I started working at the Central Children's Room at the Donnell Branch of NYPL around four years ago. While working there I often spoke with author Esther Hautzig, an author and volunteer who dedicated much of her time and energy to the place. Esther was lovely, and I understood her to be an author. What I did not understand was her history, and how it informed her work over the years.
At the age of nine, in 1939, Esther and her family were put on a deportation train by the invading Russian army and shipped to Siberia. This later appeared in her memoir for children, The Endless Steppe. After that she was sent to America and eventually ran the publicity and libr...Read More
Working with Pooh Bear is lovely. He is polite and refined. A little honey in his pot and that is all that he requires. Really, he's the perfect working companion. But this new girl who just moved in? Ugh! Talk about a holy terror. If she's not running helter-skelter around the building she's dumping our new books down the nearest unused book drop to see where they go. Pooh and I have decided that we'll just relegate her to the archivists and let THEM handle her from here on in. L...Read More
Y'all like free books and I like debut authors. Two great tastes that taste great together then. Take note fellow librarians:
The YA and MG authors of the 2009 Debutantes are giving away a 46-book set of their debut novels to ONE lucky library, anywhere in the world! In light of recent budget cuts to libraries in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other communities, these debut authors would like to contribute their library to your library, offering up brand new novels for your patrons at no cost.
The collection includes #1 New York Times bestseller WINGS, by Aprilynne Pike, critically-acclaimed novels THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH by Carrie Ryan, HATE LIST by Jennifer Brown, FLASH BURNOUT by L.K. Madigan, TWENTY BOY SUMMER by Sarah Ockler and THE SEASON by SARAH MACLEAN, Juni...Read More
It's all about self-published authors and flowers this year.
I will endeavor to explain. Eventually.
Yes, it's that time once again. Time to sit back, sip your orange juice, and revel in the Harper Collins librarian preview, season Spring '10 (you heard it here first) '10. We are now officially in the future.
A blogger can't have favorites. A blogger can, however, determine the strength of a given season, and this HC season seemed to have legs. But see for yourself what you think.
I like children's books that touch you without pandering at the same time. I like books that make you cry, but don't bend over backwards to make you think that they're sob-worthy. Basically, I like books that can get at the heart of a story the old-fashioned way. Through plain good writing. Now I don't know this Clay Carmichael character. According to her bio she's a resident of Carrboro, North Carolina. She's written three picture books in the ...Read More
Which is to say, I've a whole mess o' stuff to do so let's just look at some photos for fun, rather than writing up (oh say) a review or a preview recap.
First up, we had a lovely Read for the Record event in my branch not too long ago. Special guests included (but were not limited to):
A Very Hungry Caterpillar
Let the record show that I was convinced that children would find it the scariest darn thing ever made. I couldn't have been more wrong. Children were t...Read More
This month, should you spy a copy of School Library Journal, you will notice that on the cover are five bloggers. One of those bloggers is myself. Which on the general scale of awesomeness, is way up there. The reason we are on the cover is because I wrote an article for the magazine about blogging in general (which you can read here, should you feel so inclined). It also includes a little end section about the ten blogs you cannot live without.
Now I would like to be very clear that this is a teeny tiny itsy bitsy sampling of the total number of fabulous children's literature blogs out there. The lis...Read More
After reading Pimp My Novel's post about The Next Big Thing, I think I know what novel I want to write next for NaNoWriMo is. Picture This: A fallen angel comes to earth, only to immediately be bitten and turned into a vampire. In the course of avoiding doing evil he gets himself killed, only to be resurrected by the woman he loves in zombie form. Set, naturally enough, in a crazy Victorian past where everyone flies around in brass bolted jet packs. It's the angel trend meets the vampire trend meets the zombie trend meets Steampunk. Publishers, I await your flurry of interest.
Folks, it is November. That means that the tides of NaNoWriMo are upon us. In respect of this blessed event (which I'm toying with the notion of participating in) I present to you a game you can play that will allow you to satisfy both your writing needs and your desire to stop writing and play competitive games online. At last! A competitive online writing game!
I'd not heard of the Bunch website until recently, but due to the sheer number of cool children's literary links they include, you can bet I'll be heading back again. In the meantime, they've a Snicket/Rex hook-up you might be interested in hearing about. In their words:
We have an exclusive Halloween interview with Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events) and we're featuring it right now - along with a free download of the Snicket story from Half-Minute Horrors.
Here's just a snicket of it:
Susan Rich: Hello Mr Snicket. Thank you for agreeing to speak with us
about matters relating to Halloween. Halloween can be a very creepy ...Read More
I posted this once before, but it just gets better with every viewing. Thanks to Jennifer Schultz for the link.
Yes! It's that most wonderful time of the year. And so, without further ado, I begin the wonderful process of presenting to you the links I've acquired and accrued over ...Read More
This month, should you spy a copy of School Library Journal, you will notice that on the cover are five bloggers. One of those bloggers is myself. Which on the general scale of awesomeness, is way up there. The reason we are on the cover is because I wrote an article for the magazine about blogging in general (which you can read 
I posted this once before, but it just gets better with every viewing. Thanks to Jennifer Schultz for the link.