(View entire post here)

Author's Note: I went to Alabama three times to do research on the Harper Lee biography for young readers. This week’s blog is mostly about the first time I traveled to Alabama with my sister, Keely Madden, in the spring of 2007. In her hometown, Harper Lee is often referred to as “Nelle.”

Miss Alice is the older sister of Harper Lee who still works three days a week at the law office in Monroeville, Alabama. She will be 98 on September 11^th. I had contacted her about an interview, and I received a call from her secretary on our first morning in Monroeville. The secretary said that Miss Alice would not be talking to me out respect for her sister. I said that I understood, and I asked if I might bring my children's novels to the law office, which was located in a bank building off the town square. The secretary said that would be fine and that she would be there all day.

Our plan was to drop my children's books off with the secretary to give to the Lee sisters and then leave immediately. Maybe they would see from my books (akin to Little House on the Prairie and Anne of Green Gables) that I wasn't out to write a sensational biography. Yet, when we arrived at the law office about an hour later, the secretary was no where around. Only Miss Alice Lee was there. I was terrified, and so was my sister, Keely. Miss Alice is also deaf and so did not hear us. We stood in the hallway within her sight range debating what to do. I felt sick to my stomach.

(View entire post here)

Judging by what you would find in my office, a biography is made of a few thousand pages of documents, a few hundred clippings from newspapers and journals, a couple of dozen dog-eared old books and a pile of notebooks filled with quotes and anecdotes collected during interviews. Forever Blue is made of these items as well as the many feelings - love, anger, pride, hope, fear etc. - I uncovered in all these sources.

My goal, with every nonfiction book, is to create a clear but also complete picture of a person, event, or moment in time. My only assumption when I begin is that nothing is as simple as it first appears. Of course I also want to explore a worthy subject and in Walter O'Malley, who became the center of unending controversy when he moved the Dodgers out of Brooklyn, I had one guaranteed to hold my interest and yours.  

I began with the basics - old works of baseball history and journalism - and then began seeking more original sources. A few phone calls led me to the man's surviving son and daughter who held thousands of documents that once belonged to their father and the team. After a couple of discussions about my starting point - I was interested in discovering the story not creating one -- they turned me loose in the rooms where the files were kept, asking only that I keep an open mind.  To their credit, they never tried to influence me and didn't ask to see the book before it was in print.

(View entire post here)

The Penguin Employee Book Club will be meeting this month to discuss Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. This is the second "interactive" employee book club, where Penguin employees submit questions to the author and the author provides the answers. View last month's Q&A with Marlon James here. 

Penguin employees who are interested in joining the next interactive book club should look out for the HR announcement of the the next book club pick in early April!

1. In the additional material at the end of the Anniversary Edition you wrote that the idea of the book came to you in a nightmare.  Did you then do any research on teenage depression/trauma before writing the book? 

Honestly? Not much at all. 

The emotional landscape of SPEAK is very close to what ninth grade felt like for me. After the early draft was in shape I did some research to see if my depression had been unusual and found that, sadly, it hadn't been. When I wrote Speak my oldest child was in sixth grade. At the time, I thought that put me at a disadvantage because she wasn't quite an adolescent. Looking back, I am so grateful I didn't lean on her life's experience. I pulled from my own pain, observations of teens hanging out at the mall, and that magic that always sneaks into the writing process.

(View entire post here)

Penguin Young Readers Group Celebrates the 40th Anniversary of Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar with a Massive Marketing and Publicity Campaign

2009 marks the 40th anniversary of Eric Carle’s preschool classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Since its publication in 1969, 29 million copies of the book have sold worldwide and it has been published in over 45 languages. To celebrate the anniversary, Philomel is publishing a special pop-up version of the book and March 20th has been designated as “The Very Hungry Caterpillar Day.” The Very Hungry Caterpillar is also featured as the Google logo today, where it will be viewed by millions. On this first day of spring, teachers, librarians, booksellers, and fans of the book are encouraged to read and celebrate the metamorphosis of this eager, insatiable caterpillar.

Penguin is spreading the word to fans young and old with an extensive marketing and publicity campaign. Eric Carle will be the special guest of honor and featured artist at next month’s Los Angeles Times Book Festival. Marketing initiatives include major promotions with Stonyfield YoBaby Yogurt and Applebees that will reach a combined total of 9.6 million consumers. Scholastic Book Fairs is featuring an Eric Carle Author Video which will reach 28 million students, and The Very Hungry Caterpillar has been selected as this fall’s 2009 Read for the Record Campaign. Retailers are also supporting the book with gift cards featuring the Very Hungry Caterpillar, activity kits and displays.

(View entire post here)

Gracielis wants to forget his strange abilities. Thiercelin wants his wife to love him. Valdarrien wants to find his lost lover, Iareth, and to live again. And Joyain just wants a quiet life. But in the ancient city of Merafi, you don't always get what you want.

When I was fifteen, I wanted to be a musketeer. Or just maybe a mediaeval philologist. It was all down to the books I'd been reading - The Three Musketeers and Humphrey Carpenter's biography of J. R. R. Tolkien. You see, books can change your life. I'd always wanted to write: indeed, I had by then been writing for almost half my life. But when I was fifteen, I finally realised what kind of writer I wanted to be, a fantasy author. I wanted sword-fights and magic, shape-shifters, ghosts, plots, duels, intricate politics and a dash of romance. And I wanted to get it right. I spent a lot of years practicing, writing stories with ghosts and aliens, intrigues and duels, but it wasn't until I was twenty-eight that I managed to finish something novel-length. By then I was already a published author of non-fiction: I'd had articles in several academic journals and a book about eleventh century Wales under contract. I hadn't managed to be appointed to the musketeers, but I was writing about swordsmen, and I was a working historian specialising in the early middle ages. That first novel - long consigned to my bottom drawer - was full of duels and quarrels and narrow escapes. It wasn't good enough, but I'd found my voice as a fiction writer and I'd laid down the bones of the world I wanted my characters to inhabit.