John Rocco's Blackout is told from the point of view of a youngest child from busy older family members. When the lights go out, suddenly everyone's available!
It's impossible these days to read any posts having to do with publishing without the obligatory "the book is dead" comments. And yet with another click you'll find articles about how reading is up 20% from a decade ago among middle schoolers and teenagers, how more time is spent now reading for pleasure than in [...]
Tina Paul, Freelance Illustrator I was born in Perak, Malaysia in 1984. My love for art came at a very early age. As a child I was always drawingCharlotte's Web is about a sweet pig named Wilbur who avoids slaughter twice. The first time his savior is a girl named Fern. Later he's saved by Charlotte, a spider, and Templeton the Rat.Totally Bored Boris is a young boy bear with no particular interest at the moment. This book by Hans Wilhelm not only explains boredom but also shows how to beat it!A very polite bear can't find his hat, and he wants it back. In Jon Klassen's I Want My Hat Back, it seems like someone (wearing a hat!) has something to hide.Children's book reviewer Dimitrios Sokolakis is a Greek businessman with three daughters and, thus, an interest in children's books!In Me...Jane, Patrick McDonnell weaves images and words to make Jane Goodall's future in Gombe with the chimps seem practically pre-ordained. This touching bookIn Lane Smith's Grandpa Green, a boy introduces us to his great-grandfather by way of the grandfather's topiary garden and what the sculptures mean to him.Cindy Neuschwander's Mummy Math: A Geometry Adventure features two kids who get locked in a pyramid trying to help their scientist parents find an ancient pharaoh. Using GeometryMinli is a young girl intent on improving her family's fortune in Grace Lin's Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. Review. Searching for the Old Man of the MoonWhen Brittany Geragotelis was writing her YA novel Life's a Witch, she posted it chapter by chapter on Wattpad, an online community for sharing writing and getting feedback from readers. Gradually, she gained 13 million fans. But despite that and an active blog, YouTube presence, and proving her chops as editor of American Cheerleader magazine, [...]Chris Raschka's A Ball for Daisy is a wordless picture book telling the story of a dog whose prize red ball bursts. Kids will relate to both the joy and the sense of lossYou know it's essential these days that authors market their books, and social media is often the most cost-effective way of doing that. Now, Pay with a Tweet lets you utilize the value of your readers' social networks to spread the word about your new books. You create a button for your website or blog [...] KD Novelties We offer a large selection of personalized books, personalized music and personalized photo DVDs where your child is the star of all ofThe new Caldecott Medal and Honor books were announced today. We haven't reviewed them YET, but we have the list! Order them from your library before everyone else does!Back in the early 1990s I worked part-time at a book package called Parachute Press, which was creating a new horror series called Goosebumps. The series' author, R.L. Stine, had begun his career as a humor writer, then found a wider audience with his YA horror series Fear Street. But no one had ever done [...] Alan's Visions My style is fairytale/fantasy, old school style. I work in both colour - watercolour and acrylic - and pen and ink, as well as pastelHiding in the library from bullies, Nita Callahan happens on the self-help book, So You Want to Be a Wizard. Taking the Wizard's Oath, she soon finds herself on a list of local wizards.A family of bullies in search of booty descends on the town church in Barbara Robinson's The Best Christmas Pageant Ever Those of you who are Fightin' Bookworms (members of our CBI Clubhouse online community) know that in the two years since we've launched the site, we've amassed a huge amount of information on writing and publishing children's books. So much information, in fact, that it was getting unwieldy. So Jon's spent the last two months [...]This story by Tony and Brooklynn Langston is entitled The Dogs Don't Bite in Heaven. A father's story about what it's like in heavenEdward Gorey gives his visual spin on Hilaire Belloc's century-old Cautionary Tales for Children. Naughty kidsSeth Godin, easily the smartest man in publishing today, has once again nailed it with his post Reading Isn't Dead, But It's Changing on his Domino Project blog. His point (and he's talking primarily of young adult books, but this really applies to all ages) is that the job of authors is to write what [...]