Kudos and Opportunity

Annie Silvestro’s met her agent, Liza Voges from Eden Street LLC as a result of meeting her at the NJ SCBWI craft day in November 2013. Liza Voges turned around and found a home for her picture book. On May 19th this year, Publishers Marketplace announced the sale:

BUNNY’S BOOK CLUB, written by Annie Silvestro and illustrated by Tatjana Mai-Wyss, the story of a book-loving bunny who sneaks into the town library and borrows books for all his forest friends, to Frances Gilbert at Doubleday Children’s, for publication in Spring 2017, by Liza Voges at Eden Street for author (World).  Congratulations! Annie.

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Bruce Arant wrote and illustrated a picture book titled, Simpson’s Sheep Won’t Go to Sleep! He wrote to let me know all the good things that have happened since its release in October of 2013.

Here is part of Bruce’s letter:

The publisher, Peter Pauper Press, is doing a fourth printing this summer. For me, the most enjoyable aspect of the book has been doing presentations at schools. To date, I’ve done over 50 presentations, mostly at elementary schools, and it’s really been a blast.

One of the factors that is currently fueling the school visits, is that Simpson’s Sheep is a nominee for the 2015-2016 Golden Sower Award here in Nebraska. As I’m sure you’re aware, each state has a literary award program in which students across the state vote on their favorite books, which have been selected by a statewide committee of librarians. The students will be casting their votes in April of 2016, so I am looking forward to many more school visits in the coming school year.

Along with prospects for the Golden Sower Award, the book has won two categories in the Nebraska Book Awards last fall, sponsored by The Nebraska Center for the Book (an affiliate of the Library of Congress). The book won the Children category and the Cover/Design/Illustration category.

On a related note, Simpson’s Sheep has been selected to be featured at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. in September. The book will be featured along with books chosen from every state for the “Great Reads About Great Places” brochure. The brochure lists the book chosen from each state–showcasing a work of fiction or non-fiction, either a book about the state or by an author from the state, to point children or young adults to good reads from each state. It will also be available for sale to the public at the festival.

A couple of weeks ago, I happened to Google the book’s title and saw Hillary’s name come up and discovered that Hillary Clinton was shopping for her granddaughter and purchased Simpson’s Sheep, along with some baby clothes.   It was on several news feeds where the full title of the book was actually mentioned. That was fun.

Besides all the activity surrounding Simpson, I’ve been busy with other illustrating and writing projects. In fact, Marie submitted my sequel to Simpson’s Sheep Won’t Go to Sleep! last week, so hopefully it will be picked up. I would be happy to return to the drawing board with Farmer Simpson and his flock.

Please say “hello” to all of my friends at the NJSCBWI.

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Every summer, Agent Anna Olswanger (Olswanger Literary LLC) donates a manuscript consultation (10 pages of a manuscript for a 20-minute phone consultation) to The Born Free Foundation online auction. Born Free is an international wildlife charity that works throughout the world to stop individual wild animal suffering.  It’s a great chance to get feedback from an agent. So, please consider making a bid this week (the auction closes on Monday, June 29th, at 5:00 p.m. EST).

Anna represents children’s fiction and nonfiction, adult nonfiction, and selected adult fiction.

We all fall in love with animal characters in books. Now it’s time to help them in real life and help get wonderful feedback on your manuscript.

Here’s the auction link:

http://www.biddingowl.com/Auction/item-detail.cfm?auctionID=4041&ItemID=168767&viewType=1&style=47&font=1&catName=Services

Anna’s clients have won the Newbery Honor, Asian Pacific American Award for Literature Honor, Flora Stieglitz Strauss Award for Nonfiction, Orbis Pictus Honor, PEN/Steven Kroll Award for Picture Book Writing, Parents Choice Gold Award, Bank Street College of Education Best Children’s Book, Sibert Award Honor, Ezra Jack Keats Book Award Honor, and been on The New York Times Bestseller list.

She has sold to all the major publishers, including Bloomsbury, Chronicle, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Macmillan, Penguin, Random House, and Simon & Schuster.

You can view her full client list on Pinterest:

https://www.pinterest.com/olswanger/anna-olswanger-literary-agent/

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy