Another great kid review

Tennessee librarian (and SLJ blogger) Diane Chen has been working with her library classes to create reviews of books, and since she knows that we love to get reviews from kids, she sent this along. It’s a great review that a fourth-grade girl wrote about our book Yikes, It’s a Yeti!

I read a book called Yikes, it’s a Yeti! by Karen Wallace with pictures by Mick Reid. It was a book about a boy named Norman who had a normal, boring life. One day his mom says he gets to go “camping” with his grandma. Norman’s mom says it so loud that all his friends hear and start making fun of him. Then his grandma takes him to the Himalayas in search of a Yeti. They find one and Norman brings home a Yeti tooth. All his friends think he’s crazy until he pulls out the Yeti tooth. Just at the moment he pulls it out, he sees his life isn’t so boring after all! I think you should read this book if you like comedy.

Diane’s kids are also reviewing other books, including our sister company Capstone Press’s Ballroom Dancing. We hope she’ll send us more! Do your students write reviews? If so, please send them to us! We love to hear what kids think.

It's not easy being green.

It’s become pretty trendy to talk about being green, reducing one’s carbon footprint, recycling. It’s harder to actually do the things you need to do to feel better about the imprint you’re leaving on the world. It never quite feels like enough. Since we’re a book publishing company, and, you know, books are made out of paper, we are always thinking about ways to tread more lightly on the world.

For example, this year both Stone Arch Books and our parent company, Capstone Publishers, sent out e-cards as our holiday cards. Seems like a small thing, but just think of all the paper we saved by not printing cards, or putting them into envelopes. Now multiply that by the energy it takes to ship those envelopes all over the world. A small step makes a huge impact.

We also print our books and ancillary materials on recycled paper that contains post-consumer waste. And we strongly prefer electronic submissions to the old-fashioned paper slush pile.

We are always trying to come up with more ways to be eco-friendly. What are some of the things you do?