children's & YA recommendations on the go
Two indie presses, both based in Brooklyn, are moving into children’s publishing. powerHouse Books, which is best known for photography and popular culture nonfiction, debuts its pow! imprint this fall. Akashic Books, publishers of gritty noir fiction and political nonfiction, had a surprise hit in 2011 with its children’s book for adults, Go the F**k to Sleep, and will launch Black Sheep in February 2014.
I commend to you:
A National Poetry Centre for Primary Schools
CLPE is the home of Poetryline and the National Centre for Poetry in Primary Schools.
via About national poetry centre | Poetryline.
The result of the annual CLPE Poetry Award was announced this evening, alongside the official launch of the National Poetry Centre for Primary Schools and the Poetryline website.
The ACHUKA blog will alert you to significant updates on Poetryline.
David Fickling is to leave Random House, where he is publisher at the David Fickling Books children’s imprint, to set up as an independent publisher.
Fickling’s new company will take the name David Fickling Books, with Simon Mason joining as the company’s managing director. The venture will continue to be based in its existing Oxford office and plans to publish 25-30 books a year.
Meanwhile titles scheduled to be published at Random House’s DFB imprint after Fickling’s departure will continue to be published as DFB books by the RHCP fiction team headed by Annie Eaton and the picture book team led by Fiona Macmillan.
RHCP’s existing DFB backlist—which includes the young adult edition of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas—will gradually move to one of the other imprints in the Random House children’s division…
“I like publishing to be personal, and I want to keep at the level of making books. I’m 60, it’s about legacy—the storyhouse going on, the editorial team continuing to go on publishing the best books they can find. It’s also about sharing with authors, and partnerships. And it’s about autonomy—publishers have to recognise great work when they see it; and when they see it, act and get it out there.”
Fickling said he was looking forward to joining the community of small independent publishers. “I admire Andrew Franklin at Profile, Jamie Byng at Canongate, these amazing publishers and many others. These are the great powerhouses. I want to work with them too, and be a publisher in that group.”
Major New Zealand book award being renamed in honour of Margaret Mahy:
One of New Zealand’s best loved authors has had the country’s top award for children’s books renamed in her memory.
The New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards has announced that the top prize in the competition will be now be known as the New Zealand Post Margaret Mahy Book of the Year award.
Mahy was a previous finalist and winner of the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards and is a finalist in this year’s picture book category for her book Mister Whistler.
via Book award renamed in honour of Margaret Mahy – Entertainment News | TVNZ.
How ridiculous is this?
Britain’s tough libel laws have prevented the UK publication of Amanda Knox’s account of the murder of Meredith Kercher, according to the book’s publisher.
Publication of the 25-year-old’s memoir, Waiting to be Heard, is due to go ahead as scheduled in the US, Canada and Australia on Tuesday.
HarperCollins UK, the book publisher owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, has been due to publish the tell-all book early next month but has pulled out over fears of legal action.
“Due to our legal system, and relying upon advice from our counsel, HarperCollins UK will not publish a British edition of Waiting to Be Heard, by Amanda Knox, at this time,” said a spokesman for HarperCollins UK.
However, UK readers will be able to buy the book online.
via Amanda Knox book not published in UK ‘due to libel laws’ | Media | guardian.co.uk.
Richard Holmes chooses French portrait photographer Félix Nadar as his ‘Hero’ in The Guardian’s weekly Review feature:
Nadar was the man who introduced me to Paris, and to romanticism. He was the first great French portrait photographer of the 19th century, and a master of visual biography. His Panthéon Nadar of 1854 was originally a collection of nearly 300 literary and artistic caricatures, drawn in an arch, psychologically penetrating style later inherited by the American cartoonist David Levine. By 1870, it had become a fantastic photographic archive, in which every writer, painter, musician, dancer, singer and actor of note in the second empire – from Victor Hugo to Édouard Manet, Hector Berlioz to Sarah Bernhardt – was not merely recorded, but shrewdly observed. His sequence of photographs of his friend Charles Baudelaire, for example, is in effect a life study of the poet…
Despite his rackety life, he lived to be 89. He was in some ways his own best creation, and “Nadar” was both an artistic signature and a shrewd commercial logo. His real name was Gaspard-Félix Tournachon: a tall, exuberant man with a vibrant circle of friends and a beloved wife. Jules Verne called him “an Icarus with replaceable wings”. So this brooding self-portrait, taken in 1854, is a typical Nadar paradox. Never trust a biographer on the subject of himself. I shall always be grateful to him.
via My hero: Félix Nadar by Richard Holmes | Books | The Guardian.
2013 English 4-11 Picture Book Awards – Winners announced
Established in 1995, these awards are presented annually by the English Association to the best picture books of the previous year, in four categories: Fiction 4-7 and 7-11 yrs, and Non-Fiction 4-7 and 7-11 yrs. The winning books are chosen by the editorial board of English 4-11 from a shortlist of 12-18 books selected by a panel of teachers, with input from children. The prizes are awarded at the English Association’s Annual General Meeting each May, and the winning and shortlisted books are featured in a full-colour poster in the summer issue of the journal. This poster is also circulated to libraries, children’s bookshops and other interested parties. English 4-11 is the only journal dedicated to English in the primary classroom. It is a joint publication of the English Association www.le.ac.uk/engassoc and the United Kingdom Literacy Association www.ukla.org
The Awards will be presented to the winning authors, illustrators and publishers at the English Association’s AGM on Wednesday 15 May at the British Academy in London.
This year’s Winners are:
4-7 yrs Fiction
Hippospotamus by Jeanne Willis, illus. by Tony Ross, Andersen Press
7-11 yrs Fiction
Where My Wellies Take Me by Clare and Michael Morpurgo, illus. by Olivia Lomenech Gill, Templar Publishing
4-7 yrs Non-Fiction
A First Book of Nature by Nicola Davies, illus. by Mark Hearld Walker Books
7-11 yrs Non-Fiction
How We Make Stuff by Christiane Dorion, illus. by Beverley Young Templar Publishing
Shortlisted:
David Walliams’s best-selling childrens book Gangsta Granny is to be brought to life as a Christmas family drama for the BBC. The tale follows last year’s seasonal special when another of his novels, Mr Stink, was adapted starring Hugh Bonneville as a kindly tramp. Walliams will work on the script along with Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley who have previously worked on Gnomeo and Juliet and Robbie The Reindeer. The hour-long BBC1 film, which has yet to be cast, revolves around schoolboy Ben who is bored at his grandmother’s house until he learns she was formerly an international jewel thief and has been plotting to steal the crown jewels.The story was first published in 2011…
via Walliams book adapted for TV show – BelfastTelegraph.co.uk.
Sara Sheridan writing in Huffington Post:
how much does a writer have to sell to make it?
Average earnings in the UK were around £26,500 in 2012. To make this amount on a book contract for a paperback edition selling at £7.99 that pays 10% a writer would need to sell 33,166 copies a year. And that’s if the book isn’t discounted as part of a 3 for 2 promotion, for example. That is a lot of books! To put it in perspective to get to number one in the UK paperback chart last month you’d have needed to sell almost 20,000 copies a week. This means that going to number 1 doesn’t even earn you the national average wage (and that book may have taken the writer months or even years to produce). The odds of making a mint are very long – writing is a risky profession.
The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books drew thousands of attendees this past weekend, and as usual there was plenty of authors, panels, and activities for book-loving children and teens.
There really ARE lods of photos here. Keep on scrolling!
via A Photo-Tour of Kids' Books at the 2013 L.A. Times Festival of Books.
