children's & YA recommendations on the go
The fourth and final adventure in the action-packed Taylor & Rose series by bestselling author, Katherine Woodfine.
Top secret agents, Sophie Taylor and Lil Rose have set sail to New York City on an elegant ocean liner, ready to face their enemies and settle old scores. These two brave friends will need all of their detective skills, courage and derring-do as they race against time to rescue a beloved friend …
A really excellent profile of Dutton YA editor, Julie Strauss-Gabel.
Reading the whole piece is highly recommended…
In the cosseted world of children’s book publishing, getting an editorial letter from Ms. Strauss-Gabel, the publisher of Dutton Children’s Books, is the literary equivalent of winning a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. It virtually guarantees critical or commercial success, and often brings both.
She doesn’t hand out many of them. “I am naturally exceedingly picky,” she said. “If I’m not in love with someone’s writing at the sentence level, then I’m not going to sign up the book.”
Her knack for spotting and developing talent is apparent on this week’s New York Times young adult best-seller list, where novels that she edited hold five of the top 10 spots. She has edited 22 New York Times best sellers.
With her stable of blockbuster writers, Ms. Strauss-Gabel has become one of the most influential players driving and shaping a surge in young adult fiction, a shift that is not only transforming the publishing industry but changing American reading habits.
via Her Stinging Critiques Propel Young Adult Best Sellers – NYTimes.com.
Really slick visual representation, with a filtering panel at the side.
Recommended.
I am glad I got to glimpse the legendary booksellers from this splendid generation. They were beginning to thin out even as I arrived. The Argosy Book Store and the Strand are still operating, but most of the rest are gone, felled not by the Internet, but merely by scoundrel time. Here is a brief honor roll of bookshops now vanished: the Seven Gables Bookshop; House of Books Ltd.; Scribner’s; the Gotham Book Mart; the Carnegie Book Shop; Dauber & Pine; the Eberstadt Brothers; University Place Book Shop; House of El Dieff; and Parnassus Books.
I was only in this Elysium for two days in 1965, but I was drawn back many, many times since and still go back, though now I feel as if I am visiting a city of ghosts.
Yesterday the Huffington Post reported on our adventures: goo.gl/L9ZDUK. Then so did Oyster Magazine:http://www.oystermag.com/nyc-s-topless-book-club-nsfw. Then an Italian radio station’s website. Then Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller.
And lo and behold, we suddenly got inquiries from a whole bunch of cool women excited to discover that we exist and eager to join us at our next event. We couldn’t be more pleased. The word is spreading! And we can wait to meet our newest members.
via The Outdoor Co-ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society | Burn Bras, Not Books.
From the Huffington Post report:
It’s spring in New York City, and that means the city’s most topless literary club is back in action. Members of the The Outdoor Co-Ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society bared their breasts in Central Park on Friday, and then again Saturday while lounging on the rooftop sundeck of a certain “nude-friendly, gay-friendly, everything-friendly boutique hotel.”
The reading material included, of course, some pulp fiction titles like “Hunt Through The Cradle of Fear,” “Borderline,” as well as “Abraham Lincoln, Presidential Fu*k Machine,” and, er, “Moby Dick.”
For the uninitiated, OCETPFAS formed a few years ago. It’s the group’s mission to “make reading sexy,” as well as remind New Yorkers that toplessness is very legal in New York City.
The ABC of It – an exhibit at the New York Public Library (now through Sunday, March 23, 2014) – is an examination of why children’s books are important: what and how they teach children, and what they reveal about the societies that produced them. Through a dynamic array of objects and activities, the exhibition celebrates the extraordinary richness, artistry, and diversity of children’s literature across cultures and time.
Lizzy Ratner writes about it in The Nation:
As a walk through the The ABC of It makes clear, the exuberant, centuries-old history of children’s literature is also one of subversion, rebellion, experimentation and inclusion. It’s the story of public libraries creating reading rooms and free programs for children and, in the process, blasting open the gates of literature to young people from all backgrounds. And it’s the story of women like Pura Belpré, the New York Public Library’s first Puerto Rican librarian, who began writing her own Spanish-language picture books in the 1930s to fill the void in culturally resonant literature available to her students. It is even the story of books like The Poky Little Puppy, which was one of the first titles churned out by the mass market children’s imprint Little Golden Books in the 1940s; though the guardians of high culture clucked, the book, which cost just twenty-five cents, was one of the first to be both affordable and available to kids across the country.
Photographer Arne Svenson lives on the second floor of an apartment building in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City. For his project “The Neighbors,” he pointed his camera at a luxury apartment building across the street and secretly photographed its inhabitants through open windows.
Those photographs are now being sold for thousands of dollars at a gallery in NYC, but it turns out the subjects aren’t very happy with having their images stealthily snapped and sold.
via New Yorkers Upset Over Photographer's Secret Snaps Through Their Windows.
Recommended for the photo gallery:
After tallying 1,138,675 votes from kids all over the country, the Children’s Book Council and Every Child a Reader announced the winners of the sixth annual Children’s Choice Book Awards at a gala benefit in New York City on May 13.
