Children's Galleys to Grab

Even in lean times, there's no shortage of galley giveaways at BEA. Here are some to look out for. Brave New Worlds Alphas by Lisi Harrison (Little, Brown/Poppy) is a Clique spinoff set at an elite island boarding school, starring Clique's Skye Hamilton. The Amanda Project: Book 1: invisible i by Stella Lennon (HarperTeen).

Children's Book Reviews: Week of 4/27/2009

This week's reviews include new picture books from Ed Young and Vladimir Radunsky, summer-ready fiction from Sarah Dessen and Jenny Han, and a pair of translated novels from popular Japanese series.

Web Exclusive Reviews: Week of 4/27/2009

This week on the Web: butterfly smuggling and a real life Law & Order: Animal Victims Unit, two manifestos from radio talkers, thoughts on life from a beach bum Buddha and Bill Gates's father, and lots of advice for women who feel anxious, miscast or quickly forgotten. Plus: an excellent guide to AA, without the BS.

Stumptown Comics Fest: The Con That Refreshes

Portland, Oregon's sixth annual Stumptown Comics Fest, held April 18 and 19, was a raging success by almost all accounts. Final attendance figures weren't yet available by press time, but around 700 people turned up in the first two hours of Saturday alone.

Kids, Comics, Reading and Fun In the Bronx

Founded in 2007 by Alex Simmons, a veteran comics writer, young adult novelist, playwright and educator, the annual Kids’ Comic Con continues to attract kids, parents and educators to a day of presentations, comics workshops and lots of free stuff.

Sex and Science and Scott Morse: Ancient Books Show Modern Designers

Artist/designer Scott Morse has a bunch of projects coming out this year, including The Ancient Book of Sex and Science, featuring fellow animation designers Lou Romano, Don Shank and Nate Wragg.

Yoshihiro Tatsumi: A Heroic Life in Manga

Published by Drawn & Quarterly, A Drifting Life is not only the story of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s coming of age as a manga artist and creator of the gritty style of manga known as Gekiga, but a detailed history of the manga industry in post-WWII Japan.

Comics Briefly

Photomania: Stumptown 2009

This year's Stumptown Festival was a gathering of cartoonists and cartoons and over 2500 local indie comics fans and readers. Local Portland cartoonists celebrated with guests including Gail Simone, Jeff Smith and Carla Speed McNeil, and Saturday night's Stumptown Trophy Awards gave everyone the chance to cut loose.

Nonfiction Reviews

Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend Larry Tye . Random , $26 (408p) ISBN 978-1-4000-6651-3 Tye, a Boston Globe reporter and author of The Father of Spin, offers the first biography on Satchel Paige, the premier pitcher of the Negro Leagues. Having interviewed more than 200 veteran fellow players of the Negro and Major Leagues, he is able to flesh out the Satchel Paige persona.

Full Faith and Credit

Call it stewardship, prudence or just plain common sense—religion publishers are offering faith-based advice for coping with the current economic crisis. Much of that advice, in fact, varies little from what Christian financial authors have been preaching for decades: if you follow the money management principles found in the Bible, you will be protected during times of economic downturn.

Children's Book Reviews: Week of 4/20/2009

Among this week's reviews: Rotten Ralph's latest rotten adventure, a pair of edgy YA novels sure to grab boys' attention, and a round-up of interactive titles for the younger set.

Green Theology

With publishers singing the bottom-line blues, some are turning to green... green books, that is. Although they have long popped up on general trade publisher lists, environment-friendly titles are growing very visibly at religion and spirituality publishing houses. Is green theology their new buzzword? Aplentiful crop of new books may mean “yes,” as authors write books on what God&...

Web Exclusive Reviews: Week of 04/20/2009

This week's Web features real life stories from citizen-soldiers in Iraq, cancer survivors, a pioneering environmental ethicist, the producer of Blade Runner, and ants. Also: speculative history from JFK experts, the Skinny Bitches gets their man, an exceptional debut novel about family, Alzheimers and the African-American male.

Flux Holds Steady Through Changes

Llewellyn Worldwide’s YA imprint, Flux, which has published teen fiction for the past three years, is moving in a new direction this fall with the release of its first graphic novel: Black Is for Beginnings (Sept.). The book is a continuation of Laurie Faria Stolarz’s Blue Is for Nightmares series of four novels, the first of which launched the Flux line in 2006.

Simultaneous Pub for Takahashi Manga

U.S. manga publisher Viz Media and Japan’s Weekly Shonen Sunday will join forces to present Rin-Ne, a brand new series by international manga superstar Rumiko Takahashi, simultaneously in the U.S. and Japan beginning April 22.

Math, Philosophy, Comics and Bertrand Russell’s Search for Truth

In October Bloomsbury will publish Logicomix: An Epic Search For Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou with the art team of Alecos Papdatos and Annie Di Donna, a work of serious nonfiction that, among other things, is a biography of the noted mathematician/philosopher Bertrand Russell.

Comic Books, Fetish Art and the Co-Creator of Superman

Craig Yoe’s new book Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-creator Joe Shuster, sheds light on a seminal comics creator while unearthing illegal works that played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Comics Code Authority

Top Shelf Gets Sweded

Top Shelf is helping to bring Sweden's blossoming comix scene to the US.

CTL+ALT+DEL Moves to Bookstores

Already collected in self-published form, the popular webcomic CLT+ALT+DLT is getting a new bookstore push via a series of new editions.