Industry News

Acclaimed children’s book creator Marc Simont, who illustrated nearly 100 children’s books, died on Saturday, July 13. He was 97. His many honors include a Caldecott Medal for the art in Janice May Udry’s A Tree is Nice, and Caldecott Honors for illustrating Ruth Krauss's The Happy Day, and his own The Stray Dog.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan hosted the first Let’s Read! Let’s Move! event of 2013 on Wednesday, July 10, at the U.S. Department of Education headquarters in Washington, D.C. Along with Rep. John Kline of Minnesota; Sam Kass, executive director of Let’s Move!; and Michelle Kwan, member of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition and Olympic figure skater, the celebrity guests read to a group of students. Kwan then led the children in a session of fun, physical activities.

The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN) of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has announced the finalists for the 2013 Amelia Elizabeth Walden Book Award for Young Adult Fiction. No surprises here - just some tough decisions to make. Former winners include Lauren Myracle (Shine, Amulet), Francisco X. Stork (The Last Summer of the Death Warriors, Scholastic) and Kristin Cashore (Fire, Penguin).

For the growing numbers of us searching for online courses, as well as online educational resources, the portals are quickly growing in both number and size. Finding the best or most relevant content may be a challenge.  Sites like Kayak take care of of the would-be traveler with a cross-portal search, but what’s the would-be [...]

Can you imagine what the covers of classic literary works written by men might look like if those books had been reclassified as “by and for women”? How would the designs be different—and how would that impact how we perceive those books? These are the questions YA author Maureen Johnson posed to her fans in “Coverflip,” a challenge to gendered book covers that limit their audiences.

For many young adult literature aficionados, the highlight of the American Library Association’s annual summer conference is the ticketed reception for the Printz Awards. A central theme emerged at this year's celebration: the power of storytelling and its ability to connect kids to larger truths about the world.

"The key idea is actually a media literacy one related to representation: no one in real life actually looks like an anime or manga character."

The book traces the advent of cross-country train travel, focusing on an early trip from Omaha to Sacramento.

Barbara Robinson, author of the now-classic children's novel The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (Harper, 1972), died on July 9, 2013. She was 85. The book was named an ALA Notable Children's book and received the Georgia Children’s Book Award, the Indiana's Young Hoosier Book Award, and Minnesota's Maud Hart Lovelace Book Award.