Bargain book buyers got an early start on this year's BEA as they checked out offerings at the CIROBE Remainders & Gift Shops Pavilions yesterday.
This year's stairway to BEA heaven is brought to you courtesy of Shadowhunters, the first title in Cassandra Clare's next young adult fantasy series, the Dark Artifices (Margaret K. McElderry/S&S).
Throughout the day, Teamsters and exhibitors worked hard to prepare the show floor.
And the Teamsters had some unusual assistance over at the Workman booth, courtesy of Jordan Matter, who started the website dancersamongus.com. On the website and in his book, Dancers Among Us, he features dancers in "everyday" situations. Matter will be at BEA today from 8 a.m. to noon, taking photos of dancers on line and signing posters in the Workman booth.
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Walter Dean Myers, the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, kicked off School Library Journal's Day of Dialog. "Language Poverty" is how he described the growing reading gap between kids in homes with unemployed or underemployed parents and kids whose parents use the language of the workplace. "We must change the educational system to deal with 'unequal scholars,' " he said, arguing that a major part of the problem is the "silence" around the topic. The two crises in this country, he suggested, are "a growing illiteracy rate and a high incarceration rate." We have to either "take the leap of faith, he urged, or accept the consequences of the world illiteracy will introduce."
Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Jon Klassen, Tom Lichtenheld, D.B. Johnson, Mac Barnett (l. to r.) discussed "Pushing the Picture Book Envelope," with Betsy Bird, Youth Materials specialist at New York Public Library, moderating. Rosenthal said her book with Lichtenheld, Wumbers (Chronicle), grew out of her love of words, both their meaning and their physical representation, such as palindromes. Lichtenheld spoke of the influence of Steig's CDB and Charles Addams, and the idea that "visuals could be manipulated to tell stories." Barnett talked about metafiction and its role in "exposing the artifice"; he wanted to not only break the fourth wall, but also show how that breakthrough influences the world outside, with his book Chloe and the Lion, illustrated by Adam Rex (Hyperion/Disney). Jon Klassen played with the idea of negative space for his book I Want My Hat Back and what Bird called his growing line of "hat-based morality tales" with the addition of This Is Not My Hat (both Candlewick Press). And D.B. Johnson, creator of Magritte's Marvelous Hat (Houghton Mifflin), turned to Klassen and said, observing their two hat books, "Your hat has a point. Magritte's Hat is about embracing nonsense." Johnson added, "Once you accept the nonsensical premise, everything is logical."