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Author: CBCbooks

  • Disney May Shoot a Third Princess Diaries Film Adaptation

    To date, Cabot wrote ten installments for the Princess Diaries young adult series. Recently, HarperCollins released a new Princess Diaries novel, entitled The Princess Diaries, Volume XI: Royal Wedding, which …

  • Preeti Chhibber: How I Got into Publishing

    Senior Editorial Manager for the Teens & BookBeat Scholastic Reading Clubs

    I didn’t realize publishing was an actual career until I was a few years into college. Growing up, my mom had been clear that I was the one who would be a doctor (with my brother the lawyer and my sister the accountant*). It should be noted that I’m not good at math or science.

    Unfortunately for my mother, when I was fourteen, she gave me a copy of The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone. It’s a heavily romanticized version of Michelangelo’s life. Beyond that, it’s about loving your work, and being passionate about what you do. He sacrificed everything to able to create and carve. Agony became a book that I read once a year. (I think we can agree that what comes next is pretty much my mom’s fault.)

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    Two things happened after my freshman year of college. I’d floundered through one year of pre-med and hadn’t done well (remember? Not good at math or science). Not long after grades were released, I had a conversation with my older brother. He had just met someone who worked at Tor and immediately thought of his nerdy sister who read all the time. He suggested I talk with her. I thought of Agony. I thought about books. I knew that in my life, reading was the thing that excited me most. This was the lead-in to the Big Change: I became an English major.

    It’s not carving marble, but telling your Indian parents that you’re not going to be the doctor they spent 19 years expecting to have? Terrifying.

    They took solace in the fact that maybe I could still be a lawyer. Ha! It’s a difficult thing, breaking up with your parent’s idea of the future for something new and different.

    I did end up talking with my brother’s friend, and after a reading report on the longest sci-fi book of all time and a few interviews, I ended up getting an internship at Tor. I spent the summer before my senior year sitting next to Teresa Nielsen Hayden, sharing one desk with a fellow intern, and reading unsolicited manuscripts. Oh, also, I met ROBERT JORDAN and decided I was going to get into publishing if it killed me. I loved being around books, I loved reading the manuscripts, I loved talking about what I was reading.

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    Despite having an internship under my belt, it was not an easy move to jump from undergrad in Florida straight into a paying publishing gig in New York. I applied and got into NYU’s Masters in Publishing program, with every intention of using it to get that editor job that had been my dream. I started out as a sales assistant at McGraw-Hill, in their trade publications division. One year later, I accepted a position at Scholastic Reading Club (née Scholastic Book Clubs) as an editorial assistant for their SeeSaw book club.

    Working in children’s books changed everything. It was a world where we had conversations about snot and teddy bears and princesses… at work. After a few years of working on picture books and early readers we sold in the catalog, I moved over to marketing chapter books and middle-grade in the school market. While in this position, I pushed for more social and digital marketing for all levels, and started to see that I really enjoyed talking about and recommending books. Who knew that there was a job talking about books and how much you love them??

    In my experience, people who work in publishing are inherently passionate about what they do. They are here because they love it. Every position I’ve held has been about having the opportunity to go to work and be excited about what I do. It took me a few years and as many position-moves to realize that my true love in children’s books was YA. After moving to Book Clubs marketing, I got a job in trade and school & library marketing at HarperCollins Children’s Books, and just recently made my way back to Scholastic, seven years after I first started, to be the Teens and Adult book buyer for the Reading Club.

    It’s kind of a dream job. And while every day isn’t perfect, and there are always things you have to do that you might not want to do (ahem, P&Ls), I get paid to read… as part of my job. And then I get to tell people to buy and read the books that I love. That is straight-up magical.

    *My poor (and now very proud) mom ended up with an actor, a kid in publishing, and a graphic designer.

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    Preeti Chhibber is currently the Senior Editorial Manager for the Teens & BookBeat Scholastic Reading Clubs in New York, NY. She earned her B.A. in English at the University of Florida and her M.S. in Publishing at New York University. Hailing from West Palm Beach, Fl, she is a contributing writer for Book Riot and Panels.Net as well as a co-host on the Bookrageous and Oh, Comics! podcasts.

  • Inside the Author's Studio with Kate DiCamillo

    The author read from her latest book, Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures and shared the real-life inspiration behind the novel, including her late mother’s vacuum cleaner, and an ailing …

  • John Green Vows Never to Use The 'R-Word' in a Book Again

    In reply, Green confessed that he does regret its inclusion in his book. He also publicly declared not to use the word again in any future projects. “Yeah, I regret …

  • Scholastic Acquires Middle Grade Novel by Emma Donoghue, Author of the International Bestseller 'Room'

    NEW YORK, NY—(June 16, 2015)—Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education and media company, has acquired the first middle grade novel by Room international bestselling author Emma Donoghue. The Lotterys Plus …

  • WNDB Internship Project Recipients Announced

    The diversity nonprofit’s internship committee chose five interns of diverse backgrounds to receive a $2,500 stipend from WNDB for living expenses while interning at a New York City publishing house …

  • 44 Governors' Spouses & 4 Governors Sign On As "Reading Ambassadors" For 2015 Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge

    NEW YORK, NY – Forty-four U.S. Governors’ Spouses, along with the Governors of Colorado, Vermont and the U.S. territories Northern Mariana Islands and U.S. Virgin Islands have signed on as “Reading Ambassadors” for …

  • Ally Condie, Acclaimed, International Bestselling Author of The Matched Series, to Publish Debut Middle Grade Novel with Penguin Young Readers

    New York, NY – June 15, 2015 – Ally Condie, author of the critically-acclaimed, international bestselling Matched trilogy, will publish her debut middle grade novel SUMMERLOST, with Dutton Children’s Books, an imprint of Penguin Young …

  • Bibliotherapy

    According to neurological studies, the same regions of the brain are activated both by reading about an experience and directly undergoing it. In part because of these neural connections, regular …

  • 2015 National Book Festival Poster Unveiled

    The National Book Festival will be held on Saturday, September 5, from 10 am to 10 pm in Washington, D.C. De Sève is one of more than 150 writers and …

  • Jesse Andrews On Writing the Script For Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

    My first draft wasn’t really a screenplay. It was this Frankenstein-y thing, half movie, half novel. It was the right length, but it didn’t have the right pacing and rhythm, …

  • Go Global: We Are the World

    Contributed to CBC Diversity by Veronica Grijalva

    During my first year attending the Frankfurt International Book Fair a question was asked of me by many editors at foreign publishing houses. The question was this, “Why don’t English language publishers translate more books?” Years of working in International Rights later, I still receive this question frequently and I still have no good answer. The main reason is that English has become the dominant language in the industry, but that attitude is seeing a shift in recent years. It is our responsibility to represent not just the diversity of our country, but also international diversity. In our increasingly globally connected world it is vital that we understand diversity on all levels, at home and outside of our borders.

    I’m a child of Mexican descent, and have grown up half in and half out of that world. Finding books that were representative not only of my experience, but also of my family’s heritage, was extremely difficult. As an adult I’ve visited over a dozen countries and can read in two languages other than English. In the same way that visiting a friend’s house for the first time is an important moment in the development of empathy, visiting other countries gave me a richer understanding of the world and my own place in it. Children’s books in translation could provide that experience earlier in life.

    Children who have read the stories of many countries would have a stronger foundation for understanding international diversity. They’d be better able to respect differences and react with sympathy. Many would be able to experience the stories from the countries of their family origins. Young readers today have an unprecedented access to children and media from other countries. I moderate a forum for teens with registered users from over 30 countries, and it’s not unusual to have to step in and explain cultural differences during inevitable arguments. Imagine if those children had a frame of reference for those interactions, if they had lived in that culture in the pages of a book.

    Educators might worry that young readers would be hesitant to read stories that aren’t set in their home country but, if a child can enjoy stories set in fantasy worlds, their unfettered imaginations can imagine and enjoy fantastic experiences set half a world away. Books in translation could also offer unique teaching opportunities, as supplements to social studies, geography, and history lessons. They could act as a foreign exchange trip without having to leave the classroom.

    Books in translation do present publishers with unique challenges, and many countries have created grants and resources to help. The Frankfurt and London book fairs have pages featuring translation grant information, the Bologna Children’s Book Fair hosts a Translator’s Café, more and more agencies are stepping up to represent foreign literature, and book fairs such as the Sharjah International Book Fair have begun sponsoring translations grants. Initiatives such as Words Without Borders and Literature Across Frontiers offer educational resources and connect international writers to the English speaking public. Services like PubMatch make finding a translator or a foreign language reader simpler than ever.

    With the whole world of children’s literature open to us it has never been easier to give children the world.

    Here are a few resources to help you Go Global:

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    Veronica Grijalva was raised by books. She works as a Rights Associate, bringing translated books to kids around the globe.

  • AAP Introduces Annual Snapshot of U.S. Book Market

    According to the survey, the trade category’s largest growth was in the children’s and young adult genres — with double-digit growth in revenue (20.9%) and units (13.5%) — surpassing the adult fiction …

  • A.S. King to Write Her Debut Middle Grade Novel

    Cheryl Klein, an executive editor at Scholastic’s Arthur A. Levine Books, managed the acquisitions process. Klein negotiated the terms of the agreement with Michael Bourret, a literary agent at Dystel …

  • Ferguson Municipal Public Library Named 2015 Library of the Year

    Earlier this year, library director Scott Bonner received the American Library Association’s Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity. The Library of the Year award will be presented during a …

  • Literacy Has a New Super Hero: Chris Riddell Unmasked as New Waterstones Children's Laureate

    Chris Riddell, creator of the bestselling Goth Girl series, double CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal winner and political cartoonist, has today (Tuesday 9 June) been appointed the ninth Waterstones Children’s Laureate …

  • The Rise in Transgender Children's Books

    Recent and forthcoming titles include I am Jazz (Dial Books/Penguin Young Readers Group), a picture book co-written by transgender teen Jazz Jennings; the middle-grade novel Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky …

  • Announcing the 2015 Anne Izard Storytellers’ Choice Awards

    Westchester, NY — The Anne Izard Storytellers’ Choice Awards Committee is pleased to announce the recipients of the 12th biennial Awards.  The awards will be presented in a ceremony on Tuesday, June 16, …

  • Ezra Jack Keats Inducted into the NYS Writers Hall of Fame at Sixth Annual Ceremony

    NEW YORK—June 5, 2015—Ezra Jack Keats (1916-1983) is among seven distinguished writers who were inducted this week into the NYS Writers Hall of Fame. The induction took place on June …

  • HarperCollins to Launch the Explore the World of Margaret Wise Brown Program

    First up is a fresh edition of The Dead Bird, featuring art by Christian Robinson, who won Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honors for Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker, …

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