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By Sue Corbett — Publishers Weekly, 11/5/2009 12:15:00 PM Alex Rider’s eighth adventure, Crocodile Tears, hits stores November 17 and Penguin is partnering with MAKE magazine to challenge young inventors to come up with a gadget cool enough for the teen spy’s arsenal. After all, author Anthony Horowitz says that when he needs a new tool to get his hero out of peril, he goes to his own kids for inspiration. “I look around their bedrooms to see what kind of electronics and such they have littering the place,” said Horowitz, father of Nicholas, 20, and Cassian, 18. The challenge is to design a gadgetRead More →

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Teenreads.com conducted a survey of teen readers and the results, along with an analysis, are available in this article from Publisher’s Weekly.  Looking at what teens read, what they buy, influences and conflicts for time and dollars, there are some interesting results and ideas for educators and booksellers.  Check it out!Read More →

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Back in August the Library of Congress and the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance announced that they had teamed up to create The Exquisite Corpse Adventure, a multi-episode online story.  It was launched this past weekend at the well-attended National Book Festival in Washington DC.  The first chapter is now available on the Library of Congress website. Here’s what the Library of Congress’ site says about the story: Ever heard of an Exquisite Corpse? It’s not what you might think. An Exquisite Corpse is an old game in which people write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold it over to conceal partRead More →

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From Publisher’s Weekly:  Five backlist novels and two new titles are featured in Point of View, a fall marketing initiative from Penguin Young Readers Group. The campaign, which focuses on literary books with strong, somewhat challenging themes, entails consumer and trade components and aims to connect readers who embraced such novels as Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher and Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson to new books with a similar appeal. Joy Peskin, executive editor at Viking, who edited Wintergirls and After, views the campaign as “a great opportunity to give attention to important books by our newer authors, by tying them into more establishedRead More →

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“Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away!” – Oh, The Places You’ll Go! Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go! 2010 College Scholarship Program for high school seniors. Essay Question:  Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go! delivers an important message about the chances and the troubles that life presents.  Thinking about the book, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!, what kinds of opportunities and challenges do you think your education will present in the future? 1st Place Winner will receive $5,000 to put towards a college of their choice. Applicants must be 12th grade high school students graduatingRead More →

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What has Jon Scieszka, M.T. Anderson, Natalie Babbitt, Calef Brown, Susan Cooper, Kate DiCamillo, Timothy Basil Ering, Nikki Grimes, Shannon Hale, Daniel Handler, Steven Kellogg, Gregory Maguire, Megan McDonald, Patricia and Fredrick McKissack, Linda Sue Park, Katherine Paterson, James Ransome and Chris Van Dusen all working together? The Library of Congress and the National Children’s Book and Literary Alliance’s ongoing serial story project, The Exquisite Corpse Adventure.  The first installment, written by Scieszka, will be unveiled at the ninth annual National Book Festival on Sept. 26, 2009 in Washington, D.C. Over the course of the next year, until the 2010 Festival, chapters by the otherRead More →

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Just for teens who read and are into making videos:  Listening Library is sponsoring The Fantasy Road Trip Contest for teens ages 13-18.  To enter, submit a short film based on an imaginary road trip with a character from a favorite audiobook.  Three winners will each receive an 8GB iPod Touch and a signed audiobook set. Entries accepted until August 17, 2009.Read More →

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Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing hopes to attract more teens to its books through the creation of a new Pulse It social networking site. The site is aimed at 14- to 18-year-olds and will let teens do things they can do on such places as Facebook—like create personal profiles and befriend other members—as well as read and react to S&S titles. S&S will make two books per month available to be read online for free and members can choose one of those titles and have 60 days to finish the book. Message boards will let readers discuss the book and rank it. The site willRead More →

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From the latest issue of School Library Journal,Shonda Brisco highlights some cool online and digital resources.  Here are a couple: Animoto– create videos with sound on this site to quickly and easily mix book-cover images, photos, text and music to create 30-second online video book talks, book trailers, sneak peeks, etc.  There’s lots of potential here for both novice and tech-savvy students & educators. One More Story – an interactive instructional program that allows children to select, listen to, read along with, or read independently, over 50 award-winning childrens’ picture books.Read More →