Check your library copy of Chase’s Annual Events and among such upcoming celebrations as American Chocolate Week and National Week of Student Action, you will find Children’s Authors and Illustrators Week (CAIW), annually the first week in February.
This week was started several years ago by authors and illustrators in Children’s Authors Network (CAN!), who wanted to celebrate the school visits,
Continue Reading Tips for Children’s Authors & Illustrators Week: First Week in February »
I had the honor of leading a workshop with author Liza Ketchum in conjunction with the Vermont College MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults this past month. The following titles arose during our discussions with students during the sessions:
The Amulet of Samarkand (The Bartimaeus Trilogy,
Continue Reading Vermont College MFA Ketchum-Smith Workshop Bibliography »
The Queen of Cool by Cecil Castellucci (Candlewick, 2006). From the promotional copy: “a funny, incisive look at a teenage girl who becomes bored with her popularity and dares to take off her tiara and do something really cool with her life.” Ages 12-up.
What was your initial inspiration for creating this book?
Continue Reading Author Interview: Cecil Castellucci on The Queen of Cool »
M or F? by Lisa Papademetriou and Chris Tebbetts (Razorbill, 2005). From the promotional copy: “Frannie and Marcus are best friends-brain twins, in fact. They share a love of Bollywood movies, an unbridled passion for pizza, and the fact that neither of them has ever had a boyfriend. At least Marcus has an excuse-eligible gay boys are hard to come by in their small Illinois town.
Continue Reading Author Interview: Lisa Papademetriou and Chris Tebbetts on M or F? »
Annette Curtis Klause is the award-winning author of Alien Secrets (Delacorte, 1993), The Silver Kiss (Delacorte, 1990), Blood and Chocolate (Delacorte, 1999), and most recently, Freaks: Alive on the Inside (Simon & Schuster, 2006).
When I last interviewed you, you’d just had a short story,
Ask Me No Questions by Marina Budhos (Atheneum, 2006)(see excerpt). Nadira, 14, has always been the plump one, the less-bright one, the dim light behind the shining star of her older sister Aisha, 18. After September 11, their family of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh seeks asylum in Canada. They are turned away at the border,
A typical children’s publisher receives 5,000 or more submissions a year and publishes only a handful, according to editors. With so many people dreaming of writing a children’s book, and fewer than one-tenth of one percent of manuscripts making it out of the slush pile, sometimes it seems almost impossible to break into print. The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators is an organization that can help open doors.
Continue Reading Four Publishing Presidents to Share the Stage on the SCBWI 35th Anniversary »
Free Baseball by Sue Corbett (Dutton, 2006). Felix loves baseball and longs for the day when his father, who’s a baseball star in Cuba, will join him and his mother in Florida. When a team with a couple of players who might be Cuban comes to town, Felix takes advantage of being mistaken for the bat boy to stow away in the team bus.
Grace Lin is the creator of several picture books for children, including Robert’s Snow (Viking, 2004) and Dim Sum For Everyone! (Knopf, 2001). This month she celebrates the release of her debut novel, The Year of the Dog (Little Brown, 2006). Grace also offers one of the most beautifully designed and informative author-illustrator sites on the Web.
Kissing Brendan Callahan by Susan Amessé (Roaring Brook, 2005). Sarah wants to be a writer. She wants to enter a local writing contest, judged by her idol–romance writer Antonia DeMarco, and she wants to win first place. Unfortunately, her just-the-facts mom says she’s ineligible to enter and has a less-than-stellar opinion about Antonia herself. But Sarah has a solution,
