(View entire post here)

Jumpstart’s “Read for the Record” Rolls Out With a Bang Thursday Morning on “The Today Show”

Yesterday, readers of all ages sought to break the world record for the number of children reading the same book, on the same day with an adult. This year’s “Read for the Record” campaign book is a custom edition of the beloved children’s classic, Corduroy by Don Freeman, published by Penguin Young Readers Group. The day kicked-off yesterday morning with an early reading event in Rockefeller Plaza on NBC’s “Today Show” with First Lady Laura Bush joined by Pearson Foundation President Mark Nieker as well as appearances by such celebrities as LL Cool J, Jesse McCartney, Mary Louise Parker, Greg Kinnear and Maria from Sesame Street. Pearson and Jumpstart representatives were also briefly interviewed on the program.

Thousands of events were held and official Jumpstart’s Read for the Record Campaign events took place in major cities across the U.S., including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Penguin author Jon Scieskza, first National Ambassador of Young People's Literature by the Library of Congress, joined LL Cool J, Pearson's Bill Barke, and others at a mid-day reading in Manhattan. And, a specially designed Read for Record/Corduroy children’s bookmobile has been visiting libraries and schools throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

Employees from Penguin Group (USA)’s Hudson Street offices in New York City read to children at an official Jumpstart kick-off event at the Harlem Children's Zone. The Pearson Foundation donated dinner, books and materials, and in addition to reading Corduroy, children had the opportunity to take part in the My ABC Book activity.

PGI employee volunteers from the Pittson Township, Pennsylvania office read at the CEO (Commission on Economic Opportunity) Kidz Café, a non-profit after school program for children grades K- 6. The Pearson Foundation donated 200 books for this event.

Forty PGI employee volunteers from the Binghamton, New York office read to children at an event right out of the pages of Corduroy. Their reading was at Boscov's department store, in the bedding/furniture department - just up the escalators - just like in the book! Children from local day care centers, the Boys & Girls Clubs, and the Discovery Center pre-school, among others, were invited to enter the store, where a reader from the local theater company, dressed in a night watchman's uniform, read the book.

Twenty PGI employees from the East Rutherford, New Jersey office also volunteered their time at several events in the greater East Rutherford area. Penguin employees also took part in Read for the Record events in other New Jersey communities, including Jersey City, Guttenberg, Carlsdadt, North Bergen and North Arlington.

For more details, go to Jumpstart’s Read for the Record website and the Pearson Foundation site.

Penguin and Pearson Help Make the 2008 National Book Festival a Success

The 2008 National Book Festival, the annual event organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress and hosted by First Lady Laura Bush, was a great success, with a record-breaking number of attendees. Free and open to the public, the festival featured more than 70 award-winning authors, illustrators and poets appearing in various pavilions on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

Eight authors from Penguin Group (USA) participated in the Festival this year, and were greeted by standing-room-only crowds for their presentations: Geraldine Brooks (Viking/Penguin); James McBride (Riverhead); Bob Schieffer (Putnam); Daniel Schorr (Penguin); and Gordon Wood (Penguin Press), as well as Penguin Young Readers Group authors Jan Brett; Jon Scieszka; and Joseph Bruchac.

Penguin Group (USA) also sponsored a booth with the Pearson Foundation in the “Let’s Read America” Pavilion, where kids of all ages had the opportunity to get their photo taken with Corduroy the Bear, visit activity tables to create their own custom-made bookmarks and other fun crafts, and grab free Penguin Young Readers Group books.

Pictured: Jumpstart volunteers help young festival attendees with fun craft projects.

Check out our feature pages for Geraldine Brooks and Jan Brett.

Also on our site find interviews with James McBride, Bob Schieffer, and Jon Scieszka.

Ace Author Charlaine Harris Sweeps The New York Times Mass Market Fiction Bestseller List for A Second Consecutive Week, With Seven Titles Once Again Making the List

Charlaine Harris, the bestselling Ace author of eight Southern Vampire novels that are the basis for HBO’s new television series “True Blood,” once again dominates the October 12th New York Times mass market fiction list with an incredible seven titles appearing simultaneously. This marks the second week in a row that Harris has swept the list.

This week, Dead Until Dark is #4 and Living Dead in Dallas is #8, both in their third weeks on the list; while Club Dead is #11; Dead to the World is #13; Dead as a Doornail at #17; Definitely Dead is #19; and All Together Dead is #20, all in their second weeks on this list.

This unprecedented showing comes on the heels on last months premiere of “True Blood,” the HBO series created by Alan Ball. “True Blood” is based on a series of books by Harris that follows telepathic cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse. The show, which airs Sunday nights at 9pm, has already been renewed by HBO for a second season.

Watch a QuickTime trailer for the HBO original series “True Blood”, based on Charlaine Harris’ Dead Until Dark.

Upcoming Penguin Group (USA) Books to Delve Inside the Current Economic Crisis

Penguin Group (USA) last week acquired three important books that will each explore aspects of the current economic crisis/Wall Street meltdown. In addition to The Penguin Press’ Six Days That Shook The World by New York Times Magazine contributor Roger Lowenstein, which we mentioned in the last Spotlight, the other two books are Viking’s Too Big To Fail by New York Times financial reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin and an as yet-to-be titled Portfolio book by New York Times reporter Joe Nocera and Vanity Fair contributing editor Bethany McLean.

Regarding these acquisitions, Penguin Group (USA) President Susan Petersen Kennedy said, “This moment, this story is larger than any one writer. It affects Wall Street, Main Street and streets all over the world. And it is continuing to unfold every day. I want more than one version, more than one point of view, and so do many others." She added, “These books will each stand alone as important accounts of one of the worst economic crises in history. Even as they stand alone, we expect them also to stand together, to complement each other, to enlarge us as readers and as citizens.”

Six Penguin Group (USA) Authors to Participate in the 2008 New Yorker Festival

The New Yorker Festival returns this weekend for its ninth year, starting today and continuing through Sunday, October 5th.

With over 125 writers, artists, thinkers, strategists, and performers, the Festival will feature incisive political programming and a weekend-long voter-registration drive in preparation for the Presidential election a month from the Festival.

Penguin Group (USA) has six authors participating on “Fiction Night Friday.” T.C. Boyle (Viking/Penguin); Roddy Doyle (Viking/Penguin); Shalom Auslander (Riverhead); Junot Díaz (Riverhead) Hari Junzru (Dutton/Plume) and John McWhorter (Dutton) will join New Yorker editors to discuss the themes that inform their work on various panels throughout the evening.

Tickets for The New Yorker Festival are on sale now. For more information, click here.

For a complete listing of events click here.

To learn more about these authors check out interviews with T.C. Boyle and Junot Díaz, a podcast with Shalom Auslander, and an excerpt from Hari Kunzru's 2005 title Transmission.

Two Penguin Group (USA) Authors Are Among the Fifteen Most Prominent Hispanic-Americans in the Arts in America

Riverhead’s Junot Díaz and Viking/Plume’s Julia Alvarez have been selected by The State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs to be among the 15 most prominent Hispanic-Americans in the arts contributing to the American cultural scene.

As the largest minority group in the United States, Hispanic-Americans contribute to the cultural diversity of the United States in a multitude of ways. The 15 Hispanic-Americans selected are prominent U.S. writers, painters, sculptors, actors, singers, filmmakers and fashion designers inspired by the complexity and richness of their American experience combined with their Latin American roots.

To view the photo gallery of the prominent Hispanic-American artist click here.

Philomel Author Mike Lupica to Collaborate with Academy Award Winner William Goldman on Novel for Young Readers

#1 New York Times bestselling author Mike Lupica will join forces on a novel for young readers with Academy Award-winning screenwriter and legendary author William Goldman (The Princess Bride). The book will be the story of a boy who discovers his secret power, and the hero within, when family tensions push them to the surface. It will be published by Philomel Books in Fall 2010. The untitled book will mark Goldman’s long-awaited return to fiction writing, and will be a combination of Goldman’s magical realism and Lupica’s heartwarming tales of the underdog.

Mike Lupica’s previous titles for young readers, Travel Team, Heat, Miracle on 49th Street, Summer Ball, and The Big Field, were all New York Times bestsellers. He is a nationally syndicated feature sportswriter for New York’s Daily News and a weekly participant on ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters.”

This week, Mike Lupica also launched the fourth book in his popular Comeback Kids series, Long Shot (Philomel) with appearances on WABC Radio’s “Imus in the Morning” and on NBC’s “Today Show.”

Jim Trelease, Author of Penguin’s The Read-Aloud Handbook, Receives The 2008 Carle Honor

Jim Trelease, father of the Read-Aloud movement and author of the Penguin national bestseller, The Read Aloud Handbook, was one of four recipients of The Carle Honors 2008, on September 23rd. A constellation of awards celebrating the creative vision and long term dedication of key individuals and organizations to the art of the picture book and its vital role in supporting art appreciation, early literacy, and critical thinking, the other recipients included artist Maurice Sendak, philanthropists Jim and Vanita Oelschlager, and Susan Hirschman, retired publisher and founder of Greenwillow Books.

Penguin published the first edition of The Read–Aloud Handbook in 1982. Six months later the book catapulted to The New York Times bestseller list for seventeen weeks. Jim has been a national speaker on education, addressing major reading and library conferences and more than 250,000 parents and teachers. Updated every five years with new titles, nearly two million copies of The Read-Aloud Handbook now appear in British, Australian, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese and Korean editions.

The Secret Life of Bees Movie Premiere is a Hit

Penguin field rep Trudy Kallman joined Sue Monk Kidd and the cast of The Secret Life of Bees movie at the premiere in Washington, DC with the Black Caucus on September 25th. Trudy reports back that it was "special.... In spite of heavy rain, people were lined up waiting to get in when I arrived. There was even a red carpet and awning for the stars and Sue (we regular folk were queued to the side) and the Newsmuseum theater filled with a few hundred people. Sue looked fabulous and was introduced on stage with key cast members. The film stayed very close to the book, solid acting and the audience loved it. Lots of tears and rousing applause—I’d say we have a hit."

Pictured here: Sue Monk Kidd with Trudy.

Before you hit the theater, read an excerpt from the amazing book that started it all.

Perigee Author Helps Celebrate the 80th Anniversary of the Oxford English Dictionary

This week the Oxford University Press begins its autumn-long celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Oxford English Dictionary, with the first of a series of panel events that includes Perigee’s own word-eater Ammon Shea, author of Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages. Ammon chews the lexical fat with fellow “vocabularian” and celebrated author Simon Winchester, OUP editor-at-large Jesse Sheidlower, and others at the Yale Library (October 1st), the Oxford University (October 11th-15th), the New York Century Club (October 22nd), Harvard University (November 13th), and the Philadelphia Free Library (November 18th).

Fifteenth Anniversary of Carol Shields’ The Stone Diaries Celebrated with Penguin Classics Edition and Memorial Labyrinth, Featuring Quote Walls

As Penguin Classics publishes a fifteenth anniversary edition of Carol Shields’ The Stone Diaries, the University of Manitoba unveiled the Carol Shields Memorial Labyrinth in King’s Park. “Quote Walls” will be a unique component. No other labyrinth in the world has an entry way designated in this manner.

The two Quote Walls feature engraved granite tiles of different textures which will display a myriad of quotes from Carol Shields’ works. Anyone entering the labyrinth will pass through Carol’s words. This will physically signify the escape from daily life and the entrance into story, myth and imagination through sight, touch and experience.

The Stone Diaries displays Shields’ trademark humor, compassion, and insight into everyday life. It is a subtle, but affecting portrait of an everywoman reflecting on an unconventional life. What transforms this seemingly ordinary tale is the richness of the central character’s vividly described inner life—from her earliest memories of her adoptive mother to her awareness of impending death.

The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry Named Finalist for the Washington State Center for the Book Awards

The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn (Viking/Penguin) has been chosen as a finalist in the nonfiction category for the Washington State Center for the Book’s annual book awards, given for outstanding books published by Washington authors the previous year.

The Sharper Your Knife tells the story of Kathleen Flinn, a thirty-six-year-old American living and working in London, who returned from vacation to find that her corporate job had been eliminated. Ignoring her mother’s advice that she get another job immediately or “never get hired anywhere ever again,” Flinn instead cleared out her savings and moved to Paris to pursue a dream—a diploma from the famed Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. The Sharper Your Knife is the delightful true story of food, Paris and the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.

Want to know more about Kathleen Flinn? You can still read her September posts on the Penguin Blog.

Garrison Keillor Draws Great Reviews and Sold-Out Tour Stops

Garrison Keillor's Liberty (Viking) received a great review from USA Today in this past Tuesday’s edition that ran alongside an excerpt from the book and cover photo. Garrison will be interviewed on the nationally syndicated public radio show “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” which will air on October 11th and 12th. This is a widely listened to weekly quiz show and Garrison will be featured on their fifteen-minute long celebrity interview.

Garrison’s tour has continued to be outstanding, with sold out crowds in every city on the second leg of his tour. This past week he spoke to a crowd of 605 in Atlanta, 500 in Miami, 500 in Winston-Salem and 1600 in Washington, DC.

Check out the Garrison Keillor feature page for more on what makes this author and his books so popular.

Portfolio Acquires Book by New York Times Editorial Board Member Eduardo Porter

Portfolio prevailed over several other high-level bidders in an auction for New York Times editorial board member Eduardo Porter’s first book, tentatively titled Pricing It: How We Price and Misprice Life, the Universe, and Everything. Though Pricing It will use economics as a way to gain insights into our lives, Porter aims to hone in specifically on how there is a price behind each choice we make. Examining both individual decisions and larger historical events through the prices that determined them, Porter will show how prices are set and how they change our lives. Porter, who began his career in journalism in 1990 as a reporter for Notimex, the Mexican news agency, joined The New York Times in 2004 to cover economics; he joined its editorial board in 2007. Portfolio plans to publish the book sometime in 2010.

Fall in Fashion with Gotham’s Stylish New Reads

A change in season means a change in wardrobe. Gotham helps readers out with two essential fashion books for the fall: How to Have Style by Isaac Mizrahi and The Lucky Guide to Mastering Any Style by Kim France and Andrea Linett, which both go on-sale on October 7th.

The king of real-world chic shares his tips and award-winning flair in a colorful guidebook designed to unleash every woman’s inner fashionista. Isaac Mizrahi’s new book, How to Have Style, will be all over the media, including: “The Today Show,” “Live with Regis and Kelly,” “The Ellen Degeneres Show,” “Martha Stewart,” “Rachel Ray,” and “Leonard Lopate.” It will also be featured in several major print outlets including: More, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, InStyle, Allure, Marie Claire, Redbook, US Weekly, Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Washington Post, and many more. Be sure to catch Isaac Mizrahi, when he appears at Barnes & Noble (555 Fifth Ave @ 46th Street) on Tuesday, October 7th, to talk about his new book.

Watch this trailer for Isaac Mizrahi’s How to Have Style.

On the heels of the fabulously successful Lucky Shopping Manual comes the complete handbook for creating a great look based timeless styles. The Lucky Guide to Mastering Any Style is based on the techniques used by fashion designers for ages; the book features ten versatile archetypes that can be customized to fit varying moods, personalities, and body types. Lucky will use their publishing muscle and promote the books in their magazine and website for 6 months including e-mail blasts and advertisements. Media highlights include: “Good Morning America,” Lucky Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Dallas Morning News, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, and much more.

The New York Times Bestseller Highlights for the Week of October 5th

Three new debuts for Penguin Group (USA) on The New York Times bestseller list for the week of October 12th: Heat Lightning by John Sandford (G. P. Putnam’s Sons) hits at #2 on the hardcover fiction list, while Hot Mahogany by Stuart Woods comes in at #4 on that same list. And, Mother Warriors by Jenny McCarthy (Dutton) debuts at #8 on the hardcover nonfiction list.

In addition, Charlaine Harris manages to hold an amazing seven slots on the mass market fiction list for a second consecutive week: Dead Until Dark is #4 and Living Dead in Dallas is #8, both in their third weeks on the list; while Club Dead is #11; Dead to the World is #13; Dead as a Doornail at #17; Definitely Dead is #19; and All Together Dead is #20, all in their second weeks on this list.

Here are more bestseller highlights for the week of October 12th:

On the hardcover nonfiction list, Bad Money by Kevin Phillips (Viking) returns to the list at #6 in its third week, and Angler by Barton Gellman (The Penguin Press) is #14 in its second week.

On the trade paperback fiction list, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Riverhead) is #3 in its fourth week; The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (Penguin) is #12 in its 117th week; The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead) is #13 in its 186th week; Second Chance by Jane Green (Plume) is #15 in its eighteenth week; and The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs (Berkley) is #18 in its 39th week.

On the mass market paperback list, Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell (Berkley) is #3 in its fourth week.

On the paperback nonfiction list, Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (Penguin) is #1 in its 87th week; while Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (Penguin) is in the #2 slot in its 88th week.

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle (Plume) holds at #1 on the paperback advice, how-to and miscellaneous list in its 35th week.

In the young readers sector, Goodnight Goon written and illustrated by Michael Rex (Putnam) is #8 in its fifth week on the children’s picture book list; Just Listen by Sarah Dessen (Speak) returns to the children’s paperback book list at #4 in its seventeenth week; and Barack Obama by Roberta Edwards, illustrated by Ken Call (Grosset & Dunlap) is #9 in its eighth wee on that same list.

New This Week

Cheating at Canasta by William Trevor (Penguin, on-sale now)

William Trevor has been hailed by the The New Yorker as “the greatest living writer of short stories.” The Wall Street Journal has said of Trevor, “there is no better short story writer in the English speaking world.” In his latest work, Cheating at Canasta, which was published by Penguin on September 30th in conjunction with Trevor’s 80th birthday year, he delivers another brilliant collection of stories that will delight his devotees as well as anyone hungry for literary fiction.

The Second Civil War by Ronald Brownstein (Penguin, on-sale now)

In recent years, the polarization dividing Washington, and indeed the entire country, has risen to alarming levels. Though we are currently facing critical issues which require broad consensus to solve, the political landscape has become more vicious, more zero-sum, more willing to make mountains out of molehills, and less able to confront the real problems we face. In The Second Civil War, veteran political reporter Ronald Brownstein diagnoses the electoral, demographic, and institutional forces that have pulled politics to the margins, leaving precious little common ground for compromise.

Brownstein offers a fresh look at American politics and the personalities who have shaped it, from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Brownstein examines the inner-workings of the two political parties and the events that have paved the way to today’s dangerous impasse, from little-understood changes in congressional rules that made it easier for parties to enforce discipline and discourage compromise, to the rise of special-interest pressure groups, to a vastly changed media environment.

A vital big-picture analysis of the forces that have made this era in American politics so bitterly partisan, The Second Civil War is essential reading for all Americans who are disturbed by our current political dysfunction and hungry for ways to understand it...and move beyond it. And in this heated political season, readers from all parties and affiliations can benefit from reading Brownstein’s enlightening examination of how this deep divide has affected the present state of American politics.

View our website feature page with an excerpt from Ronald Brownstein’s The Second Civil War.

The Slave Ship by Marcus Rediker (Penguin, on-sale now)

Winner of the George Washington Prize and the 2008 OAH Merle Curti Award, historian Marcus Rediker’s The Slave Ship: A Human History transports readers to a dark period in American (and human) history. From its startling and horrifying introduction that follows an African woman’s entrance onto a dreaded slave ship, Rediker’s account of this terrible vessel captures the imagination and heartstrings of even the most seasoned reader. The Wall Street Journal called the book “provocative and briny… in this book, the ghosts have all their say.”

Alice by Stacy A. Cordery (Penguin, on-sale now)

New this week in paperback is Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker, published by Penguin Books. The book has been very well-received, with reviews in USA Today, Washington Post, New York Times, and newspapers across the country. With so much media scrutiny focused on the families and children of our presidents and candidates, from the Bush twins to Bristol Palin, Alice gives readers a fascinating look at how one presidential daughter put her sudden fame to good use.

New Next Week

Lulu in Marrakech by Diane Johnson (Dutton, 10/7)

The two-time Pulitzer Prize- and three-time National Book Award-nominated author of the bestseller Le Divorce returns with a mesmerizing novel of double standards and double agents. In Lulu in Marrakech, Diane Johnson creates “part page-turning thriller, part in-depth examination of gender inequality and the ‘perennial eye infection of colonialism’” (O Magazine). Major media for Diane includes: national women’s magazines such as Elle, Vogue, Marie Claire, O Magazine, Town and Country, Vanity Fair, More, major print such as The San Francisco Chronicle, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Time Out New York, and much more. You can catch Diane at Barnes & Noble (2289 Broadway @ 82nd St) next Tuesday, October 7th, as she discusses her new book. Read an excerpt from the book here.

Amarcord by Marcella Hazan (Gotham, 10/7)

This is the food publishing event of the season. Marcella Hazan is the beloved teacher and bestselling cookbook author that shaped how America makes Italian food. It is because of Marcella Hazan that Americans eat pesto and balsamic vinegar. Gotham will publish her memoir, Amarcord, which chronicles her life growing up in Emilia-Romanga, teaching science in a small town in Italy and finally teaching America how to cook Italian. Major media highlights includes: “The Today Show,” a major feature in Gourmet, WHYY’s “Chef’s Table,” a major Kim Severson profile in The New York Times, The New York Times Books Review, AARP, Associated Press, O Magazine, “Martha TV,” and much more to come.

Penguin books, publishing, bestsellers, literary awards