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I have to point out the book trailer that Gayle Krauss sent me a few days ago. I knew that Gayle had published a book titled, RAT GIRL.  I was planning to buy a copy, because I know Gayle and I always try to support people I know, but somehow (Don’t be mad at me Gayle) the title did not entice me. I am so glad Gayle sent me this trailer, because it does exactly what a book trailer should do – sell the book. Now I am really  looking forward to reading RAT GIRL: SONG OF THE VIPER. Great job!

Gayle Krauss’s RAT GIRL: SONG OF THE VIPER book trailer.

Kit Grindstaff did a great job with her book trailer, too, for her new book THE FLAME IN THE MIST

Kit at her first book signing.

Paula Newcomer signing her poetry book, TOSSING OFF THE GLOVES.

Tori Corn’s debut picture book, WHAT WILL IT BE PENELOPE? arrived in the warehouse this week and will be available on June 4th. Here is the Amazon link.

It looks like Penelope is a popular name.

Robin Hutchinson has combined the fun of cooking and reading in this self published book titled, PENELOPE’S SECRET COOKING CLUB: IS THERE A SECRET TO KEEP? Here is the Amazon link.

Congratulations to all!

Hope I will be able to share your success on a future post.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy

I'm thrilled to host the reveal for Lindsey Leavitt's upcoming novel, Going Vintage, out March 26th from Bloomsbury.

About the Book: After Mallory discovers that her boyfriend has cheated on her with an online girlfriend, Mallory decides she's had enough of technology. She finds a list her grandmother made in the 1960s of five goals to accomplish in high school and Mallory decides she's going to try her hand at the list-and hopes it will help her get back to a simpler time and get over her ex. With a list made up of things like sew a homecoming dress (Mallory can't sew!) and run for pep club secretary (what exactly is pep club?) Mallory finds that being a teenager can be complicated, no matter what decade you're in.


Sounds awesome, right? It's a wonderful that I highly recommend (you can read my full Going Vintage review here) And check out the trailer-you'll want to get a copy of this book when it's released!

 

Our good buddy James Kennedy alerted me to the fact that after his magnificent 90-Second Newbery show left New York City for other library systems in other states he received additional, incredibly funny and insane submissions that are worth seeing.  What we have here is a Tacoma-based Frog and Toad Together take on the story “The List”.  As James describes it it’s “done in the style of a French ye-ye music video or Wes Anderson movie.”

If you’d like to see the story that was based on you can see five stories from this book animated in five different ways.  I’m particularly fond of the one with the seeds.  There’s also a wholly fascinating take on The Story of Mankind that sort of has to be seen to be believed.

All right.  We’re gonna present this day by cheering you up, breaking your heart, and then piecing it back together a bit at a time.  That’s the kind of Sunday I’m dealing with here.  Now I don’t know if you read the recent SLJ article Kid Lit Authors, Illustrators Visit Sandy Hook Elementary School but you should.  And as it happens our roving reporter in the field Rocco Staino took some videos of the aforementioned authors and illustrators.  This one is of Bob Shea.  The very normality of it destroys me.  Utterly.

Now let’s do something nice.  In lieu of Kid President (which, correct me if I’m wrong, a whole great big swath of us have already seen) here’s “Obvious to you. Amazing to others,” coming at you via The Styling Librarian.

I’m not going to read too much into the fact that I live in Harlem and yet, until I heard from a Ms. Nicole Roohi this week, I had totally missed this whole “Harlem Shake” craze, as it were.  Fun Fact: Not from Harlem.  In any case, turns out there are a BUNCH of videos of this thing filmed in libraries across our fair nation.  You can find some here and here and here and here and here.  The one I will feature today, however, is from Goldenview Middle School in Anchorage, Alaska.

As Ms. Roohi told me, “The video production class filmed it, and the security guards starred in it (well, along with my assistant and myself).  The principal, teachers, students and even a bus driver joined in.”  Thanks for the link, Nicole!

In keeping with the peppy music today, if I lived in a world where every person had their own theme song that followed them around throughout the day, the tune that is featured in this trailer for Jesse Klausmeier & Suzy Lee’s Open This Little Book would be mine.  Granted, it would bug people, but I’d only turn it on when I was marching down the street.  Marching, I say.

Thanks to Mr. Schu for the link!

And finally, since we seem to be all trendy trendy today, let’s just end with something Downton Abbey-ish.  The fact no one else has done this yet is amazing to me.

Though I would take issue with that Lady Crawley line near the end.  Doesn’t he mean she loves ‘em?

Yes, finally, the eBook edition of Saving the Planet & Stuff has been published and is available for both Kindle and Nook.

I believe my first mention of this project here at OC was on March 1 of 2012 (when we hadn't yet settled on the spelling "eBook"), so it has been very, very close to a year that the Saving the Plant eBook has been in the works. Go back to Saturday's post on publishing to get an idea of what we've been dealing with while I've been trying to juggle other work-related tasks that are in various stages and my computer guy/publishing partner has been holding down a full-time job.

You'll continue to hear about my experiment in self-publishing as I work on promoting this title over the coming months. In the meantime, look at what we did! A book trailer!

1. Publishing my Gothic romance novel, Overtaken in both paperback and Kindle editions.
2. Creating the book trailer for Overtaken.
3. I sold my house (a miracle in this current market).
4. Moved into a rental condo--and I love it. No maintenance. No gardening. No "what if I want to sell it?"
5. My day job moved into spacious new premises.
6. Although I had a great little studio at my old house, I now have a new space three times bigger.
7. I participated in National Novel Writing Month, and reached my 50K goal!
8. Took a fantastic 3-day screenwriting seminar aka "screenwriting boot camp" and learned that writing a screenplay is just as difficult as I thought it was, LOL.
9. I also took a 6-week oil pastel class and found my true north. I absolutely adore oil pastels now--especially Sennelier brand.
10. Went camping in an RV for the very first time--and found out I love RVs. Will have to do this one again very soon.
11. Prepared two manuscripts for 2013 submission: my nonfiction book, A Pet Owner's Book of Days, and a new novel, The Abyssal Plain.
12. Kept up with this blog and had two fantastic giveaways. Big congratulations to my winners!

I think the nicest thing about the internet, for me anyway, is that if you wait around long enough things that you’ve seen live will appear online and then you can let lots of people know about them.  For example, this video of Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket and Maira Kalman is not new.  It does, however, contain the only known record (known to me) of them both talking about the photograph game they would play.  The photo involving the catapult and the giant ice cream is a bit dangerous as it makes me giggle for long periods of time.

Next up, the only thing better than bad lip reading of Twilight?  Bad lip reading of New Moon.  True fact.

Read a really good independently published children’s book this week.  Self-published and remarkably fun.  It even has one top-notch book trailer to accompany it.  Check it out, peoples.

If the author’s name sounds familiar, that would be Ms. Lynn Messina of Little Vampire Women fame.  On an unrelated note, she also owns awesome boots.

Big time thanks to David Maybury for directing me to his link to this video of Laureate na nÓg Niamh Sharkey working with students from Griffeen Valley Educate Together on a Christmas Window for Hodges Figgis Bookstore in Dublin.

I’m now harboring fantasies of some store in New York doing something similar.  Books of Wonder maybe, though Bank Street Bookstore would probably get more foot traffic watching.  I mean, if Dublin can do it, we can too, can’t we?

And finally, for the off-topic video sometimes you just gotta give cred to the science/digital geeks.  Serious cred.

Thanks to BoingBoing for the link!

Aw yeah.  I’m breaking out the big guns today.  Cute kids trying to raise library funds.  The catchy song and good cause don’t hurt much either.  Seems a little town called Shutesbury has been having a difficult time raising funds for a new library.  Their old one is, as you can see “wicked small”.  So they’ve set up a lovely fundraising site but they still need help.  It’s a good cause.  If you’re feeling generous you might try to get a headstart on your yearly “giving”.  Thanks to Rich Michelson for the link!

If you feel you haven’t gotten your quota on cute kids, this lot have accents.  British accents.  Can’t get much cuter than that.  It’s a promo for the app for the Barefoot World Atlas.  A rather lovely idea and a nice way to incorporate nonfiction into an app’s layout, don’t you think?

You know, I think we’re finally getting to the point where book trailers have distinctive flavors.  For example, if you had not told me that this next trailer was produced by Chronicle, I think I would have guessed anyway.  Something about their trailers just stand out.  They are, simply put, better than the rest.  See for yourself:

By the way, I’m particularly thrilled to see this book since we haven’t had a really good sign-related picture book since the days of Tana Hoban.

As you may know, Mr. Sharp and Mr. Schu along with their #nerdbery corps are dedicated to systematically reading through all the Newbery winners from the 1920s to today.  Mr. Sharp offers his thoughts on the best and the worst.  Of the 20s I confess to only having read The Trumpeter of Krakow (the actual Newbery Medal for this resides in my library, FYI) and The Dark Frigate.  See how Mr. Sharp ranked them:

This next one’s fun.  Years ago I was enamored of a picture book called The Terrible Plop by Ursula Dubosarsky, illustrated by Andrew Joyner.  That title’s a bit of a misnomer, by the way.  No potty humor here.  In any case, I was pleased to learn that the book had been adapted into a play for the preschool set.  Now it’s coming to the New Victory Theater (just down the street from my library, as it happens) to play from April 26th to May 13th.  Andrew Joyner told me that, “Then it does a week in Pittsburgh and a week in New Jersey.  It’s a fun and energetic show – quite different from the book, almost like a clowning performance (although I think they give a straight reading of The Terrible Plop before the performance starts).  I saw it a couple of years ago with the family and we all had a great time.  It was put together by a local theatre company in Adelaide, South Australia, called Windmill Theatre.”  Interested at all?  After all, it does involve bunny puppets. Here’s the info and here’s the trailer:

Finally, f

You know how, no matter how many hundred channels you have, there is nothing on TV? More and more, people are turning to webseries and vlogs for fresher kinds of humor and entertainment. So why not start a vlog series for your library website, or get a bunch of teens together to write a script for an original series? You could also take advantage of the short format of these videos and host a “festival” of screenings of the best series and vlogs out there. Now that so many computers come fully equipped with a basic webcam and editing software, this is an inexpensive way to get creative and to learn more about technology.

Here are some great vlogs and webisodes that should provide you with inspiration as they entertain you.

• The Lizzie Bennet Diaries: This relatively new series transfers Jane Austen’s novel to the life of a grad student recording her angst. It’s funny and a great way to make classic literature applicable to our current times. If your patrons are having trouble getting ready for their AP English exam, use this to take off the stress.
• Everyone’s new favorite method of publicity is to film a book trailer, highlighting themes or great one-liners from upcoming books. But there’s no reason why you couldn’t get a group of teens to create their own trailer for a book that came out long ago. Pick a favorite, get a storyboard, and get filming!
• There are tons of book bloggers out there doing innovative things to get readers to see them as the foremost hotspots for new releases. One popular feature is “in my mailbox” (cf. The Story Siren), when bloggers round up the week’s worth of purchases, galley receipts, and more to whet readers’ appetites. Other bloggers, like Loretta at Between the Pages, do this on video, showing off covers and taking readers on tours of local bookstores and libraries. Other bloggers use this as an opportunity to show off that week’s reading list or upcoming titles they’re coveting. What a great way that you could highlight new collections or underused materials!
• For your incredibly crafty patrons, you can plan a great stop-motion video to learn about construction and design. Picturebook writer-illustrator David Hyde Costello has created videos of Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions made all out of paper and cardboard.
• Homemade videos are a great vehicle for critique–of media, of culture, of politics, whatever. Teach your teens the art of a good analysis and create a well-edited video on a topic of their choice. Anita Sarkeesian of Freminist Frequency creates videos utilizing clips of commercials and movies to talk about feminist issues and stereotypes in the media. This is a great way to exercise your Creative Commons and fair use muscles and come up with an excellent, innovative teaching and creating experience.

What are you doing with video and media in your programming?

There was no question in my mind which video to begin with today.  I cannot help but think that meeting Quentin Blake must be akin to meeting Roald Dahl.  The man is a living legend and this video is a true treasure.  Would that every illustrator were half so thorough when discussing the preservation, creation, and process that goes into their art.  A very big thank you to Jonathan Cape Graphic Novels for the link.

Mind you, Quentin had some stiff competition for the top video of the day.  He only narrowly beat out this Reading Rainbow remix.

I’ve been trying to identify all the books in the video but it is incredibly tough.  I can account for Carl Hiaasen’s Flush, Christopher Paul Curtis’s Elijah of Buxton, and what appears to be a Civil Rights book that I can never quite catch the title of.  Other spotted books are welcome.  Mention them!  And thanks to mom for the link.  Probably the only time you’ll ever see the New Orleans Bounce on this blog, I’d wager.

Benefit books come out occasionally but rarely do they incorporate Broadway stars.  Over the Moon: The Broadway Lullaby Project is benefiting breast cancer research.  You’ve got big name vocalists singing songs from big name composers with a book illustrated by big name artists (for the most part).  Here’s the roster:

” . . . the project’s book component also features a distinctive cover illustration by fabled cartoonist/playwright Jules Feiffer, along with a foreword written by stage and screen legend Julie Andrews and her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton. Among the award-winning illustrators lending their talents are Selina Alko, Lynne Avril, Paulette Bogan, Beowulf Boritt, Lauren Castillo, R. Gregory Christie, Seymour Chwast, Jane Dyer, Richard Egielski, Daniel Glucksman, Julia Gran, Ying-Hwa Hu, Genevieve LeRoy-Walton, Betsy Lewin, Anna Louizos, Victor Mays, Emily Arnold McCully, Wendell Minor, Barry Moser, Jon J Muth, Sean Qualls, Peter H. Reynolds, Marc Simont, Javaka Steptoe, Melissa Sweet, Cornelius Van Wright, Neil Waldman, Nancy Elizabeth Wallace, Tony Walton, Gary Zamchick, and Paul O. Zelinsky.”

I had no idea Jules Feiffer was a fable.  And here I was convinced he was a real person.  In any case, impressive list of names!  A couple I don’t know but most I do. And here, on a related note, is a glimpse at one of the songs.

Thanks to Rich Michelson for the info.

Speaking of Julie Andrews, I’m sure you’ve all seen Stephen Colbert’s interview with her in conjunction with his own picture book release of

Whew!  Been a while, hasn’t it?  I hardly know where to start.  Might as well begin with my place of work, eh?  You see my library enjoys making little movies about itself from time to time.  When you’ve got an iconic set, how can you resist?  In my building (big stone lions, etc.) my Milstein Division conjured up this little video.  Probably the sexiest genealogy vid I’m ever likely to see on this good green earth.  More info on it here.

Now it seems to me that there’s room enough in this world for a fine bit of psychedelic middle grade.  And when you’re dealing with something like Dan Boehl’s Naomi and the Horse-Flavored T-Shirt . . . well, honestly this is preeeee-cisely the kind of video you would hope for.  To the letter.

Couldn’t stand in sharper contrast to this next video, and yet the two work as very good examples of how sophisticated book trailers are becoming these days (Flash animation has a lot to do with it, of course).

Aw, heck.  Just one more.  You’re going to have to stick around for the credits.

Clearly I’ve been sitting on a lot of videos for a while, but I doubt that it’s too late to put up this one.  Recently Matthew Kirby (Icefall & The Clockwork Three) emailed me the following:

Here in Utah, we have the Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers Workshop, run by Carol Lynch Williams. It’s an intensive week-long workshop, taught by amazing writers and illustrators. I attended back in 2007, and in combination with SCBWI, it’s where I “got my start.”

Now the people running the conference have created a little promo video of their success stories to encourage folks to attend.  Smart cookies.  Least I can do to show it, eh?

Finally, for the Off-Topic Video of the Day, I’ve many piled up but this is the one closest to my heart today.

Thanks to my cousin Peter for the link!

I spent a chunk of today researching book trailers with Darcy Pattinson's The Book Trailer Manual. I own this on Kindle. I like to mark up my nonfiction books while reading them, so I learned how to highlight and make notes on Kindle. While I was at it, I learned how to make collections so I could organize some of the e-books I now own.

I feel as if I've accomplished something, but it was also quite painless. Those two experiences don't usually come together, I've found.

A contemporary librarian noir starring folks I know?  Don’t mind if I do!  I had no idea that Sarah Murphy was such a fine actress but it surprises me not at all.  Written and co-directed by Joy Tomasko with co-direction, photography and post-production by Jon Dieringer and starring librarians and friends thereof, this film premiered at The Bell House in December 2011 during the Desk Set’s Biblio Noir, a fundraiser for Literacy for Incarcerated Teens (which I missed thanks to my new baby state).   Screened at Spectacle Theater in June 2012 it’s now available online.  Many thanks to Maria Falgoust for the link.

After that, let’s start the day off right with a book that is completely and utterly unavailable to us here in America.  Basically, this all boils down to a children’s graphic novel, blurbed by Shaun Tan himself, that we have not yet seen.  Tan says of it, “Reading this book is like being quietly ushered into another dimension by winged strangers, a place beyond the tread of normal earth-bound language. Ephemeral as a feather, timeless as a rock, and as true as both, Unforgotten is a magical experience.”  That would be Unforgotten by Tohby Riddle.  Here’s the trailer:

Thanks to Andrew Joyner for the link!

So this is fun. The Digital Shift recently came up with the Seven Top Trailers to Hook Kids on Books. Picking and choosing amongst them there’s a lot to enjoy here, but I’m particularly taken with this 60th Anniversary trailer for good old Charlotte’s Web (#1 on my Top 100 Children’s Novels Poll, doncha know). Observe:

Speaking of pigs, in comes the rather timely (how many Olympic-related fictional picture books are there this season?) Olympig via author Victoria Jamieson.  Much with the fun.

Finally, for our off-topicness, I think I’m going to go nerd on you and whip out a bit of Star Wars meets Goyte stuff.  I know you’ve probably already seen it, but it makes me happy.  See if you can hear the hidden Wookie howl.

I've come across two very good book trailers recently that I just had to share! The books couldn't be more different.

The first is for an upcoming picture book called Nighttime Ninja by Barbara DeCosta and Ed Young. I'd love it just from the title alone, but then I saw the book trailer and I'm even more excited to read the book now!

Then there's the book trailer for Libba Bray's upcoming YA novel, The Diviners. And yes, both of these books are from Little Brown. Hats off to their marketing team for such awesome book trailers!!!

I am planning a book trailer for the new e-book edition of Saving the Planet & Stuff. Evidently you can train for the Olympics in less time than it takes to make a book trailer. And, as with so much that writers do regarding self-promotion, there's not a lot of evidence that you get much return on investment. However, when I originally decided to publish this e-book, back before I realized that my e-book editions are my back list and valuable for that reason, one of my goals was to learn new promotional/marketing...things. And trailers, worthwhile or not, are a new promotional/marketing...thing.

So far, I've looked at book trailers and read The Book Trailer Manual by Darcy Pattinson. I've looked at more book trailers, reread Saving the Planet & Stuff, and created a log of juicy bits and dialogue. I've come up with a few trailer ideas and looked at book trailers. Now I'm working on a storyboard and looking at book trailers.

A family member sent me The Big Tease: Trailers Are a Terrific Way to Hook Kids on Books in School Library Journal, which includes...trailers! I've also stumbled upon 7 Brilliant Book Trailers at Brain Pickings. Most of these were too long for my taste. I am already firmly in the school of "keep 'em under a minute and a half." But I wanted to bring your attention to the first one, for Maurice Gee's Going West. I was drawn to that because I was so taken, years ago, by Gee's book, The Fat Man. The trailer for Going West is visually stunning. I have to say, though, that while I was riveted to the images, I barely noticed the soundtrack. Someone was reading something. That's all I can tell you. Is that good? Is that bad? At any rate, I now know Gee wrote a book called Going West, which I didn't know yesterday.

As happens whenever I am involved in something for work, you can be sure I will keep yammering about it here. In the meantime, if anyone wants to recommend a book trailer, feel free to do so in the comments.

Finding videos of the Voldemort vs. Mary Poppins nuttiness online was surprisingly difficult.  Finally I found a sort of recap of the Olympic 2012 opening ceremonies with reference to the rise of the great children’s literature villains (The Queen of Hearts, a Disney-esque Cruella de Ville, Captain Hook, and Voldemort) and their destruction at the hands of 30 Mary Poppins.  “A sweeping rambling narrative” is as accurate an interpretation of what happened as any I could come up with.  You’ll see the references at 1:00 in this video.

And since we’re already on the topic of Harry Potter (admittedly we are almost always on that topic) I sure hope you guys had a chance to see the first installment of Harry Potter and the Ten Years Later.  I thought it was rather well done.  Sort of makes me want to see the whole series now.

Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.

And now for a bloody effective book trailer.  If the point of such trailers is to cause the reader an immediate and almost impossible to resist urge to pick up the book and read it, Leave Your Sleep as edited by Natalie Merchant (yes, that Natalie Merchant) now has that hold on me.  It does not hurt that the songs featured here, paired with Barbara McClintock’s illustrations, are a delight.  A sheer, as they say, delight.

Resist it if you can.  And, might I say, this is one of the more logical uses of a celebrity getting involved in children’s literature that I’ve seen.  I was seated next to Ms. Merchant at a BEA lunch and to my delight she turned out to be a huge Barbara McClintock fan long before this book.  She said this, so I decided to quiz her by asking what she knew.  Without missing a beat she rattled off everything from The Gingerbread Man to Adele and Simon to the Aesop’s Fables Ms. McClintock did years ago.  Woman knows her stuff.

Okay, gear switch.  Obviously if I’m showing a Louis CK video then this is not going to be workplace friendly, though honestly aside from one off-white phrase this is downright pure for Louis.  When I read in a recent Entertainment Weekly article that he hated Clifford the Big Red Dog with a passion that eclipses the white hot sun I knew I had to find video proof.  Proof I found, and I love how he pairs Clifford with Narnia.  If Louis put out a CD that was just children’s book rants . . . okay, that’s a ridiculous dream.  But a dream I now have!

And now Louise Yates interviews Quentin Blake.  Because I can.

Thanks to Watch. Connect. Read. for the link!

And for the final off-topic video, awwwwww.  Baby goats.  Manic, remorseless baby goats.  Sadly adorable.

Thanks to mom for the link.

You start it with . . . EXCITEMENT!

A show of hands.  Who, right now, is weeping a little over the fact that we will never have Mr. Colby Sharp as the 4th grade teacher of our youth?  That is, perhaps, the first video I would show to my students if I were teaching a graduate course in children’s librarianship.  And everyone should watch it just before the school year starts to get pumped up.  Thanks to Gretchen Hardaway for the link.

Book trailer time!  So I have some good news, and I have some bad news.  Literally.

Fact of the matter is, thanks to Flash animation, book trailer technology just grows more and more accomplished every year.  We’re getting to the point where they may as well be little movies in and of themselves.  Case in point, The Insomniacs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAbeV_gPUNA&feature=player_embedded

And as for this next one, a Grimm story retold as a graphic novel by James Odone . . . WANTWANTWANNAWANNAWANT!

Trouble is, this one’s in the works so we’ve no info on it yet.  James, for the record, is the fellow behind the fantastic picture book Honey Badgers (it came out before the YouTube video so no snorts, people) as well as this year’s Mole Had Everything (a natural companion to I.C. Springman’s More, illustrated by Brian Lies.

And for our off-topic video of the day, let’s just think of this one as Make Way for Ducklings 2.0.

I think it fitting that I follow up the last Video Sunday bit of teacher enthusiasm with this subsequent sneaky teacher taping.  “We’re just smelling books, Mr. Lewis.”  That would be Mike Lewis and though they acknowledge him at the start, it’s pretty clear they don’t know he’s taping until much later on.  This should give heart to anyone worried about the fate of the paper book.  Big big thanks to Mike Lewis for this video.

So happy Sunday to you, one and all.  It’s not Banned Books Week, or Banned Books Month, or even the Year of the Banned Book, but even still this video was so nicely put together that I figured it deserved to be shown at a time of year that wasn’t designated “banned”. And naturally I liked that so many of the books read here were children’s as well as adult.

Well written too, come to think of it.  It was created by Bookmans, a kind of used bookstore/everything else in Tucson, Mesa, Phoenix, and Flagstaff.  Thanks to Ben Collinsworth for the link.

Now for fun personal stuff.  As you may know I’m writing a book with Jules from Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.  Certainly finding videos of me on the web is easy enough but finding videos of Jules can be a bit tricky.  Fortunately as part of their We Believe in Picture Books campaign, Candlewick has been soliciting and posting videos from folks of all stripes.  I’m sure you’ve been following the various videos they’ve posted.  Here we find my co-writer in the flesh talking about all things picture bookish:

Then the book trailers cometh.  And this next one for Chronicle Books just sort of cements them as my favorite book trailer publisher.  It’s for this year’s Project Jackalope from the Senior Producer of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Emily Ecton.

Not that Candlewick does a bad job.  This one showed during SLJ’s Day of Dialog with slightly different music.  It’s Jon Klassen sequel to I Want My Hat Back called (appropriately enough) This is Not My Hat.  Gorgeous trailer.

And heck, Penguin too.  I mean, tell me this trailer doesn’t make you want to go out and rip the book from the arms of young people so that you can read it yourself.

Not sure if this one counts as a book trailer.  Is it a trailer if they read the whole thing?  Basically, I figure that if you read anything in that magnificent accent you are allowed to read as much of it as you like.  This book’s a pip but I can’t imagine it would be half as interesting to hear from an American mouth.  We just don’t pronounce the word “kennel” correctly, do we?

Thanks to Lisa Abid for the link!

And finally, when the tough can’t find any off-topic videos, the tough go to BB-Blog and plunder what they find there.  It’s a Caketrope (a zoetrope cake) in a Burton style.  Yum!

This one I have to read.

Check it out!

Who says you need to be Ed Emerley to make fingerprints dance?  A canny bit of book promotion, this title is out this year but I certainly hadn’t heard of it until now (Laurence King Publishers, anyone?).  Now I’ll need to see it for myself.  It’s Let’s Make Some Great Fingerprint Art by Marion Deuchars.  Thanks to Julian Hector for the link!

Altogether now . . . awwwwwwwwww.

Okay, book trailer time.  Full discloser, Mr. Eliot Schrefer is in my writing group and I read this book, Endangered, in manuscript form.  The man can write.  I mean, really write.  I don’t see much YA in a given year, but I saw this and it was glorious.  But, in the words of the immortal LeVar Burton, you don’t have to take my word for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p75AP5ABuE8&feature=embed

Or, if you’d just rather watch Eliot get covered in apes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nILY_hhsKvE&feature=embed

Then there’s Mr. Jarrett Krosoczka. Or, as I like to think of him, the hardest working man in show business.  Now I only assume this, but surely he teaches other authors how to use social networking and technology to connect with fans, yes?  I only wonder since he’s sort of really good at it.  Example A: a recap of a webcast his did with kids recently.  Theme song and all:

Example B: The comics that were made during the workshop.  I rest my case.

Finally, my off-topic video that isn’t very off-topic.  If I’m going to be honest, I almost opened the post today with this bad lip-reading of Twilight.  What can I say?  It made me laugh very very hard (on the second segment anyway).  Forgive me if there’s a political ad before it.

See now, this is what I get for waiting when I see a good video.  I’ve been doing my Video Sundays a little less frequently since I like to do them when the content is primo.  The flipside is that sometimes I get scooped.  Such is the case with today’s video.  It is a delight and I have watched it multiple times, but it’s not as new as it once was.  No matter.  You will enjoy it thoroughly, I think.  Thanks to Jon Scieszka and, by extension, Lisa Brown for the link.

Next up, a triple threat.  He writes books like Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities (which I have read and thoroughly enjoyed).  He blogs at Mike Jung’s Little Bloggy Wog.  But the kicker?  He sings.  And goldurnit . . . he’s good.

Brother Iz step aside.  I may have to rework my children’s book boy band roster around to include him.  Dude has pipes.

Speaking of music, I am of the opinion that a catchy score can make or break a book trailer.  Example A: As the Crow Flies by Sheila Keenan and Kevin Duggan.  Catchy as all get out.

And where would this little trailer for the oh-so Canadian Little Jack Horner LIVE from the Corner be without its catchy tunes?  Only author Helaine Becker and illustrator Mike Boldt know for sure.

In other news, J.K. Rowling was in town.  Care to watch her chatter?  Here’s the uncut interview with Jon Stewart in all it Daily Showy glory.

Finally, our off-topic video comes to us from good man Mike Lewis.  As he says, it’s the reactions that make this one a classic.

Love it!

Tarie: Hi, everyone! Please help me welcome YA author Meredith Zeitlin Into the Wardrobe! She's here to introduce her debut novel Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters, which was released just this month!


Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters by Meredith Zeitlin (Putnam Juvenile, 2012)

Book description from Amazon:

"Let's say you're fourteen and live in New York City. You'd think your life would be like a glamorous TV show, right? And yet . . . You don't have a checking account, much less a personal Black American Express card. You've never been to a club, and the only couture in your closet is a Halloween costume your mom made from an old laundry bag.

In other words? You're Kelsey Finkelstein - fourteen and frustrated. Every time she tries to live up to her awesome potential, her plans are foiled. Kelsey wants to rebrand herself for high school to make the kind of mark she knows is her destiny. But just because Kelsey has a plan for greatness . . . it doesn't mean the rest of the world is in on it."

Watch the book trailer below:



Guest Blog Post by Meredith Zeitlin

The Story Behind the Story: How the Book Came to Be

When I first moved to Brooklyn, I babysat for an awesome little girl... who is now taller than I am, by the way. (Why?!?) Anyway, I would read her YA books while she did her homework, and with few exceptions, I found myself very bummed out by them. I thought they seemed cookie-cutter and not very well-written and, most importantly, not at all the sources of comfort I grew up with, which were filled with relatable characters who were awkward and desperately trying to figure things out. Instead these were all about super rich and sophisticated kids, the likes of which I certainly never met when I was fourteen.

Since then, I've been turned on to lots of amazing contemporary YA writers – they are definitely out there! But at the time, I was so disappointed. I thought, maybe I'll write something myself.

I had been writing a personal blog for a few years at that point (mostly to keep the creative juices flowing while I bartended and babysat and temped), which was basically an account of all the ridiculous things that always seem to happen to me. Of course, since I was a so-called adult, some of the recent adventures were a bit on the racy side, but I thought: What if I wrote a story that's about the disastrous things that happened when I was growing up? After all, I've almost completely recover