The Rotary Club members came back to Southern Illinois with the plan to get basic library books for each of those schools. A project called “Build a book bridge to Belize” was born, and each of the 47 Rotary Clubs in District 6510 has been challenged to provide books for the project, with a goal of obtaining 10,000 books before next May.

. . . many of the villages he tours with his “moving library” of 100 picture books are located smack in the midst of a civil war between government troops and guerrillas.

The children in these poor, mountainous villages cannot go to school. Until Matsui came, most had never seen a book.

And then we have this story about the Knox County Tennessee libraries throwing books in the trash.

NEW YORK, Feb. 23 /PRNewswire/ — Harry Potter fans will be counting down to the July 25, 2006 release of the paperback version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with an exciting six-week sweepstakes from Scholastic, the U.S. publisher of the Harry Potter series. Beginning March 1st and continuing with a new installment every Wednesday for six weeks, the sweepstakes at www.scholastic.com/harrypotter offers fans a chance to win the grand-prize of a Harry Potter iPod® package which includes a 30GB iPod® etched with the crest of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and all six downloadable audiobooks from the iTunes® Music Store, plus a copy of the Deluxe U.S. edition of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with a bookplate signed by author J.K. Rowling.

Is there really anyone left who needs to count down to the release of the paperback? How many millions of copies does this woman sell when her hardbacks are released? Are there really readers who are anxiously awaiting the paperback? I’m kind of surprised by that.

And then, this gal is pretty funny:

“We know how passionate the Harry Potter fans are and we wanted to give them something new and exciting to expand their reading experience,” stated Suzanne Murphy, Vice President of Scholastic Trade Marketing. “While old fans will love the online activities and interactive features, readers new to the series can be introduced into the magical world of Harry Potter.”

After the bazillions of dollars they’ve all made off of Harry Potter, they are now offering three iPods and 93 free books. Wow!

And how new and exciting can these books be? I think if they really want to give something to the fans they should give a cherried out Ford Anglia at least. If they filled the trunk with Chocolate Frogs and Bertie Bots Every Flavor Beans, they’d be on the right track.

This fellow’s story cracks me up. He’s thirty-five, he studied at Oxford, has a doctorate, and couldn’t find a full-time job. So what else do you do when you can’t find a full-time job? You pound out a children’s book.

But the part that cracks me up is that “Matthew didn’t think his novel was good enough to publish. But a friend insisted on sending the manuscript to an agent.”

After sitting on the slush pile for a while, the book sells:

Puffin, though, had to win a serious bidding war for Endymion Spring.

“Pretty well every major publishing house in London bid for it. It was absolutely crazy,” says McNally.
So how much was her winning bid — which includes the rights to Skelton’s next book?

“It was not an insubstantial sum for a big company like Penguin to part with,” she says. “It was a substantial six-figure sum. In pounds. A substantial one.”

This for a book the author didn’t think was publishable. It is really hard for writers to judge their own work.

The book is compared to The Thief Lord and His Dark Materials trilogy, neither of which I liked (but that didn’t stop them from being best sellers).

Here is a blog that will give you reviews and interviews from a kid’s perspective. Now when you read my old reviews and think I’m sounding like a dinosaur who has totally lost touch with the ugly, messy, noisy, things that children find so thrilling today, you can just click on over to The Write Brothers (they are so witty!) to get the scoop from real kids (as opposed to me, the old, fat, fake kid).