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Here are some literary events to pencil in your calendar this week.

To get your event posted on our calendar, visit our Facebook Your Literary Event page. Please post your event at least one week prior to its date.

Heidi Boghosian will headline a conversation event about her new book, Spying on Democracy, at the Hillside Club. Join in on Tuesday, October 1st starting 8 p.m. (Berkeley, CA)

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Cathy Potter is a school librarian at Falmouth Elementary School in Falmouth, Maine. She serves on the Chickadee Award committee, the 2014 Sibert Medal committee, and she co-authors The Nonfiction Detectives blog. TCBR is so happy to shine the spotlight on Cathy Potter!

The 2012 finalists for the Children’s Choice Book Awards have been revealed. Kids can vote from March 14th to May 3rd.

The winners will be announced live at the Children’s Choice Book Awards gala on May 7th. Nominees have been divided into four groups classified by different school grades.

In the Author of the Year category, middle-grade fiction writers dominate. The nominees include Diary of a Wimpy Kid 6: Cabin Fever by Jeff Kinney, Inheritance by Christopher Paolini, Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life by James Patterson, The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan and Dork Diaries 3: Tales from a Not-So-Talented Pop Star by Rachel Renée Russell.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Massive, and I do mean massive blog coverage of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) National Conference in Los Angeles at  The Official SCBWI Conference Blog.

The team-blogging effort was led by Alice Pope, who edits the Children’s Writers and Illustrators Market, the annually updated directory published by Writer’s Digest Books.

I also recommend Diandra Mae’s blog Taking Flight for her attentive and fun  coverage of her experience as an attendee of the four days of panels, workshops, talks and socials .

Before we  get into the blogs,  though, here’s a clip of the great picture book artist and creator Tomie dePaolo being interviewed by SCBW National Executive Director Lin Oliver about the “art of the picture book.”  No, the video’ was not part of the conference but part of an SCBWI “Master Class.” But these are two personalities who loom large over the org.

If you’ve not yet heard of SCBWI or know much about it, here’s an interview from the org’s website where Executive Director (and prolific children’s author and producer of movies based on children’s books) Lin Oliver does a good job of speaking for the now global organization.

D’s posts put you in the shoes of someone packing her bags and heading out to Los Angeles for the big event. She ’s a talented illustrator in the Houston area — a former 7th grade teacher now active with the  Houston chapter of SCBWI .

She catches many good quotes and observations in her blog  Taking Flight, like David Weisner’s remark in an illustrators’  Q&A:

“…He did mention that with all of these portfolios he is asked to view at art schools around the country, he’s noticed that there is a serious lack of drawing ability that often hinders brilliant and wonderful ideas. ‘Take a figure drawing class for goodness’ sakes!’ He reminds us that this ”is not about making precious drawings, it’s about learning the craft’ because ‘observational drawings are at the heart of everything we do.’ “

I  enjoyed reading about what apparently was the first ever Illustrators’ Social at the conference. D writes,“What a wonderful concept! Cecilia Yung, David Diaz, Priscilla Burris were there to facilitate the chaos of portfolio sharing, card swapping and chatting. They talked a little about how we illustrators were only 15% of the attendees, and we needed to band together for support.”

So here you go:  Day One , Day Two , Day Three,
Day Four . Thank you, Diandra Mae  for some wonderful reporting.

The SCBWI LA Conference team blog includes the  Golden Kite Awards/2009 Conference Portfolio Awards along with art from the winners of the SCBWI New York Portfolio Exhibition and the Tomie dePaola Award.

Alice Pope on her own Children’s Writers and Illustrators Market blog (on August 12) includes  a transcript of her own tweets throughout the four days. They’re entertaining  even if you’re not familiar with all of the authors’ and editors’ names.

You can read all tweets from all persons who tweeted in real time on  the event at this Twitter site. (Or you can pull them up on your own twitter page by searching for:  #scbwi09.)  The tweets are nano-quotes from the artist/writer/editors/ agent panels and talks,  breadcrumb trails of “kid publishing” thought.

Team blog carries reportage on talks by the wonderful illustrator Marla Frazee
Dan Yaccarino,  Scholastic Executive Art Director Elizabeth Parisi (on book dummies), Golden Kite Award winner for illustration (for Last Night,  Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Hyewon Yum — and more from David Weisner, like how, for those  lily pad piloting frogs of  his Caldecott Medal winning-picture book Tuesday,  he found frog skeletons to study.

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As I fly away from LA, I was sad to leave good friends and the brilliance of some of the world’s great creators. David Weisner whose illustrations are in the school of Shan Tan, with worlds within worlds in his illustration shared dinner with me. He is such an original thinker, like Shan Tan, where his drawings take him into philosophy, relationships, the great issues of life. He’s talking with Shan at a US conference next month. They’ll have a lot to talk about.

Can’t wait for the USA edition of I AM JACK to come out - here’s Cathy Wilcox’s US cover.

Book Update: Bright is backin hadns of Awesome Agent. Cross your fingers! I feel its done - I rewrote beginning and ending in addition to edits _ added material resulting in an additional 12,000 words. Now tween book is at 63,000

It is 10 pm (LA time) and our day really just ended.

Went for breakfast this morning with Lindsey Leavitt, Katie Anderson, Sarah Francis Hardy, and Kimberly Derting. (SFH had the best egg pizza - yum! and LL had a tower of sticky buns!! Yum yum! Me? the healthy oatmeal boring. Tomorrow I am going all out :)

The morning started off with Sherman Alexie, author of ...Diary of Part Time Indian...

he was so funny. But under all the humor was a guy who turned his painful childhood into a dream existence. A kid with brain damage, bad vision, poor, lived on an Indian reservation. A kid who found a way to escape from his hard childhood with books.

Here are some of my "Ah ha" moments (for more detail you can go to scbwi's blog.)

"when you give a kid a book he naturally identifies with than you expect him to connect with it. But when you give a kid a book that is outside his normal comfort zone, and he finds a way to connect with it - that is when you begin changing the world."

"The power of books is amazing. They find a way yo the people that need them the most. Whether its 1 person or 100,000. Every book has the destiny to change at least one person."

"As a children's author - you must accept responsibility of writing for a young audience; prepare to be lonely because it is hard work, and know when you write it - it will impact people."

Next was David Weisner (Flotsam)

"He talked about the films and books that impacted his illustrations and writing. He showed a journey of how he got to Flotsam. How all of his books led up to that one."

"Writing is a personal journey. We don't write with a certain kid in mind. We write from our kid. From our hearts, experiences, and memory. Kids just happen to be touched by them."

"Think about all the stuff that you thought was cool when you were a kid. There is a story in each thing that stood out to you."

Ingrid Law - Savvy

Write with creativity and courage
Read the book "Spunk and bite"
Push voice further than you thought possible.
exercise: write a crazy sentence - then ask questions. This is how Savvy started - one crazy sentence and a bunch of questions.
Trust your instincts, be wild and playful, have a beginner's mind, be courageous, take risks, and don't be afraid to break the rules - you can always rein them in
pretend you are always a tourist and see things with a new eye.
be sure to look up when you walk around so you can observe the nuances of life

Sarah Davies - Greenhouse Literary (love her!!!)

world rights - all languages in world
world english rights - english language anywhere in world
hard to see Us fiction in UK. less space for YA market

Ways to spread international buzz:
Scouts - represent foreign publishers
Publishers marketplace - sign up and watch foreign right sales
understand foreign market
Pub weekly features on international authors
Bologna Frankfurt conferences/book fairs

Advice for global sales
consider world when you write
have market in mind
middle grade needs strong sales
YA fiction with unique voice and premise

Audio Books
1) primary - when they exploit own rights
2) secondary - sells rights to someone else

what helps international sales
global appeal
unique voice
Non fiction and PB do not sell as well as MG/YA
unusually ideas
awards/sales figures
love young boy fiction
concepts and setting that transcends cultures

see you tomorrow!

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Exclusive SCBWI TEAM BLOG Video Interview: Zombie Sock Puppet David Wiesner...

Visit CocoaStomp for Jaime Temairik's latest exclusive TEAM BLOG video interview with illustrator, Caldecott winner and Summer Conference keynote speaker David Wiesner who takes the form of a zombie sock puppet! (This is Jaime's brilliant follow up to yesterday's interview with zombie sock puppet Dan Yaccarino.)

Two days from now: Blog-mania! Stay tuned...

Visit CocaoStomp for Jamie Temairik's latest exclusive TEAM BLOG video interview with illustrator, Caldecott winner and Summer Conference keynote speaker David Weisner who takes the form of a zombie sock puppet (another undead illustrator!).

Two days from now: Blog-mania! Stay tuned...