The Lerner Blog

This past year, I had the pleasure of working with the company’s founder, Harry Lerner, on his memoir. I had been bugging him to write it since 2006, because the company’s 50th anniversary was coming up in 2009. I KNEW it would take a lot of nudging to get him going, and boy was I […]Read more "Working on a Memoir"

I started my career at Lerner Publishing Group as the company proofreader, way back in the early 1990s. The tools of the trade in those days were a red pen and lots of pencils. Okay, and some erasers too. In the digital twenty-first century, as editorial director of the TFCB imprint, I’m at the computer […]Read more "A Foot in the Door"

Working with Brian P. Cleary on his many books is a great deal of fun for me as an editor. As anyone who has seen him speak at a conference or school knows, he is just as funny in person as he is on the printed page. For those of you who haven’t yet had […]Read more "25+1 Random Things about Brian P. Cleary"

I’m happy to be off to ALA for part of the annual conference in Chicago. I’m especially excited to talk with authors and illustrators I’ve never met face-to-face, including Greg Christie, illustrator of Bad News for Outlaws, and Rebecca and Donald Wojahn, authors of the Follow That Food Chain series. I’m also looking forward to […]Read more "ALA 2009"

I’m a longtime Lerner/TFCB staffer—first in-house and then freelance. Domenica invited me to write an entry to give a little bit of the insider’s view. I work from my home office, which makes for a short commute. Sometimes I go out to the driveway and then back in to pretend I’m walking to work. The […]Read more "Insider’s View from Peg G."

Known around the office as DDIP, I’ve been an editorial director with Lerner Publishing Group for more than ten years. Initially, I worked across a wide range of imprints and age groups, all the way from Sandra Markle’s Animal Predators series in the Lerner Publications imprint to the Graphic Myths and Legends series in our […]Read more "Introducing Domenica Di Piazza"

In the television series Heroes—a strange, scenery-chewing show, check your local listings—two guys from Japan, lost in the Midwest, hope to find clues to a mystery of world-shattering ramifications in a comic book that predicts the future. They head into the local comics shop with confidence the latest issue will be waiting, because there’s one […]Read more "GU Comics Day: Making zombies safe for kids"

Ah, I love the feeling of a new blog—all shiny and full of possibility. I’m excited to be making a contribution to this blog, along with my regular Carolrhoda blogging, from which I am adapting this post: I wrote about trailblazing YA author John Green’s great post on advances and royalties late last week and […]Read more "Link by link: New publishing."

I recently spent a weekend with a nearly six-year-old boy who I’ll call J. In a single hour, a number of different books came up. The experience made me rethink my views of reading level and interest level for all sorts of books. We started with I’m the Best Artist in the Ocean. J. proudly […]Read more "What an Almost-Six-Year-Old Taught Me about Reading Level"