Shelf Awareness for Tuesday, January 27, 2009


Atheneum Books for Young Readers: Dalmartian: A Mars Rover's Story by Lucy Ruth Cummins

Albatros Media: Caring for the planet on Earth Day and every day!

Bloom Books: The Dixon Rule (Campus Diaries #2) by Elle Kennedy

Holiday House: I Would Love You Still by Adrea Theodore, illustrated by Ken Wilson-Max

Dial Press: Within Arm's Reach by Ann Napolitano

Soho Crime: Agnes Sharp and the Trip of a Lifetime (Miss Sharp Investigates) by Leonie Swann, translated by Amy Bojang

Shadow Mountain: Millie (Best Friends Dog Tales) by McCall Hoyle, illustrated by Kevin Keele

Letters

'There Is a Promotional Preference Program'

Nicki Leone of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance writes in response to yesterday's letter about creating a database of bookseller preferences for promotional material:

The regional independent trade associations actually have a program in place to target promotional materials to the bookstores that want and/or need them. It is called the Creative Advertising and Promotional Alert, an e-mail modeled on the Book Sense/IndieBound Advanced Access program. Publishers can list the marketing materials they have developed for their books and booksellers can request the materials of most interest to them. Listings have included not just posters and bookmarks, but event kits, samples, downloadable audio and video, contests, postcards and reading group guides among many, many other very creative things. See an example here.

The Creative Alerts are released monthly by all the regional trade associations, and hence reach a national audience of independent booksellers. The response from SIBA's own stores has been overwhelmingly positive.

 


Ballantine Books: By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult


News

Notes: PW Cuts Staff; College Store Expands

Publishers Weekly has laid off at least five more staff members, including editor-in-chief Sara Nelson, executive editor Daisy Maryles, bookselling editor Kevin Howell, children's reviews editor Elizabeth Devereaux and director of business development Rachel Dicker. School Library Journal editor-in-chief Brian Kenney is becoming editorial director of PW, SLJ and Library Journal, the New York Times reported. We also hear that Críticas, which reported on the U.S. Spanish-language market for the past eight years, is being shut down and senior editor Aída Bardales has been laid off.

We're sorry to see more of our former colleagues go and wish them the very best.

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Calvin Reid, still at PW, reports that Amazon.com plans to stop offering e-books in Microsoft Reader or Adobe e-formats and will offer e-books only in Kindle or Mobipocket formats. Amazon owns the Kindle and Mobipocket. 

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The University of Kentucky Bookstore, Lexington, Ky., is currently celebrating its grand reopening following extensive renovations that included the addition of 7,000 square feet of space, wider aisles, more merchandise and a new entrance.

In a statement, bookstore director Sally Wiatrowski said, "We are now a 'one-stop shop' for students who live on campus. This store will be a campus destination for textbooks, trade books, and Wildcat imprinted clothing, which includes a Nike shop for men and special sections for women's and children's apparel." In the trade area, the store sells bestselling fiction and nonfiction and books published by University Press of Kentucky.

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Daniel Goldin and Lanora Hurley, the two Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops managers who are setting up separate stores in two of the four Schwartz locations that are closing in and around Milwaukee, Wis., were interviewed on WUWM's Lake Effect on Friday. Both make a marvelous, articulate case for the importance of bookstores in communities, talk about memories of Schwartz, praise other booksellers around the country and more. Listen to them here.

Goldin is in the process of establishing Boswell Book Company, which will be in the Schwartz location on Downer Avenue in Milwaukee, and Hurley is opening Next Chapter Bookshop in Mequon (Shelf Awareness, January 19, 2009).

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The Los Angeles Times surveyed the state of Book Soup, West Hollywood, Calif., following the death early this month of owner and founder Glenn Goldman. There have been several offers, but Adrian Newell, who was Goldman's partner, is waiting for someone who understands Goldman's vision. Poignantly she added, "I wouldn't have wanted to be in any other industry at a time like this. I've felt so supported and embraced by everyone in the book community. I've never really had a family, but it's felt like a family."

Manager Tyson Cornell said that last year Book Soup did "very well." And Kerry Slattery, manager and co-owner of Skylight Books, Los Angeles, said sales at the store rose 17% in December and were up 7.5% for the year. The Los Feliz store expanded at the end of the summer to 3,100 square feet of space from 2,000.

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As Kepler's Books & Magazines, Menlo Park, Calif., cuts hours to 80 from 90 hours a week, owner Clark Kepler told the Almanac News that the new schedule is "seasonal. We do it every time the economy goes really bad and we need to reduce our costs."

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The Calgary Herald profiles Pages Books on Kensington, which was founded in 1993 and is co-owned by Simone Lee, who formerly working in publishing in Toronto and bought an interest in the store in her hometown 18 months ago. Her business partner is Ben Falconer.

"The joke was, the only way I was going to have as many books as I wanted was for me to buy a bookstore," Lee told the paper. "My very first badge I got as a Brownie was a reading badge."

Pages, which stocks about 10,000 books, won the Bookseller of the Year award from the Canadian Booksellers Association in 2003, held 150 author events last year and has a strong literary bent. The store also has one of the strongest poetry sections in Canada--in part because of University of Calgary's creative writing Ph.D. program.

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Wendy Sheanin has been promoted to director of marketing, adult books, at Simon & Schuster. She was formerly senior marketing manager.

In a statement, Liz Perl, senior v-p of marketing, said, among other things, that Sheanin's "retail marketing program has lead to increased sales, better bookseller relationships, and happier authors. . . . She has cultivated valuable relationships with the bookselling community and is able to galvanize independent and chain store booksellers in support of a wide variety of titles."

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Effective immediately, University Games, the game and toy manufacturer that publishes games books under its Spinner Books imprint, is being distributed to the trade in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Australia by National Book Network.

In related news, James Connolly, former publisher of BAY/Soma Books, has been named publisher for Spinner Books.

University Games has headquarters in San Francisco, Calif., and subsidiaries in the Australia, the U.K. and the Netherlands. Spinner Books was founded in 2001 and has more than 75 active titles and publishes about a dozen new titles a year. 

In a statement, University Games president Bob Moog indicated that the company views the relationship between NBN and University Games as "more of a partnership rather than that of strictly publisher and distributor."

 


G.P. Putnam's Sons: Hot Summer by Elle Everhart


Media and Movies

The Art of Filming The Art of Racing in the Rain

Actor and car racer Patrick Dempsey, perhaps best known for playing Dr. Derek Shepherd on Grey's Anatomy, has bought movie rights to Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain. He will be a producer and play Denny, car racer and master of Enzo, the book's narrator.

 


Viking: Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See by Bianca Bosker


Media Heat: Love in the Time of Colic

Tomorrow morning on the Early Show: Steve Harvey, author of Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment (Amistad, $23.99, 9780061728976/0061728977). He will also appear tonight on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

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Tomorrow morning on the Today Show: Ian Kerner and Heidi Raykeil, authors of Love in the Time of Colic: The New Parents' Guide to Getting It on Again (Collins Living, $16.99, 9780061465123/0061465127).

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Tomorrow morning on the Early Show: Noelle Nelson, author of Your Man Is Wonderful: How to Appreciate Your Partner, Romance Your Differences, and Love the One You've Got (Free Press, $25, 9781416593508/1416593500).

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Tomorrow on the Diane Rehm Show: former President Jimmy Carter, author of We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work (Simon & Schuster, $27, 9781439140635/1439140634).

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Tomorrow on Fox News's Hannity & Colmes: Jeff Benedict, author of Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and Courage (Grand Central, $26.99, 9780446508629/0446508624).

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Tomorrow on Oprah: Bruce D. Perry, author of The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog (Basic Books, $15.95, 9780465056538/0465056539).

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Tomorrow on Tavis Smiley: Martin Indyk, author of Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East (Simon & Schuster, $30, 9781416594291/1416594299).

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Tomorrow night on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Neil DeGrasse Tyson, author of The Pluto Files (Norton, $23.95, 9780393065206/0393065200).

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Tomorrow night on the Colbert Report: Denis Dutton, author of The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution (Bloomsbury Press, $25, 9781596914018/1596914017).

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Tomorrow night on the Late Show with David Letterman: the Food Network's Guy Fieri, author of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives: An All-American Road Trip . . . With Recipes! (Morrow Cookbooks, $19.95, 9780061724886/0061724882).

 



Books & Authors

Neil Gaiman Wins Newbery; Beth Krommes Wins Caldecott

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins) wins the 2009 Newbery Medal. The seed for this story of an 18-month-old orphaned boy who escapes his family's killer and takes refuge in a nearby cemetery was planted when his own toddler-age son used the graveyard across the street from their home as a playground, the author told his audience at BEA's Children's Book and Author Breakfast in Los Angeles last year. He described the tale as a kind of twist on Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, in which the boy is raised by ghosts rather than animals.

The 2009 Caldecott Medal goes to Beth Krommes for her artwork in The House in the Night, with text by Susan Marie Swanson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Her black-and-white scratchboard illustrations, with a judicious use of yellow and gold, illuminate a narrative inspired by a nursery tale that celebrates nature, home and hearth.
 
Four Newbery Honors were awarded: Kathi Appelt's The Underneath (S&S/Atheneum), which was also a National Book Award Finalist; The Surrender Tree by Margarita Engle (Holt), which was also awarded the Pura Belpré Award for Narrative (the Pura Belpré honors Latino writers and illustrators whose work "best portrays, affirms and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in a work of literature for youth"); After Tupac & D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson, whose Feathers was cited as a Newbery Honor last year (both Putnam/Penguin); and Savvy, a first novel by Ingrid Law (Penguin/Dial).
 
Two of the three Caldecott Honors went to artists who also illustrated their works: Marla Frazee, for A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever (Harcourt), and Uri Shulevitz for How I Learned Geography (FSG). Shulevitz won the 1969 Caldecott Medal for The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship (retold by Arthur Ransome) as well as Caldecott Honors for Snow (in 1999) and The Treasure (1980), all published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The third Caldecott Honor went to Melissa Sweet for A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams, written by Jen Bryant (Eerdmans).
 
For the second year in a row, Mo Willems won the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award (given to "the most distinguished book for beginning readers") for an adventure about Elephant and Piggie: Are You Ready to Play Outside? (Hyperion). He won the 2008 Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for There Is a Bird on Your Head!, which starred the same duo. The Geisel honorees were: One Boy by Laura Vaccaro Seeger (Roaring Brook/Porter), who last year received both a 2008 Caldecott Honor and a Geisel Honor for her book First the Egg; Chicken Said, "Cluck!" by Judyann Ackerman Grant, illustrated by Sue Truesdell (HarperCollins); Stinky by Eleanor Davis (part of the Toon Books series from Raw Junior/Little Lit); and Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator by Sarah C. Campbell, with photographs by Sarah C. Campbell and Richard P. Campbell (Boyds Mills).
 
Kadir Nelson's We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball (Hyperion/Jump at the Sun) racked up several awards: Nelson won the 2009 Robert F. Sibert Medal for nonfiction, the 2009 Coretta Scott King Author Award and a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration. Last year, Nelson received a Caldecott Honor for Henry's Freedom Box, written by Ellen Levine (Scholastic), and a 2007 Caldecott Honor for Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom, with text by Carole Boston Weatherford (Hyperion/Jump at the Sun). The two Sibert Honor books are: What to Do About Alice? by Barbara Kerley, illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham (Scholastic), and Bodies from the Ice: Melting Glaciers and the Recovery of the Past by James M. Deem (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
 
Floyd Cooper won the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for The Blacker the Berry (HarperCollins/Amistad), and the book's author, Joyce Carol Thomas, received a Coretta Scott King Author Honor. The John Steptoe Award for New Talent went to Shadra Strickland, illustrator of Bird, written by Zetta Elliott (Lee & Low). The other two Coretta Scott King Author Honors went to Keeping the Night Watch by Hope Anita Smith, illustrated by E.B. Lewis (Holt); and Becoming Billie Holiday by Carol Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Floyd Cooper (Boyds Mills/Wordsong). The other two King Illustrator Honors (in addition to Nelson, above) went to Sean Qualls for Before John Was a Jazz Giant, written by Carol Boston Weatherford (Holt), and Jerry Pinkney for The Moon Over Star, written by Dianna Hutts Aston (Dial/Penguin).
 
Ashley Bryan wins the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, which is given every two years and "honors an author or illustrator whose books are published in the U.S. and have, over a period of years, made a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children." Bryan's books include Dancing Granny; Beat the Story-Drum, Pum-Pum; and Beautiful Blackbird (all published by S&S). Bryan won the 2008 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for Let It Shine (S&S/Atheneum).--Jennifer M. Brown

 


Attainment: New Books Appearing Next Week

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, February 3:

Dean Koontz's Frankenstein: Prodigal Son
by Dean Koontz, Chuck Dixon, and Brett Booth (Del Rey, $22.95, 9780345506405/0345506405) is a reimagining of the horror classic in which Dr. Frankenstein has survived more than 200 years to become a biotech tycoon.

Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs (Ace, $24.95, 9780441016761/0441016766) is book four of the supernatural Mercy Thompson series.

True Colors by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin's, $25.95, 9780312364106/0312364105) follows a trio of rural Washington sisters from their mother's death in 1979 through adulthood.

 


Book Review

Book Review: A Course Called Ireland

A Course Called Ireland: A Long Walk in Search of a Country, a Pint, and the Next Tee by Tom Coyne (Gotham Books, $26.00 Hardcover, 9781592404247, March 2009)


 
As I write, the January snow is falling softly, and the first round of spring seems distressingly distant. That makes it the perfect time to settle down before the fire with a tumbler of Bushmills and Tom Coyne's delightful, inspiring, hilarious account of his tour of Ireland's links courses.
 
In the spring of 2007, Coyne set out from his home in Philadelphia with the goal of playing all of Ireland's more than 40 links, layouts hard by the ocean and distinctive for their rolling turf, mountainous dunes and ever-present wind. Links golf, in contrast to its tamer inland cousin is, as Coyne describes it, "unapologetic, unpretentious, and wonderfully unrefined." What makes his story remarkable was his decision to cover the entire itinerary on foot, walking up to 20 miles a day with a backpack and partial set of clubs slung over his shoulder. Four months, 963 holes, 196 pubs and 1,118 miles later he completed his odyssey.
 
There's ample golf and even a bit of philosophy in A Course Called Ireland. Coyne offers well-informed impressions of must-play courses like Ballybunion (Old Course) and Old Head, as well as his take on hidden gems, some of which he planned to play and others he serendipitously encountered. Blessedly, he shuns the vice, endemic to books of this genre, of straining our patience with accounts of interminable (to us) rounds or cosmic (to him) insights. He's adept at communicating a sense of Ireland's frequently tragic history and a perspective on the country it's impossible to gain from the comfort of an air-conditioned tour bus. Inspired by his own Irish roots, he possesses a deep appreciation not only for the rich feast of golf Ireland presents but also for its distinctive people and their ruggedly beautiful land.

Coyne tops off the book with a helpful, if admittedly idiosyncratic, selection of "bests"--courses, pubs and bed and breakfasts. Although it's doubtful many people, after reading this book, will have the audacity to attempt to duplicate his trek, he provides the more conventional Irish golf traveler with an indispensable list of suggestions about everything from the attitude to bring ("If you don't go expecting Florida, the place will blow you away.") to his blunt recommendation about what to leave at home ("Golf. Pub. Food. Pub. Bed. Golf. Don't screw it up with your BlackBerry.").

It would be easy to envy Tom Coyne for this trip despite all the painful blisters, speeding drivers and lonely hours he had to endure. But he's such a good-natured traveling companion that by the time he's done we're more likely to offer him a hearty Sláinte for his skill at bringing his unusual experience so vividly to life.--Harvey Freedenberg

Shelf Talker: A delightful, inspiring and hilarious account of one man's determination to play all of Ireland's more than 40 links courses--and to cover the entire enterprise on foot.

 


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