News - Books

Mark Kurlansky has become a veritable regular on the Book Sense 76 List. The hardcover edition of his The Basque History of the World (Walker) appeared on the November/December list in 1999; the hardcover edition of The White Man in the Tree: And Other Stories (Washington Square Press) was on the January/February 2001 list; and The Basque History of the World paperback (Penguin) was featured on the March/April Book Sense 76 in 2001.

This is the earliest announcement yet of the Book Sense 76, in order to give you as much lead time as possible to check initials or on-hand. The March/April 76 with bookseller quotes will run here next week, as we know many of you like to see the quotes early, and to cut and paste them for newsletters, Web sites, and shelf-talkers. Any on-sale dates that we have for February and March are noted; otherwise, assume January or fall '01 publication, with a few earlier, which is neat.

Ernest Hebert, novelist and Dartmouth professor of writing, has taken to the open road for a book tour with stops at about 15 Book Sense stores. His work of historical fiction, The Old American (Hardscrabble, University Press of New England), set in the New England frontier during the French and Indian Wars, is based on the true story of an English settler kidnapped by an Algonkian king, Caucus-Meteor.

Readers of USA Today this morning got a Book Sense-specific "USA Today Snapshot," when the newspaper's Life section featured five "top teen books" taken from the recent Book Sense Teen 76 Top Ten. The featured spot -- on the first page of the Life section -- also noted that the complete list and recommendations were available on BookSense.com. (The full list can be found here, and it will also be mailed to Book Sense stores in the February white box.)

Here's news of the next 76 Top Ten -- a Teen 76 Top Ten. It will be mailed to you in the February white box, for store display in March. Teen/young adult books will still be included in the full Children's 76s, but, just as you've moved and increased your teen sections in your stores, we want this group of readers to have their own distinct place.

On Tuesday, January 22, judges for Britain's prestigious Whitbread book awards conferred the title of Book of the Year on the sophisticated children's fantasy tale The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman (Knopf/Del Rey). The Book of the Year is selected from among the winners of five categories -- Novel, First Novel, Poetry, Biography, and Children's Book.

According to Clarion spokesperson Deb Shapiro, the publisher has ordered thousands more copies of both The Three Pigs by David Wiesner and A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park since Tuesday, when the two books won the 2002 Caldecott Medal and Newbery Medal respectively. (Click here for a related story.)

By Kathleen Craughwell Special to the Los Angeles Times It's ridiculously early on Sunset Boulevard -- 7:30 a.m., to be exact -- when two women from the Santa Clarita Valley pitch their collapsible camping chairs on the sidewalk in front of Book Soup, the popular West Hollywood independent bookstore. The store will not open for another hour and a half.

David Wiesner, author and illustrator of The Three Pigs (Kids' Book Sense 76 Pick, Spring '01), has been named the winner of the 2002 Randolph Caldecott Medal, and Linda Sue Park has won the 2002 John Newbery Medal for her novel A Single Shard. The awards, honoring outstanding writing and illustration in children's books published in the U.S.

Quick, now: Who was the biggest-selling crime-fiction writer in the United Kingdom in 2001, according to official industry figures? P.D. James? Ruth Rendell? Patricia Cornwell? John Grisham?