate and universal; the riveting story of an unforgettable life lived during an unbelievable time.” Learn more about the book, or like us on Facebook to see more pictures of Andrea’s illustrations.
Want to see more artwork in progress? Illustrator Beth Lo shares how to paint a ceramic plate.
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Like dating, designing the right cover for a book can be a long, arduous process. Sometimes a cover gives off the wrong impression. Sometimes it’s too showy, sometimes it’s too dull. Sometimes a cover says all the right things, but lacks sincerity.
But sometimes, you find The One. And you just know.
That was the case with the cover of Summer of the Mariposas, coming this fall from our Tu Books imprint. Summer of the Mariposas, by Guadalupe Garcia McCall, is a YA retelling of The Odyssey set in Mexico. It follows Odilia and her sisters on their quest to return a dead man to his family (you can read an excerpt of the book here).
Because Guadalupe Garcia McCall is such a gorgeous writer (her first novel, Under the Mesquite, won the Pura Belpré Award and was a Morris Award Finalist) we wanted to find a gorgeous cover that would do justice to her work. Based on suggestions from the editor, Stacy Whitman, and Guadalupe herself, the designer came back with seven or eight different covers to start with. But when we saw this one, we knew it was perfect:
This cover is filled with small details that really capture the feeling of the story – the symbol in the sky, five stars for five sisters, the fantasy elements grounded by a very real-looking road. And yesterday the first ARCs came in, so now we can see what they look like in real life:
What do you think?
(Note: if you’ll be at ALA, we’ll be doing an ARC signing with Guadalupe Garcia McCall herself on Sunday morning at 10AM in booth #2436!)
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Today is National Siblings Day, so we thought it would be the perfect time to share a sneak peek of one of our most highly anticipated upcoming books: Morris finalist and Belpré winner Guadalupe Garcia McCall’s Summer of the Mariposas! Out in fall 2012 from our Tu Books imprint, Summer of the Mariposas is a YA retelling of The Odyssey in which Odilia and her sisters embark on a quest through Mexico to return a dead man to his family, and must overcome monsters from Mexican folklore as they journey home.
In the excerpt below, the Garza sisters have found a dead body in their swimming hole, and Juanita, the second eldest, has hatched a harebrained scheme to take their father’s car and return the dead man to his family in Mexico. Odilia, the eldest (and narrator of Summer of the Mariposas), is trying to trick her sisters into staying home by telling them she’ll tell their mother:
Juanita came back into the room, looking more like herself again. “You’re a lousy sister!” she yelled.
“Enough!” I finally raised my voice the way Mamá does when she’s done putting up with them. “Now go to bed before I call Mamá back and tell her what’s really going on. And you, stop cursing, or I’ll wash your mouths out with Clorox.”
To my surprise, the twins flounced off the bed. All four of my sisters marched out and down the hall to the kitchen without another word. I went out the front door, locked it, and put the spare key to the deadbolt in my pocket. There was no other set of keys in the house to that door, so if they wanted to open it again, they’d have to wait until Mamá came home or jump out a window.
The thought had barely entered my mind when I heard the unmistakable sound of a window being slid open. I turned around to look at the darkened house. The only light was in Pita’s room, which faced the front.
“You can’t back out of this! We out-vote you four to one!” Juanita screamed, her body halfway out the window.
I lifted my hand in the air, my index finger extended. “Rule Number One of the code of the cinco hermanitas: The eldest sister has the final word. Always. Good night.”
I left the yard, closing the gate behind me noisily, so they could hear me leaving even in the moonless night. Then I walked resolutely up the sidewalk toward Brazos Street. The thought of them escaping through a window made me cringe. I froze momentarily before I reached the corner, but then I realized they wouldn’t do that. They might be wild, but they depended on me for everything. If I wasn’t in on it, it usually didn’t fly. That was the beauty of following the code of the five little sisters. We really did do everything together.
Of course, Odilia’s sisters do win out in the end, and the girls end up on a road trip to Mexico, guided by La Llorona, the legendary Wailing Woman. On the way home, the sisters must overcome their tendency to bicker, join together, and defeat the magical forces of evil they meet—a witch and her Evil Trinity of monsters—so they can return home.
Stay tuned for more sneak peeks and excerpts from Summer of the Mariposas, and check out a great new interview with Guadalupe Garcia McCall on growing up bilingual and between cultures. And if you haven’t yet read Under the Mesquite, what are you waiting for?
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Never listen to a cat.
You don’t have the luxury of eight more lives when the kitty litter hits the fan.
Today we’re excited to share the cover of Cat Girl’s Day Off by the oh-so-hilarious Kimberly Pauley (author of Sucks to Be Me), out this April from our Tu Books imprint:
Natalie “Cat Girl” Ng comes from a family of the super-Talented: levitation, lie-detecting, and just plain genius. In comparison, her own Talent of talking to cats doesn’t seem so great, until the desperate pleas of a cat on a viral YouTube video catapult Nat to the forefront of a celebrity kidnapping scandal. While trying to keep her secret Talent hidden from her secret crush, Nat and her friends Oscar and Melly race through Ferris Bueller’s Chicago trying to rescue the lives—human and feline—that are on the line.
Let us know what you think, and be sure to hop over to part I of our cover reveal to check out Vodník, also out from Tu Books this spring!
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It’s HERE! We are super excited to share the cover of Vodník by Bryce Moore, out this March from our Tu Books imprint. About the book:
Short version: Slovakian fairy tales! Roma characters! CASTLES!!
Long version: Vodník is a YA contemporary fantasy about Tomas, a Roma teen who moves with his family from the US back to Slovakia and discovers that the folk tale creatures he befriended as a young boy are more dangerous than he knew, especially a vodník who has begun drowning local townspeople (deaths for which Roma like Tomas are blamed). When he learns that his own cousin’s life is in danger, Tomas makes a deal with Death to save her – but can anyone cheat death forever?
And here, dear friends, is the cover in all its glory:
Extra points if you can see the vodník’s face in the background.
Stay tuned for part II, where we reveal the cover of Kimberly Pauley’s Cat Girl’s Day Off, also out this spring from Tu Books. And meanwhile, let us know what you think!
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Ivan Lett
Fashion has been one of the most notoriously difficult industries for blacks to penetrate. In March 1966, Donyale Luna was the first black model to appear on the cover of Vogue—the British edition. It would be almost a decade later before Beverly Johnson appeared as the first black model for American Vogue, finally gracing the cover with the August 1974 issue.
The work of Alexander McQueen, with its bold, distinctly provocative style, has shown the ways in which fashion and beauty transcend race. The most vocal among black models championing 
McQueen’s legacy is close friend, Naomi Campbell, the first black model to appear on Vogue Paris’s cover. Last spring, she paid tribute to McQueen’s style with her “Fashion for Relief Haiti” show, highlighting McQueen’s Manta dresses, alongside Kate Moss and Annabelle Neilson. He touched people regardless of race, and many black celebrities including superstars Rihanna, Kanye West, and Michelle Obama have expressed their appreciation for his designs and vision.
Photographer Nick Knight, well known for his “All Black” issue of Italian Vogue, put together a tribute video to McQueen, titled “To Lee, with Love” (sound familiar?) with an exclusive soundtrack by Björk. Many of these iconic pieces will be part of The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art for a show opening May 4, “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.” The accompanying catalog, published by YUP in association with The Met, is edited by curators Andrew Bolton and Harold Koda, covering his entire career as a fashion designer, one of the most important of our times.
Tribute to Alexander McQueen by Nick Knight, music by Björk from SHOWstudio on Vimeo.
Ivan Lett is Online Marketing Coordinator for Yale University Press.
Only two days left to enter our contest and win a free copy of John Farndon's Atlas of Oceans. 
Remember: you must correctly identify the landmasses on the cover image and live in North America to win. Submit your answer and e-mail address as a comment to our blog (not on Facebook). The most specific answers will win, so there's still a chance you can bump someone less descriptive out of the winner's circle.
Contest closes on Wednesday at 6pm, EST. Good luck!
Today, Yale University Press announces the official publication of the Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. This monumental project by David Eltis and David Richardson has finally come to fruition after more than a decade of hard work and research. The Foreword and Afterword were written by David Brion Davis and David Blight, respectively.
The book draws from a historic and international scholarly project—the online database, www.slavevoyages.org—with records on nearly 35,000 slaving voyages, covering roughly 80 percent of all such voyages ever made. Eltis and Richardson use astonishingly detailed illustrations to show which nations participated in the slave trade, where the ships involved were outfitted, where the captives boarded ship, and where they were landed in the Americas, as well as the experience of the transatlantic voyage and the geographic dimensions of the eventual abolition of the traffic. While this is no easy subject to wrap one's head around, it is an important contribution for not only scholars, but the whole of the Atlantic world; what Dwight Garner at the New York Times has already proclaimed "elegant and eye-opening."
The amount of information you can learn from just one of these maps is astonishing, and… well, enthralling. Let’s test the theory; click the thumbnail to see more. 
Paul VanDevelder is a featured author on Smithsonian.com's History and Archeology page this week, giving readers a sneak peek at his new book, Savages and Scoundrels: The Untold Story of America's Road to Empire through Indian Territory. His latest post sets the scene on what the tribes called "The Great Smoke", "a month-long spectacle of feasting and negotiating" that took place in 1851 at Horse Creek in the Nebraska Territory. The treaty drafted there established peace along the Oregon Trail and political boundaries on a dozen new tribal homelands and was later ratified by the United States Senate. Unfortunately, this moment of peaceful alliance wouldn't last long.
The 1851 treaty at Horse Creek plays a key role in VanDevelder's history of the American government's fraudluent dealings with native tribes. Those taken by VanDevelder's rollicking style of writing can look forward to further posts on Smithsonian.com and Powells.com. In the meantime, head over to yalebooks.com to check out another excerpt.
New York Magazine got their hands on an advance copy of Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy by Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton. They decided to do an early preview of the exhibition, which premiered at the Met this past Wednesday.
New York Magazine called Superheroes a "genuinely cool book," and found it an eye-opening companion to the opening gala gossip: "For all the jokes one can make about the gala's red carpet being graced with celebrities awkwardly decked out in Catwoman leather or Captain America capes (per hostess Anna Wintour's request that attendees take the theme seriously), a look at what's actually being shown at the exhibit is rather illuminating." Read the entire preview here.
And the blog mblankier.com reviewed Superheroes, noting the "very provocative and interesting parallel" between superheroes and fashion. "All the essays, costumes, and clothing in the book," the blogger writes, "are really fantastic and really inspiring." Read the full review here.
Featuring designers including John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Jean Paul Gaultier, and many more, this innovative book examines how the style of superheroes’ dress has influenced street wear and high fashion.
IBM Corporation. The Clorox Company. Charles Schwab Corporation. Reliance Industries. JPMorgan Chase.
What do all of these successful corporations all have in common? They--and many others--all have executives who read and praised Matthew S. Olson and Derek van Bever's Stall Points: Most Companies Stop Growing--Yours Doesn't Have To.
Clayton M. Christensen, professor at the Harvard Business School says, “Stall Points is grounded in competent and compelling research. There is no fluff here. It is a cogent, practical guide to the most pressing problem today’s managers face: How to sustain growth.” Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer for Facebook says, "This book should be required reading for leadership teams that want to stay relevant to their customers over the long run." You can see what more top execs have to say about the book here.
After the jump, read more about Stall Points, and learn how your company can sustain growth.
Although Stall Points isn't released until May 19, you can preview Olson and van Bever's book with an excerpt in the Harvard Business Review. Olson and van Bever, with Seth Verry, analyzed the growth of Fortune 100-sized companies over the past half-century. They found that 87% of those companies stalled at least once in their history. The authors found the dangerous long-term effects of a growth stall, and identify the most common causes. The entire article is available here for purchase.
For more information on growth stalls, what they are, and how to prevent them in your company, check out Olson and van Bever's website, The Stall Points Initiative. The site even includes a Red Flag Diagnostic, which can help identify the warning signs that senior management should guard against.
Matthew S. Olson is an executive director and Derek van Bever is the chief research officer of the Corporate Executive Board (NASDAQ:EXBD), the premier advisory and performance improvement network for leaders of the world’s largest public and private organizations. The authors live in the Washington, DC area.
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Under the spotlight of the 60th anniversary of Israeli independence, Benny Morris's recent book, 1948, is a praised as a shining example.
Last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review features David Margolick's review, saying: "Morris relates the story of his new book soberly and somberly, evenhandedly and exhaustively."
The May 5th issue of The New Yorker hit newsstands on Monday with a feature piece by David Remnick. This piece on Israeli history centers around Morris and the publication of 1948, calling it "a commanding, superbly documented, and fair-minded study of the events that, in the wake of the Holocaust, gave a sovereign home to one people and dispossessed another."
Last Monday, David Holahan reviewed the book for the Hartford Courant. 1948, he said, is "a richly detailed and thoroughly researched primer.... A compelling 'aha' book, 1948 brings order to complex, little-understood subjects." He went on to compliment Morris on his "vivid narrative prose and masterly analysis."
Canada's National Post began running excerpts from 1948 on May 5, and will run a total of 5 installments. Read the second and third installments.
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In celebration of the Yale University Press Centennial (1908-2008), we are proud to launch our brand new Centennial website.
Visit here to find a message from Yale Press Director John Donatich; a brief history of the Press's first 100 years; highlights from the Press’s bestselling, prize-winning, and seminal works; news about upcoming celebrations, exhibitions and media events; and more.
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Network World featured Yale Press author and "bona fide member of the digiterati" Jonathan Zittrain in a review titled "How the iPhone is killing the 'Net." This review of Zittrain's new book, The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It, has quickly made its way across the web. Macworld reprinted the article, and from there it was dugg and is being picked up by bloggers at Alejandro@Oxford, The iPhone Low Down, Steve's Unofficial Blog, and elsewhere.
Additionally, StopBadware.org blogged on an interview with Zittrain that appeared in the Management section of Computerworld.
North Korean radios that are altered to receive only the official stations. Cars that listen in on their owners’ conversations. Digital video recorders ordered to self-destruct in viewers’ homes thanks to a lawsuit against the manufacturer thousands of miles away. Zittrain’s extraordinary book pieces together the engine that has catapulted the Internet ecosystem into the prominence it has today—and explains that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of consumers, the Internet is on a path to a lockdown, a closing off of opportunities and innovation.
Visit the author's website at www.jz.org. Read and comment on the entire book online at Yale Books Unbound.
Fady Joudah, author of The Earth in the Attic, was featured on Tuesday by the online anthology of contemporary poetry, Poetry Daily. The site also shared two of Joudah's poems, "Atlas" and "The Tea and Sage Poem."Those poems, both from The Earth in the Attic, can be read here. Also, you can click here to listen to Fady Joudah read "In the Calm" from his poem, "Pulse."
Fady Joudah is a Palestinian-American medical doctor and a field member of Doctors Without Borders since 2001. He lives in Houston, TX. He is also the translator of Mahmoud Darwish’s recent poetry The Butterfly’s Burden.
As part of their celebration of National Poetry Month, CBC Radio's Writers & Company invited Yale Press author John Felstiner to talk on Monday about his book Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew. Click here to hear that interview in RealAudio format--and to hear Celan himself read from his most famous work, Deathfuge.
This book is the first critical biography of Paul Celan, a German-speaking East European Jew who was Europe’s most compelling postwar poet. It tells the story of Celan’s life, offers new translations of his poems, and illuminates the connection between Celan’s lived experience and his poetry.
Felstiner's biography has received many accolades: nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award; chosen as a best book of 1995 by Choice magazine, Village Voice, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Philadelphia Inquirer; and winner of the 1997 University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin.
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The Hartford Courant profiled Jonathan Brent, editorial director of Yale Press' Annals of Communism Project, who received a $1.3 million Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to develop a digital documentary edition of Stalin's Personal Archive.
After sharing a story of Stalin's correspondences with director Sergei Eisenstein and novelist Upton Sinclair, the Courant said, "It is documents like the dispatch to Sinclair that distinguish Yale's Stalin archive." Read the entire article here.
The article in the Courant was picked up by the History News Network, as well as by RussiaTrek and cafe historia, who said, "This is surely what the web was designed to do. If only other institutions would follow suit."
The digitization of Stalin's Personal Archive is a new initiative of Yale University Press' acclaimed Annals of Communism series, begun in 1992. The digitized documents from this archive will become the basis for future scholarly research, while expediting traditional book publications on topics of great importance in understanding Soviet and twentieth-century world history.
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Episode 14 of the Yale Press Podcast is now available.
Download Episode 14
In Episode 14, Chris Gondek speaks with (1) Steve Fraser, about how Americans have perceived Wall Street and its more well known investors throughout its history, and with (2) Jay Parini, about the importance of poetry for both individuals and for cultures.
Download it for free here, on iTunes, and everywhere else that podcasts can be found.
Comments are welcome.
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Writing on The Huffington Post, Trita Parsi, author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States and president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), discusses the upcoming NIAC conference, "Breaking the US-Iran Stalemate: Reassessing the Nuclear Strategy in the Wake of the Majles Elections." Parsi begins:
When it comes to Iran, President Bush has all but banged the drums of war. In fact, when faced with the question of Iran's nuclear file, it's been talk of sanctions or war, but nothing else -- even though sanctions have gotten us nowhere.
On April 8, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) will host foreign policy A-listers, Congressional members and staff, key academics and accredited media to discuss another option on Capitol Hill: a multinational enrichment facility inside Iran, coupled with direct and comprehensive talks with Tehran.
Read the entire article here. For more information on the conference, including a schedule and making reservations, click here.
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In his Findings column for the New York Times, John Tierney wonders why Americans aren't changing their lives in reaction to climate change. "We need the right nudge," Tierney says, referring to the recent release from Yale Press authors Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.
Taking a cue from Thaler and Sunstein, Tierney suggests a piece of jewelry that measures the wearer's carbon footprint and displays it to the world on a scale from red to green. Writing a blog post for TierneyLab, Tierney nudged his readers to help him out with this project: "Do you have a better name, or a better nudge of kind? The best suggestion will be rewarded with a copy of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago." Click here to read the entire post or enter the contest.
For more information about nudges, check out Nudge or the website for the book, www.nudges.org, with news, reviews, a blog and even a glossary.
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Episode 13 of the Yale Press Podcast is now available.
Download Episode 13
In Episode 13, Chris Gondek speaks with (1) Richard Sennett, winner of the 2006 Hegel Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities and social sciences, about the art of craftsmanship; and (2) Gus Speth, dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale, about how the free market system will need to adjust in the face of serious environmental changes.
Download it for free here, on iTunes, and everywhere else that podcasts can be found.
Comments are welcome.
Professor Ron Hammond, I love you.
From The Daily Herald via Library Link of the Day:
Dismayed at the rising cost of textbooks, Hammond has quit using textbooks in his courses. He has redesigned the courses he teaches to provide his students with a more varied selection of source material for a lower cost.
"I want them to understand where information comes from," Hammond said. "It's a skill they're going to need."
As a librarian who teaches research skills I say "Hoorah!"
As a parent who is paying for expensive textbooks for the entling's classes, I say "Double Hoorah!"
Oh… this looks so great! I can’t wait.
I had the pleasure of seeing one of Dave the Potter’s pots a few years ago. It was SO impressive-big enough that my son could have climbed into it! As a potter, what I really wanted to do was run my fingers up the inside of that pot and feel the grooves where he had “pulled up the wall.” (It’s a habit of potters- most of us do this to other people’s pots. In this case it would have been a direct connection to history.) Alas, for some reason, museums don’t let you touch the art.
In college I had a roommate who always touched the art in museums (after he made sure the guard wasn’t looking). He said it gave him a tactile connection to the art.
Oh my, Jason!