News & Features

Harlequin has announced the signing of New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Julie Kagawa to a major multibook deal for a new series (her third for Harlequin Teen), which will feature mythical creatures in a contemporary setting. Natashya Wilson, Harlequin Teen's executive editor, secured world rights and will edit the series. Laurie McLean, a senior agent at Larsen Pomada Literary Agents, brokered the deal.

Since 1976, every U.S. president has designated February as Black History Month. From slavery to civil rights, and science to music, the following books for young readers honor the accomplishments of African Americans.

A new app for the iPad and Android devices uses a highly visual format to provide a different search experience for the tablet user. More than just a pretty interface, Izik—which debuted last month as the top reference app in iTunes—is based on Blekko, the search engine that boasts higher quality results based on human curation.

It is WAY too late in the day for me to be only starting a Fusenews post now.  All right, guys. Looks like we’re gonna have to do today double quick time.  Sorry, but I’ve a ticking time bomb in the other room (sometimes also known as “my daughter”) and I gotsta gets to bed [...]

These Peanut Gallery posts are where we highlight responses to the latest BoB activity. And so here are some celebrating the announcement of the 2013 Contenders and the Brackets. If we missed yours, let us know in the comments and we’ll add them in here.

First of all,  if you didn’t see it, be sure to check out SLJ’s “Our Battle of the Kids’ Books Back!.” On the day ALA’s Youth Media Award’s were announced The LibrarYAn, in a post, had this to say:

This morning the brackets for the SLJ Battle of the Kids’ Books were revealed.  And something tells me that yesterday’s Youth Media Awards announcements figured into these match-ups.

(A brief interjection from the Battle Commander:  Ha and no!  We did this way back in early December when the contenders list went to SLJ. And none of us, not even Newbery Committee Member Roxanne, is prescient enough to have known how the awards would play out.)

 In “So Much for a Career in Divinations” Jen reflects on previous battles and gears up for this year’s.  CBC pinned us on Pinterest.   Random Musings of a Bibliophile has a few thoughts about this year’s list of contenders. And there were loads of tweets. (FYI: the hashtag is #sljbob.) Here are a few of them: NewsCLN SLJ Battle of the Books brackets are UP! I’m reading, I’m reading … rebeccazdunn SLJ‘s Battle of the Kids’ Books 2013 Brackets Revealed! The match-ups this …

» Continue Reading: The First Peanut Gallery for the 2013 Battle

Please forgive this little journey about curation and life outside of school. I’ve been doing some thinking about curation and hair. Here’s my sad story and my proposed solution. I hadn’t had a hot shower for a week after Hurricane Sandy.  I was beat.  And my hair was full of knots.  When I got to [...]

As School Library Journal caught up with Newbery and Caldecott Medalists Katherine Applegate and Jon Klassen this week, a common theme emerged in our talks. In what surely comes as no surprise to SLJ's readers, both authors credited the library community for helping to champion their books to a wide circle of readers.

At ALA Midwinter, author Tom Angleberger dresses as a character from his "Origami Yoda" series; authors Sarah Skilton and Cat Winters pose at the Abrams booth.