Book News

Readers of USA Today this morning got a Book Sense-specific "USA Today Snapshot," when the newspaper's Life section featured five "top teen books" taken from the recent Book Sense Teen 76 Top Ten. The featured spot -- on the first page of the Life section -- also noted that the complete list and recommendations were available on BookSense.com. (The full list can be found here, and it will also be mailed to Book Sense stores in the February white box.)

According to Clarion spokesperson Deb Shapiro, the publisher has ordered thousands more copies of both The Three Pigs by David Wiesner and A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park since Tuesday, when the two books won the 2002 Caldecott Medal and Newbery Medal respectively. (Click here for a related story.)

On Tuesday, January 22, judges for Britain's prestigious Whitbread book awards conferred the title of Book of the Year on the sophisticated children's fantasy tale The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman (Knopf/Del Rey). The Book of the Year is selected from among the winners of five categories -- Novel, First Novel, Poetry, Biography, and Children's Book.

Here's news of the next 76 Top Ten -- a Teen 76 Top Ten. It will be mailed to you in the February white box, for store display in March.

Teen/young adult books will still be included in the full Children's 76s, but, just as you've moved and increased your teen sections in your stores, we want this group of readers to have their own distinct place.

By Kathleen Craughwell
Special to the Los Angeles Times

It's ridiculously early on Sunset Boulevard -- 7:30 a.m., to be exact -- when two women from the Santa Clarita Valley pitch their collapsible camping chairs on the sidewalk in front of Book Soup, the popular West Hollywood independent bookstore. The store will not open for another hour and a half.

David Wiesner, author and illustrator of The Three Pigs (Kids' Book Sense 76 Pick, Spring '01), has been named the winner of the 2002 Randolph Caldecott Medal, and Linda Sue Park has won the 2002 John Newbery Medal for her novel A Single Shard. The awards, honoring outstanding writing and illustration in children's books published in the U.S.

A California school district has ordered a high school principal to return William Styron's novel Sophie's Choice to the shelves of the school library. La Mirada High School Principal Andrew Huynh had removed the acclaimed novel after a parent complained that the book contained sexual material that was inappropriate for minors.

Quick, now: Who was the biggest-selling crime-fiction writer in the United Kingdom in 2001, according to official industry figures? P.D. James? Ruth Rendell? Patricia Cornwell? John Grisham?

Ask Solomon Jones, author of Pipe Dream, (Random House/Striver's Row) what finally turned him away from a crack-addicted life that began in 1990 and he will answer quickly, "I turned to the Lord." Taking pages out of his own life, his novel Pipe Dream catapults readers inside Philadelphia's underground drug world to solve a murder mystery.

Last spring, out of the masses of books energetically offered at BookExpo America 2001, Jim Harris, owner of Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City, Iowa, found himself compelled to pick up and read an advance copy of The Last Summer of Reason by Tahar Djaout (Ruminator), he recently told BTW.