Elizabeth C. Bunce's first young adult novel has found a home at Arthur A. Levine Books. Editor Cheryl Klein said Bunce's retelling of Rumpelstiltskin set in a eighteenth century woolen mill stands out "like gold thread in homespun." AALB plans to release the book in Spring 2008.

Dorinda Makanaonalani Nicholson's book, Remember World War II: Kids Who Survived Tell Their Stories (National Geographic, June 2005) has been named a Notable Social Studies Trade Book! Visit Dorinda's Web site to learn more about her life as a child of Pearl Harbor and her other award-winning books.

Henry Holt and Company has offered a two-book deal (yes, a two-book deal!) to first-time author (yes, first-time author!) Katie Speck. Reka Simonsen, editor with Henry Holt, said of Maybelle in the Soup: The Adventures of a Cockroach: 'I adore Maybelle --- she's absolutely my cup of tea when it comes to chapter books."

Christine Taylor-Butler is pleased to announce her widely successful first Rookie Reader Water Everywhere will be released in both French and Spanish-language versions. And Who Needs Friends, the product of a conference challenge by an editor to create a child-friendly story for the K-3 market in under 5-minutes based on a writing prompt "revelation", was purchased by Children's Press for release in 2006.

In April 2006, Children's Press released Mary Schulte's next three books: geography titles The Amazon River and The Great Salt Lake, and her fiction book Who Do I Look Like? Her six-book series on animal classification: Ants and Other Insects, Newts and Other Amphibians, Parrots and Other Birds, Monkeys and Other Mammals, Snakes and Other Reptiles, and Piranha and Other Fish came out in September 2005. 

The first two of Lisa Wade McCormick's seven books with Scholastic's Children's Press, Christopher Columbus and The Wright Brothers, were released September 2005, just in time for Columbus Day.

September 2005 also brought the release of Karin Lindstrom's first publication, Tiny Life on Plants, part of Children's Press Rookie Read-About Science series. The book highlights things like a puffball mushroom, which is the size and shape of a soccer ball. It also shows you a dead bug that’s been invaded by a mooching fungus. If you’re willing to scan and stare, and peer and prod, you too can find some of these tiny creatures in nature.

Earth, Pluto, Uranus, Saturn, Mercury, and Jupiter -- the first six in Christine Taylor-Butler's 12-book series on the solar system -- are now available in softcover through Scholastic Book Club flyers.

Stories Time and Again by Jan Irving Duncan O'Neal is now available through the Libraries Unlimited catalog and at Amazon.com. This is Jan's tenth book with Libraries Unlimited and is a companion to her book Stories Neverending.

Congratulations to Susan Schank for placing second in the Half Price Books Bedtimetime Story contest with her story poem "Grow a Story." Twenty winners will have their works published in the Say Goodnight to Illiteracy Bedtime Story Book. 

School Library Media Activities Monthly published "Caldecott Collage" by Susan Schank. Her article "Salami, Cheese and Midnight Mass" recently appeared in Metro Voice. Susan has also sold "Who Ever Heard of a Tofu Turkey?" to Highlights for Children.