...after these messages

The month of January is always a bit of a joy-suck. The holidays are over, New York is silent and gray, work hits hard after slowing down a bit at the end of December, and it takes something really special like Terry Pratchett receiving a well-deserved Printz Honor to really get the spirits up. At the same time, January's chronological placement allows for procrastination from said work by compiling Tops Of the Year lists. For me, that means going through the stacks of great books and records and movies that came out last year and whittling them down to a personal best-of. And so before resuming regularly scheduled programming as we move out of January, I figured I'd take a break from the typical purview of this blog and post my fifteen favorite (not necessarily "the best") records from 2008. These are the albums I had on repeat while reading or editing manuscripts at home or on the train, so I suppose you could say that there's a bit of these in each of the books I've worked on this year.

15. Feed the Animals, Girl Talk
14. In Ghost Colours, Cut Copy
13. Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust, Sigur Rós
12. In Her Gentle Jaws, The Depreciation Guild
11. Stainless Style, Neon Neon
10. Jim, Jamie Lidell
09. Los Angeles, Flying Lotus
08. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
07. Made In the Dark, Hot Chip
06. Chunk Of Change EP, Passion Pit
05. April, Sun Kil Moon
04. Elephant Shell, Tokyo Police Club
03. Dear Science, TV On the Radio
01. For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver* (tie)
01. Saturdays = Youth, M83 (tie)

Anyone else have favorites that they want to share?

*For Emma, Forever Ago was self-released in 2007 but didn't see wide release until this year, so I'm not sure if it ought to be included, but, frankly, it's got enough great stuff on it for two years of best-of lists anyway.

2009 Predictions: You heard it here first

Here are my predictions for publishing in 2009:

January
Anita Silvey won't be happy with this year's Newbery, either.

February
There'll be no federal bail-out of anyone's backlist.

March
Books will have to be more beautiful and skillfully made to deserve ink and paper.

April
Anyone who does go to Bologna/Comic-con will find a treasure.

May
Authors will outnumber booksellers at BEA.

June
Jo Rowling will announce her next project -- a "cozy mystery."

July
See April.

August
Obama will have disappointed us from time to time.

September
Something (surely!) will be the next Twilight/Wimpy Kid.

October
One significant publishing company will close its doors right before Frankfurt.

November
Bowen Press will be thankful not to have been that publishing company (tempting fate, I know).

December
_____________________

Any ideas for December, or corrections/changes/additions gratefully received. I'd especially like to be right, however, about November.

A Peek Inside My "Sent Mail" Folder

Or, Reason Number One Million and Three Why I Love This Job! (Other possible but eventually discarded titles for this post included: "Emails That Make You Laugh Out Loud As You Write Them" or "Emails That Make Me Sound Crazy But Are Actually Totally Professional.")

Amidst a busy few days of paperwork, reading, meetings, and more paperwork, I had an utterly delightful moment that amused me so much that I thought I'd share it. From my Sent Mail folder, then--the following note to one of our author/illustrators:

"Dear XXX, I'm just sending you a quick note to let you know that the hippos arrived via Fedex today, just as expected."

There is something sublime--and wildly, fantastically delightful--about the fact that a statement like that (and the wonderful visual image it evokes) is all in a day's work for a children's book editor. Truly, there's never a dull moment at the Bowen Press!

Black Wednesday

It was a dark day for publishing yesterday. Layoffs, squeeze-outs, consolidations, cancellations. It was such a hard day that I for one didn't sleep last night. Couldn't get the whole morass of change out of my mind.

But I'll tell you, there was a small but very bright spot at Bowen Press, yesterday afternoon. And that was the moment that we opened two FedEx boxes from Peter Reynolds, in which we found his watercolors for a book we're publishing next fall, called Tess's Tree.

The text is by Jess Brallier, and it's the story of a girl who loves a tree -- a tree that is so old that it needs to be cut down. Tess sees it fall, and only lets go of her anger and sorrow when she has a funeral for her tree, celebrating its life, and learning about its small but important role in the fabric of her neighborhood in the process.

Of course there's a parallel in Tess's story to the events of yesterday, but that's not what I want to say here. What I want to say here is that we all stopped what we were doing when the shipment arrived. We gathered around a table and carefully opened the boxes. (Truth be told, Jordan manfully ripped off the flap of one box because there are NO EXACTO KNIVES around original art.) Peter had packed a lovely simple black box within the FedEx box, and when we opened it, truly, it was like opening a treasure chest.

I'll post the images as soon as I get to the office, but let me tell you, there is no thrill like seeing pictures you've only seen as jpegs or scans or sketches in their original state. The texture of the watercolor paper is toothy, the white is rich. The tissues over the art crinkle and you have to lift them like a bride's veil to see what's underneath. And then the art itself -- sweet, delicate, powerful, with impeccable line and (to our surprise) really drenched in color.

We'll publish Tess's Tree next fall. There will still be books, and there will still be children who turn to books to learn about themselves and the world. So black as Black Wednesday was, for me it will always be linked to that moment of ripping and opening and crinkling and wonder at the sight of something new, something unique in all the world.

Bowen Press website

Here is is, if you are feeling in the mood for a promotional blast:

http://www.harpercollinschildrens.com/harperchildrens//Kids/gamesandcontests/features/bowenpress/default.aspx

Oooh, shiny!

Author/illustrator Greg Foley, creator of Willoughby and the Lion, one of the picture books on the Bowen Press's debut Winter 2009 list, dropped by our offices yesterday between several meetings in midtown. In his daytime life, Greg's the creative director behind the high-end fashion & art magazines V, Visionaire and Vman. But over his lunch hour, he put on his author/illustrator hat to lend his golden signature to the broadsides for his stunning book, and set a most impressive record: 500 autographs in 20 minutes! (And even though it's not our book, we fell in mad love with his Thank You Bear t-shirt!) Craving one of those gorgeous broadsides? Stop by the HarperCollins booth (#1013) at ALA Midwinter and beg nicely....

I'm rockin' a vision here dude

Such was the expression overheard on the street on Saturday near Union Square. The conversation was about a skateboard ("sweet as #@$%," he called it -- the last word unprintable in a family blog), but the phrase itself was worthy a vision of any scope or magnitude. It made me think: What vision am I rockin'? And is it sweet as #@$%?

On the responsibility of publishing

Last night I finished reading a manuscript left me weak. Crying and trembling, in fact. It is Lauren Oliver's If I Should Fall. No encapsulation will do it justice, but it's the story of a girl who has to live the last day of her life seven times over until she understands how to save herself. The story is heartbreaking and the writing is astonishing. The manuscript epitomizes the idea that there is something new to say and there is a new way to say it. And it's a first novel. The author turns 25 today.

As the publisher, I feel both elation and an enormous responsibility: Can I live up to publishing this? So many questions: Will I get the jacket right? Will the interior design be exquisite enough? Will I get it into the hands of all the people who need to see it? I want so much for this book. I want kids to read it and debate it and wish they could affect the outcome. I want it to outlive me.

It's a masterpiece of a debut (and I know, I know how the gods are about saying things like that but I made a small animal sacrifice in order to get away with it). I can't believe how lucky I am.

Halloween at the office...

...always a trip. Used to be that everyone felt the license to dress up, even from 9 to 5. Now, not so much. At Bowen Press today we did have a fabulous harlequin in the design department, and a zombie in the production department, so the tradition of misrule has not died out entirely. Soon I will be a proficient enough blogger to have taken photos, but not yet. Just now, though, at home, our trick or treaters included a Mexican vampire (kid who grabbed a sombrero from his parents' hat tree); a superhero, whose powers derived from his "Nike Toe Crusher" shoes -- essentially plastic bags; and a dear young boy who said, "I'm a sorcerer from the Ranger's Apprentice." Okay, it's not a Bowen Press book, but it's pretty great to know that kids still find inspiration in children's books to practice being new versions of themselves on Halloween.

So we finally...

...came up with a logo.

Peter Reynolds was kind enough to draw it for us. It's a "Bowen knot," which when untied is a circle. I didn't even know about the Bowen knot until we started doing research for our imprint. A designer we work with unearthed this heraldic device and now we've made it our own. It's a little imperfect, which I like: it doesn't share the fearful symmetry of the Mac's Command key. Peter rendered the logo a few times for us and named this drawing "small bright." Which is just what it is.

We have a motto, too. Our motto is "Only connect!" stolen from E. M. Forster's Howards End. At our best, we try to connect children to books, authors to artists, ideas to execution, culture to commerce. And now we have a blog, so that's a point of connection, too.