For the first time, Americans won both the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals, the UK’s top children’s book prizes. Ruta Sepetys won the Carnegie Medal for Salt to the Sea (Penguin Children’s/Puffin), and Lane Smith won the Kate Greenaway Medal category with picture book There is a Tribe of Kids (Roaring Brook Press/Two Hoots). In accepting the award, Sepetys said: “As a writer, I am drawn to underrepresented stories and history in hiding. I spend a lot of time pondering the question – why do some parts of history penetrate our collective consciousness while others remain hidden? When I began work on the […]
Awards
People, Etc.
Agency News Writers House is closing its London office, and managing director of Writers House UK Angharad Kowal has left the company as a consequence. Peggy Boulos Smith joined Writers House in New York as UK rights director, representing adult clients, and director of children’s subsidiary rights Cecilia de la Campa is handling the UK children’s business. Smith was previously global rights director at the Jane Rotrosen Agency. Meredith Miller has joined United Talent Agency as an agent and will direct their foreign rights department. Previously, she was associate director of foreign rights at Trident Media Group, where she worked for 6 […]
People, Etc.
Tracy K. Smith was named Poet Laureate for 2017-2018, starting her role in September. Smith is the author three collections, including Life on Mars, which won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. The first laureate appointed by new Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, Smith is interested in using the position to reach a broad audience. Hayden said: “The fact that Tracy wants to go into rural areas and talk about poetry is such a great idea and something that really excited me because I think that’s the kind of thing we should be doing as an institution.” Smith succeeds Juan Felipe Herrera. […]
July Library Reads
Ruth Ware’s novel The Lying Game tops July’s Library Reads list. Also on the list is Final Girls, by Riley Sager, excerpted in our July Buzz Books Monthly, available for download on Amazon, iBooks, and NetGalley. The rest of the list features: Watch Me Disappear, by Janelle Brown The Marriage Pact, by Michelle Richmond Down A Dark Road, by Linda Castillo When The English Fall, by David Williams The Almost Sisters, by Joshilyn Jackson The Wildling Sisters, by Eve Chase Wired, by Julie Garwood Hello, Sunshine!, by Laura Dave
A Better Guess for This Month’s Oprah Pick?
Further to last week’s quick report on the new Oprah’s Book Club pick due at the end of June, the findable metadata on the ISBN looks to be gibberish, so we don’t have a lot of faith in the various listings that indicate a book for young readers or any particular author (since, for example, this BN.com listing connects it to a book by Mother Theresa and Father Brian Kolodiejchuk). A bookselling friend indicates that one leading guess is Imbolo Mbue‘s debut novel BEHOLD THE DREAMERS, awarded the PEN/Faulkner Prize in April. Earlier this spring Random House was listing the trade paperback […]
Unusual Young Reader’s Oprah Pick Possible for Later In June
Ingram sent a Street Smart Alert telling accounts that an untitled book from Random House Trade Paperbacks publishing June 26 will be the next Oprah’s Book Club selection, Early Word reports. From the findable metadata, the new pick looks unusual: The 416-page paperback, a work of fiction, lists an age range of 8 – 12 years old and a grade level of 3 – 7. Cached versions of since-purged pages from Random House’s own international/export listings for the matching ISBN [9780525509714] had listed the author as veteran writer Laurie Rozakis. But a Rizzoli bookstore listing for the same ISBN, which seems less reliable […]