The Lerner Blog

Are you starting to plan your summer camping trips? You probably have your tent, your sleeping bags, your cooler, your water bottles…but wait! What about the campfire? Yes, yes, you have your wood and your matches and your marshmallows. That’s all well and good. But do you have your scary stories? You know, your dragons, […]Read more "Summer scares"

By Danielle Carnito, Trade Art Director and Designer Sometimes, we in the design department actually LEAVE the design department for a few hours. I know it’s hard to believe, but we don’t always sit behind a computer clicking buttons for eight hours a day. Some aspects of book making require interacting with other people outside of […]Read more "Demystifying the Press Check Process with Chris Barton’s New Book: Dazzle Ships"

Greg Hunter, Associate Editorial Director A couple of weeks ago, C.M. Surrisi, author of this spring’s hilarious, suspenseful middle-grade whodunit Vampires on the Run: A Quinnie Boyd Mystery, asked me what I thought made the middle-grade mystery novel unique. I probably responded with more verbiage than needed, but here’s a crack at the answer: Much […]Read more "Solving the Middle-Grade Mystery"

I love police procedurals, especially when you need a lot of adjectives to nail them. For example, Ben Winters‘s The Last Policeman (the first in a trilogy) has been described so many ways: murder mystery; dystopian fiction; apocalyptic novel; detective story. It’s all of the above, plus a darn good read, What does this have to […]Read more "Forensic Pairing: Fiction and Nonfiction"

Special thanks to Jeff Mitchell for the following post! Library cards are often the beloved relics of the wallet. A sturdy library card from your public library will usually stick around longer than your driver’s license (requires renewal), credit cards (expiration dates), and certainly your cash (obviously). Maybe some of you proud Luddites out there […]Read more "Login to Lerner Digital… with Your Public Library Card"

By Alix Reid, Editorial Director of Carolrhoda Lab™ Recently I listened to a Fresh Air podcast in which Terry Gross interviewed Peggy Orenstein about her new book Girls and Sex. In one of the segments, Peggy quoted a teenager who said that girls were considered either “prudes” or “sluts.” This spring I had the great […]Read more "A Shout-out to Strong Young Women"

It’s tough to go against the grain of consumer culture. Our society glorifies a seemingly endless cycle of spending and acquiring more and more—a cycle that can leave us feeling stressed and like we never have enough, all while emptying out our pocketbooks. Resisting the message of “buy, buy, buy” is hard enough for adults, let alone […]Read more "Be Ad Aware"

Picture book author Kate Hosford recently had the opportunity to talk with Sanda Watt, the Romanian translator of Kate’s first four books. Here are Sanda’s answers to some of Kate’s questions.  Feeding the Flying Fanellis Kate Hosford: Welcome to the Lerner blog, Sanda! Can you tell us how you became a translator? Sanda Watt: My […]Read more "Q&A with Translator Sanda Watt"