Bits and bobs: August 2017

Books and resources for talking with kids about race, from middle grade author Olugbimisola Rhuday-Perkovich.

Katherine Pryor will be teaching a free class on writing children's books at the Mount Vernon Library on September 12th at 6:30.

Writing a complete and compelling story in less than 1,000 words is no easy feat. Modern picture books explain the world to children in new and exciting ways, but there are guidelines and formats to the genre that must be understood before approaching a publisher. This class will examine the structure of successful contemporary picture books, and offer a glimpse into various paths to publication for children’s book authors. Katherine Pryor is the award-winning author of the children's picture books Zora's Zucchini and Sylvia's Spinach, published by Readers to Eaters. She is a frequent presenter at schools and libraries, and loves helping writers of all ages learn to share their stories.

This event takes place Tuesday, September 12th, at 6:30 pm in the Resources Room, and is free and open to the public.

Shambhala Publications is launching a children's imprint, Bala Kids, and are putting a call for submissions for children's books with Buddhist values. Details here. Thanks to Wendy Wahman for the heads up.

What happens when an author self-publishes their debut literary novel? Nicole Dieker details her experience on Jane Freidman's blog.

If you enjoyed Gretchen McNeil's spooky YA murder mystery TEN, you can set your dir to catch the Lifetime movie version on September 16.


And speaking of YA movie adaptations, the Hollywood Reporter notes a shift toward personal narratives in upcoming adaptations. 


YA author MJ Beaufrand recently noted that Seattle Children's Hospital could really use some book donations, particularly early readers and chapter books, in good condition. Clean off your shelves, gather up your ARCs, or pick up a few at the local indy to help ease kids' time in the hospital, if you're so inclined. Drop books off at the volunteer station in the River Building on Sand Point Way.

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”  Carl Sagan

Of all the 'Nerve'

Here's a cool piece of news, sent via Laurie Thompson:

Jeanne Ryan's young-adult novel, Nerve, has been adapted and will hit the big screen––and there are big stars attached! Here's the scoop. Jeanne is one of our own (Laurie mentioned her in her inspiring talk, as the author who uses Write or Die in kamikaze mode!), and credits our retreat with helping her with revisions on this novel! According to Laurie, "It is sooooooo good!"

Help the Fat Kid Rule the World!

There will be a screening of Fat Kid Rules the World (filmed in Seattle and based on the amazing Printz Honor winning YA novel by K.L. Going) on August 28th at SIFF Cinema Uptown...

BUT, only if they can sell more tickets to the screening. They currently need 11 more to make it happen. So grab a fellow YA lover and make a night of it!

Details and tickets can be found here. 

See the trailer:

Diary of Anne Frank: a Disney movie?

From Variety:

Disney has acquired pic rights to a new rendition of "The Diary of Anne Frank," to be written and helmed by David Mamet. Mamet will produce with Andrew Braunsberg.

The film will be an amalgamation of the famed diary; the stage adaptation by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich; and Mamet's own original take on the material that could reframe the story as a young girl's rite of passage. Frank, who died at 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, became an icon of the Holocaust after the post-war publication of the diary that she kept during the two years that her family hid in a secret attic apartment in Amsterdam.

Braunsberg, best known for producing "Being There," spent a year gathering the rights from the Anne Frank Estate as well as the estates of Hackett and Goodrich. He met with ICM's John Burnham, who recommended Mamet. Mamet sparked to the opportunity tell the story, and he is already writing the script.

Read the rest.

Fantastic Mr. Fox trailer

This one's for the adaptation of the Roald Dahl book.

@ Yahoo! Video

Where the Wild Things Are

I don't know about you, but heat like this brings out my inner wild thing. Rather than eat anyone up, I'm trying to bask in the cool of the WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE featurette on the making of the movie.