Macmillan has settled with the Department of Justice in the lawsuit over the agency model for selling digital books. All five major publishers sued by the DOJ have now settled, leaving Apple to battle the government in court.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York must approve the settlement, but it will end Macmillan’s role in the suit.
Antitrust Division chief of staff Jamillia Ferris offered this statement: “As a result of today’s settlement, Macmillan has agreed to immediately allow retailers to lower the prices consumers pay for Macmillan’s e-books … Just as consumers are already paying lower prices for the e-book versions of many of Hachette’s, HarperCollins’ and Simon & Schuster’s new releases and best sellers, we expect the prices of many of Macmillan’s e-books will also decline.”
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Library eBook readers might see more books from Macmillan this year as the company has opened a pilot program to bring Minotaur digital books to library patrons.
AppNewser has all the details:
Macmillan Publishers has partnered with OverDrive, a company that distributes digital books to more than 22,000 libraries, to make a collection of its eBooks available to libraries through a pilot program. As part of the pilot, libraries that have access to OverDrive will now have access to more than 1,200 titles from Macmillan’s Minotaur Books imprint. This includes pieces from authors Olen Steinhauser and Julia Spencer-Fleming. Macmillan is making one copy of each eBook available so that one copy can be check out at a time.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Macmillan CEO John Sargent wrote a letter to authors, illustrators and agents working with the publisher, pledging not to settle the price fixing lawsuit with the Department of Justice (as Penguin did this week).
He also noted that the company has no plans to merge like Penguin and Random House. Read his complete letter at Tor Books.
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
In a recent PW announcement, Macmillan Children’s Books has announced the creation of a new YA Romance imprint. The switch? It will be a sort of American Idol for YA Romance Writers.
Romance writers, are you ready for this?
Crowdsourcing, or drawing on participation from the audience for decisions, will be the major focus of the new imprint. Audience will consider chapters and vote on their favorite. When a manuscript is finally chose, they’ll vote on book covers.
The editor’s role?
The imprint’s editors will not screen the submitted manuscripts, but will monitor the content to make sure that “nothing obscene happens” in the novels. Romance fans reading the manuscripts online will be able to provide comments and offer a rating, the highest of which is five hearts – or “swoon-worthy.”
The imprint will be under the leadership of the ever-innovative Jean Feiwel, senior v-p and publisher of Feiwel and Friends, Square Fish, and now Swoon Reads. She has collected wide support throughout Macmillan and this will be an imprint to watch.
Do you have a manuscript that is Swoon-Worthy?
Polish it up! Read the early offerings from SRYA and look for announcements of submission guidelines.
Pickle: The (Formerly) Anonymous Prank Club of Fountain Point Middle School
By Kim Baker
Illustrated by Tim Probert
Roaring Brook Press (a division of Macmillan)
$15.99
ISBN: 978-1-59643-765-4
Ages 9-12
On shelves now
When I was in college I took a course in journalism to fulfill an English credit. I had no real desire to report the news in any way, shape, or form so when the time came to write an article for the paper I had to find something that would be in my wheelhouse. Ultimately I decided to write a piece on the history of pranks at my alma mater. It was a fun piece to write and instilled in me not a love of reporting but rather a love of pranking and all it entails. A good prank, a true prank, does no harm aside from a minor inconvenience for the poor schmuck who has to clean it up. It does not destroy school property, causing only joy for those innocents who witness it. And pranks, the really good ones, are almost impossible to think up. Now it’s hard enough to think up a prank for a liberal arts college in eastern Indiana. Imagine how much more difficult it is to think up a whole roster of pranks for a fictional elementary school. That is the task Kim Baker gave herself and the end result is a book that I simply cannot keep on my library shelves. Kids eat this book up with a spoon.
What would you do if you found out your favorite pizza joint was getting rid of all the balls in their ball pit for free? If you’re Ben Diaz, the answer is simple. You make several trips with the balls to your elementary school, dump the lot in your classroom window, and then sit back and enjoy the show. It’s an auspicious beginning for an up-and-coming prankster, and once Ben gets a taste of the havoc (and admiration) his act garners, there’s no stopping him. Next thing you know he’s started a prank club with school funds. Okay… technically the school thinks that he’s started a pickle club, but that shouldn’t be a problem, right? Trouble is, once you’ve started something as silly as a prank club, it’s hard to know when you’ve crossed a line and gone a little too far.
There’s been a lot of talk in the press and the general public about the fact that when it comes to Latino characters in children’s books you may as well be asking for the moon. They exist, but are so few and far between when compared to other ethnicities that one has a hard time figuring out who precisely is to blame. Pickle, I am pleased to report, stars a Hispanic kid who is featured on the cover front and center, no hiding his race or getting all namby pamby on who he is. And let me tell you now that the only thing rarer than a children’s book starring a Latino boy is finding a children’s book starring a Latino boy that’s hilarious and fun. The kind of book a kid would pick up willingly on their own in the first place. It’s like a little diamond on your bookshelf. A rara avis.
Now the key to any realistic school story, no matter how wacky, is likable characters. Not everyone in this book is someone you’d like to hang out with (personally I wouldn’t cry a tear if Bean took a long walk off a short pier) but for the most part you’re fond of these kids. Ben himself is a pretty swell guy. I don’t think anyone’s going to accuse Baker of failing to write a believable boy voice. Best of all, he’s a can do kind of kid. He takes charge. His solution to the pickle problem is well nigh short of inspired, and a nice example of a protagonist using their special skills to problem solve. And though the true antagonist of the book is the principal, it’s clear that his best friend Hector is a likable but lowly worm that serves as the emotional antagonist to our hero. You can’t help but like the fact that Hector is such a stoolie/squealer that he will not only confess crimes he and Ben have committed but crimes they NOT committed as well. There is no better way to get a reader on your side than to tap into their sense of injustice and unfairness. It is a pity that the only girls in the group are the only people incapable of really good pranks. Or, rather, one is incapable of coming up with a good prank and the other is perfectly good but goes rogue with it.
Baker distinguishes nicely between pranks that merely annoy and pranks that upset and destroy. Undoubtedly there will be adults out there that worry that by reading this book kids are going to immediately go out and start putting soap in their own school’s fountains/drinking fountains/what have you. Aside from the fact that most of the pranks in this book would be difficult to pull off (unless your kids have access to abandoned ball pits, I think you’re pretty safe) the book distinguishes nicely between those pranks that do good and those that do harm. I’m sure there are adults who believe that there is no “good” prank in the world. Those are the folks who should probably steer clear of this one.
Pranking requires a certain set of requisite skills. You need to be smart enough to figure out what the pranks should be and how to make them work. You need to have the guts to pull them off, regardless of the consequences. And you need to know when you’ve gone two far. Include only the first two requirements and leave off the third and you’ve got yourself one heckuva fun book like Pickle. Celebrating the kind of anarchy only pranking can truly inspire, this is one of those books for kids that are truly FOR kids. Gatekeepers need not apply. Show one to a kiddo and watch the fun begin.
On shelves now.
Source: Galley sent from author for review.
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- The faux pickle related website that “Ben” created is pretty fun. Hard not to love a site that promotes popsicles made out of pickle juice. Mmm mmm!
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The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdős
By Deborah Heiligman
Illustrated by LeUyen Pham
Roaring Brook (an imprint of Macmillan)
ISBN: 978-1-59643-307-6
Ages 6 and up
On shelves June 25th
Make a beeline for your local library’s children’s biography section and learn firsthand the shocking truth about picture book bios of mathematical geniuses. Apparently there was only one and his name was Einstein. End of story. The world as we know it is not overflowing with picture book encapsulations of the lives of Sir Isaac Newton or Archimedes (though admittedly you could probably drum up a Leonardo da Vinci book or two if you were keen to try). But when it comes to folks alive in the 20th century, Einstein is the beginning and the end of the story. You might be so foolish as to think there was a good reason for that fact. Maybe all the other mathematicians were dull. I mean, Einstein was a pretty interesting fella, what with his world-shattering theories and crazed mane. And true, the wild-haired physicist was fascinating in his own right, but if we’re talking out-and-out interesting people, few can compare with the patron saint of contemporary mathematics, Paul Erdős. Prior to reading this book I would have doubted a person could conceivably make an engaging biography chock full to overflowing with mathematical concepts. Now I can only stare in amazement at a story that could conceivably make a kid wonder about how neat everything from Euler’s map of Konigsburg to the Szekeres Snark is. This is one bio you do NOT want to miss. A stunner from start to finish.
For you see, there once was a boy who loved math. His name was Paul and he lived in Budapest, Hungary in 1913. As a child, Paul adored numbers, and theorems, and patterns, and tricky ideas like prime numbers. As he got older he grew to be the kind of guy who wanted to do math all the time! Paul was a great guy and a genius and folks loved having him over, but he was utterly incapable of taking care of himself. Fortunately, he didn’t have to. Folks would take care of Paul and in exchange he would bring mathematicians together. The result of these meetings was great strides in number theory, combinatorics, the probabilistic method, set theory, and more! Until the end of this days (when he died in a math meeting) Paul loved what he did and he loved the people he worked with. “Numbers and people were his best friends. Paul Erdős had no problem with that.”
There are two kinds of picture book biographies in this world. The first attempts to select just a single moment or personality quirk from a person’s life, letting it stand in as an example of the whole. Good examples of this kind of book might include Me…Jane by Patrick McDonnell about the childhood of Jane Goodall or Lincoln Tells a Joke: How Laughter Saved the President And the Country by Kathleen Krull. It’s hard to pinpoint the perfect way to convey any subject, but it can sometimes be even harder to tell an entire life in the span of a mere 40 pages or so. Still, that tends to be the second and more common kind of picture book biography out there. Generally speaking they don’t tend to be terribly interesting. Just a series of rote facts, incapable of making it clear to a kind why a person mattered aside from the standard “because I said so” defense. The Boy Who Loved Math is different because it really takes the nature of biography seriously. If the purpose of a bio is to make it clear that a person was important, how important was a guy who loved math puzzles? Well, consider what the story can do. In a scant number of pages author Deborah Heiligman gives us an entire life synthesized down to just a couple key moments, giving the man’s life form and function and purpose, all while remaining lighthearted and fun to read. Who does that?
Did you know that there are kids out there who like math? I mean, reeeeeeally like math? The kinds that beg their parents for math problems to solve? They exist (heck, Ms. Heiligman gave birth to one) and for those kids this book will come like a present from on high. Because not only does the author highlight a fellow who took his passion for numbers and turned it into a fulfilling and fun life, but thanks to illustrator LeUyen Pham the illustrations are overflowing with math equations and puzzles and problems, just waiting to be interpreted and dissected. I have followed the career of Ms. Pham for many years. There is no book that she touches that she does not improve with her unique style. Whether it’s zeroing in on a child’s neuroses in Alvin Ho or bringing lush life to a work of poetry as in A Stick Is an Excellent Thing, Pham’s art can run the gamut from perfect interstitial pen-and-inks to lush watercolor paints. I say that, but I have never, but ever, seen anything like what she’s done in The Boy Who Loved Math.
It would not be overstating the matter to call this book Pham’s masterpiece. The common story behind its creation is that there was some difficulty finding the perfect artist for it because whosoever put pen to paper here would have to be comfortable on some level with incorporating math into the art. Many is the artist who would shy away from that demand. Not Ms. Pham. She takes to the medium like a duck to water, seemingly effortlessly weaving equations, charts, diagrams, numbers, and theorems into pictures that also have to complement the story, feature the faces of real people, capture a sense of time (often through clothing) and place (often through architecture), and hardest of all, be fun to look at.
But that’s just for starters. The final product is MUCH more complex. I’m not entirely certain what the medium is at work here but if I had to guess I’d go with watercolors. Whatever it is, Pham’s design on each page layout is extraordinary. Sometimes she’ll do a full page, border to border, chock full of illustrations of a single moment. That might pair with a page of interstitial scenes, giving a feel to Paul’s life. Or consider the page where you see a group of diners at a restaurant, their worlds carefully separated into dotted squares (a hat tip to one of Paul’s puzzles) while Paul sits in his very own dotted pentagon. It’s these little touches that make it clear that Paul isn’t like other folks. All this culminates in Pham’s remarkable Erdős number graph, where she outdoes herself showing how Paul intersected with the great mathematicians of the day. Absolutely stunning.
Both Heiligman and Pham take a great deal of care to tell this tale as honestly as possible. The extensive “Note From the Author” and “Note From the Illustrator” sections in the back are an eye-opening glimpse into what it takes to present a person honestly to a child audience. In Pham’s notes she concedes when she had to illustrate without a guide at hand. For example, Paul’s babysitter (“the dreaded Faulein”) had to be conjured from scratch. She is the rare exception, however. Almost every face in this book is a real person, and it’s remarkable to look and see Pham’s page by page notes on who each one is.
Heiligman’s author’s note speaks less to what she included and more to what she had to leave out. She doesn’t mention the fact that Paul was addicted to amphetamines and honestly that sort of detail wouldn’t have served the story much at all. Similarly I had no problem with Paul’s father’s absence. Heiligman mentions in her note what the man went through and why his absences would make Paul’s mother the “central person in his life emotionally”. The book never denies his existence, it just focuses on Paul’s mother as a guiding force that was perhaps in some way responsible for the man’s more quirky qualities. The only part of the book that I would have changed wasn’t what Heiligman left out but what she put in. At one point the story is in the midst of telling some of Paul’s more peculiar acts as a guest (stabbing tomato juice cartons with knives, waking friends up at 4 a.m. to talk math, etc.). Then, out of the blue, we see a very brief mention of Paul getting caught by the police when he tried to look at a radio tower. That section is almost immediately forgotten when the text jumps back to Paul and his hosts, asking why they put up with his oddities. I can see why placing Paul in the midst of the Red Scare puts the tale into context, but I might argue that there’s no real reason to include it. Though the Note for the Author at the end mentions that because of this act he wasn’t allowed back in the States for a decade, it doesn’t have a real bearing on the thrust of the book. As they say in the biz, it comes right out.
I have mentioned that this book is a boon for the math-lovers of the world, but what about the kids who couldn’t care diddly over squat about mathy malarkey? Well, as far as I’m concerned the whole reason this book works is because it’s fun. A little bit silly too, come to that. Even if a kid couldn’t care less about prime numbers, there’s interest to be had in watching someone else get excited about them. We don’t read biographies of people exactly like ourselves all the time, because what would be the point of that? Part of the reason biographies even exist is to grant us glimpses into the lives of the folks we would otherwise never have the chance to meet. Your kid may never become a mathematician, but with the book they can at least hang out with one.
One problem teachers have when they teach math is that they cannot come up with a way to make it clear that for some people mathematics is a game. A wonderful game full of surprises and puzzles and queries. What The Boy Who Loved Math does so well is to not only show how much fun math can be on your own, it makes it clear that the contribution Paul Erdős gave to the world above and beyond his own genius was that he encouraged people to work together to solve their problems. Heiligman’s biography isn’t simply the rote facts about a man’s life. It places that life in context, gives meaning to what he did, and makes it clear that above and beyond his eccentricities (which admittedly make for wonderful picture book bio fare) this was a guy who made the world a better place through mathematics. What’s more, he lived his life exactly the way he wanted to. How many of us can say as much? So applause for Heiligman and Pham for not only presenting a little known life for all the world to see, but for giving that life such a magnificent package as this book. A must purchase.
On shelves June 25th
Source: Advanced readers galley sent from publisher for review.
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Category: Young Adult Verse Novel
Keywords: Kidnapping, friendship, forgiveness, compassion, camp
Format: Hardcover
Source: Purchased from
Vroman's BookstoreFrom the jacket copy:
When Wren Abbott and Darra Monson are eight years old, Darra's father steals a minivan. He doesn't know that Wren is hiding in the back. The hours and days that follow change the lives of both girls. Darra is left with a question that only Wren can answer. Wren has questions, too.Years later, in a chance encounter at camp, the girls face each other for the first time. They can finally learn the truth—that is, if they’re willing to reveal to each other the stories that they’ve hidden for so long. Told from alternating viewpoints, this novel-in-poems reveals the complexities of memory and the strength of a friendship that can overcome pain.Alethea's Review:I once had a parent tell me that she did not want her daughter (14 at the time) reading verse novels as they were "too short" and "too easy". I tried to tell her they are just
different--that the form of the novel does tend towards brevity, but that extracting meaning from verse is sometimes a more difficult skill for kids to pick up. The parent was adamant, and I felt bad for her child--she'd be missing out on some great stories just because they were told in poetry format, or would at least until she is able to choose her own reading material.
I hope that girl gets to read Hidden
Tomorrow's the day!
The trailer for On the Road to Mr. Mineo's
will be revealed
AND
Mr. Schu is giving away The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester and The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis
AND
There will be some other cool stuff
___________________________________________________________________________
55 attorney generals from different states, districts and U.S. territories have reached an agreement with HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster in the ongoing litigation over eBook pricing.
According to the terms of the deal, consumers who bought an eBook from any of the “Agency Five” publishers during April 1, 2010 until May 21, 2012 will receive compensation.
Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster will pay consumers who purchased eBooks from any of the five agencies accused of price fixing, including Macmillan and Penguin, who have yet to settle. Payments will begin 30 days after the settlement gets its final court approval.
continued…
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By: alethea aka frootjoos,
on 9/8/2012
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Read by Rachel Botchan
ISBN 10/13: 1596436093 | 9781596436091
Keywords: World War II, Girl detective, friendship, mystery
Category: Young Adult Historical
Format: Audiobook, Hardcover, Paperback, eBook
It's the Fall of 1942 and Iris's world is rapidly changing. Her Pop is back from the war with a missing leg, limiting his ability to do the physically grueling part of his detective work. Iris is dying to help, especially when she discovers that one of Pop's cases involves a boy at her school. Now, instead of sitting at home watching Deanna Durbin movies, Iris is sneaking out of the house, double crossing her friends, and dancing at the Savoy till all hours of the night. There's certainly never a dull moment in the private eye business.
Alethea's review:
I'm not a Veronica Mars fan (as the marketing taglines for this series insist on singling out that demographic), but there's something about the spunky girl-detective novel that never fails to please me. I'll confess that I have fond memories of a hundred Nancy Drew novels, and am currently obsessed with vintage fashion, which might explain part of why I liked this book. Some of the credit definitely goes to the reader, Rachel Botchan. She really nails not just the New York accents but also the inflections from--has it really been that long?--seventy years ago. I think I would have enjoyed this less had I tried to read it myself.
I'm actually surprised this novel kept my interest, as the beginning of the novel felt really slow. Iris is coping with many changes--not just the typical girl-becoming-woman challenges we expect of a coming-of-age novel. She's transplanted from the posh part of town to the Lower East Side, hears whispers of disapproval and malicious gossip regarding her mother's suicide the year before, and is trying to form some sort of connection with her estranged and now disabled father. It's heavy stuff, lending gravity to the story, and I can't decide whether or not it saves the rest of the book from just being a plot-driven mess.
The main mystery involves the disappearance of a boy from Iris's new school. I really enjoyed the author's skill at portraying the secondary characters: Suze, queen bee of the charmingly named "Rainbow Gang", the high school's resident hooligans, and Pearl, the plump, quiet, and defensive schoolmate Iris struggles to befriend. There's no team of good girls versus the bad girls here: everyone seems to have some bad with the good, even Iris, who makes some really terrible decisions for occasionally noble reasons. Despite all the mistakes they make, I found the characters well-rounded and likable.
The solution of the mystery did leave something to be desired. I wouldn't call this a traditional whodunit--you're better off
reading the original (or even
playing the games--they're really good!) if a murder is what you're after. You'll enjoy this more if you like reading about relationships, teen problems and comparing those of today to those of yesteryear, or World War II nostalgia.
You can find the author online at
www.kathrynmillerhaines.com and on Twitter @
KathrynMHaines.
FTC disclosure: Only the Bookdepository.com link may generate revenue for this blog if you make a purchase by clicking the link. The other links in this post are not formatted with my affiliate IDs.
By: Maryann Yin,
on 12/9/2011
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St. Martin’s Press defended novelist Lenore Hart against plagiarism charges this week. A blogger who runs a Edgar Allen Poe fan website initially denounced The Raven’s Bride as “a virtual cut-and-paste job” from Cothburn O’Neal‘s 1956 novel, The Very Young Mrs. Poe.
Since then, members of the literary community (including spy novelist Jeremy Duns and Melville House co-publisher Dennis Johnson) have supported the allegations. The New York Times reported on the debate, including a statement from St. Martin’s Press in response to the accusations.
Here’s more from the statement: “Ms. Hart supplied a detailed response, which cited her research into biographical and historical sources, and explained why her novel and Cothburn O’Neal’s The Very Young Mrs. Poe contain certain details of place, description and incident. As Ms. Hart explained in her response, of course two novels about the same historical figure necessarily reliant on the same limited historical record will have similarities.”
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By: David Elzey,
on 12/12/2011
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Story and drawings by Mervyn Peake
Originally published in Country Life magazine 1939
Macmillian 1967 reprinted by Candlewick 2001
The Captain and his oddball crew settle in on an uncharted island where they encounter a creature the color of butter and then... do nothing?
The good Captain is a bruiser who has run through his share of crew. His ship, The Black Tiger, has lost many a men to
Bandits
By Johanna Wright
A Neal Porter Book – Roaring Brook (an imprint of Macmillan)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-1-59643-583-4
Ages 4-8
On shelves now
There has been inadequate use of raccoons in children’s literature. Seems to me that if you have a furry woodland creature with a homegrown mask as part of its fuzzy face, it’s a crime NOT to make it a creeping bandit at some point. I mean, raccoons basically live up to their sneaky looks anyway. They turn over folks’ garbage cans. They lark about when the world is dark. Over the years I’ve seen the occasional book here and there give these creatures of the night their due, but few have done it quite as beautifully as Johanna Wright’s Bandits. Having discovered Ms. Wright when she wrote the utterly odd and charming The Secret Circus, Bandits proves to be an evocative follow-up. As amusing as it is to read (and it is amusing) Wright’s original eclectic style also makes this one of the stranger and yet more beautiful recent picture books out there. A funny mix of unreliable narration and sweet family life, these bandits are the ones you’ll think of from here on in whenever you spot a raccoon’s telltale face.
“When the sun goes down and the moon comes up, beware of the bandits that prowl through the night.” Traveling en masse, a family of raccoons begins its evening of mini larceny. Raiding garbage cans and stripping the apples from the topmost branches of trees these sneaky petes are clearly under the impression that they are villains par excellence. Even when their ramblings are discovered by (highly amused) humans they believe that they’re in possession of some pretty choice “loot”. And when the sun comes up, the family goes inside to sleep and read some books. “But just until the sun goes down.”
Part of what makes the book so charming is that while the raccoons appear to be entirely of the opinion that they are master thieves stealing great treasures from their unsuspecting victims, in truth their capers are fairly innocent and their “treasures” items that folks don’t need (like the garbage) or don’t mind losing (like the fruit from the trees). I mean, when you get down to it, the sneakiest things these “bandits” do, aside from knocking over the odd garbage can, is to brush their teeth in somebody’s fountain. Booga booga! I love that the writing in this book is clearly from their perspective too. Even as the pictures make it clear that you’re dealing with some pretty tame criminals, they’re trying to impress you with their daring. At one point you read, “They baffle the fuzz with each little trick” while the picture shows the raccoons tiptoeing past an old hound dog that couldn’t be less interested. And multiple readings of this book yield multiple ways to grow fond of the raccoon family unit. After all, there are some scenes of them relaxing in their home, their thoughts far from their pilfering ways. Reread the bo
Today we bring you another installment of Youth Media Movers and Shakers. We’ve culled through industry publications looking for the recent executive placements we think you should know about. If you have executive news that you want us to... Read the rest of this post
By:
Betsy Bird,
on 3/13/2012
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Green
By Laura Vaccaro Seeger
A Neal Porter Book – Roaring Brook (an imprint of Macmillan)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-1-59643-397-7
Ages 4-8
On shelves March 27th
Sometimes you just want to show a kid a beautiful picture book. Sometimes you also want that book to be recent. That’s the tricky part. Not that there aren’t pretty little picture books churned out of publishing houses every day. Of course there are. But when you want something that distinguishes itself and draws attention without sparkles or glitter the search can be a little fraught. We children’s librarians sit and wait for true beauty to fall into our laps. The last time I saw it happen was Jerry Pinkney’s The Lion and the Mouse. Now I’m seeing it again with Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s Green. I mean just look at that cover. I vacillate between wanting to smear those thick paints with my hands and wanting to lick it to see if it tastes like green frosting. If my weirdness is any kind of a litmus test, kids will definitely get a visceral reaction when they flip through the pages. I know we’re talking colors here but if I were to capture this book in a single word then there’s only one that would do: Delicious.
Open the book and the first pictures you see are of a woodland scene. Two leaves hang off a nearby tree as the text reads “forest green”. Turn the page and those leaves, cut into the paper itself, flip over to two fishies swimming in the deep blue sea. A tortoise swims lazily by, bubbles rising from its head (“sea green”). Another page and the holes of the bubbles are turned over to become the raised bumps on a lime. And so it goes with each new hole or cut connecting one kind of green to another. We see khaki greens, wacky greens, slow greens and glow greens until at last Seeger fills the page with boxes filled with different kinds of green. This is followed by a stop sign and the words “never green” against an autumn background. On the next page it is winter and “no green” followed by an image of a boy planting something. The final spread shows a man and his daughter gazing at a tree. The description: “forever green”. You bet.
Can a color be political? Absolutely. In a given election season you’ll see red vs. blue, after all. In children’s books colors would historically be associated with races or countries (hence the flare up around titles like Two Reds). Green occupies a hazy middle ground here. We all know about the Green Party or green activism. However, it’s not as if you’ll find many parents forbidding their children to read this book because it pushes a pro-environment agenda. Seeger is subtler than that. Yes, her book does end with humans planting and admiring trees, but thanks to her literary restraint the message isn’t thwapping you over the head with a tire iron. She could have turned her “no green” two-page spread into some barren landfill-esque wasteland. Instead we see a snow scene. This is followed by the only silent two pages i
Penguin Books associate publisher Stephen Morrison will serve as the new publisher at Macmillan’s Picador Books. He starts on April 30th.
Henry Holt publisher Stephen Rubin and FSG publisher Jonathan Galassi welcomed the new editor in a memo: “Stephen brings exactly the right combination of enthusiasm, fortitude, resourcefulness and experience to grow Picador into a dynamic division committed to publishing a wide range of paperback reprints, paperback originals , hardcover works of fiction and nonfiction and digital-only publications. Stephen’s mandate is to make Picador one of the industry’s most undaunted, aggressive marketing machines, culling books from all of Macmillan’s divisions, including St. Martins, FSG and Holt.”
Picador publisher Frances Coady departed last month in a company restructuring. Previously, Morrison served as executive editor at Bloomsbury, a senior editor at Penguin and a senior scout at Maria B. Campbell Associates.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
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Earlier this week, you may have heard the dogs barking in your neighborhood. Perhaps all of the car alarms went off simultaneously. Perhaps you were listening to the radio, and a strange squeeling noise was heard. Perhaps a bit of dust was dislodged from the ceiling tiles over your cubicle, creating a small rain of particles.
That was me.
Generally, my squeels of joy are at the lower, Stimpson J. Cat, level. Sometimes, I might bounce up and down in my chair if I see something really cool. This week, I saw something so utterly cool and unexpected that my squeel went hypersonic.
Now, regular readers know I’ve seen a lot of cool stuff in my 40+ years on this planet. I love seeking out the strange and cool and unusual, and love sharing it with others. So, what, pray tell, could be so amazingly awesome to cause an uninhibited and automatic reflex that shakes window panes?
Let me enumerate them.
- There’s a Pipi Longstocking book I haven’t read.
- It’s been out of print for thirty years.
- It’s a collection of Pippi Longstocking comics.
- The comics were drawn by the same artist who illustrated the prose novels.
- It’s a full-color hardcover from Drawn+Quarterly.
Pippi Longstocking has been translated into 64 languages. Astrid Lindgren is one of those superheroes of literature, and pretty awesome!
- The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award pays out about $750,000 dollars (SEK 5,000,000) annualy to notable children’s writers, illustrators, and promoters of children’s literature.
- She was the second recipient of the Hans Christian Andersen Award.
- She will appear on the soon-to-be-redesigned 20 Kroner banknote.
- She has her own amusement park, based on her books.
- In 1978, the Russians named a minor asteriod after her. When announced, she is said to have declared “From now on you can address me [as] Asteroid Lindgren”.
- The first Swedish microsatellite was named for her, and the scientific instruments were named after her characters.
Here’s the info from the Macmillan catalog:
Pippi Moves In
Astrid Lindgren, Ingrid Vang Nyman
On Sale Date: November 13, 2012, Ship Date: October 25, 2012
$14.95
56 pages
Full-Color Illustrations Throughout
Hardback / With dust jacket
9781770460997, 1770460993
Author Bio: Astrid Lindgren
(1907–2002) was the creator of one of S
Macmillan CEO John Sargent has released a public letter addressed to “authors, illustrators and agents,” sharing the moment he decided to join the agency model in 2010–setting prices for eBooks across different retailers.
Check it out: “I am Macmillan’s CEO and I made the decision to move Macmillan to the agency model. After days of thought and worry, I made the decision on January 22nd, 2010 a little after 4:00 AM, on an exercise bike in my basement. It remains the loneliest decision I have ever made, and I see no reason to go back on it now. Other publishers have chosen to settle. That is their decision to make. We have decided to fight this in court.”
The moment will play a crucial role in court soon as the Department of Justice has sued Apple and publishers, alleging that they colluded together to set eBook prices. Sargent disputed these claims in his long letter. We’ve reprinted the entire letter below…
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Multiple reports have surfaced that the Department of Justice has sued Apple and publishers for allegedly colluding to set eBook prices. We will update as the story evolves this morning.
Bloomberg had the first complete report: “The U.S. filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple Corp., Hachette SA, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster in New York district court, claiming collusion over eBook pricing.”
The Wall Street Journal added: “A settlement involving some of the publishers is expected to be filed Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the matter.” Digital Book World has a letter from Macmillan CEO John Sargent:”Other publishers have chosen to settle. That is their decision to make. We have decided to fight this in court.”
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Macmillan CEO John Sargent has released a public letter addressed to “authors, illustrators and agents,” sharing the moment he decided to join the agency model in 2010–setting prices for eBooks across different retailers.
Check it out: “I am Macmillan’s CEO and I made the decision to move Macmillan to the agency model. After days of thought and worry, I made the decision on January 22nd, 2010 a little after 4:00 AM, on an exercise bike in my basement. It remains the loneliest decision I have ever made, and I see no reason to go back on it now. Other publishers have chosen to settle. That is their decision to make. We have decided to fight this in court.”
The moment will play a crucial role in court soon as the Department of Justice has sued Apple and publishers, alleging that they colluded together to set eBook prices. Sargent disputed these claims in his long letter. We’ve reprinted the entire letter below…
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Multiple reports have surfaced that the Department of Justice has sued Apple and publishers for allegedly colluding to set eBook prices. We will update as the story evolves this morning.
Bloomberg had the first complete report: “The U.S. filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple Corp., Hachette SA, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster in New York district court, claiming collusion over eBook pricing.”
The Wall Street Journal added: “A settlement involving some of the publishers is expected to be filed Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the matter.” Macmillan CEO John Sargent wrote a public letter about the case. Read the whole letter here: “Other publishers have chosen to settle. That is their decision to make. We have decided to fight this in court.”
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
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I try not to get jealous of other authors …. But oh man, the Pickle Club idea is just SO good!
Oh, yeah, if forgot to mention… I’m jealous of that beautiful cover, too!
Now that’s a blurb if I ever heard one! Macmillan should snap this up and put it on the paperback edition.
My son is reading this right now, and loving every minute of it. We also think it is so cool that Tom Angleberger commented on this book! We love his books too!!