After winning the Man Booker Award last night, The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson shot up to #10 on Amazon’s sales rankings (it had been at #1,086 before the announcement).

The Daily Beast examines the impact of the award on sales in The Power of the Booker. Although it’s a British prize and is not open to Americans, it sells more books in the U.S. than our own homegrown awards (like the National Book Awards; candidates will be announced at noon today).

Jacobson appeared on the BBC Breakfast show today; link here to see a very happy winner.

Earlier, Jacobson talked about his ambition to write the “funniest book ever” on the BBC’s Review Show, followed by a heated debate over the book’s merits by several reviewers, including Germaine Greer (who does not love it).

Jacobson was longlisted for the Booker in 2006 for Kalooki Nights (S&S) and in 2002 for Who’s Sorry Now (not in print in the U.S.).

The Man Booker prize winner was just announced at a dinner in London. The winner is Howard Jacobson for The Finkler Question, just published today in the U.S.

On All Things Considered last night, David Sax (author of Save the Deli) explained why he thought it should win. It was also reviewed by Library Journal last week.

Jacobson, often called the “British Philip Roth,” was recently quoted in The Jewish Week (“Can Howard Jacobson Play In America?“), saying this comparison no longer makes sense, “Roth has essentially stopped being funny…He is perfectly within his rights to have stopped being funny … but [life’s] never too serious to laugh.”

The Guardian published an excellent profile of Jacobson this summer.

The great news for libraries? It’s in trade paperback.

The Finkler Question Howard Jacobson Retail Price: $15.00 Paperback: 320 pages Publisher: Bloomsbury USA – (2010-10-12) ISBN / EAN: 1608196119 / 9781608196111

Judging a book by its editor is more productive than going by the famously unreliable cover. That’s why we’re pleased that HarperCollins has added a new feature to their Buzz section on EarlyWord, The Editor’s Buzz.

First up is David Highfill, who edited one of our favorites of the season, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter.

We are not the only fans of Crooked Letter; one of our favorite reviewers, Sarah Weinman, says this about it in the L.A. Times last week,

There is no greater joy than when an author whom you’ve long admired produces his or her best work to date…. I’ve sung the praises of Don Winslow for Savages, his literary approximation of a narcotic jolt, and of Emily St. John Mandel for training an astute eye on contemporary anxiety among emerging adults with The Singer’s Gun. Now I’m back in that state of wondrous reading pleasure thanks to a new, years-in-the-making novel by Tom Franklin.

Even if you’ve read Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, you will gain new insight from Highfill. Based on a shared love of that book, we’re willing to follow him to his next obsession, the bio he recently edited about Joan Crawford (clearly, he’s a man of range).

More interviews with editors will be coming up throughout the fall, so keep your eyes on the HarperCollins Editor’s Buzz page.

Possessed: The Life of Joan Crawford Donald Spoto Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: William Morrow – (2010-11-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061856002 / 9780061856006

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Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter Tom Franklin Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: William Morrow – (2010-10-01) ISBN / EAN: 0060594667 / 9780060594664

The winner of the Man Booker Award will be announced in just a few hours. One of the shortlist titles, The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson releases in the US today. On All Things Considered last night, David Sax (author of Save the Deli) explains why he thinks it should win. It was also reviewed by Library Journal last week.

The Finkler Question Howard Jacobson Retail Price: $15.00 Paperback: 320 pages Publisher: Bloomsbury USA – (2010-10-12) ISBN / EAN: 1608196119 / 9781608196111

However, the front runner among UK bookies is the experimental novel, C by Tom McCarthy.

C Tom McCarthy Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2010-09-07) ISBN / EAN: 0307593339 / 9780307593337

Tantor Audio; UNABR; Narrated by Stephen Hoye
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Tied for second place with Room by Emma Donoghue is another title with a room in it, In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut. It will not be available in the U.S. until Nov. 2.

In a Strange Room Damon Galgut Retail Price: $15.00 Paperback: 224 pages Publisher: Europa Editions – (2010-11-02) ISBN / EAN: 1609450116 / 9781609450113

The former Secretary of State’s memoir about her childhood releases today, with a requisite appearance on the The Today Show this morning and a less predictable matchup with Regis and Kelly. She will also appear on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart tomorrow night.

Several media sources refer to the book as a “memoir for young people.” USA Today‘s interview with Rice today accurately states that is being published simultaneously as both an adult and a young adult book.

Most libraries have ordered just one of the two versions and classified it in adult.

Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family Condoleezza Rice Retail Price: $27.00 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Crown Archetype – (2010-10-12) ISBN / EAN: 0307587878 / 9780307587879

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Condoleezza Rice: A Memoir of My Extraordinary, Ordinary Family and Me Condoleezza Rice Retail Price: $16.99 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers – (2010-10-12) ISBN / EAN: 038573879X / 9780385738798

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Random House Audio; CD; Read by the author; 9780307750631 $ 35.00

The author of Cutting for Stone, Dr. Abraham Verghese is interviewed about his day job in the NYT Health section today. He says his two professions are quite similar,

Doctors and writers are both collectors of stories…[the] two careers have the same joy and the same prerequisite: “infinite curiosity about other people.”

As part of the Good Comics for Kids panel presentation at New York Comic-Con this weekend, my fellow bloggers and I added a new highlight to our standard spiel: looking at kids comics publishers. Librarian and former Marketing Manager Scott Robins polled all of us on our picks for both the biggest kids comics publishers, as well as those who deserve more attention from librarians, educators and parents.

The Big Three

The biggest players at this moment in publishing comics for kids were easy to compile. Scholastic’s Graphix made every one’s top of the list. As the first recognizable imprint for children’s comics, roaring out of the gate in 2004 with Bone, and then continuing with acclaimed titles Smile and Amulet, they continue to make their mark. They’ve done adaptations right with The Baby Sitter’s Club as well as delivered clever original work including Knights of the Lunch Table, and all is supported by an indefatigable marketing machine that knows its target audience.

Random House, with their popular trio of Babymouse, Kit Feeny, and Lunch Lady, have shown their muscle by sheer popularity. There was some dissension, however, among the panelists about whether they deserve a spot because they haven’t done much more with the format beyond those three titles.

Toon Books, the early reader comics publisher with the trio of Geisel award and honor winners Stinky, Benny and Penny and the Big No-No!, and Little Mouse Gets Ready, is a model of how to stick to your guns and produce quality comics for young readers.

Worthy of note

Then there are the top three publishers putting out great titles that deserve more of our attention. Top Shelf is the little company that packs a huge punch. While they are known for publishing certain adult comics, their kids comics are charming and their selection is expanding over the next year. They’re already the home of kid (and parent) favorites Owly, Korgi, Johnny Boo, and Spiral-Bound. By 2011 they plan to have eleven to twelve series running for young readers.

Udon gained a spot on the list for being one of the only companies publishing manga expressly for children including Fairy Idol Kanon, Ninja Baseball Kyuma, and The Big Adventures of Majoko. The big two manga companies, Tokyopop and VIZ, are doing their bit for kids manga, but Udon doesn’t rely on media tie-ins or retooling teen work for younger readers: they’re publishing appealing titles that are intended for kids in Japan.

Finally, Kids Can Press consistently produces quality titles for young readers, from the picture-book sized Binky the Space Cat to the how-to Lila and Ecco’s Do-It-Yourself Comics Club and Scott Chantler’s Three Thieves series starting with Tower of Treasure.  Kids Can selects wisely and offers titles for a growing range of readers, and we all look forward to seeing what they pick up next.

The Honorable Mentions

As with any vote, there are always honorable mentions, and in this case there were a lot of publishers we discussed that didn’t quite make the cut for our presentation. Abrams, with their colossal success in comics hybrid Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, is a strong player with newer titles like Hereville and the 3-2-3 Detective Agency. BOOM! Studios has distinguished themselves via Disney comics, and they’re noted for creating tie-in titles that boast strong creators and avoid rehashing of their related media. As one panelist noted, they made their Incredibles comics much better than they had to, telling new stories instead of simply retelling the film. First Second, like TOON, is a go-to press for quality — their books are always well crafted and beautifully presented, and their younger titles like Zita the Spacegirl, The Unsinkable Walker Bean, the Adventures in Cartooning series, and City of Spies are an eclectic and thrilling collection.

I’d be curious to see if our impressions of kids comics publishers match librarians, teachers, and parents lists. Are there publishers you think deserve more attention? What would be your top three?

The buzz you heard over the weekend came from children’s librarians on the listservs, infuriated by Friday’s NYT article, “Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children.” According to the article, parents are pushing their preschoolers and early elementary children into “chapter books.” As a result, new picture books “languish on the shelves,” so publishers are releasing fewer titles.

As I read the article, I was steaming. Maybe there are other reasons for fewer titles;

• Could it be that there was a glut of picture books over the last ten years and this pulling back is a sane course correction?

• Could it be that, because of the economic downturn in the last few years, publishing has downsized?

• Could it be that public libraries have lost funding, certified school librarians across the country are being laid off and that is a large part of  the market for hardcover new picture books?

• Could it be that conservative communities don’t want books with witches or scary tales resulting in fewer fairytales and folktales?

The article only looks at bookstores. Do library circ numbers reflect a fall off in picture books? It seems not; Joann Jonas of the San Diego County Library system says that “picture books carry our circulation. We budget or funds accordingly.” Sno-Isle (WA) PL reports on their collection development staff blog,

Picture books are not dying out in Sno-Isle Libraries. Our picture book collection is allotted 32% of the overall Juvenile Book budget and circulation figures show that 777,489  picture books were checked out in the first nine months of 2010.

But what about parents snatching picture books from tiny hands and forcing “chapter books” on children barely old enough to decode the words?

Those parents overlook what picture books can do for young minds. Think of Jon Scieszka’s perennial favorite The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by A. Wolf (Viking Childrens, 1989) with its sophisticated unreliable narrator. To enjoy and understand this story, kids need to know the classic Three Little Pigs, they need to comprehend the lying language of Alexander T. Wolf, and have the visual literacy to peruse Lane Smith’s collage art for contradicting evidence of the verbal story. These critical thinking skills are strengthened through reading and rereading picture books.

The hundreds of comments on the listservs lay out salient points for librarians confronted with parents who think their kids are “too old” for picture books. I have tried to distill them below;

• The text of picture books is often written at a higher reading level. Children need to hear this higher vocabulary to acquire language before they can read it.

• The pictures give children practice in visual literacy. Excellent picture books are ones that you can go back to again and again, discovering something new every time.

• Early series chapter books are great for reading practice but their vocabulary and sentence structure are simplistic and their plots formulaic.

• Picture books provide self recognition; think of the work of Ezra Jack Keats, Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems, and Ella Sarah Gets Dressed by Margaret-Chodos-Irvine

• Picture books help negotiate emotional milestones, think Robie Harris’s Mail Harry to the Moon.

• Picture books for older children give a window into history, cultures and communities  other than our own with sophisticated artistic representation. Let’s look at just one artist, Gregory Christie, Brothers in Hope: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan, Only Passing Through: The Story if Sojourner Truth, and the joyful, exuberant, juicy language-filled Yesterday I had the Blues.

• Rhythm, rhyme, and repetition of early  picture books support the learning of reading skills like phonemic awareness, phonics, comprehension and fluency.

• Reading picture books does not exclude reading aloud fabulous chapter books like My Father’s Dragon and Ramona the Brave.

My charge to readers — Copy the NYT article and post it along with my rebuttal. Pull the best of your picture book collection for display and label with cards or standees or bookmarks what skills children are gaining by sharing these books with their parents, caregivers and teachers. Do the same on your website or blog. School librarians, rally around the teachers who are using picture books in the classrooms. Continue to buy these books for your collection; if we don’t support these artists and writers, there may come a time when the pickings are slim.

PS. Check out this list of fabulous picture books to read aloud, selected by Bank Street College of Education’s School for Children 1st through 4th graders and almost 2,000 students from our cooperating schools

The national newspapers pulled out their big guns to offer assessments of Mario Vargas Llosa, the winner of the Noble Prize in literature. For those who prefer speed, The Daily Beast Books Editor offers a 60-Second Guide to the Nobel Lit Winner.

L.A. Times, David L. Ulin, Critic’s Notebook: Mario Vargas Llosa’s work and life push boundaries

New York Times, Michiko Kakutani,  A Storyteller Enthralled by the Power of Art

Washington Post, Marie Arana, The power of Mario Vargas Llosa’s words led the political writer to Nobel Prize

Vargas Llosa’s next book, El Sueno del Celta (Celtic Dream), about Roger Casement, one of the leaders of  Ireland’s Easter Rising revolt, will be published by Alfaguara on November 3. FSG is scheduled to release the English translation in 2012, but that date may be moved up.

Sueno del Celta / Celtic Dream (Spanish Edition) Mario Vargas Llosa Retail Price: $19.99 Paperback: 250 pages Publisher: Alfaguara – (2010-11-03) ISBN / EAN: 1616052465 / 9781616052461

Click here to download a sales sheet with ISBN’s for the complete Vargas Llosa Spanish-language backlist. The top-selling titles in the U.S. are Travesuras de la niña mala (The Bad Girl) and Fiesta del Chivo (Feast of the Goat).

Which book deserves to win the Man Booker prize, to be announced tomorrow? The Wall Street Journal‘s Paul Levy looks at the list of contenders and deems some of the judge’s decisions “downright perverse;” like eliminating two novels that were on the longlist, the “riveting” The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Penguin 4/27/10) and the “thrillingly imaginative” The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (Random House, 6/29/10).

Despite finding Tom McCarthy’s C (Knopf, 9/7/10) the “most daring work on the shortlist,” Levy comes down on the side of Peter Carey’s Parrot and Olivier in America (Knopf, 4/20/10).

He considers one of the front runners, currently the best selling of the shortlist titles in the U.S., Emma Donoghue’s Room, (Little, Brown, 9/13/10) “unworthy” to even be on the list.

How can you not want a book that caused its Wall Street Journal reviewer to,

…laugh so hard I had to leave the room. My daughter was trying to study, and I could see she was getting alarmed. … You hear people say things like “I laughed so hard I cried” and “I nearly fell out of my chair,” but I had gone well beyond the crying stage by the time my metabolism began to return to equilibrium. And then I realized that I hadn’t laughed so hard in 35 years, since I was a teenager, reading National Lampoon.

The book, about the National Lampoon, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, rose to #75 on Amazon sales rankings after the review appeared. It was also featured two weeks ago on NPRs All Things Considered. It was not reviewed prepub and was ordered by less than half the libraries we checked.

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Writers and Artists Who Made the National Lampoon Insanely Great Rick Meyerowitz Retail Price: $40.00 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Abrams – (2010-09-01) ISBN / EAN: 0810988488 / 9780810988484

This might sound like an unlikely pairing; Jon Stewart will be hosting Condoleezza Rice on The Daily Show this week. However, the two bonded earlier this year when Stewart moderated the author breakfast at BEA, and mock-threatened Rice after she finished a moving talk, “Don’t make me like you!”

Below are the other author appearances scheduled on Comedy Central this week. We’re looking forward to Bill Bryson on The Colbert Report.

Monday

The Colbert Report

Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future Robert B. Reich Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 192 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2010-09-21) ISBN / EAN: 0307592812 / 9780307592811

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Tuesday

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy Retail Price: $15.00 Paperback: 224 pages Publisher: Threshold Editions – (2010-09-14) ISBN / EAN: 1451607342 / 9781451607345

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Wednesday

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Condoleezza Rice: A Memoir of My Extraordinary, Ordinary Family and Me Condoleezza Rice Retail Price: $16.99 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers – (2010-10-12) ISBN / EAN: 038573879X / 9780385738798

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Thursday

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Half Empty David Rakoff Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2010-09-21) ISBN / EAN: 0385525249 / 9780385525244

The Colbert Report

At Home: A Short History of Private Life Bill Bryson Retail Price: $28.95 Hardcover: 512 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2010-10-05) ISBN / EAN: 0767919386 / 9780767919388

The long-time rumor that there is another book in the Millennium series was confirmed yesterday on CBS Sunday Morning.  Joakim Larsson, told the show that his brother, Stieg, had sent him an email just before he died, saying that it was nearly finished. Joakim also said that it’s not the fourth book, but the fifth in the planned ten-book series. The writer skipped ahead because “he thought it was more fun to write.” The Larssons said, however, that even if the book surfaces (it’s thought to be in the hands of Larsson’s partner, Eva Gabrielsson, who refuses to work with them), they won’t publish it.

As a result of the interview, all three books rose on Amazon sales rankings, with the latest, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, going to #2.

How do you appeal to kids? John Muth tells Scott Simon on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday that you don’t talk down to them; “children are as completely capable of intuiting wisdom as adults are.”

The third book in his series about Stillwater, the Zen Buddhist panda, Zen Ghosts, came out last month. All the books in the series rose on Amazon sales rankings as a result of the NPR feature.

In addition to the interview, you can hear Scott Simon read one of Stillwater’s stories on the NPR site.

Zen Ghosts Jon J. Muth Retail Price: $17.99 Hardcover: 40 pages Publisher: Scholastic Press – (2010-09-01) ISBN / EAN: 043963430X / 9780439634304

To read Emma Donoghue’s Room is to want to talk about it. Entertainment Weekly‘s “Shelf Life” blog has initiated a Room discussion group that’s bringing in some fascinating comments; we won’t reveal them here because most of them contain spoilers (don’t link if you plan to read it; on the other hand, the spoilers serve as a great cheat sheet for those who don’t want to be left out of the discussions).

One comment we can reveal; “the audio recording is amazing, and probably works even better than print.”

The book, of course, is shortlisted for the Booker. The winner will be announced on Monday.

Room: A Novel Emma Donoghue Retail Price: $29.98 Audio CD: 0 pages Publisher: Hachette Audio – (2010-09-13) ISBN / EAN: 1607886278 / 9781607886273