This month marks 15 years since "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" made Kinney one of the world's most popular writers. I spoke to him about his start in children's literature and the mark he's left. Read more
Children's authors and performers say growing censorship, institutional timidity and online backlash are resulting in stories about diversity, sexuality and even contemporary world events being deemed inappropriate for younger readers.
For nearly two decades, I have been speaking about the ways adult gatekeepers encourage girls to read books about boys but discourage, prevent, or even shame boys from reading about girls. A couple of years ago, a helpful industry professional let me know that gendered reading wasn't an issue anymore. "We've moved past that, you don't need to keep talking about it."
"It's just great to be back in Bologna," said Margie Wolfe, publisher of Second Story Press of Toronto, Canada. "It's a little quieter than usual, but the meetings have been good." Wolfe echoed what many publishers are saying: the pandemic, which kept people at home for long stretches, helped fuel a boom in book sales. "We were up 100% in sales for 2021," said Wolff.
The Bologna Children's Book FairThe Bologna Children's Book Fair or La fiera del libro per ragazzi is the leading professional fair for children's books in the world. will run March 21-24 in its usual venue at the BolognaFiere exhibition center in Bologna, Italy. It will be the first time since 2019 that the fair will be held in person. Organizers say they've booked 950 exhibitors, down from 1,200 in 2018 and 2019. Sixty American companies, primarily small and medium publishing houses, will attend. Read more
The China Shanghai International Children's Book Fair (CCBF), originally scheduled to start on November 19, has been postponed to next year and is scheduled to run from March 20 to 22. This is the latest development from China's strict zero-Covid policy even though the average number of new cases in the past few days was well below 100.
The proportion of children's books featuring a minority ethnic character has almost quadrupled in the last four years, according to a new survey - but researchers say "we are not yet at the point where children of colour have the same experience of literature as their white peers".
Good children's literature is a serious business. Not serious as in boring or "improving", but serious in attention and ambition, serious about beauty and wonder, about engaging the brain but also the heart, about sadness and difficulty, but also about silliness and joy. Above all, it is serious about the legitimacy of a child's world - which is a world away from being child-ish.
Does it sound grand to say I have always written? It took me thirty years to get published, but now the second in the series of Albert the tortoise picture books is launching. Read more
'We've only been publishing for three years, having started just before the pandemic did... The digital vision we had formulated was vindicated and validated by the pandemic - but that doesn't mean it's not still relevant. As we grow, we're doing a bit more print, but we'll continue to adapt and survive.
In 2017, we learned that Eleanor Oliphant was completely fine. As you may recall, there was a bestselling novel all about it, titled, appropriately enough, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. Soon, a wave of syntactically similar book titles followed, all involving simple sentences containing the female protagonist's name: Evvie Drake started over. Florence Adler swam forever. Read more
Kate Clanchy's memoir about teaching won the Orwell prize. Then, a year later, it became the centre of a storm that would engulf the lives of the author, her critics and dozens of people in the book trade. So what happened?
Writers buy plotting books by the dozen and do their best to create the plottiest plot that the world has ever seen. They stuff their novels with action-packed sword fights, explosions, fist fights, and screaming matches. Plot points, pinch points, and grandiose climaxes abound. Read more
In my 15 years of teaching English to hundreds of children in various parts of England, there are four books that have been on the curriculum in every school I have found myself in, with no exception: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Animal Farm by George Orwell, An Inspector Calls by JB Priestley and Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo. Read more
The Booker prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo says she fears that publishers' interest in black authors may be only a "trend or fashion" that could wane unless the business becomes more diverse. Read more
Waterstones Children's Laureate Cressida Cowell has revealed the "transformative" impact on the pilot primary schools taking part in her "Life-changing Libraries" initiative, including an increase in a love of reading, motivation towards learning, well-being and feelings of self-worth. Read more
Every writer has had it drilled into them at some point. It's one of the most familiar bits of writing advice there is: "Write what you know." And it makes so much sense-it worked for John Grisham and Kathy Reichs, right?
Another May has come and gone without BookExpo or any other in-person, industrywide spring show taking its place. As the pandemic eases, more and more publishing and publishing-related conferences, meetings, and fairs are moving from online-only events to either in-person or hybrid affairs. Read more
Meanwhile, I was working on my column for Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/. The theme: influencing readers-beyond BookTok. I certainly didn't expect to find a point of intersection with these two shows. Did I? Bear with me.
'The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. 'tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.'