Paolini, in his first
public reading of Brisingr,
in New York City.
Photo: Lisa Berg.
Brisingr (Knopf), the long-awaited third volume in Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance cycle, arrived last Friday night, September 20, at midnight. In a record for Random House Children’s Books, the book sold 550,000 copies in its first day.
Random had printed 2.5 million copies of Brisingr, the largest-ever first printing for the division. First-day sales for the title were four times that of Eldest, second in the cycle, which pubbed in August 2005. RHCB president Chip Gibson said the numbers for Brisingr “far surpassed our projections.” More than 2,500 bookstores held midnight parties.
Random House U.K., which published the novel simultaneously, reported first-day sales of more than 45,000 copies, “Brisingr is by far and away the fastest-selling book we’ve ever published,” said children’s sales director Helen Randles. The company also called it the fastest-selling children’s book in Britain this year.
Click on the picture - there's a review, badges and a poster to print, and activities for teachers to share
When life as Alex Morales had known it changed forever, he was working behind the counter at Joey's Pizza. He was worried about getting elected as senior class president and making the grades to land him in a good college. He never expected that an asteroid would hit the moon, knocking it closer in orbit to the earth and catastrophically altering the earth's climate.
He never expected to be fighting just to stay alive.
Susan Beth Pfeffer's "Life As We Knew It" enthralled and devastated readers with its brutal but hopeful look at an apocalyptic event from a small-town perspective. Now this harrowing companion novel examines the same events as they unfold in New York City, revealed through the eyes of a seventeen-year-old Puerto Rican New Yorker. When Alex's parents disappear in the aftermath of tidal waves, he must care for his two younger sisters, even as Manhattan becomes a deadly wasteland.
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by Barbie Heit Schwaeber Illustrated by Thomas Buchs and Karen Carr |
From the reviews
From Ankylosaurus to Zigongosaurus, children will delight in learning about dinosaurs and prehistoric life. Witty rhymes describe many species of dinosaurs, including where they roamed, what they ate and their physical characteristics.
Soundprints has paired up with the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History to produce this book
The read-along CD of the book opens with an original song about dinosaurs, setting the tone for what follows. The song is largely a listing of the alphabet and words covered in the book.
This article originally appeared in SLJ’s Extra Helping. Sign up now! and I am late publishing this post. It has been sitting in the "drafts" folder, unnoticed!
A Darkling Plain ("The Hungry City Chronicles," HarperCollins), Philip Reeve's dark, post-apocalyptic tale of return to a London ravaged by war and radiation, has won the Los Angeles Times' 2007 Book Prize for young adult fiction, announced late last week.
In a second just-announced literary honor, The Escape of Oney Judge: Martha Washington’s Slave Finds Freedom (Farrar), written and illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully, has taken the top prize in the 2008 Jane Addams Children's Book Awards, in the category of Books for Younger Children. We Are One: The Story of Bayard Rustin (Calkins Creek) by Larry Dane Brimner has won in the Books for Older Children category.
The Addams Awards also named an honor book in its younger children category, One Thousand Tracings: Healing the Wounds of World War II (Hyperion), written and illustrated by Lita Judge.
Honor books in the older children's category include Rickshaw Girl (Charlesbridge), by Mitali Perkins; Elijah of Buxton (Scholastic) by Christopher Paul Curtis; and Birmingham, 1963 (Wordsong) by Carole Boston Weatherford.
Oney Judge tells the story of a slave girl who flees to freedom. "Expressive watercolors within this well-researched biography portray the bravery of Ona Maria Judge, an African-American woman who claimed, and fought for, the right to have "no mistress but herself," the judges wrote.
The Story of Bayard Rustin introduces young readers to the controversial African-American pacifist and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, a trusted adviser to Martin Luther King, Jr. and organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. "Succinct prose, powerful quotations, and fresh historical photographs place the story of Rustin’s life alongside the story of the March, revealing the breadth and depth of Rustin’s decades of commitment to confronting racism and promoting peace in the United States and in countries around the world," the judges wrote.
The Addams Awards, from the Jane Addams Peace Association, celebrate children's books published the preceding year that "effectively promote the cause of peace, social justice, world community, and the equality of the sexes and all races."
A Darkling Plain, the L.A. Times winner, is the final book in Reeve's "Hungry City" series. In a 2006 interview, Reeve told SLJ that he was aiming the “Hungry Cities” series at children 12 and upwards, "which was the age I was when I was reading grown-up science fiction.”
[Via Publisher's Weekly]
Two fall books from children’s divisions are likely to be two of the biggest-selling books of the year, period. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown/Tingley, Aug. 2) and Brisingr by Christopher Paolini (Knopf, Sept. 20), both eagerly anticipated by booksellers, each have first printings of 2.5 million copies. Hundreds of bookstores across the country are planning midnight parties for the titles.
The 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were announced on April 25.
British author Philip Reeve won in the Young Adult Fiction category for A Darkling Plain (HarperCollins/Eos), the fourth and final volume in his Hungry City Chronicles.
The four other finalists: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (Little, Brown); The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean (HarperTeen); What They Found: Love on 145th Street by Walter Dean Myers (Random/Wendy Lamb); and Darkwing by Kenneth Oppel (HarperCollins/Eos)
Marvel plans comics adaptations of two books by Hugo Award-winning sci-fi novelist Orson Scott Card.
Have you read the books? We (my son and I) loved them. They are action-packed, but there is also a twisting, thought-provoking plot. Check out Ender's Game
