Here are a few highlights from my time at last week’s annual conference of the American Library Association (ALA). At the Nonfiction Book Blast, I saw seventeen engaging nonfiction writers present their recent books. If you missed it, you can find out about all the books on the Nonfiction Book Blast wiki. We celebrated Lerner’s […]Read more "ALA: Taking Children’s Books Seriously"

Domenica invited me to write about my books in the new Fall 2009 TFCB series The Decades of Twentieth-Century America. How satisfying to write a book that requires research into what makes this nation tick! How special to multiply this reward by five. That is how I felt writing five books in the decades series. […]Read more "Insider’s View from Marlene Targ Brill"

I don’t think anyone who knows me well is surprised that I became an editor. I read voraciously as a kid. I wrote a ten-book series in my early childhood—a project that had me clipping photos out of magazines to use as illustrations and scrawling back-cover copy on construction-paper book jackets. (Yes, my parents were […]Read more "On Childhood Dreams and Lightning Bolt Books!"

I had the opportunity to talk to the students at the Hamline University’s low residency MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. It’s a new-ish program, but it’s off to a fantastic start with a great faculty and great students. It was a real pleasure to be involved. One of the things I talked […]Read more "The Cocktail Party"

Last Wednesday I mentioned our new title Kung Fu Masters. This past weekend was the Asian American ComiCon (AACC) at the Museum of Chinese in America in Manhattan, where Kung Fu Masters artist Alitha E. Martinez had a table in “artist’s alley.” Author Evonne Tsang is also local, so she and I and a handful […]Read more "GU Comics Day: Taking the zombies to a con"

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"