Who Lives Here? in China!

I recently received a letter from my publisher at Kids Can Press informing me of the happy news that my series, Who Lives Here? has been sold to Shanghai Xiron for Simplified Chinese rights. Hooray!

I am thrilled to know that young children in China will be able to turn the pages of these books and learn all about animals and their habitats.

I visited Shanghai a couple of years ago and had so much fun meeting elementary school students who were keen to say hello and practice their English. Maybe some of them will read these books. :-)

Cheers!

Hooray for Dr. Seuss!

Dr. Seuss, world-famous children's author, has a new book out: The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories. It contains 7 stories that were published in Redbook Magazine in 1950 and 1951. I wonder if they stand the test of time? You can read about the new book here.

Did you know that Dr. Seuss's first book, And To Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was rejected 27 times before it finally found a home at Random House?

At the time of Theodore Seuss Geisel's death, in 1991, he had sold more than 200 million copies of his books (numbered then at 46). Impressive!

Shows the value of perseverance.

Cheers!

This Weekend at SCBWI

The huge SCBWI (Society of Children's Writers and Illustrators) summer conference is on in L.A. this weekend. Lots of my friends are there and I wish I were, too!

The next best thing to being there is following along with the live blogging and tweeting that is taking place. And that's what I'm doing! If you'd like to follow along, too, here are the links for the conference blog and tweets.

We can live vicariously. :-)

Cheers!

Authors on Tour

Publishers don't have a lot of $$$ for PR these days and it's often up to an author to be a self-promoter. Lots of authors are building websites, writing blogs, creating trailers and twitter-feed, all in the hopes of attracting people to their books.

Here's a story about three authors who are doing even more — they have joined forces to set up their own author tour. Hooray for them!

Meanwhile, I'm hunkered down in my office, working hard on revisions. (There's a certain irony that while I'm busy with this project, the sun has finally come out in Vancouver, and I'm missing all the beach fun. Ah, the charmed life of a writer...)

Cheers!