Author: Jamie Canaves

Rufus Sewell Reads To Us In Cozy Sweater

Rufus Sewell has blessed us by reading one of Shel Silverstein’s poems from Every Thing on It while wearing a cozy sweater. Your move, Chris Evans, your move.

Bedtime Bonnet

After Nancy Redd’s three-year-old daughter didn’t want to wear a bonnet to bed, because she associated it with being old, Redd decided to write a children’s book: Bedtime Bonnet. “Du-rags, silk scarves, wave caps, and doobie wraps are all represented in its pages. Redd wanted to transfer her love of the self-care ritual onto her little girl and children around the world.” Beautiful!

Yes, Please

Gabby Rivera’s awesome novel, Juliet Takes a Breath, about a young adult finding her voice and place in the world is going to be a graphic novel! Publishing this November (so far away!), with art and color by Celia Moscote and James Fenner, Rivera says “Get ready for a Juliet Milagros Palante that’s gayer, chubbier, and more confident than ever before.” We’ve been ready!

Hello fellow bibliophiles, it’s been a week, so today’s newsletter will be a little different: we’ve rounded up all of our COVID-19 book related coverage. Stay informed. Stay safe. Stay entertained.

Scribd, the audiobook, ebook, and magazine subscription service, is offering 30 days of free access to their entire library of titles.

Audible has launched Audible Stories, a free service that offers family-friendly educational and entertaining audiobook content.

You can now download ten free ebooks on social and economic justice from Haymarket Books to read while social distancing.

LibraryThing is now free! Add, catalog, and organize unlimited books while stuck at home.

Chicago Public Libraries Need To Close Now To Save Lives

Cookbook authors are helping with what to cook during quarantine.

Nicole and Matthew discuss the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of racism and social media, how the virus is impacting school kids and families, and how the kidlit community is responding.

Artists and writers are chronicling their journey with COVID-19 in interesting and thought-provoking ways.

Take this quiz to find your next 500+ page read!

Two major independent booksellers are laying off employees as they close their physical shops in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Free resources on the coronavirus pandemic to help you stay informed, from news outlets and newsletters to podcasts and more.

These closed-space book recommendations make for perfect quarantine reading.

The many reasons why library staff should not have to report to work as we work to stop the spread of COVID-19 on a global level.

Amy Adams and Jennifer Garner have partnered to launch #SAVEWITHSTORIES.

Amazon has been flooded by an influx of self-published books on coronavirus, many of which are plagiarized or contain false information.

Kidlit authors offering read alouds, drawing lessons, and other free resources for education and entertainment.

Editor’s Note: Apologies to those of you who received a test email from us; it was sent in error. Here’s actual news from the book world.

Poet Freed From Prison Refuses To Be Silenced

Poet Stella Nyanzi spent 16 months in Uganda’s Luzira prison for a poem on Facebook about Yoweri Museveni’s (Uganda’s president) mother’s vagina. No, that was not Mad Libs and no Nyanzi’s time in prison did not work to silence her. Now released she discusses the poems she wrote while incarcerated, including the poetry collection she released while in prison.

Keep Book Clubbing

If you’re social distancing and missing your book club time, there are ways to still social distance and meet your book club. Online, baby! With some tweaks y’all can be arguing or agreeing over how much you loved your last read. Here’s some tips to become a digital book club.

Bittersweet

The animated fantasy epic She-Ra and the Princess of Power has had a fantastic four seasons on Netflix so far and now we’ve learned, through showrunner Noelle Stevenson, that the fifth season will be its last. While it’s always sad to see a great thing end, it was always designed and written to have five seasons and we’ll soon have an awesome completed story to rewatch a billion times. I will definitely be dropping everything on May 15 for the final season.

Bye-Bye Library Ebook Embargo

Macmillan publishers had angered librarians, patrons, and bibliophiles last year when it decided to implement an embargo on its new ebook releases with libraries. Macmillan just announced it has eliminated the embargo, including on new releases. Libraries closing because of the current COVID-19 outbreak and patrons turning more to ebook lending certainly played a role in this decision. Time will tell if the new model also wasn’t working for them financially and if they’ll leave it alone or try again later.

Join In and Help Write the Great Librarian Novel

The Twitter account “Fake Librarian Statistics” (“Tweets from a real librarian. Not currently wearing a cardigan.”) has created and shared a Google Doc for everyone to join in and write a book together. As of me writing this, there are four chapters written so go have some fun and read what has been written so far and/or join in and write the next page or chapter.

Physical Books No Longer A Priority At Amazon

Amazon informed third-party sellers that its current focus, and warehouse space, will be designated for “household staples, medical supplies and other high-demand products.” While they are hiring 100,000 additional warehouse and delivery workers for the recent demand, as everyone is buying supplies online during social distancing, the focus will only be for prioritized products at the moment and no other products will be accepted at Amazon fulfillment centers until April 5th.

Amy Adams Joins IG For Bookish Project

In an effort to help Save the Children and Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign, actresses Amy Adams and Jennifer Garner have teamed up with children’s publisher Scholastic to launch #SaveWithStories. They’ll be posting videos on Instagram and Facebook of celebrities reading children’s books to help drive donations to Save the Children and No Kid Hungry, since many kids unable to go to school during the current coronavirus outbreak are missing out on education, and also a school meal they rely on and need.

We’re Now Getting Movie Theater Movies At Home

Kind of hard to go to the movies when we’re social distancing, so Universal Pictures has decided to make movies currently in theaters available on demand. You can watch adaptations like Emma and The Invisible Man for the rental fee of $19.99 starting on Friday on Apple, Amazon, Sky, and Comcast.

Peru’s Nobel Literature Laureate VS China

Peruvian author, and Nobel literature laureate, Mario Vargas Llosa used his mighty pen to write an article in Spain’s El Pais newspaper where he opined that if China had been a democracy instead of a dictatorship, the coronavirus would not have spread the way it did. China’s embassy responded, calling on Llosa “as a public figure, not to spread irresponsible and prejudiced opinions that serve no purpose.”

Book Decorated Shopping Cart Races

The second Middletown Kiwanis shopping cart challenge raised money for the Dolly Parton Imagination Library by having eight teams decorate shopping carts with bookish themes and then race around to complete tasks and games at selected downtown businesses. Fun!

Voice Of Frozen‘s Olaf Will Read You Children’s Books

Josh Gad, the actor who voices Olaf in Frozen, has decided to help everyone staying home during the coronavirus outbreak by reading children’s books and livestreaming it on Twitter. He started by reading Olivia Goes to Venice by Ian Falconer.

Updated COVID-19 Impact List

PW is keeping a list of the book events cancelled and/or rescheduled, industry functions impacted, policy changes etc. due to the coronavirus outbreak.

New Baby-Sitters!

Kristy, Mary-Anne, Claudia, Stacey, and Dawn are back! Okay, thanks to the popularity of The Baby-Sitters Club books, they never went anywhere (and even got new audiobooks narrated by Elle Fanning and one of my all time favorite narrators Bahni Turpin), but now they’re getting a Netflix adaptation and we have the first look at the cast!

Volume Of Octavia Butler’s Work

Library of America publishers are working on a volume of Octavia Butler’s work to release in 2021, edited by Nisi Shawl and Gerry Canavan. The collection will include “novels Kindred and Fledgling, the contents of her collection Bloodchild and Other Stories, as well as a handful of other short stories.” And it’s just the beginning: they plan on publishing a new volume every year or two to end up with four volumes of Butler’s work. Here for all of it!

Sneaky, Sneaky

In a plan to fight censorship around the world, Reporters Without Borders and Blockworks have created a library inside the game Minecraft with hundreds of virtual books that contain articles that are censored/banned around the world by governments. Now, no one tell those governments about the game.

The Everywhere Book Fest Announced

You may have noticed that quite a few things are getting cancelled in these here pandemic times, and book festivals have not been spared. To keep society safe while also continuing to support authors and readers, a virtual gathering of kidlit authors, books, and readers is coming May 1st and 2nd: The Everywhere Book Fest. You can follow them on Twitter and await more news on their site.

Excellent Books Get Awarded

National Book Critics Circle announced the winners for fiction, autobiography, nonfiction, biography, poetry, criticism, and the John Leonard Prize. If you’re looking for your next read, here are seven, award winning, excellent picks: Everything Inside; Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland; The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth; Know My Name: A Memoir; Magical Negro; Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval; The Yellow House: A Memoir.

Supporting Your Indie Bookstore

Small businesses usually get hit first in times like recessions, economic downturns, and sudden changes in physical store foot traffic. With social distancing being a reality at the moment, indie bookstore co-owner Josh Cook talked with PW about ways readers who have the means and desire to can support indie bookstores, ranging from simple acts of signing up for their newsletters all the way to local activism.