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In April of this year, Beverly Cleary will celebrate her 100th birthday. To honor the popular children’s books author, HarperCollins released new editions of three of her titles: Ramona Quimby, Age 8, The Mouse and The Motorcycle, and Henry Huggins.

According to a post on Cleary’s Facebook page, the publisher recruited three female writers to create new forewords: Amy Poehler, Judy Blume, and Kate DiCamillo. All of the books will also feature an exclusive interview with Cleary.

The publisher also has a new edition of Cleary’s memoir, A Girl From Yamhill, slated for release on Apr. 5. It was originally published in 1988. (via Entertainment Weekly)

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It's one thing to read about censorship in a news article; it's another to become aware of the threat at a nearby library or school. For Banned Books Week this year, we reviewed hundreds of documented appeals to remove materials from a local public library, school library, or course curriculum. Below are 30 books that [...]

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For the past few months, the three library systems of New York City (the New York Public Library, the Queens Library, and the Brooklyn Public Library) have been pushing Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Council for an increase in funding. The campaign has proved successful; a $43 million increase has been approved for the Fiscal Year 2016.

More than 150,000 New York library patrons sent in letters to support this cause. Several authors and celebrities also joined in this fight including Newbery Medal winner Neil Gaiman, In the Unlikely Event novelist Judy Blume, Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz, ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, Oscar-nominated actor Ethan Hawke, and Grammy-winning musician John Legend.

According to the press release, this budget increase “will allow for citywide six-day branch service, as well as an increase in hours and programming seats, more expert library staff, and more. The budget — adopted today — also includes a capital allocation of at least $300 million to libraries over 10 years, which will go towards improving, renovating, modernizing, and repairing library facilities across the city. This is the first time libraries have received such a large, long-term investment, allowing them to adequately plan for the future.”

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We’ve collected the books debuting on Indiebound’s Indie Bestseller List for the week ending June 07, 2015–a sneak peek at the books everybody will be talking about next month.

(Debuted at #3 in Hardcover Fiction) In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume: “In 1987, Miri Ammerman returns to her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, to attend a commemoration of the worst year of her life. Thirty-five years earlier, when Miri was fifteen, and in love for the first time, a succession of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving a community reeling.” (June 2015)

(Debuted at #4 in Hardcover Fiction) Finders Keepers by Stephen King: “The genius is John Rothstein, an iconic author who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but who hasn’t published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy is livid, not just because Rothstein has stopped providing books, but because the nonconformist Jimmy Gold has sold out for a career in advertising.” (June 2015)

(Debuted at #8 in Hardcover Nonfiction) Gumption by Nick Offerman: “To millions of people, Nick Offerman is America. Both Nick and his character, Ron Swanson, are known for their humor and patriotism in equal measure.” (May 2015)

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A group of high-profile celebrities and authors have come together to advocate for the library systems of New York. Each participant has signed their name to a letter calling on Mayor Bill de Blasio and city council members to increase the funding for the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, and the Queens Library.

Some of the entertainers who took part include ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, Oscar-nominated actor Ethan Hawke, and Grammy-winning musician John Legend. Some of the writers who took part include Newbery Medal winner Neil Gaiman, In the Unlikely Event novelist Judy Blume, Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, and historian Stacy Schiff.

Here’s an excerpt: “New York City’s libraries offer inspiring programs, welcoming staff, and safe spaces for people of all ages, as well as free access to technology and, of course, millions of books. Libraries are the great equalizers…Now is the time to restore $65 million in operating funding for libraries, and to invest $1.4 billion in capital funding over the next decade to repair and renovate our 217 neighborhood branches. It’s time for New York City to Invest in Libraries.”

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Last night, beloved author Judy Blume appeared at the 92Y to discuss her new book In the Unlikely Event. Comedian Samantha Bee served as the moderator.

Early on in the conversation, Bee asked Blume if she writes with “a vision or intention” for her readers. Blume answered: “For me, I can’t think about an audience…that would paralyze me. You just have to be alone with your characters.” As the evening went on, Blume continued to share advice on writing.

According to Blume, her mind can be a “messy” place which is why her first drafts tend to be “a mess.” As she was working on the Summer Sisters book, she formed a habit of organizing each draft in individual three-ring binders. She also emphasized that all writers must “read” because all writers start off as “readers first.” What do you think? (Photo Credit: Joyce Culver)

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In June, Alfred A. Knopf will release Judy Blume’s new adult fiction book In the Unlikely Event. The story came to Blume from an event back in the 1950’s where three plane crashes descended on her hometown of Elizabeth, N.J. within a two-month period.

Usually, Blume relies much more on life experiences to inspire her storytelling. For this project, she elected to try a different creative process and conducted extensive research to inform her writing.

Here’s more from The New York Times: “She spent hours at the Key West library, going through Microfilm in a room so dusty she wore a surgical mask, until her husband bought her a Microfilm machine on eBay to use at home. As she started writing, she lavishly layered in the historical details that define the small, specific universe of the book: the names of the department stores in Elizabeth where each person would have shopped, the songs and jingles that ran through their minds, the way young women stored their angora sweaters in the freezer to keep them from shedding. Her characters’ lives, and how the crashes changed them, started to take shape in her mind.”

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Junot Díaz has become an advocate for the New York Public Library. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist credits libraries for helping him grow and develop into a creative professional.

Here’s an excerpt from Díaz’s letter: “Libraries are one of the greatest American institutions — they are not only treasure houses of knowledge, they are also fiercely democratic spaces. It kills me that New York City — the home of one of the greatest library systems in the world — has been under-funding libraries for over a decade. This has to stop.”

In recent years, the NYPL had to deal with a number of funding cuts; this is one of the factors that propelled Díaz to write a letter to library patrons urging them to contact New York City’s mayor and city council members. Fellow author Judy Blume also wrote a piece on behalf of the NYPL. Both Díaz and Blume hope to mobilize bibliophiles to fight for a budget increase.

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Judy Blume has decided to become an advocate for the New York Public Library. Blume considers librarians to be heroes and feels that this institution deserves more funding.

The Gothamist recently reported that several NYPL buildings seem to be suffering from great disrepair; this is one of the factors that propelled Blume to write a letter to library patrons urging them to contact New York City’s mayor and city council members. She hopes to mobilize bibliophiles to fight for a budget increase.

Here’s an excerpt from Blume’s letter: “As you probably know, I’ve never been one to accept the status quo. So join me in taking a stand. The City will release its executive budget soon — now’s our chance to go out and make it right. Send your letter to Mayor de Blasio and the City Council. Tell them, my heroes need their help.”

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Dan Ruffino has been hired as the managing director of Simon & Schuster Australia. Ruffino will report to Ian Chapman, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster UK and International.

Ruffino has devoted more than 25 years to a career in publishing. Some of the authors he has worked with in the past include Jackie Collins, Ian Thorpe, Ken Follett, Marian Keyes, and Judy Blume.

Ruffino gave this statement in the press release: “I am thrilled to be given the opportunity to lead Simon & Schuster’s dynamic team in Australia and New Zealand. I am passionate about connecting writers with readers and look forward to working closely with my colleagues internationally and with local booksellers, authors and agents to continue to accelerate the growth of the business in Australia.”

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Judy Blume has revealed the title and release date for her forthcoming adult novel. Alfred A. Knopf will release In the Unlikely Event on June 02, 2015.

BuzzFeed has posted the cover for this book—what do you think? People magazine reports that the book “focuses on an ensemble of family and friends across three generations.”

According to Blume’s website, the inspiration for this story comes from “a series of passenger airplanes crashed in Elizabeth, New Jersey within a three-month period in 1951–1952.” This real-life tragedy has inhabited a place in Blume’s mind since she was a teenager.

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Judy Blume has more than 82 million copies of her books in print. Books like

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret

Blubber



and

Just as Long as We're Together.


There's even a new movie out - based on her book - that she wrote the screenplay for: Tiger Eyes.



Judy gets a standing ovation as she takes the stage.

Every eye (and camera) on Judy Blume

Judy is full of joy and emotion and warmth.

She shares with us a few thoughts Tomie dePaola offered that resonated for her, like

Courage

When it came to Judy's writing, she never thought twice about it.

"I was brave in my writing in a way that I wasn't in my life."

Courage to create. Courage to imagine.


Judy speaks about the value of the safe space, the community SCBWI offers us all. She talks about Focus and Determination, and tells us stories...

She offers us some tweets she's designed for us, like this one

"Do not let anyone discourage you. If they try, get angry, not depressed."

Judy Blume has us laughing and thinking and feeling. And she tells us that while she was supposed to inspire us, being at this conference inspired her. She's fired up. And she's going to go home. And she's going to do it.

And we can, too.

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Hi ho.  Time to round-up what Jules and I have been up to over at our Wild Things blog (book promotion for bloggers means more blogging, you see).  Here’s the long and short of what you may have missed:

• Wacked out 1970s picture books.
• Maurice Sendak’s actual first book (and it’s not what you think).
• Blueberry cheesecake and how it applies to Newbery and Caldecott acceptance speeches.
• Thoughts inspired by what may well be the most misguided celebrity children’s book we’ve heard about in years.
• Why did Robert McCloskey leave the field early? Perhaps Maurice Sendak had something to do with it.
• That time the editor of SLJ threatened to hit the editor of Horn Book over the head with a chair.
• The direct connection between the Caldecott Medal and the man who caught Al Capone.
• Authors that have to deal with their books on the silver screen.
• Last words and final regrets.
• More film adaptations, particularly the bad ones.

Whew!  We’re busy little bees, aren’t we?

• Tra la!  It’s coming!  The greatest conference of children’s and YA literary bloggers is coming!  And Liz Burns not only has the info but also the reason such an event is cool.  Quoth she: “What I love about KidLitCon is it’s about the bloggers. Full stop. That is the primary purpose and mission of KidLitCon. It’s about what the bloggers care about. Oh, there may be authors and publishers there, presenting, and that can be great and amazing. But it’s not about them. They are there to support the blogging community: they are not there saying, what can the blogging community do for us.”  Amen, sister.  Preach!  By the way, the theme this year is Blogging Diversity in Young Adult and Children’s Lit: What’s Next?  Be there or be square.

• So there’s a new Children’s Book Review Editor at the New York Times and by some strange quirk of fate her name is NOT alliterative (note Julie Just, Pamela Paul, and Sarah Smith).  Her name?  Maria Russo.  Which pretty much means I’ll be tracking her like a bloodhound at the next Eric Carle Honors event.  Trouble is, we don’t wear nametags at that event so I’ll probably be the crazy lady grabbing all the women, staring intently into their eyes.  Wouldn’t be the first time.

• The 10 Children’s Book Series That Deserve TV Adaptations list at Flavorwire is perfectly nice, but you can actually pinpoint the age of its writer.  Which is to say, she’s my little sister’s age.  Not a new series of children’s books as far as the eye can see.

I blame Saving Mr. Banks.  One little children’s writer biopic comes out where the writer isn’t seen as all kittens and sunshine (I still loathe you Miss Potter and Finding Neverland) and all hell breaks loose.  Now we hear that McG is going to do a Shel Silverstein biopic on the one hand and that there are plans to examine the relationship between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien on the other.  I’m just counting the minutes until someone tackles Margaret Wise Brown or the whole Anne-Carroll-Moore-didn’t-like-Stuart-Little story (which you just KNOW is in the works somewhere).

• Speaking of films, when I heard that Alan Snow’s delightful Here Be Monsters was being turned into a film called The Boxtrolls I was incredulous.  That book?  The one I couldn’t get kids to even look at until they made a blue paperback version?  I mean I liked it (it came out in a year when sentient cheese was all the rage in children’s literature) but how long was this film in production for crying out loud?  Doesn’t matter because according to iO9 it’s brilliant.  Good to know.

• So Phil Nel, our ever intrepid professor with a hankering for children’s literature, went to ComicCon.  Best of all, he’s willing to report his findings to us (so that we don’t have to go!).  Read up on Part 1, Part 2 (my favorite for the cameo of Bananaman), Part 3, and Part 4.  Phil was there promoting his Barnaby books (which he co-edited with Eric Reynolds). These include Barnaby Volume One: 1942-1943 (2013) and Barnaby Volume Two: 1944-1945 (2014).

• Me stuff.  Thank you, Zoobean.

• Did I know that Amanda Palmer wrote a song about what she owes to Judy Blume?  I do now.

• This is what separates the true fangirls from the poseurs.  Thanks to the CBC for the link.

• I did once learn about this old National Book Award kerfuffle, but had long since forgotten it until Roger Sutton reminded me.  And I too have seen that book.  And it is AWFUL.  But, as ever, Peter Sieruta said it better than I.

• Two Little Free Libraries have sprung up near my home across the street from the Harlem branch of NYPL.  I couldn’t be more pleased because they mean just one thing to me . . . a place to give away my books!!!  Culling books is terribly enjoyable.  It’s also part of BookRiot’s incredibly useful post 8 Tips for Moving When You Have a Ton of Books.

• What can writers learn from Goodnight Moon?  That it’s awesome.

• Daily Image:

Two words. Bookish shoes.  My personal favorites include . . .

Remember, by the way, that my sister told you how to make some of these yourself.  Thanks to Mom for the link.

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Here's the interview, where you can read Judy's advice on getting past the moments when she wanted to quit writing, and hear the best writing advice she ever got!

Thanks Judy, and thanks Martha!

While the 2014 SCBWI Summer Conference is sold out, make sure to check out this conference blog and our conference twitter feed (at #LA14SCBWI) for highlights and a tapas-like taste of all the inspiration, craft, business, opportunity and community!

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

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Acclaimed writer Judy Blume has been working on a new novel for adults. According to Blume’s website, this “complicated story” takes place during the 1950′s.

The New York Times reports that Alfred A. Knopf has scheduled it for release in Summer 2015. Blume’s editor Carole Baron promises that this project is “pure Judy Blume, writing about family and about friendships, about love, about betrayal.”

Not too long ago, Blume teamed up with her son Lawrence to write the script for a movie adaptation of her young adult book Tiger Eyes. During a promotional event, Blume revealed that she had an unfinished manuscript she started back in 2009. Perhaps, she’s finally putting the finishing touches on that project and soon it will be unveiled to the world. (via The Guardian)

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Sarah Mlynowski is the New York Times bestselling author of the Whatever After series as well as Gimme a Call, Don’t Even Think About It, Ten Things We Did (and Probably Shouldn’t Have), How to Be Bad (along with E. Lockhart and Lauren Myracle) and the Magic in Manhattan series. Originally from Montreal, Sarah now lives in the kingdom of Manhattan with her very own prince charming and their fairy-tale-loving daughters.

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Describe your latest book. My Salinger Year is a memoir about my sojourn as the assistant to J. D. Salinger's agent, a job that involved answering his fan mail, typing letters on an ancient IBM Selectric, mastering an archaic device known as a Dictaphone, and generally coping — or trying to decipher — the odd, [...]

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Veteran YA author Judy Blume said that parents spend too much time worrying about what their kids are reading, at the Hay Festival in the UK this past weekend. In her opinion, kids "self-censor" and won't read any content that the don't get. The Telegraph UK has more: If the content was unsuitable, she argued, children would simply tire of it or let it wash over their heads without understanding.... she said the experience of having her own books banned in the Eighties was "alarming", leaving her feeling "very alone". Her novels, which confront issues of teenage sex, racism, divorce, bullying, puberty and masturbation, were considered shocking at the time, and are remembered by a generation of women for teaching them the facts of life.

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All right.  Me stuff off the bat.  I was recently asked to moderate a panel of authors for the Children’s Media Association.  The panel consisted of Ame Dyckman, Joanne Levy, Katherine Longshore, Elisa Ludwig, Lynda Mullaly Hunt, and Sarvenaz Tash.  During the course of the evening it was suggested that we perform a Giant Dance party.  Joanne was kind enough to edit the footage and the results . . . well, here you go.  I’m the one in the middle, for the record.

Goof-tastic!

In other news, NYPL recently turned my Children’s Literary Salon that featured Leonard Marcus talking about the current NYPL exhibit The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter as interviewed by Jenny Brown into a Google+ Hangout.  Here is the gist of it.  You’ll probably want to start watching after the 5 minute mark.  Unless you like watching empty chairs.  In which case, go crazy.

It’s worth it for the info on the ivory umbrella handle info alone.

And since I’m on a roll with the NYPL events, any interest in hearing Leonard Marcus interview Judy Blume and Eric Carle at the same time?  Hit the 9:50 mark on this l’il ole video and it’s all yours.

Okay.  Now it’s time to acknowledge that Halloween is nigh.  Scaredy Squirrel created a PSA / book trailer.  Pretty good, though I’m amused that Scaredy is still drilling home the fear of apples.  In the history of man I’m pretty darn sure no one ever actually put a razorblade in a fruit.  That was a myth.  Ah well.  Scaredy wouldn’t care.  It’s still a potential threat.

In other book trailer news, this one’s pretty cute.  Let’s hear it for effective Flash animation paired with music that bloody gets caught in your brain.

And speaking of earworm music . . .

Everything Goes: By Sea (animated trailer) from Brian Biggs on Vimeo.

And for our off-topic video of the day, technically this is a GIF and not a video but I figure if it moves and slows down my computer’s operating system, that’s close enough for me.  Et voila:

 

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• Oh, so very much has gone on this week!  Where to begin?  What to do?  Well, for starters, NYPL released a handy dandy list to accompany their current exhibit The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter.  I helped make said list, which is officially called 100 Great Children’s Books, 100 Years.  So, two things.  #1: We didn’t say “best” or “most popular”.  We just said great.  These are great books.  Hard to argue with that.  And #2: It’s just the stuff published in the last 100 years.  So before you get your knickers in a twist, there is a reason The Secret Garden, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are nowhere in sight.  NYPL even lets you buy the books in little packages by age level or the whole kerschmozzle at one time.  Groovy.

• In conjunction with the exhibit and the list, the library brought over Judy Blume and Eric Carle.  So, naturally, when a photograph was to be taken I wedged myself between the two of them.  I intend to blow it up, crop it, and then in fifty years claim to my grandchildren that we were all bestest buddies and this was taken mere moments before we stepped out for some pie.

• And now, on the depressing side of things, Gary Soto explains why I haven’t seen a new children’s title come out of him since I got my library degree.  I just completely missed that entire Marisol debacle.  In 2005 I was a newly minted librarian.  Seems a bit unfair that I just missed the output of Soto.  So come on, man!  That was basically a decade ago.  Time to do with the typey type.

• In happier news, Vermont college offers a scholarship to minority children’s & YA authors.  This fact is accompanied by a killer photo of Angela Johnson.  Worth it right there.

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Recently, I’ve taken to browsing through the book sections of my favorite thrift and consignment stores. Quite often, I find copies of bestsellers in both paperback and hardcover that I wouldn’t mind purchasing for my home library, but those aren’t exactly what I’m looking for. In the past year, I’ve revisited a love of writing and reading children’s literature, and part of that rediscovery includes searching for copies of the books I read and loved as a teenager.

My journey started when my daughter started reading more advanced middle-grade books, and it hit me that I could probably write one of my own with a little research. I began scanning the juvenile fiction shelves at the library, where I picked up the vaguely familiar Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. After spending a tear-filled afternoon reading it, I was hooked. I whooped with joy when I found a used copy of Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret? by Judy Blume at the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. (I hid that one away for now, as my 9-year-old daughter is not quite ready for the subject matter yet!) It even had the same cover I remember from reading it as a child. I posted a photo of my find on Facebook and it sparked many comments from girlfriends, who all had a personal connection with the book. The first e-book I bought on my new Kindle a few weeks ago was Daughters of Eve, written by one of my all-time favorite authors, Lois Duncan. Daughters of Eve was one of the only books of Duncan’s I had never read, and I was surprised to find out that it had been updated to have a more modern feel, as have many books in her catalogue of titles.

When I was a teenager, I had stacks of paperback books by both Duncan and Christopher Pike, my two favorite suspense YA authors, along with a weathered complete collection of the Trixie Belden mystery series that my grandmother discovered in storage and gave to me. I carried them all with me for years, but somewhere along my many moves they were lost. It makes me sad to think that I probably donated them, not knowing how much I would want them back one day as I pursued my dream to become a published novelist.

I’m not sure why I’ve been feeling such a sense of nostalgia regarding these lost books lately. It might be because I first dreamed of becoming a writer while reading those treasured books, and after their loss, I spent many years thinking that becoming published wasn’t in the cards for me. Now that I’m finding success as a writer, the memory of all those stories continues to provide me with hope and inspiration, so I’ll keep looking for my old favorites in secondhand bookstores every chance I get.

Who were some of your favorite young adult authors?

Renee Roberson is an award-winning freelance writer and editor who blogs at Renee's Pages.

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The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has collected birthday wishes for the legendary author, Judy Blume.

The Giver author Lois Lowry, former National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature Jon Scieszka and Internet Girls series writer Lauren Myracle all contributed messages.

Scieszka and Myracle shared photos of themselves posing with Blume. Read all the messages on the NCAC blog.

continued…

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Before we begin I would like to have a few words with the publishers on behalf of catalogers nationwide.

Ahem.

Hi, guys.  How’s it going?  Heckuva weird weather we’ve had lately, right?  Yeah . . . so . . . here’s the thing.  You know how you’ve been rereleasing a couple classic children’s books recently like Slake’s Limbo and all the Ramona Quimby books?  That is just awesome of you.  Seriously, new covers were desperately needed.  But, you’re kind of doing this weird thing that’s messing everything up.  See, for some reason you’re changing the covers but you’re keeping the old ISBNs.  And we wouldn’t really mind if it was just the jackets you were changing, but in the case of the Ramona books you have new interior illustrations.  This is a HUGE disservice, not only to libraries, but to your new illustrator, Ms. Jacqueline Rogers.  If you keep the same ISBN then in records across the country previous illustrators will be listed in the system.  Not Ms. Rogers.  So, I know we’re supposedly going to go through some crazy crisis where we run out of all the ISBNs, but do a gal a favor and change the ISBNs on rereleases if you have new interior art (or, also in the case of Ramona, new pagination).  It just makes good clean sense.

Okay!  Moving on.

• If I say that Travis Jonker fellow at 100 Scope Notes is a nice guy I’m not exactly telling you anything you don’t already know.  But how nice is he?  Well, in his awesome 10 to Note: Spring Preview 2013 do you know what book he led with?  MINE!! I’m thrilled and flabbergasted all at once.  Ye gods!  I hit the big time, folks!  Now I just need to get my hands on that cool looking Lauren Myracle early chapter book and that new Charise Mericle Harper graphic novel.  Woot!

• You know you’re cool when the National Coalition Against Censorship collects cool birthday wishes for you.  You’re even cooler if those birthday wishes come from folks like Jon Scieszka, Lois Lowry, and the aforementioned Lauren Myracle.  And if you happen to be Judy Blume?  Icing on the cake, baby.

• On the one hand, it’s awfully interesting to hear folks speculating on what really made Mary Ingalls blind.  On the other hand  . . . . NBC News linked to me, linked to me, linked to me me me!

• In case you happened to missed it, I hosted a helluva Literary Salon the other day.  Yup.  Jeanne Birdsall, Adam Gidwitz, N.D. Wilson, and Rebecca Stead all gave up their precious time to stop by old NYPL for a Children’s Literary Salon where they debated why pop culture at large tries to label middle grade fiction as YA.  The whole conversation was, for the very first time, recorded for posterity.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that the audio feed is lousy.  Not sure what I did but it’s a bit mucked up.  Clear enough that you could make a transcript from it (casts meaningful looks into the nethersphere) but not so clear that you could actually enjoy listening to it.  A little later in the podcast some folks stop speaking into mics.  That actually helps.  Rear in Gear reports on how it went from  the frontlines.  By the way, the title “Why YA” is a good one.  I might shorten it to Y.YA, then proclaim that to be the newest bestest trend without explanation.  Cause that’s how I roll.

• Speaking of my Children’s Literary Salons, I’ve one in early March on the topic of Diversity and the State of the Children’s Book that will prove to be most fascinating (and better recorded, I hope).  Much along the same lines is a truly fascinating post over at Ms. Yingling Reads.  The post concerns those book jackets that do not reflect the ethnicity of the characters within, but brings up a very interesting p.o.v. from that of the smaller publisher reliant on stock images.  This post is your required reading of the day.  Many many thanks to Carl in Charlotte for the heads up.

• The post on 10 Fictional Libraries I’d Love to Visit is a lot of fun, but I would add the library featured in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman books most certainly.  That would be the library that contains every book conceived of but never published by the world’s greatest writers.  The in-jokes alone are worth it.  Who doesn’t love Psmith and Jeeves?

Thanks to AL Direct for the link.

• Nerd that I am, I cannot help but be thrilled that the Bologna Book Fair has just established a new prize for the Best Children’s Publisher of the Year.  What a fantastic idea, and why has no one else come up with it before?  Now THAT is something I can get behind.  Boy, yeah.

• Flavorwire’s Conspiracy Theories About Classic Literary Characters doesn’t tell you a lot you haven’t already heard about your classic books (Nick Carraway = gay, Holden Caulfield = gay, yadda yadda yadda) but there are some fun exceptions on the children’s literature side.  I think I’ve heard the Winnie-the-Pooh theory before, and I certainly heard the Harry Potter one (Rowling herself even addressed it) but the Wizard of Oz one is actually entirely a new one on me.  Huh! Thanks to Annie Cardi for the link.

• I like it when authors reveal the covers of their upcoming books.  I especially like it when those authors are folks I’ve heard of before and have enjoyed thoroughly.  I met Matthew Kirby (The Clockwork Three, Icefall) at a SCBWI event recently and now I find out that he has revealed his latest title The Lost Kingdom.  Yep.  I’ll be reading that one.

• The other day I spoke on a panel for some young publishers about the library’s role in the pursuit of Common Core.  I was on that panel with Scottie Bowditch of Penguin and John Mason of Scholastic.  After the fact I learned that Scholastic has been working to get their hands on all this Common Core schtuf by creating the site Common Sense for the Common Core.  It was created to help parents through this tricky time, but no doubt we librarians would benefit a tad as well.  FYI!

• You may have heard that tornadoes recently ripped through Mississippi on Sunday causing untold devastation in their wake.  They hit in a number of places, including Hattiesburg, Mississippi.  Why do I mention this?  Well, are you aware what resides in Hattiesburg?  That would be the University of Southern Mississippi.  And what is the University of Southern Mississippi home to?  If you answered that it was the de Grummond Collection “one of North America’s leading research centers in the field of children’s literature” you would also be correct.  So did the collection survive the storms?  We are happy to report that they did.  And on the de Grummond’s Twitter feed they assured everyone that they were safe and sound.  Whew!

• Look me in the eye.  Right here!  Right in my beady little eye and tell me that this is not the smartest use of The Pigeon you’ve seen in a long long time.  The crazy thing?  I thought they melded together a bunch of different Pigeon books.  Not true!  Instead, all these panels come from The Pigeon Wants a Puppy.

• Remember when NPR started that program they called NPR’s Backseat Book Club?  They said they would pick a new book for kids every month and discuss them.  Well, the whole “every month” part of that plan has been spotty and the selections have been even spottier.  Seems to me NPR isn’t taking full advantage of the field.  I mean, Black Beauty and Wimpy Kid?  Is that the best you can do?  Fortunately it looks like they’ll crank things up a notch when they discuss Gary Schmidt’s Okay for Now.  In fact, kids are encouraged to submit some questions to the author ahead of time.  Got yourself some kids?  Then go to it!

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