The American Library Association (ALA) annual conference, a ginormous offering for ALA’s 68,000 member librarians, was held this past weekend in Orlando at the newly refurbished Convention Center. Why should that matter to you? According to the ALA convention website, approximately 16,000 people who are decision makers concerning which books are purchased for their libraries […]
Iceland, 2015 Being invited for an artist or author residency is such an honor. Last May I went to northern Iceland for a week long artist residency to help seventy kids in grades one to ten paint murals. The school was Valsárskóli in Svalbarðsströnd, which is across the fjord from where my son Eric and […]
by Joyce Audy Zarins In my small collection of children’s books from around the world, some help explain ways of thinking to the young. The world can be a scary and sometimes puzzling place, so clues are always useful. In Les Mammouths, Les Ogres, Les Extraterrestres, et ma petite soeur, as the title suggests, creatures […]
Check this out! “Sand Dollar, Sand Dollar,” my first picture book of long ago, is now available on Amazon in five languages! French, Spanish, Vietnamese, Portuguese, and Tagalog. All are paperback and all have the English text also. The book is being reissued by a small Boston start-up, Bab’l Books, Inc., whose mission is to […]
Today I received a copy of my book Sand Dollar, Sand Dollar in its final Spanish/ English dual language paperback version, published by Bab’l Books, Boston. I am excited to see this book in print again! I love the idea of reaching out to bilingual kids. And, its hidden message is environmental – that we […]
I have a teeny bit of news, but it’s in five or six languages! My first ever picturebook, published in 1980 by J.B. Lippincott, then taken on by Harper and Row, which has been out of print for years, is being reissued by a small start-up as a bilingual paperback and Kindle book. Bab’l Books […]
This article also appears at writersrumpus.com. While your book is percolating in your mind, in revisions or sketches, or under the scrutiny of your crit group buddies, you can explore ways to build your publishing credentials. Magazines and other media can be valuable, shorter-term ways to get your work seen. Here’s a more-or-less “out there†[…]
What earnings can writers and illustrators of books for children today expect to receive from a publisher? The range of payment options has widened, sometimes not in your favor. If you would like to see whether the basics of the deal you now have is comparable to what others receive and help your colleagues too, […]
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Story for Children by Gabriel Garcia Marquez may be more for you and me than for children (at least American ones). But that is an assumption. An unfair one perhaps. But the old man has left behind a scraggly feather on the shore of my memory. It […]
Black & White is a terrific concept for an exhibit – it’s so contrast-y. The Children’s Museum of New Hampshire’s upcoming show on that theme includes fifteen of my drawings. One is a graphite frottage, a technique related to rubbings, only more creative in that the textures are combined to make new images. I am […]