I grew up playing soccer. It was my fist organized sport. We played in the spring and fall where I grew up. This was in the 80s, and it was a fairly low-key league. We got a tee-shirt at the the beginning of the season for a uniform, and it seems like I was always […]Read more "In praise of soccer in the age of You Tube"

Over the Fourth of July holiday, I traveled to Chicago by train. The scenery between Minneapolis and Chicago isn’t dramatic or exciting. But gazing out the window as we passed through the small towns and fringes of cities gave me a glimpse of something I don’t see much of anymore—the slow march of summer days. […]Read more "The Heart of Summer"

vs. I’m working on Americanizing  a YA novel from the UK  for our spring 2011 Carolrhoda Lab list. That was a hard sentence for me to write, because I’m somewhat allergic to the idea of Americanization. As a reader, I really enjoy encountering the subtleties of different forms of English usage in fiction. I think […]Read more "Separated by a common language"

By Domenica Di Piazza, Editorial Director, TFCB July 4. Fireworks. Brats on the Grill. Corn on the Cob. Boston Pops. Federal Holiday. Day off Work. Swimming, Boating, Fun. Behind it all is the struggle for the nation’s independence 234 years ago, and TFCB has a number of books on the subject to provide good background […]Read more "Independence Day"

Carol H. tells me that this is the first anniversary of the Lerner Blog. It appears that the inimitable Fuse #8 has given us an excellent present in the form of a post about our BEA Librarian Preview. (It’s also just in time for our new website’s launch.) So let’s not mess about here; head […]Read more "[Screams] Happy Blogoversary to Us"

by Erin Finnegan, NY editorial intern This week I interviewed Anne Timmons, the illustrator of our version of Pigling, as told by Dan Jolley. It’s part of our Graphic Myths and Legends series. It turns out Anne is the prolific illustrator behind loads of fun-looking graphic novels! Hopefully we can get her to do another […]Read more "GU Comics Day: Talking with artist Ann Timmons"

By Domenica Di Piazza (Editorial Director, TFCB) and Martha Kranes (Senior Production Editor) My editorial colleague, Martha Kranes, and her family always have exciting projects going on at their home. For example, Martha’s eight-year-old son recently discovered nine caterpillars on a volunteer bronze fennel plant that had come up from last year’s seed in the […]Read more "Butterfly Magic"

By Carol HinzEditorial Director, Millbrook Press Earlier this month on the BookEnds, LLC blog, Jessica talked about style sheets. I’d like to talk a little more about style sheets as they relate to nonfiction. Here at Lerner, text editors put together style sheets for our copy editor/proofreader to refer to. Indexers also refer to the […]Read more "Got Style?"

By Carol HinzEditorial Director, Millbrook Press If you’re at ALA this weekend, be sure to stop by our booth—number 2311. We can’t promise to bring along our temperate Minnesota weather, but we can promise we’ll have some fabulous new books on hand as well as two great authors and one amazing illustrator. Saturday11:00Brian P. Cleary […]Read more "ALA, Here We Come!"