Authors & Illustrators

The Port Washington (NY) Public Library will host an exhibition of kid lit illustrators. Arizona State University wins REFORMA’s 2013 Mora Award. YALSA’s 2013 Teens’ Top Ten list is announced. The Gale Virtual Reference Library adds nearly 200 children’s Encyclopedia Britannica titles. Apply for a ALSC/Candlewick Press Grant. A research fellowship is available at the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi.

More than 100 children’s book authors and illustrators have asked President Obama to ease the country’s mandates for “excessive" standardized testing in our nation’s schools. Such an emphasis has a negative impact on kids’ love of reading and literature, they say.

Rosoff captures this mature adolescent’s view of adults without condescension or judgment.

A Latina teen is the target of bullying in Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina. In the audiobook version, Roxanne Hernandez’s narration is spot-on. Check out the starred review.

All right.  Me stuff off the bat.  I was recently asked to moderate a panel of authors for the Children’s Media Association.  The panel consisted of Ame Dyckman, Joanne Levy, Katherine Longshore, Elisa Ludwig, Lynda Mullaly Hunt, and Sarvenaz Tash.  During the course of the evening it was suggested that we perform a Giant Dance [...]

Neil Gaiman's bestselling urban fantasy novel Neverwhere is still available to students at the library at New Mexico’s Alamogordo High School, despite recent news reports that it is “banned,” the school’s librarian and media specialist Vicki Bertolino tells SLJ. The district is currently accepting written public comments ahead of its planned review of the book’s literary merit.

Word had already gotten out that Disney has a Space Mountain graphic novel in the works, but they filled in a lot more details at New York Comic Con last weekend. The book is due out in May 2014, and the Disney folks were handing out the poster above to promote it. Here’s the blurb [...]

Ann Jonas, award-winning writer and illustrator of numerous children’s books, died September 29 in Rhinebeck, NY. She is perhaps best known for Round Trip, which was named an ALA Notable Book and a New York Times Best Illustrated Book.

The Kids’ Right to Read Project (KRRP) announced that it has urged New Mexico’s Alamogordo Public School district to return Neil Gaiman’s urban fantasy novel Neverwhere to high school English classrooms.