Who Knows Who Could be the Next Big Thing at Your Library? The Maureen Hayes Author/Illustrator Award is now open for applications. This $4,000 award, funded by Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, supports a visit from an author/illustrator who will present to children who might otherwise not have had the opportunity to hear from a nationally known speaker. Last year's winner, Keene Public Library (NH), is bringing in Andrea Davis Pinkney, who will speak about her work and the Civil Rights Movement as part of a larger programming effort focusing on the changing definition of freedom and equality in America. Applications are due on Saturday, November 1, and applicants must be members of the Association for Library Service to Children as well as the American Library Association. You can find more information on the Maureen Hayes Award/ALSC website. Win Jasper Fforde’s Ffun YA Series for Your Library If you read our interview with international best-selling author Jasper Fforde last month, you’ll be itching to enter this giveaway to win the first three books in his "Chronicles of Kazam" series: The Last Dragonslayer, The Song of the Quark Beast, and the latest title, The Eye of Zoltar (Houghton Harcourt). Jennifer Strange, her assistant Tiger Prawns, and 45 barely sane sorcerers work for Kazam Mystical Arts Management in Fforde’s popular series for young adults. The books are set in the Ununited Kingdoms, a modern-day world that mixes cars, TVs, magic, despotic kings, and dragons. Five winners will receive paperback editions of the first two books in the series and The Eye of Zoltar in hardcover for their collections. To enter, send an email with your name, shipping address, and email address. Entries must be received by midnight (PDT) on October 22. Winners will be selected in a random drawing and notified via email. One entry per person, please; prizes will only be shipped to U.S. addresses. Quark! GVRL Adds More STEM Content With ever-growing focus on STEM curriculum in schools, libraries need to have resources to help students complete reports, construct science fair projects, and conduct research. That's why the signing of publishers Taylor & Francis, Mitchell Lane, HCPro and World Scientific to add approximately 750 ebooks to the Gale Virtual Reference Library is especially good news. Gale is adding hundreds of titles for the STEM market, for which occupations are expected to grow 17 percent by 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. GVRL offers user-friendly features such as ReadSpeaker technology (text-to-speech functionality) article translation, online book browse, and the ability to download articles as PDFs for offline access. GVRL allows unlimited concurrent users and downloads.