Speedy Site
Website in a hurry? Okay. Website in a hurry and no money tucked aside to make it quite yet? No Problem…? Author, Peter Gould and I met on his sweet embankment above the Whetstone Brook in Vermont at the breaking of Spring and decided we had this wee problem. Peter was soon on his way to talk in front of the HPAlliance, an incredible international online Harry Potter fan group that has stayed together to confront the types of real world tyranny that their Hogwarts counterparts battled in fiction. How to speak in front of these brilliant...
read moreFollow the Yellow Brick Road
Curious City threw out the Wizard of Oz references with tacky abandon at the Spring New England Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. We liken the pursuit of publication to the trip down the yellow brick road meeting cowards, heroes, witches (good and bad), and a few flying monkeys or two. We likened NYC publishing to the Emerald one–for both its glitter and glam and for our ability to place more hope into our success there then the wizards of publishing could ever deliver on. We collectively cringed at the...
read moreHey, Little Ant Marches to Sailsbury U.
Phil Hoose and I are just back from a grand trundle down to Salisbury University for the Green Earth Book Awards and the Children’s & Young Adult Literature Festival wrapping up a year’s celebration of Hey, Little Ant’s (Tricycle Press) decade in print. So much frolic and logic to report, but first up was the surprise appearance at one of the events by one Ian Whisner, a second grader sporting a copy of Phil’s book, Hey, Little Ant. Ian had received an Honorable Mention for his essay in the Hey, Little Ant Essay...
read moreGreat Gracious Grant
Anne Sibley O’Brien and I were awarded the fine news that we had received a grant from the Maine Arts Commission (glory be their name) to produce 15 profile postcards to support her outreach for After Gandhi: One Hundred Years of NonViolent Resistance. Charlesbridge Publishing has already done heroic work for the book producing a stand-alone website, downloadable posters, an ed guide, a book trailer, and a widget. They also did extensive outreach to peace, justice, and social action groups and publications. Anne Sibley O’Brien,...
read moreIt’s the End of the World (With Swearing)
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” –Albert Einstein Author, Charlotte Agell led her televised appearance at The Portland Public Library’s First Friday Author Talk (to be broadcast on CTN) with the above quote and the advice that quoting a genius on TV can only make you look good. Curious City invited 80 King Middle School students who are studying Science Fiction to attend the filming of Charlotte’s talk about her YA dystopia novel, Shift. We solicited Charlotte’s...
read moreForeigner in the House of Comic Con
kAs a foreigner in the house of Comic Con from the much more tepid world of book trade shows, I wondered often and heartily over the weekend at “fandom.” As someone who as a living tries to increase the readership of books for children, I marvel that Graphia (the new haute word for manga, comic books, and graphics novels) has FANS, not readers.How different a writer’s life would be if, say, (our dear departed) John Updike had readers pressing towards him at conventions dressed like Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. I mean, the...
read moreOh, So Sweet!
Leave it to me to book my return flight from ALA Midwinter at the same time as the awards are being announced. As I land in Detroit all 100 passengers discover they have missed their connecting flights.Everyone is shouting at the flight attendants or complaining into their cells. I click online to check the awards. There I find that Melissa Sweet has won a Caldecott Honor and Beth Krommes has won the biggie. I start whooping and laughing and jumping up and down in the middle of the angry crowd. Silence descends. The mob is all staring at me.I...
read moreLunch Box Illustrators Land Caldecott
There was much dancing of jigs by Curious City at the ALA Award news this week.Illustrator, Beth Krommes took the Caldecott Medal for her (beyond) lovely picture book, The House in the Night. Curious City Lunch Box attendees will remember her meticulous illustration style of pulling a reverse image out of ink-saturated scratchboard. Where you there?The dancing continued with much abandon when it was announced that Melissa Sweet took a Caldecott Honor for the illustrations for A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams....
read moreSome Social Justice
NAACP president, Benjamin Jealous not only got a key to Portland, Maine, but a stack of young adult literature as well.As part of Human Rights Day: Marking the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the keynote speaker Benjamin Jealous was presented with books on social justice from Curious City clients, Phillip Hoose, Anne Sibley O’Brien, and Maria Testa.Phil Hoose presented his forthcoming young adult biography of Claudette Colvin, the brave 15-year-old who refused to give up her seat to a white woman in 1955...
read moreOnline Flapdoodle
Curious City just finished up a website for author Amy MacDonald. Having just released, Too Much Flapdoodle that includes the same line up of eccentric characters as her chapter books, No More Nice and No More Nasty, we decided to create a greater “series presence” for her books.As the third book did not follow the naming mechanism of “No More…” we created a themed website based on the character’s names and quirks.As the books deal with the formerly straight-laced boys, Simon and Parker spending time with...
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