NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC'S NANCY FERESTEN AND THE FUTURE OF KIDS' DIGITAL AND PRINT MEDIA
“For
many years now, we in the children's book world have been struggling to do what
we have always done—bring compelling stories and information to kids—as the
world shifted and shook all around us with the combination of the digital
transition and the great recession,” Feresten says. Her more than 25 years’
experience in children’s publishing includes work for Harper & Row,
Scholastic and W.H. Freeman. She is also a published author of nonfiction
children’s books.
“It
looked for a while there as if our little pocket of peace (and that of the
children we serve) could collapse, and we are just beginning to relax a little
at finding ourselves altered but clearly still here,” she adds. “At National
Geographic Kids, we spent the recession years in the exciting but scary process
of refocusing our brand, vision and content development to serve today's kids
in a unified way across all of our activities (including books, magazines,
digital publishing, apps, web, video and experiences) and to be flexible enough
to withstand changes still over the horizon.”
Her
ideas about the future are detailed and practical. For example, kids’ reading
devices, she said at a Frankfurt Book Fair conference on digital publishing, will
have “big screens. Maybe double screens with a hinge so they can close securely
and open to twice their carrying size. Keep them light, though.” They will be
sturdy: “You can drop it--even into the tub--and it comes out working great.”
As for picture books: “The 32-page picture book is dead. Long live the
any-length picture book!” Print books will shift to short runs, “to supply
bookstores and libraries with browsing copies and authors with signing copies.”
Print-on-demand will grow in popularity and quality for specific uses such as
gift-giving and souvenirs.
Please join us on November 21 at Busboys & Poets for Feresten’s program, which will include an overview of National Geographic Kids. Then plan to participate in what she calls “a lively discussion about the shifting publishing and media landscape we all occupy.”
Date: Thursday, November 21
Time: 11:30 a.m. "social hour"; noon luncheon
Place: Busboys and Poets
1025 Fifth Street NW (at K Street)
Menu: All choices $25 ($26 when paid online via PayPal)
:: CHOICE OF SANDWICH (all sandwiches served with a salad of baby greens and house-made kettle chips) ::
• Falafel Sandwich (vegetarian/vegan) with house-made hummus, cucumbers, lettuce, tomato and onion on whole-wheat pita, served with tahini sauce (vegan without tahini sauce)
• Home-Roasted Turkey Sandwich with Havarti cheese, Dijonnaise, lettuce, tomato and onion on wheat bread
• Grilled Chicken Panini with chipotle mayo, caramelized onions, pepper jack, lettuce and tomato on ciabatta
• Portabella Mushroom Panini (vegetarian) with pesto, roasted red pepper and fresh mozzarella on herb ciabatta
:: DESSERT ::
Assorted Cookies (family style)
:: BEVERAGES ::
Fountain Drinks (unlimited soft drinks and iced tea), fresh coffee and organic tea
• Falafel Sandwich (vegetarian/vegan) with house-made hummus, cucumbers, lettuce, tomato and onion on whole-wheat pita, served with tahini sauce (vegan without tahini sauce)
• Home-Roasted Turkey Sandwich with Havarti cheese, Dijonnaise, lettuce, tomato and onion on wheat bread
• Grilled Chicken Panini with chipotle mayo, caramelized onions, pepper jack, lettuce and tomato on ciabatta
• Portabella Mushroom Panini (vegetarian) with pesto, roasted red pepper and fresh mozzarella on herb ciabatta
:: DESSERT ::
Assorted Cookies (family style)
:: BEVERAGES ::
Fountain Drinks (unlimited soft drinks and iced tea), fresh coffee and organic tea
2. Jason Low's October Program
3. Frostburg State's Spring Festival
4. Member News
5. A Call for Nominations from the Nonfiction Award Committee
WELCOMING TWO
ORGANIZATIONS TO THE GUILD
by Karen Leggett
We are
delighted to welcome two organizations that have both been affiliated with the Guild
in the past in some way. Various
divisions of the Library of Congress have been represented in the Guild, but
now the Young Readers Center joins us for the first time. The Nature Generation
was a Guild member as the Newton Marasco Foundation and has recently rejoined.
When the Young Readers Center (YRC) at the Library of Congress opened in 2009, Guild
member PATTY STEELMAN arranged for
members to donate books with bookplates designed by ROSALYN SCHANZER. Now KAREN JAFFE, the new director of the YRC, will be representing the YRC at the
Guild.
 |
| Karen Jaffe |
The Nature Generation, represented by JENNY NEWTON SCHMIDT
and JEANNE BROWN, supports a variety
of national and local environmental education programs, including the first
award for authors whose books teach children and young adults about
environmental stewardship.Two Guild members’ books have been honored with a Green
Earth Book Award: Cindy Trumbore and Susan L. Roth’s The Mangrove Tree: Planting Trees to Feed Families (2012) and Marfé
Ferguson Delano’s Earth in the Hot Seat:
Bulletins from a Warming World (2010).
 |
| Jenny Newton Schmidt |
 |
| Jeanne Brown |
Nominations
are now being accepted for the 2014 Green Earth Awards,
and for the first time, the award celebration will be held in Washington, D.C.,
on September 19, 2014.
AN ENLIGHTENING AFTERNOON WITH JASON LOW OF LEE & LOW BOOKS
by Jennifer O’Connell
In 2010, Lee & Low introduced Tu Books to expand its
diversity mission into young adult and middle grade genres. Low showed a book
trailer for Yummy, a compelling
graphic novel by G. Neri about a seven-year-old boy’s downward spiral after
becoming involved with gangs.
“Talk is cheap. It’s not enough to believe something is a good
idea; you have to support the idea,” declared publisher Jason Low at the Guild’s
October 17 meeting. It was evident that Low is passionate about supporting Lee
& Low’s mission: “to meet the need for stories that all children can identify with and enjoy.” He detailed how Lee
& Low is constantly breaking new ground and exploring ways to expand its
reach.
Low said that since Nancy Larrick wrote her 1965 article, “The
All White World of Children’s Books,” many people have tried to reflect
diversity in children’s publishing. They include his father, Tom Low, and
Philip Lee, who met in a writing class 22 years ago and began the exciting and
challenging journey of learning how to become a publishing house. In 1993, they
published their first books under the name Lee & Low.
Baseball Saved Us,
written by Ken Mochizuki and illustrated by Dom Lee, put them on the map that
year. The story chronicles a young boy’s love of the game and how it elevated
his spirit in a World War II internment camp for Japanese Americans, a place
that was void of human dignity. “Distributers said that the book was way too
dark,” said Low, “and they dropped us.” But when the book was released it was
given a glowing, full-page review in The
New York Times. It remains Lee & Low’s best-selling title to date.
Low showed slides of many popular Lee & Low titles,
including two by Guild members: Lulu Delacre’s How Far Do You Love Me? and Susan Roth’s Parrots of Puerto Rico.
Lee & Low has continued to grow and take risks. In 2000 it
launched its first educational imprint, Bebop Books, featuring high-quality,
dual-language illustrated books that correlate to the Common Core State
Standards. It also founded the New Voices Award to nurture and publish new
talent.
Today, 39 percent of Lee & Low’s authors are publishing for
the first time; 68 percent of its authors and illustrators are people of color;
73 percent of its staff are people of color; and its marketing,
editorial and sales departments all have someone fluent in Spanish.
Lee & Low has worked at online promotion and maintains a
blog, “The Open Book,” on its website. Low showed a flowchart that is posted on
the blog titled, “How to Deal with a Racist Remark.” “Everyone [at Lee &
Low] was sharing how they dealt with it,” he said. “We’re trying to create a
place to come up with some solutions to some things that are still
unfortunately occurring in society.” Lee & Low is also present on Facebook,
Twitter and Pinterest, as well as Tumblr (which Low said is where all the kids
are now).
Low said that only 10 percent of children’s books published in
the past 18 years contain multicultural content, though people of color make up
37 percent of our population. Because this diversity gap continues to exist,
and “since the mainstream media refuses to go there, we’ve decided to go on our
own,” he explained. Lee & Low is doing this book by book, boldly,
purposefully and successfully.
FROSTBURG STATE UNIVERSITY'S SPRING FESTIVAL OF CHILDREN'S LITRATURE: APRIL 25 AND 26, 2014
The festival provides
librarians, educators, students and other advocates the opportunity to
experience face-to-face interaction with celebrated authors, illustrators and
storytellers. The featured speakers for 2014 are Steve Jenkins, Floyd Cooper, Ben
Mikaelsen and Melissa Sweet. Small-group sessions on current educational
topics, as well as book sales, autographing and a luncheon are included in the
festival registration. The festival concludes with the presentation of the
Betty Roemmelmeyer Children’s Literature Advocate Award, given to a teacher,
librarian or individual who possesses and nurtures a love of literature.
For
more information, please contact:
Clc@frostburg.eduwww.frostburg.edu/clc
@CLCFSU #CLCFest14
MEMBER NEWS
Dutch and Turkish rights have been sold for JENNIFER ALLISON's just-published illustrated chapter book Iggy Loomis: Superkid in Training (www.iggyloomis.com). On October 20, Jennifer and an assortment of sugar-fueled kids launched Iggy Loomis (the first of a trilogy published by Dial) with a "birthday party" bash at The Book Cellar, a much-loved Chicago independent bookstore in the Lincoln Square neighborhood.
UMA KRISHNASWAMI has two Diversity 101 posts, Blurring the Line Between Familiar and Foreign, up at the CBC Diversity blog:
Uma highly recommends the blog for its lively posts about writing within and across cultures, and other subjects related to this important conversation in our field.
JACQUELINE JULES will be a featured author and speaker at the Virginia State Reading Association Conference in March 2014. She will also be signing books on November 22, at 11:30 a.m, at the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) annual conference. The conference runs November 20 through 23 at the National Convention Center.
KATHERINE JANUS KAHN's series about Sammy Spider is 20 years old! Kathy is the illustrator; Sylvia A. Rouss is the author. To celebrate Sammy's birthday, KarBen Publishing will be having a birthday cake, and Kathy will be signing books at the NAEYC Conference (Preschool) on Thursday, November 21. Sammy Spider is also an e-book series, made available by Open Road Media, which did a two-day interview with Sylvia and Kathy in May.
 |
| Happy birthday, Sammy! |
MARY QUATTLEBAUM reports that the French version of Pirate vs. Pirate is now out and that The Shine Man and Sparks Fly High now have Korean editions.
LAURA MURRAY's picture book The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School is a nominee for the Virginia Reader's Choice Award this year, as well as for the Illinois and Nevada Children's Choice awards. Laura is a former teacher, and this book was based on her students' favorite unit--the school gingerbread-man hunt! Laura offers teachers and librarians a fun standards/core-linked Teacher's Guide full of activities and ideas at http://www.lauramurraybooks.
Also, NPR featured teachers and students reading and using The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School in association with Common Core in the story “States Roll out New Education Standards,” by Martha Dalton and Gina Jordan: http://wabe.org/post/states-
MARFE FERGUSON DELANO, ROSALYN SCHANZER and MARC TYLER NOBLEMAN will be speaking at the 2013 NCTE Annual Convention in Boston on Friday, November 22, as members of a panel titled, "Passion! Plot! Primary Sources! Connecting English, History, and Writing with Literary Nonfiction."
A bilingual (English/Spanish) version of SUSAN STOCKDALE's picture book Stripes of All Types has been published by Peachtree. This bilingual format has been selected as a Junior Library Guild book.
And… Susan's picture book Bring On the Birds will be published by Working Title Press in Australia and New Zealand in 2014.
 |
| Becky Jones's Annie Award and her books |
REBECCA JONES recently was honored with the 2013 Annie Award for Literary Arts from the Arts Council of Anne Arundel County, Md. The award honors Becky's "significant, indelible and inspiring" impact on the arts in her local community and beyond. During her long, productive career Becky has written 16 children's books, three books for educators, and numerous magazine articles. She also spent years teaching writing at the college level. The Annie Awards are presented to residents of Anne Arundel County for outstanding contributions to the arts; PRISCILLA CUMMINGS was the recipient in 2003.
ANN MCCALLUM will be signing Eat Your Math Homework: Recipes for Hungry Minds at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum on December 14 at 1 p.m.
JENNIFER O'CONNELL is happy to share that her new book, The Eye of the Whale, has been awarded the 2013 Moonbeam Children’s Book Gold Award in the Nonfiction Animal/Pet category. Also, the Society of School Librarians International has named The Eye of the Whale an Honor Book in the Language Arts–Picture Book category. Finally, RIF (Reading Is Fundamental) has selected The Eye of the Whale to be on the list of books for its STEM to STEAM program. (http://stemtosteam.org).
A CALL FOR NOMINATIONS
The 2015 Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award Committee welcomes nominations from Guild members for this important award. The Guild's award is the oldest nonfiction award in U.S. children’s literature and is given to an author or author-illustrator for his or her body of work. The Guild has honored many, but by no means all, of the great writers of nonfiction books for young readers. Please send your thoughts and suggestions to Kathie Meizner, chair of the 2015 committee: kathie.meizner@montgomerycountymd.gov. Please note that the committee is accepting nominations from Guild members only.
*********
Tweet Your News!
Do you have a publication date for a new book, a local appearance coming up or an award nomination to tout? Don't be shy! The Guild has its own Twitter account (@ChildrensBookGuild) and is looking for news to tweet. Just send your news to Caroline Hickey (carolinesmithhickey@gmail.com
*********
NOTE ABOUT THE CHILDREN'S BOOK GUILD NEWS: Would you rather print your newsletter than read it online? Current and past issues now available for printing on the Guild's website at http://www.childrensbookguild.org/guild-newsletters. Look for the "Newsletter" tab on the left side of the Guild website. There is also a "Printer Friendly Version" link on the top left hand side of this blog.
***********
No comments:
Post a Comment