Hello Genius!

Say hello to Hello Genius, our new line of board books for toddlers.



Featuring perfect topics for kids 0-4 (tooth-brushing, toilet learning, mealtime manners, and bathtime), these four new books were under many Stone Arch staffers' Christmas trees this past holiday.

As the parent of a 17-month-old boy, I know half of what I look for in a book for my son is something that appeals to me, too. After all, if it's a favorite, I might be reading it fifteen times in a row. These books are great for that. The text is fun, the illustrations are adorable, the colors are exciting—you're not going to be bored while you're reading these books to your child, and you won't roll your eyes internally when they look at you with those puppy-dog eyes and beg for another read. Really.

Here are a couple of our toddlers (Raini and Sofia) enjoying the Hello Genius books.

The New Yorker's chance at greatness

I got a sweet letter today from an almost-twelve-year-old girl--I'll call her Sally. Sally is a writer. She's working on a couple of stories right now--one of them is 65 notebook pages long, and the other is 18 typed pages. Her mom knows my mom, so my mom (as all relatives of people who work in publishing do) passed along my contact information. (Note to moms: I don't mind when it's a kid. Grown-ups, on the other hand, can be a little grumpy.)

Sally reminds me so much of myself as a kid. I was just telling my husband about the short story I submitted to the New Yorker when I was twelve. I don't remember if I included a cover letter, but every day for at least a few weeks, I checked the mail, expecting my acceptance letter and a huge check.

Though the story has been lost in the sands of time, I remember that it involved a tortured artist who painted mysterious dark paintings and made intricate pottery. When the artist finally walked into the ocean one day (I KNOW! So ridiculous) her husband found shards of pottery on the beach, each glazed with the colors of the sunset. (I hope it doesn't ruin your suspense when I ask if you can BELIEVE the New Yorker didn't want to publish this masterpiece!)

One day, while I was babysitting, my mom called to tell me I had an envelope in the mail with the New Yorker's logo on it. Honestly, I could barely make it through the rest of my babysitting job. I was daydreaming exactly how I'd tell my parents and teachers about my first published story. As soon as I got home, I ran to my room with the envelope. Inside: the first page of my story. A scrap of paper thanking me for my submission. And a post-it: "Enclose a SASE."

I'm not saying that Sally's stories are nearly as ridiculous, pretentious, and overwrought as that story was. I haven't read them yet, but I bet they're great. And I love telling kids about how publishing works and encouraging them to keep reading and writing. Because you know what I took away from my first rejection? They didn't treat me like a kid. They didn't ignore me or talk down to me. (And they sent me a letter even though I didn't know about self-addressed stamped envelopes.)

More soon--
Beth

What's scary?

Michael touched on scariness with his post last week, and I was thinking about it again yesterday while a bunch of us were at Wild Rumpus (a great Minneapolis children's bookstore). They have a special spooky cottage toward the back of the store, where all of the scary books are kept--I spotted the Twilight books, There's a Monster at the End of This Book, and The Graveyard Book, among many others. If you look down while you're standing in the spooky cottage, you can see the store rats through a special clear floorboard. It's a really cool place--perfect for raising some goosebumps while you look for that great scary book.

While my colleagues and I were perusing the shelves, I noticed a little girl standing with us--I think she was probably about four. She seemed perfectly comfortable with the books themselves, but when she looked up and realized that she was surrounded by grown-ups--none of whom were her mother--she started to cry. I helped her find her mom and little brother, and she seemed to be relatively untraumatized, but it got me thinking--for a little kid, so many different things can be scary, and not all of them are the ones we grown-ups expect them to be. Some things--like scary books--aren't scary at all; they're exciting. But looking up and seeing a bunch of strange grown-ups (all of whom, I might add, are on the bookish-nerdy-quiet end of the spectrum)? Nightmare.

Scare Me! . . . just a little

I visited a library in Southeast Minneapolis yesterday, and read from some of my books to a mixed crowd of mostly 1st through 3rd graders. Before I picked up the book titled “Cave of the Bookworms” from the Library of Doom series, I asked if anyone in the audience liked scary stories. Everyone raised a hand. So I started reading the creepy story that begins and ends with a young boy dreaming about monsters. The little kids’ eyes grew wide. Their jaws dropped. They stared at the illustrations I held out to them. They responded so enthusiastically that I read another book from the series at the end of the presentation. After the kids had left, an adult came up and said how amazed he was that “the little girls liked the story as much as the little boys.” Everyone likes to be scared, I said. Especially if you’re in a safe environment such as a library or a classroom -- or, like one first-grader yesterday, on your grandmother’s lap.

Heroes

If you haven’t heard already, Stone Arch Books recently sponsored a contest where students in grades 3 – 6 wrote an entry about someone they felt was a hero at their school. The contest ran thru February 28. Every morning as my computer powered up, I found myself excited to see if there were any entries. Day after day, I checked the mailbox and nothing was there. I wondered to myself “Was this a good contest? Would kids enter?” Then after 13 days of checking that empty mailbox, I received the first entry! It was from a seven-year-old named Emma and it was so sweet. “My Hero. My hero is Ms. Sortino because she will help us everyday. Her powers are: Mind reading, eyes in back of her head, knowing everybody's names in the universe, Super running. She has also got a side kick named Mr. Hagen the Asst. Principal. His power are: Flying, Super Strong, and X-ray vision.”

After that day, the entries came flooding in. I was amazed at how well kids could articulate the “super powers” of their everyday heroes. Most entries were written about teachers (especially gym teachers), librarians, principals, and custodians. But there were others written about the bravery of a fellow student battling leukemia, a best friend that stands up for herself and doesn’t succumb to peer pressure, a reading teacher that has helped a student progress from level M to level R, and a seeing-eye dog named Licorice that helps a student find her way. I wish I could share all of them with you. As it came time to pick the contest winner, I pored through the entries over and over again. How were we going to choose? We narrowed it down to 50, then to 15, then to 5 and then finally to our winner, Hakeem. Hakeem is a special ed student at the Nathanael Greene School in New York. He wrote an entry about his teacher Mr. Brown.

“My teacher Mr.Brown is visually impaired. That not what makes him a hero. It is because he takes public transportation everyday with Stanley his dog to school. That is why he is a true everyday superhero. In our class we had a project of being blindfolded and trying to find our way around the class it was hard for me. In our school it is hard. Being in special education, we learn to recognize our disabilities. Mr. Brown don't what to take access-a-ride to work being driven from his house to work. I feel sad he can't see the beautiful things around. That bothers me. To ride the train to East NY in Brooklyn is chaotic and not the safest even for people who do not have a disability. The travelling in the snow and ice with Stanley make him even more courageous. Mr. Brown is my pick for our school superhero. He could serve as a superhero for all.”

Thanks to Hakeem for sharing this with us and to all of the kids who recognized the heroes in their lives. (Who's the hero at your school? Share in the comments.)



Shannon Zigmund
Marketing Manager, Fiction
Capstone Publishers

Kids Are Still Reading

Reading is still alive and well, reports a new Scholastic study. According to the study, 62% of kids like to read and think reading for pleasure is important. While the percentage of kids who like to read decreases as kids grow up, even 55% of teenagers ages 15-17 like or love reading.
This is great news for parents, teachers, librarians, and people like us, who are invested in getting kids to read (and loving to read, too!).

Perhaps one of the more interesting findings of the study was that when kids don’t spend time pleasure reading, it’s because they’d rather be doing other things or because they don’t have enough time to read due to schoolwork. Kids also reported that they don’t spend more time reading because they have trouble finding appealing books, but there’s good news—when Scholastic published its last report in 2006, the number-one reason kids chose not to read was because they couldn’t find books that appealed to them. In the 2008 report, that answer moved down to the third most-frequent response.

So what does this mean for us? It means we—as parents, educators, and book lovers—are still creating a love of reading in children. We’re still writing, illustrating, and publishing great books—maybe even better books now than before. We’re on the right track, and kids are still reading.

A Visual Change

For the past several years, I’ve presented at the Young Authors, Young Artists Conference in Rochester, MN. The event, sponsored by the Southeast Service Cooperative, is a gathering of 800 talented, energetic, and artistic fourth through sixth graders from schools in southeastern Minnesota. My presentation, “Creating Graphic Novels,” discusses the steps involved in creating graphic stories.

Initially, when the event was called the Southeast Young Writers Conference, my presentation was about poetry. After I wrote my first graphic novel, Matthew Henson: Arctic Explorer, on the cusp of the recent graphic novel boom, I switched to my current presentation. After all, these students are the same age as I was when I first delved into comics. I brought in samples of each step involved in the creation of a graphic novel, from my outline and script to the storyboards, inks, and final colors, and discussed the reasons and importance of each of these steps. And I always ended the presentation with an activity where we’d create and share
a one-page comic. At first, few students really understood what a graphic novel was, and usually only a handful hands would raise when asked if they read graphic novels, but the final activity was always a hit.

A lot has changed, visually, over the years. I now show art from my Eek and Ack books. The name of the conference has evolved to include “Young Artists”, and there are nearly as many art sessions as there are writing ones. In each of my eight presentations, nearly all the students raised theirs hands when asked if they read graphic novels. Young readers get the idea of telling a story through pictures, and understand the concept of sequential art. And they can’t get enough. They’re also excited to create their own comic stories and learn the art of storytelling through illustrations. During my most recent presentations, I was continually asked, “Is it time to draw yet?” “Can we start drawing now?”

It thrills me, as an author of graphic novels, knowing that they are not only getting kids more excited about reading, but they are also animating their creative talents. Graphic novels can cultivate reading skills as well as energize artistic ones.

--Blake A. Hoena
Production Manager, Stone Arch Books
and author of the Eek and Ack series

Sooner (or Later) Kids Love Books!

Kids are wild about reading down in the Sooner State. I recently returned from a trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma where I spoke at the Young Author’s Conference, the Tulsa Reading Council, and made a few school visits. On Saturday, the young authors surprised me. Whether in first grade or fifth grade, they all liked scary stories! And they all loved graphic novels. I showed the artwork and read from my Library of Doom series. They wanted more! After the workshops, the conference sold books written by the participating authors. Kids snapped up 5 or 6 books apiece of the Doom books. “Which one’s the scariest?” they would ask.

On Monday night, before the Reading Council dinner, I spoke with a number of educators and librarians whose students had been at the conference Saturday. One woman told me that one of her boys, Justin, who was not a reader at all, had his nose buried in a book at the back of her class. It was one of the Library of Doom books, The Book That Dripped Blood. He was supposed to be writing in his journal. So when the teacher walked over to his desk to remind him, Justin looked up, pleading, and said, “But I just have to finish this first!” And she let him.

As an author, that’s about the best praise I can get—the knowledge that my books have done just what I (and the rest of the staff at Stone Arch) intended them to. They’re not just creating spooky atmospheres—they’re creating environments of reading success.


--Michael Dahl
Editorial Director, Stone Arch Books

Books kids fight for.

Librarians and teachers, warn your principals! We’ve heard more than one report lately of renegade groups of students refusing to leave their principals’ offices unless the administrations agree to fund the purchase of the entire Stone Arch Books catalog. We’re working on our Fall 2008 catalog now, so there’s not much time before there’s a whole new collection of books that students will fight for!

In the meantime, you can direct your kids to www.stonearchbooks.com (where, if you’re not currently receiving our catalog, you can also sign up to get on our mailing list). Consider this your fair warning—let that catalog (or any of our high-interest, kid-friendly books) slip into your students’ hands, and you can’t be held responsible for the results!

We love hearing anecdotes about kid reactions to our books—please comment if you have any! And if your students need a better way to communicate their feelings about books than storming administration offices, we’re always looking for kid reviewers—click here for more information.