Year: 2014
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Trudy Ludwig Lets Out Her Inner Child to Celebrate Children’s Book Week
Follow our YouTube playlist for fun videos from children’s book creators celebrating children’s books and the joy of reading — now through Book Week! Join them by becoming a Children’s Book Week …
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Looking for a way to get your kids excited about reading this summer?
Kids love that they can earn points and badges for reading, rating, and reviewing books. Research shows that friends are the #1 source of new book recommendations for kids today, …
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Tracing the White World of Children’s Books Through Time
“As of July 11, we had received 1,509 trade books published in 2013. I found that 1,183 (78.3 percent) were about human beings. And just 124 of those (10.5 percent) …
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The #UnlockTheOne Hashtag Sweeps Social Media
More than 311,000 young adult readers participated. In less than 48 hours, the #UnlockTheOne hashtag was trending in the U.S., Brazil, and the Philippines. The fans were able to enjoy …
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A Book Brought ‘Say Anything’ Actress Ione Skye and Her Older Brother Together. What Has Kid Lit Done for You?
Follow our YouTube playlist for fun videos from children’s book creators celebrating children’s books and the joy of reading — now through Book Week! Join them by becoming a Children’s …
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Jack Black Stars In Goosebumps Directed By Rob Letterman Also Starring Dylan Minnette And Odeya Rush
CONYERS, Ga. — Principal photography has commenced on Goosebumps, starring Jack Black. Rob Letterman directs the film from a screenplay by Darren Lemke and Mike White and a story by Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski and Darren Lemke, based on the Goosebumps book series published …
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Quick, Kid Lit Fanatics: How Many of the Titles in Jonathan Auxier’s 1-Minute Video Have you Read?
Follow our YouTube playlist for fun videos from children’s book creators celebrating children’s books and the joy of reading — now through Book Week! Join them by becoming a Children’s …
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Toronto Public Library Patron Files Complaint Against ‘Hop On Pop’
“The Toronto Library system did not submit to the complainant’s belly aching. The book remains in circulation in part because the children in the book are, in fact, told not …
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It’s Tiara Time! Join Princess Alethea Kontis and Celebrate Children’s Book Week May 12-18!
Follow our YouTube playlist for fun videos from children’s book creators celebrating children’s books and the joy of reading — now through Book Week! Join them by becoming a Children’s …
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CBC Diversity: The Stories We Tell
Whenever I hear about some new study reaffirming that literature creates empathy I can’t help but roll my eyes.
I know way too many well-read jerks to believe that.
But maybe it isn’t so much about how well-read they are, but what they are reading? The stories we tell and the stories we hear are important. They shape us.
Institutional racism and prejudice exist in our world, and publishing is no safe haven from it. Even well-meaning people don’t realize their own internalized racism until they have been called out on it (and sometimes not even then). This post on Teen Librarian Toolbox speaks to the insidiousness of internalized racism, and that is just one example.
Diversity in Children’s Literature is a powerful topic, and if there is any doubt as to why it’s an important conversation to continue to have, just check out the hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks on Twitter.
What I love about the We Need Diverse Books campaign is that it’s mobilizing people at all levels. It’s writers and readers forming a community, and voicing their beliefs and values. It’s creating a groundswell of interest. It’s motivating people to support the wonderful books and authors that are already out there by buying those books—which, let’s be honest, is the truest path to industry change.
I don’t believe in any form of censorship, and even the books that get it wrong can teach us something…as long as we’ve got plenty of other representations that get it right. That is something we need to work on. If we continue to focus on creating and supporting children’s literature that reflects the world’s beautiful, dynamic, colorful, plural, complexity, maybe the next generations will have fewer well-read jerks.
Change will not happen overnight. I’d like to believe we’re all in this for the long haul. Mistakes will be made. Let’s agree to call them out when we see them. And to listen to each other with an open mind and an open heart.
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Thirteen U.S. Students Are Honored by Scholastic for Outstanding Academic Success
READ 180® and System 44® All-Star Award winners recognized for overcoming the odds and improving their reading skills. NEW YORK, NY – Scholastic (NASDAQ: SCHL), the global children’s publishing, education and …
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Re-Potterfy Harry Potter: A Challenge
“…I think the best thing for this challenge is for artists to re-interpret any scene from any Harry Potter book in the style of a children’s author. Perhaps you’ll have Tomi Ungerer’s …
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Did You Read Aloud to Your Stuffed Animals as a Kid? ‘Fallen’ Author Lauren Kate Did!
Follow our YouTube playlist for fun videos from children’s book creators celebrating children’s books and the joy of reading — now through Book Week! Stay tuned for wonderful videos from: …
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Simon & Schuster Announces Publication of New Series by Mike Lupica
NEW YORK, NY – Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers will publish New York Times bestselling author Mike Lupica’s new middle-grade series called HOME TEAM. Each HOME TEAM novel will tell the story …
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The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art Celebrates the Life and Art of Simms Taback
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Amherst, MA (April 28, 2014)— The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of work by acclaimed children’s book author and …
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Scholastic Launches New Subscription-Based Digital Reading Programs for Schools
New York, NY – Scholastic today announced the launch of Storia® School Edition, a subscription-based ebook solution for Pre-K through Grade 6, for group and individual classroom reading, and Core Clicks™, a web-based …
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‘The Finisher’ Author David Baldacci Travels the World Through Books. He’s a Children’s Book Week Champ!
Follow our YouTube playlist for fun videos from children’s book creators celebrating children’s books and the joy of reading — now through Book Week! Stay tuned for wonderful videos from …
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CBC Diversity — Ann Dye: How I Got into Publishing
Associate Director, Brand Marketing at Little Brown Books for Young Readers
Many times over the years I’ve been asked this question – what’s the one book in your life that turned you into a reader? Not just a casual reader, but a SERIOUS reader. An obsessive, might-miss-my-subway-stop-to-read-this-last-chapter READER. I could say Jane Eyre (because Jane is absolutely my literary personality match), Toni Morrison’s Beloved (fellow Cornell alum!), or Wuthering Heights (I’m a Bronte girl – what can I say?). But my answer is always the same. Eloise by Kay Thompson and Hilary Knight.
Growing up, Eloise was my hero, and I forced my mother to read the book to me every night from the age of six until the binding wore all the way through. Always recited to me with a sigh (because, come on, for a picture book its length is EPIC), I loved hearing my mother recite the story nightly of this eccentric little girl and her life in the Plaza, imaging all the while just how much I wanted to step inside her shoes (personality, lifestyle and all).
There’s a reason that to this day, Eloise in particular still resonates with me, along with so many other amazing children’s books. The imagination, the heart, and spirit that Knight and Thompson have funneled into this character is something so tremendously special. Eloise, and so many like her (Madeline, Babar, A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh) shaped my imagination and spirit from such a young age and set a passion that’s made me a reader for life. So it was inevitable to me that this love would naturally translate into my adult career.
For years I was convinced I would become a children’s author, but I was never interested in the creation of a story so much as a desire to work day in and day out in a world where books were celebrated. I wanted to work where they made Miss Nelson is Missing! (Miss Swamp gives me nightmares to this day); see behind the scenes how Rain Makes Applesauce was born. The books that inspired me and made me who I am the most were children’s books, and I wanted to fit into a career that gave me a place to continue that cycle for the next generation of kids.
The marketing field wasn’t a given entry point for me. I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, went to college in Ithaca, NY at Cornell, and took a chance attending the NYU Publishing Institute the summer after graduation in 2005. With little in my savings account and no real game plan in place, I hoped at NYU I would be able to make the right networking contact to get my foot into the publishing door. Like many graduates in the field, I assumed editorial would be the best entry point. I had naïve visions of sitting in a secluded office all day, reading amazing manuscripts and getting paid for it.
Reality soon set in that while the publishing community is certainly a warm and inspiring one, it’s not the easiest to get into right off the bat. The first real bite I received was a marketing assistant job at DK Publishing. While my access to the children’s books of my dreams weren’t quite realized there, what I did discover in my first job was a sincere appreciation, and love, for marketing in the publishing realm.
From that first job to my second jump, working as an Associate Marketing Manager at Disney-Hyperion, I learned why marketing is (in my opinion) one of the often overlooked gems of the publishing industry and a natural fit for me. It was clear from the start that marketing offered everything the Eloise-loving girl in me could want. At Disney I was regularly gifted with beautiful books from our very talented editors, tasked to creatively position them to the best of my ability to be discovered out in the world. I had the opportunity to devour incredible manuscripts, and then devise and compose creative copy and promotional campaigns, working hands-on at consumer trade shows and events to connect with real parents and young readers to help them discover new books and create REAL readers.
I worked at Disney-Hyperion for five amazing years, with the pleasure of working with some incredible authors and even more incredible colleagues, before I made a shift to my current position at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. I now oversee all consumer marketing efforts for LBYR’s picture book and middle grade list, where I have had the honor of working on books by Julie Andrews, Lemony Snicket, Andrea Davis Pinkney, James Patterson and many more.
Of course, as with every job, there are stressful days and long weeks, with tight budgets, challenging deadlines, and fierce competition. But I look back on that little girl who could recite by heart Eloise and Nana’s trips through the Plaza at the age of six, and I feel a special sense of privilege that I now get to play a small part in putting characters like that out in the world. The bookstore landscape may be changing day by day, but I know I’ll never lose the passion I have for this business, and the very talented people within it.
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Join Joelle Charbonneau, Author of ‘The Testing’, for a Week of Reading, Dreaming, and Imagining – Celebrate Children’s Book Week!
Follow our YouTube playlist for fun videos from children’s book creators celebrating children’s books and the joy of reading — now through Book Week! Stay tuned for wonderful videos from: …
