EarlyWord is the home of GalleyChat, monthly online discussions where library staff share excitement about upcoming books. More information here.
Summaries of chats and announcements are posted to the right. Use them to add to your own TBR piles and for collection development.
Links on the far right of the site offer information useful to readers advisors.
Hope to see you during our next chat,
GalleyChatters
The Country Cooking of Ireland by Colman Andrews was named the Cookbook of the Year at the James Beard Foundation ceremony on Sunday night. Celebrity chef and restauranteur, Thomas Keller, won for General Cooking with Ad Hoc at Home (Artisan), which also won an IACP Award last week. The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Pastry Arts (Abrams), also won awards from both groups.
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In the lead review in Sunday’s NYT BR, Christopher Buckley calls The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman, “…so good I had to read it twice simply to figure out how he pulled it off,” and says he almost pities Rachman, “…because a debut of this order sets the bar so high.”
The novel is the story of a declining newspaper, told through the eyes of various members of its staff. Louis Bayard, in the The Washington Post, says it “…is about what happens when professionals realize that their craft no longer has meaning in the world’s eyes…and that the only people who really understand them are on the same foundering ship, and that, come to think of it, they really loved that damn ship for all it made their lives hell.”
The attention brought the book to #4 on Amazon sales rankings yesterday, where it remains today. It was also featured as an Amazon “Best Book of the Month.”
The book generated a lot of excitement in the fall of 2008, when seven publishers were bidding for the rights to publish it. Dial’s Susan Kamil won, paying somewhere between $250,000 and $500,000, according to The New York Observer. Kamil was also the editor of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
Holds are building on light ordering by libraries, with several showing ratios of over ten holds per copy.
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Adobe EPUB eBook available from OverDrive.
After weeks of waiting for the results to be e-mailed and phoned in, I am thrilled to announce that Robot Zot! by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by David Shannon, has won the 2010 Irma Simonton Black and James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature.
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Three books received honors:
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The Black Award will be presented on Thursday, May 13th at 8:30 am at the Bank Street College of Education. NY. The keynote speaker will be Carmen Deedy, who won a Black Honor in 2007 for Martina The Beautiful Cockroach, Peachtree Press.
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Librarians who want to attend may RSVP by email to Linda Reing or by phone, 212.961.3332.
Irma Simonton Black was a writer and editor of children’s books and a founding member (in the 1930s) of the Bank Street Writers Laboratory, which included such stars of children’s literature as Margaret Wise Brown and Maurice Sendak.
The Black Award (for short), which commemorates Irma’s achievements, has been presented annually since 1973 by Bank Street College of Education. (The Award was presented in Irma’s name only until 1992, when James Black’s name was added in recognition of his ardent support of the Award.) The Award goes to an outstanding book for young children — a book in which text and illustrations are inseparable, each enhancing and enlarging on the other to produce a singular whole.
The Award is unusual in that children are the final judges of the winning book. The process is as follows:
Your fearless, tireless librarian/ friend, Lisa Von Drasek reads all of the picture books published in the year. We develop a short list of about 75 titles that meet our criteria of what is an excellent children’s picture book (my personal criteria is a little more basic; can I stand reading aloud this title over and over and over again? Will I hang my head in shame if the kids pick it as best of the year?)
Then a group of librarians and educators choose approximately twenty to twenty-five books that they consider the best candidates for the Award. These books are then sent (in four sets) to the four 8-9’s and 9-10’s classrooms at the Bank Street School for Children. Over the course of five weeks the children read and discuss all of the books before selecting four finalists. These four–called the Black Honor Books–are placed in classrooms or libraries in schools, in New York and elsewhere.
Over 2,000 children voted this year.
For collection development librarians who are looking for a list of great read aloud, The Black winners are surefire hits. More information and a list of previous winners is available at the Bank Street College Children’s Library site.
For their upcoming fall title, Guys Read: Funny Business, the editor John Scieszka and fellow contributors tell a joke about telling jokes.
I’ve just read the incomplete galley. It’s not only laugh-aloud funny, it’s high interest reading for the guys and girls. It has the usual suspects; gross, slimy, disgusting interspersed with truly witty fun. Don’t miss it!
| Guys Read: Funny Business |
| Jon Scieszka, Mac Barnett, Adam Rex, David Yoo, Paul Feig, Kate Dicamillo, Christopher Paul Curtis, Eoin Colfer, Jack Gantos |
| Retail Price: | $6.99 |
| Paperback: | 208 pages |
| Publisher: | Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins – (2010-10-01) |
| ISBN / EAN: | 0061963739 / 9780061963735 |
Among the titles that have been on the NYT kids best seller lists for weeks and weeks (Gallop! is STILL on after 112 weeks) are some new titles that I’m happy to see break on to the lists.
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Todd Parr’s new book debuts on the Picture Books list this week. He’s a genius when speaking to the young child. His bright colors and direct language can be jarring to grown-ups but trust me, kids just want to grab on and not let go. Best Earth Day advice – put your underwear in the freezer to cool off instead of air conditioning.
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Macmillan Audio; UNABR; 9781427208828; $29.99
On the Chapter Books list for the second week, now at #6, is the second in the Nick McIver Time Adventure series. I am a sucker for time/travel tales. This one is a big fat novel for the kids who have graduated from Jack and Annie and the kids waiting for this week’s release of the Red Pyramid.
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Brilliance Audio; UNABR
7 CD’s; 9781441842602; $71.97
MP3-CD; 97814418426-6 $39.97
OverDrive WMA Audiobook
On the Chapter Books list at #8 after three weeks, this is my number one pick for YA this spring. Great deep read that reflects the very real lives of teens. Got kids who are obsessed by Glee? This is for them.
The week begins with a book that is already rising on Amazon, after a review in the NYT BR and an NPR feature on Weekend Edition Saturday.
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Oprah features Laura Bush on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Stewart sits down with another former First Lady.
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