Award News!

We were excited to hear award news earlier this week. Great work to everyone involved!

The Ocean Story by John Seven, illustrated by Jana Christy, has won the 2012 Frances and Wesley Bock Book Award for Children's Literature, sponsored by the Neumann University Library and the Neumann Institute for Franciscan Studies. The award recognizes only one children’s book each year which demonstrates ethical values and moral attitude and action, appeals to a child’s sense of wonder and curiosity, and instills a compassion for all creation. The Ocean Story joins noted past winners which includes Zen Ties by Jon Muth.

The 2013 Teachers Choice Awards for Children’s Books has named the My Little Planet series by Charles Ghigna, illustrated by Ag Jatkowska, among the best resources for the classroom. The award, sponsored by Learning magazine, is exclusively judged by teachers in the classroom. Entries are evaluated on quality, instructional value, ease of use, and innovation.

Awards!

We received great news last week that some of our books had won Moonbeam awards!


In the Picture Book-Preschool category, Crabby Pants by our very own Julie Gassman won a Gold! Roger the cat shouldn't be so crabby now that he has that gold medal.


In the Juvenile Fiction-Early Reader /1st Chapter Books category, Kylie Jean Blueberry Queen by Marci Peschke won a Gold! I think Miss Kylie Jean would be mighty pleased.

And last, but certainly not least, in the Pre-Teen Fiction-Historical/Cultural category, A Time For War, from our Bloodlines series, won a Silver. This set is amazing!

Congrats to all of the winners!

Moonbeam Children's Book Awards

We are pleased to announce that three of our titles have won the 2010 Moonbeam Children's Book Awards. This award celebrates youthful curiosity, discovery and learning through books and reading.

Early Childhood Honors

Over the past year, Capstone Publishing has began marketing into the early childhood market. Making books for the toddler and preschool crowd has been incredibly interesting and incredibly fun.

Here at fiction, we are particularly proud of two new series, our Hello Genius board books and Little Boost picture books. This week our efforts were recognized; two of our titles were selected as winners of the 2010 Creative Child Awards Program, sponsored by Creative Child magazine. Pony Brushes His Teeth from the Hello Genius series won the Seal of Excellence Award, while Crabby Pants from the Little Boost series won a Preferred Choice Award.

Title Wave

The Diagram Prize is a literary award handed out in Great Britain each year for the most bizarro book title. A few days ago, this year’s winner was announced: Crocheting Adventures With Hyperbolic Planes. The runner-up is What Kind of Bean Is This Chihuahua? (Bean is actually the name of the canine hero.) A stipulation for the award is that the titles be genuine and pertinent to the actual content of the book.

Ask any author or editor; they will tell you that the title is the hardest part of the book to create. Novels are easy. But a tiny little title? Think what those few words have to accomplish:

Sum up the theme, plot, and tone of the book
Be original
Be memorable
Make a reader pick up the book
Roll smoothly off the tongue (so readers and reviewers can easily recommend the book to their listeners)
And (a book designer will add) be short enough to fit on the book cover
And (young boys will add) not be embarrassing to be seen with

Titles have to accomplish so much in such a short space and time. It’s a daunting feat. No wonder authors quail and editors weep.

Most readers have their favorite titles. A few of mine are Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close as well as his Everything Is Illuminated. Either he’s a genius at coming up with titles or his editor is. And I love the bewitching, bookish, and mouth-watering titles for the Flavia de Luce mysteries: The Sweetness At the Bottom of the Pie and the new The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag (inspired by an 18th-Century English poem).

Titles are in the air at the moment here in the Stone Arch offices because we are working on two future seasons, Spring and Fall 2011. We need titles to accompany those terrific manuscripts that will inspire our cover illustrators. Many authors supply their own. And many of them are perfect. But there are always those titles that need a little help, or might sound too similar to another title and therefore need to be re-imagined.

Someone, somewhere is going to title a new children’s series with just the numbers. Can’t you see it? They’ll give the series a name, like, ZOMBIE PIE MAKERS and then call the first book, Number 1 and so on. And then we’ll all wish we’d thought of that.

Happy New Year!

2008 was a big year for us at Stone Arch Books.

• We published 102 books (and that doesn't include paperbacks, reprints, audio, or interactive).
• We won a bunch of awards: American Graphic Design Awards for The Adventures of Sam X, our Spring 2008 catalog, our Fall 2007 catalog, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; the Golden Duck Award; and Ropes of Revolution won both the Moonbeam Award and the Teacher's Choice Award.
• As part of a restructuring at Capstone Publishers, we assumed responsibility for Picture Window Books' fiction, and now we're publishing a more comprehensive selection of fiction, expanding our age range to preK through grade 9.
• We said goodbye to Kay, one of our designers, and Maryellen (who is now working as the classroom project manager for Heinemann Raintree/Capstone Publishers).
• We welcomed two new editors (Julie and Christianne), an art director (Bob), two designers (Emily and Hilary), and an intern (Sean, who has just officially become an associate editor).
• We solved approximately 250 New York Times crossword puzzles during lunch.
• Two babies were born (Sam, to Beth, and Isla, to Julie).
• We got a bunch of great reviews.
• We moved from our cramped cubicles in "the garage" to more spacious offices downstairs. Our new location is a work in progress—and some of us are still not in our permanent desks—but we've got a lot more room!
• We traveled all over the US—to ALA, SCBWI, Comic-Con, TLA, and helped host PLA here in Minneapolis (where we introduced Jake Maddox to a bunch of happy librarians).
• We had tons of fun!

How can we possibly top 2008? It's going to be tough, but we're pretty sure we can do it. For starters, we've got 106 new books headed to libraries now for our Spring 2009 season. We'll have another 98 the season after that (making our 2009 total 204!). January will mark the launch of our new DC Super Heroes set, featuring Batman and Superman. We've been working on these books for years now, and we're so excited for them to finally be in the hands of readers! But the fun won't end in January—we'll have more new series, great new authors and illustrators, and fantastic new books all year long.

The Stone Arch Books blog is evolving in 2009 too. We want to give you more—more insight, more behind-the-scenes, more commentary. We'll feature more staff members, authors, and illustrators. We'll unveil more new features. And we want to hear from you—please use the comments sections to tell us what you want, what you think, how we can better serve you (as teachers, librarians, parents, readers).

Our resolution for 2009: Innovate more. We know that 2009 is going to bring challenges in every industry, including ours. We've always considered ourselves innovative, but with the new economic atmosphere, we're going to have to be even more creative. We'll have to find new ways to do things. We'll have to do our work differently. It'll be exciting to see what comes out of it.

What's your resolution for 2009? What challenge are you excited to tackle? (Let us know by leaving a comment!)

Happy New Year from all of us here at Stone Arch Books. 2009 may not be easy, but we're pretty sure it's going to be good.