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Hot New Releases & Popular Kids Stories It's important to keep up on the hot new releases and popular kids' books as we enter the gift giving season!

Morning, folks.  Let’s see, let’s see.  After yesterday maybe it would be a good idea to do a post on rainbows and unicorns and cute little puppy dogs cavorting in the sun.  I’m a little exhausted after yesterday’s post so let’s just do a quickie Fusenews of wonderfullness instead.

• First up, The Toast knocks it out of the park.  If you read nothing else today (pay no attention that blog post behind the curtain) read A Harry Potter Where Hermione Doesn’t Do Anyone’s Homework for Them.

• Do you read Real Simple?  A familiar name might have snuck her way onto one of the pages.

• Calling Caldecott addresses an issue that has always fascinated me. Why do some illustrators who have amazing illustrating chops never ever get Caldecotts?

• Maybe 100 Scope Notes has the answer. In terms of publication dates, what month births the most Caldecotts? Travis Jonker finds the figures.  Be sure to read the statistics in the comments.  Truly we are living in the Age of Aquarius.

• Maybe it’s just clickbait, but as titles go The Guardian’s article
  Children’s author Cressida Cowell scoops philosophers’ award for fight against stupidity sort of takes the cake in terms of interesting concepts all jumbled together into one place.

In case you missed it, 215 candidates from 59 countries are currently nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award 2016.  The Yanks are of particular interest.  There are the usual standbys and then there are folks like oral storyteller Anne Pellowski.  Wow!  Well done there.  I’m also going to check out Children’s Literature New England (CLNE) & The Examined Life (EXL), Friends of African Village Libraries (FAVL), and Room to Read. I’m feeling a bit embarrassed that it took this nomination to learn about their work.

• By the way, a show of hands.  How many of you knew about The Arnold Adoff Poetry Awards, which “seek to recognize excellence in multicultural poetry for youth, for readers at the primary level, middle level, and teens”?  Be honest.  It’s new to me too.  But it’s out there and they could do with some proactive publishing houses, large and small, sending in their nominees.  If you fit the bill, tell your publisher today.  You have until December 1st.

• An interesting Pew Survey finding that teens are reading more than adults these days.  They do not ascribe any particular reason for the YA surge.  We know it cannot exist in a void, however, so I’m just going to congratulate the YA librarians out there.  You guys are doing a stellar job.  Keep up the good work.

• “Please Don’t Agree with Me: the Need for Disagreement in Debates About Literature for Young People.”  That talk?  Given by Christopher Myers recently and recapped by Phil Nel.  I’m particularly interested in the part where Chris says that agreement can efface difference, whereas “Disagreement recognizes an actual difference.”  I think we can safely say that no differences were effaced in the last two weeks at this site.

• Daily Image:

And Shannon Hale goes for the fancy fingernail book release win!

How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll are among books that have been given a new life in London this summer. The National Literacy Trust in Britain has developed a public art project that commemorates 50 books in an new and innovative way: as public benches.

The project is called Books about Town. Artists have been asked to adapt famous books into benches which have been placed throughout the city. The “BookBenches” project is designed to encourage reading. Readers can find four different literary maps of these sculptures online and use them to guide their literary treasure hunts. The routes include: Greenwich Trail, Bloomsbury Trail, City Trail and Riverside Trail.

The exhibition is up through September 15th.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Summer holidays are nearly upon us here in the UK and so I’ve compiled a set of places to visit with the family all of which have a children’s literature link.

Last week I treated myself to an morning exploring the Island of Berk and reacquainting myself with just how one goes about training a dragon by visiting Wolverhampton Art Gallery’s A Viking’s Guide to Deadly Dragons with Cressida Cowell

The exhibition originated at the marvellous Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children’s Books and is now slowly touring the UK (in 2015 it will be in the National Museums, Northern Ireland and The Dick Institute, Kilmarnock, whilst in 2016 it will visit Norwich Castle Museum and Tullie House, Carlisle).

Based around Cressida Cowell’s How to Train your Dragon series, the exhibition is packed with original illustrations, both draft drawings and finished artwork, notebooks and video interviews, audio clips and [you have been warned!] …dragons.

There’s a viking long boat you can climb in and sail away on, there’s a camp fire for telling stories around, there’s dressing up and there are books you can just sit and enjoy reading.

The dragons are very keen to be played with, though some are scarier than others!

I think kids will love seeing some of Cressida’s school work – a descriptive piece she wrote with comments from her teacher on how to improve it!

I love showing kids how even very successful authors “uplevel” (to use my girls’ schools’ favourite bit of literacy jargon) their work; it’s completely normal to revise, edit and improve. That’s why this little note caught my eye:

I was delighted to see that some dragons love reading!

Something about these little girl vikings really caught my eye:

The exhibition has a great mix of open space – allowing kids to rush around playing with the dragons and climbing aboard the long boat – and fascinating artwork and notes from the author that are worth spending time really looking at closely. If you don’t know the books, you’ll get a great flavour of them and the kids will still be able to enjoy the exhibition because there are plenty of things to do, including lots of buttons to press. If you DO know the books, it is really exciting to see the art work and something of the development of Cowell’s ideas. It’s also pretty fun to cuddle the dragons!

Snuck in between information on Dragonese and the Hooligan Initiation Programme there’s also some factual background to the vikings which was nice to see. There’s a special section devoted to the How to Train Your Dragon films and my plan is to take the girls to the exhibition one morning during the summer holidays and then to the film in the afternoon Would you like to join us?

The exhibition is FREE and runs till August 30th. It’s well set up for people with hearing impairment, with all the videos either signed or subtitled. The cafe in the museum is one of the best museum cafes I know and the rest of the museum is really well geared up for families, with lots of hands-on activities in every space.

Full details: http://www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk/events/vikings-dragons/

Are there any children’s book themed exhibitions on near you in your part of the world? Please do let me know – even if I can’t visit them, I’d love to know about them!

For picture book fans there's a new Charlie the Ranch Dog book from Ree Drummond, and Tad Hills has the bestselling duo Duck & Goose featuring in a book perfect for some pre-summer reading. Middle Graders have more from The 39 Clues and How to Train Your Dragon series, while teens can indulge in Kami Garcia's Dangerous Creatures.

By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: July 1, 2012

Here’s the scoop on the most popular destinations on The Children’s Book Review site, the most coveted new releases and bestsellers.

Best Young Adult Books with Galley Smith

Summer Reading List: Summer Sports, Baseball, & the Outside World

3 Kids Picture Books that Teach Good Manners

How Picture Books Play a Role in a Child’s Development

Where to Find Free eBooks for Children Online

THE NEW RELEASES

The most coveted books that release this month:

Shadow of Night

by Deborah Harkness

(Ages 18 and up)

Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian

by Eoin Colfer

(Ages 9-12)

Big Nate Fun Blaster

by Lincoln Peirce

(Ages 8-12)

How to Train Your Dragon: Book 9

by Cressida Cowell

(Ages 8-12)

THE BEST SELLERS

The best selling children’s books this month:

PICTURE BOOKS

Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons

by Eric Litwin

(Ages 4-7)

This coming Saturday and Sunday sees a wonderful children’s literature festival “pop up” just behind Kings Cross in London. The Pop Up Festival is completely free and is all about celebrating books, stories and imagination for children, teenagers and families.

Authors and illustrators attending include Candy Gourlay, Nii Parkes, James Mayhew, Marcus Sedgwick, Laura Dockrill, Sarah McIntryre, Francesca Simon, Sita Brahmachari, Clara Vulliamy, Lynne Reid Banks, Nicky Singer, Sarwat Chadda, Rod Campbell, Alexander Gordon Smith, Caroline Bird as well as the Society for Storytelling and Barbar and the Moomins!

Having seen Candy Gourlay speak at the Federation of Children’s Book Groups annual conference, I personally would make a bee line for her contribution to the Pop Up Festival – an exuberant Filipino-style fiesta, complete with bamboo dancers, game shows and team quizzes, picture book performances and prizes, and a children’s brass band! It’s sure to be very exciting.

To see the full programme visit the festival’s website http://pop-up.org.uk/. Let me know if you go – I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time.

If you’re near Manchester this coming weekend I’d like to point you to the illustration workshop being run on Saturday by Emma Reynolds as part of Manchester Children’s Book Festival. The same day as Emma you can see an old favourite of mine, Steve Cole (I love him as much now as I did then)

To find out more about Emma’s illustration workshop click here.
To find out more about entire programme for the Manchester Children’s Book Festival to to their website http://www.mcbf.org.uk/

A week today the sun comes out on Moon Lane. Even if it ends up actually pouring with rain (the UK has indeed had a very wet past few weeks), I can guarantee (metaphorical) sunshine at the multi-award winning independent children’s book shop in South London, Tales on Moon L

We begin this week with something extraordinary.  A book trailer that looks like a movie trailer (no real surprises there) but that includes so many specific details to its book that you’re half inclined to think that the movie version already exists.  Super 8’s actor Joel Courtney stars in trailer for The Dragon’s Tooth by ND Wilson.  What’s funny about it is that its locations are eerily perfect, the scenes amazing, and yet it has one aspect that makes me sad.  You see, the hero of this book and his sister are dark skinned.  Yet here you can see that they’re pretty darn white.  To be fair this is entirely due to the fact that Mr. Courtney is friends with Mr. Wilson’s kids and that’s how he got the part.  Still . . . sigh.  Ditto the fact that an elderly woman from the book now appears to be 45.  Perhaps elderly actresses are difficult to find sometimes?  But aside from all that this is a remarkable piece of work.  Maybe the best movie-like book trailer I’ve ever seen.  Little wonder since it was directed by the author himself!  If that whole writing books thing doesn’t work out, I can see a second career ready and waiting. Thanks to Heather Wilson for the link.

Along similar lines is this trailer for Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone.  When you’ve been following an author since day one, there’s an instinct to claim them.  I loved Ms. Taylor when she wrote her Faeries of Dreamdark books back in the day.  Now she’s hugely popular and I feel very possessive of her.  With a whopping 50,000+ views (holy moses!) this next video is not as sophisticated as Wilson’s, but it has its own ineffable charm, no?

A very different kind of book trailer involves the recent winner of The Society of Illustrator’s Original Art gold medal.  I daresay that this is the first time in my own recollection that a nonfiction title has won the award (and from National Geographic at that!).  And I can think of no better way to see the art than this little video right here:

Gorgeous. Thanks to Jules Danielson for the link!

If I hadn’t begun with all those book trailers I probably would have begun with this glimpse of the staged production of How to Train Your Dragon in Australia.  Because when it comes to stage puppetry, you ain’t never NEVER seen nuthin’ like this: