Congratulations to the winners of the 2006-2007 California Young Reader Medal: in the primary division, My Lucky Day by Keiko Kasza (Grosset & Dunlap, 2003); in the intermediate, Christopher Mouse: The Tale of a Small Traveler by William Wise, illustrated by Patrick Benson (Bloomsbury, 2004); in the picture books for older readers, Cats in Krasinski Square by Karen Hesse, illustrated by Wendy Watson (Scholastic, 2004); in the middle school, Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko (Putnam, 2004); in young adult Shattering Glass by Gail Giles (Roaring Brook, 2002). See the 2007-2008 nominees. Read a Cynsations interview with Gail.
Bad Tickets by Kathleen O’Dell: a Q&A interview at the YA Authors Cafe.
Book Trailer for Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger (Simon & Schuster, 2007). Read a Cynsations interview with Ellen.
Editorial Anonymous: A Blog of a Children’s Book Editor: source unknown, obviously. Note: the posts to date are entertaining and helpful at dispelling beginning writer myths and insecurities.
Interview with author Debra Garfinkle by Debbi Michiko Florence. Debbi says: “Debra’s first book, a humorous young adult novel called Storky: How I Lost My Nickname and Won the Girl, was published by Penguin in hardback in 2005 and recently released in paperback and German. In May, Penguin published her second and third young adult books: Stuck in the ’70s, a humorous time travel novel, and The Band: Trading Guys, a racy novel about a teenage rock band.” Note: Stuck in the ’70s is now available. See also a Cynsations interview with Debra about the novel.
Bruce Hale has launched a new site and now offers a monthly newsletter of writing tips. “Bruce’s book, The Malted Falcon, was a finalist for the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allan Poe award… Altogether, the Chet Gecko Mysteries series has sold over half a million books.”
Interview with Brent Hartinger from Shrinking Violet Promotions; don’t miss part two. See also The Good Karma Networking Approach.
L.A. Times Book Award and Book Festival: get the low-down from author Nancy Werlin, who was a finalist for The Rules of Survival (Dial, 2006). Read a Cynsations interview with Nancy.
Winner Robin Merrow MacCready‘s trip to the Edgar Awards part one, part two, and part three, hosted by Cynthia Lord’s LJ. Read Cynsations interviews with Robin and Cynthia.
Unabridged: a new blog from Charlesbridge. Read an interview with editor Yolanda LeRoy of Charlesbridge.
Writing & Illustrating for Children: the 36th annual summer of conference of SCBWI. The event will be held August 3 to 6th in Los Angeles. Note: I’m honored to be a member of the distinguished faculty of authors, editors, art directors, etc. I’ll be speaking on “Increasing Your Revenue & Book Sales: Blogs and Websites” (part of a special workshop track) and “Using the Web to Build Craft and Career.” I hope to see some of you in Los Angeles!
More Personally
My husband, author Greg Leitich Smith, and I had the honor of doing a public reading of poetry and essays by young writers (elementary through high school) involved with the O. Henry Writing Project at the Barnes & Noble Westlake last Saturday.
The program teacher and event emcee was Austin author Spike Gillespie. Other reader-presenters included Brian Anderson (author interview) of Austin and Jerry Wermund (author interview) of Buda. By the way, there are signed copies of Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith (Candlewick, 2007) available at the store.
Tantalize has been nominated for the BBYA list. See the complete list of nominees!