The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 38,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 14 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
The first week of school saw me passing out bags of books from my home library and office. While it’s a form of “weeding”, handing out the bags for me is bittersweet. I always say that the best book is one in the hands of a child. On the other hand, we know I come to book hoarding naturally, so parting with books I’ve loved, does require disciplline on my part. Here are some newer titles I’ve passed on.
Troublemaker by Andrew Clements
Stink: The Ultimate Thumb Wrestling Smackdown by Megan McDonald
Miss Child Has Gone Wild by Dan Gutman
Ivy and Bean: What’s the Big Idea by Annie Barrows
Flat Stanley’s Worldwide Adventure: The Japanese Ninja Surprise by Jeff Brown
Blank Confession by Pete Hautman
Junonia by Kevin Henkes
Enclave by Ann Aguirre
Inside out and Back Again by Thanann Lai
I can’t remember where I found this little picture, but I sure do like it. So much of how we interpret something is based on our perception of the event. What if change wasn’t scary, but just something to view with curiosity. I think it would be better for everyone.
I accept:
- Middle grade and nonfiction
- YA fiction
What I Love Best:
- Realistic or historical YA and middle grade novels
- YA fantasy
I do not review and therefore will not accept:
- Self-published or vanity press books
I’m happy to accept ARCs, please e-mail me. If you let me know a date preference, I will try to stick to that date to help create momentum.
Policy modeled on fellow blogger models
Bemouth by Scott Westerfield
Infinity by SherriLynn Kenyon (audiobook)
Storyteller by Patricia Reilly Giff
Reviews written:
A Tale Dark & Grimm by Adam Gidwitz
Trance by Linda Gerber
Last night around 11:00 it was official. All precincts data in and the levy won by 180 votes.
THANK YOU GRANVILLE SCHOOL SUPPORTERS!!!!
Go Blue Aces!
Sophia Coudenhove read a picture book on Wednesday to her 14-month-old daughter, Anna, perhaps too young for a chapter one.
Picture books are so unpopular these days at the Children’s Book Shop in Brookline, Mass., that employees there are used to placing new copies on the shelves, watching them languish and then returning them to the publisher.
The picture books section at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington. Even some best-selling authors feel the pinch.
“So many of them just die a sad little death, and we never see them again,” said Terri Schmitz, the owner.
The shop has plenty of company. The picture book, a mainstay of children’s literature with its lavish illustrations, cheerful colors and large print wrapped in a glossy jacket, has been fading. It is not going away — perennials like the Sendaks and Seusses still sell well — but publishers have scaled back the number of titles they have released in the last several years, and booksellers across the country say sales have been suffering.
The economic downturn is certainly a major factor, but many in the industry see an additional reason for the slump. Parents have begun pressing their kindergartners and first graders to leave the picture book behind and move on to more text-heavy chapter books. Publishers cite pressures from parents who are mindful of increasingly rigorous standardized testing in schools.
“Parents are saying, ‘My kid doesn’t need books with pictures anymore,’ ” said Justin Chanda, the publisher of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. “There’s a real push with parents and schools to have kids start reading big-kid books earlier. We’ve accelerated the graduation rate out of picture books.”
Booksellers see this shift too.
“They’re 4 years old, and their parents are getting them ‘Stuart Little,’ ” said Dara La Porte, the manager of the children’s department at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington. “I see children pick up picture books, and then the parents say, ‘You can do better than this, you can do more than this.’ It’s a terrible pressure parents are feeling — that somehow, I shouldn’t let my child have this picture book because she won’t get into Harvard.”
Literacy experts are quick to say that picture books are not for dummies. Publishers praise the picture book for the particular way it can develop a child’s critical thinking skills.
“To some degree, picture books force an analog way of thinking,” said Karen Lotz, the publisher of Candlewick Press in Somerville, Mass. “From picture to picture, as the reader interacts with the book, their imagination is filling in the missing themes.”
Many parents overlook the fact that chapter books, even though they have more text, full paragraphs and fewer pictures, are not necessarily more complex.
“Some of the vocabulary in a picture book is much more challenging than in a chapter book,” said Kris Vreeland, a book buyer for Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, Calif., where sales of picture books have been down. “The words themselves, and the concepts, can be very sophisticated in a picture book.”
They can, for example, be written with Swiftian satire, like “Monsters Eat Whiny Children” by Bruce Eric Kaplan, a new book about children who are nearly devoured as a result of bad behavior.
Each year, the coveted Randolph Caldecott Medal goes to the most distinguished picture book published in the United States. (This year it went to “The Lion and the Mouse” by Jerry Pinkney, an adaptation of the Aesop’s fable with luminous images and no words at all.)
Still, many publishers have gradually reduced the number of picture books they produce for a market that had seen a glut of them, and in an age when very young children, like everyone else, have more options, a lot of them digital, to fill their entertainment hours.
At Scholastic, 5 percent to 10 percent fewer hardcover picture books have been published over the last three years. Don Weisberg, the president of the Penguin Young Readers Group, said that two and a half years ago, the company began publishing fewer titles but that it had devoted more attention to marketing and promoting the ones that remain. Of all the children’s books published by Simon & Schuster, about 20 percent are picture books, down from 35 percent a few years ago.
Classic books like “Goodnight Moon” and the “Eloise” series still sell steadily, alongside more modern popular titles like the “Fancy Nancy” books and “The Three Little Dassies” by Jan Brett, but even some best-selling authors are feeling the pinch. Jon Scieszka, who wrote “Robot Zot,” said his royalty checks had been shrinking, especially in the last year.
“We see the stores displaying less picture books, and publishers are getting a little more cautious about signing up new projects,” Mr. Scieszka said. “You can feel that everyone’s worried.”
Borders, noticing the sluggish sales, has tried to encourage publishers to lower the list prices, which can be as high as $18. Mary Amicucci, the vice president of children’s books forBarnes & Noble, said sales began a slow, steady decline about a year ago. Since then, the stores have rearranged display space so that some picture books are enticingly paired with toys and games.
Other retailers have cut shelf space devoted to picture books while expanding their booming young-adult sections, full of dystopic fiction, graphic novels and “Twilight”-inspired paranormal romances.
“Young adult fiction has been universally the growing genre,” said Ms. Lotz of Candlewick, “and so as retailers adapt to what customers are buying, they are giving more space to that and less space to picture books.”
Some parents say they just want to advance their children’s skills. Amanda Gignac, a stay-at-home mother in San Antonio who writes The Zen Leaf, a book blog, said her youngest son, Laurence, started reading chapter books when he was 4.
Now Laurence is 6 ½, and while he regularly tackles 80-page chapter books, he is still a “reluctant reader,” Ms. Gignac said.
Sometimes, she said, he tries to go back to picture books.
“He would still read picture books now if we let him, because he doesn’t want to work to read,” she said, adding that she and her husband have kept him reading chapter books.
Still, many children are getting the message. At Winnona Park Elementary School in Decatur, Ga., a recent book fair was dominated by chapter books, said Ilene Zeff, who organized the fair.
“I’ve been getting fewer and fewer picture books because they just don’t sell,” Ms. Zeff said. “By first grade, when the kids go to pick out their books, they ask where the chapter books are. They’re just drawn to them.”
On a recent discussion board on Urbanbaby.com, a Web site for parents, one commenter asked for recommendations for chapter books to read to a 5-year-old, and was answered with suggestions like the 272-page “Phantom Tollbooth” by Norton Juster and “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum — books generally considered more appropriate for children 9 to 11.
Jen Haller, the vice president and associate publisher of the Penguin Young Readers Group, said that while some children were progressing to chapter books earlier, they were still reading picture books occasionally. “Picture books have a real comfort element to them,” Ms. Haller said. “It’s not like this door closes and they never go back to picture books again.”
‘Smart Chicks’ YA Author Tour Ready to Roll.
It’s quite the big deal: 18 authors, 12 days, 11 cities. Kicking off on September 13 in Austin, Tex., and wrapping up on September 25 in Brampton, Ontario, the Smart Chicks Kick It Tour is entirely organized and funded by the participating paranormal romance writers. The grassroots tour was masterminded by Melissa Marr (Wicked Lovely series) with the help of Kelley Armstrong (Women of the Otherworld series), both of whom will appear at every event, as will a third headliner, Alyson Noël (the Immortals series). Aside from this trio, the author lineup will change at each venue, with six to nine Chicks in attendance. Here’s how it all came together.
The seeds of the tour—so titled to emphasize the strong, capable heroines in the authors’ fiction—were planted in June 2009, when Marr was slated to take part in several group author events for her publisher, HarperCollins. “In addition to that, on my own I had set up group signings during the RT Booklovers Convention in April and during BEA in May,” Marr says. “And my friend Kelley Armstrong and I were also signing together during RWA. So the idea of group touring was on my mind.”
Bookseller response to the tour was equally enthusiastic, leading Marr and Armstrong to expand the tour from the originally planned six or eight cities to 11 (there will be two events in Houston). The authors publicized the tour on Facebook, and Marr sent an e-mail to booksellers she knows. “I wrote, ‘I know you do good events and I’m wondering if you’re interested.’ They all said ‘yes!’ Then booksellers I didn’t already know reached out, and readers requested we visit their cities, so we added a few more stops.”
As the launch of the tour approaches, Wadsworth notes, “We are now immersed in the details, like making sure the Chicks, who are coming from all corners of the country as well as overseas, are wherethey are supposed to be whenthey are supposed to be there.” To promote the tour, Media Masters is sending participating bookstores posters, t-shirts, and swag baskets to give away, and has been contacting local press and librarians to help spread the word. “This has been a terrific experience,” says Wadsworth. “We can’t wait to tackle Smart Chicks Kick It Tour 2.0!”
Barbara Hudson, PR and events coordinator for Joseph-Beth in Cincinnati, will host six Chicks on September 24. She anticipates between 150 and 300 attendees, and has ordered a significant number of books for the event. “I tend to go heavier with the buying when there are multiple authors, since people are often being introduced to new authors they decide they’d like to read,” she says. “These are big-name authors, and with this group it’s going to be electric. Hearing their conversation will be the biggest and best part of the evening.”
