Visit your local Barnes and Noble this Saturday, September 28, 2019, at 11 am for their Storytime and Activities event featuring How I Met My Monster!
Mark your calendars for #BNStorytime!
Category: Book Launchings
Happy #NationalMonsterDay!
Celebrate by welcoming the newest member of our Monster family: “Are You My Monster?” – a board book companion for babies and toddlers!
Help Ethan compare his drawing to an assortment of amusing monsters. Do the colors match? Are their tails long or short? Are their nails pointy or round? Are their teeth big or small? Children will be thrilled when Ethan finds the perfect match – which turns out to be his beloved stuffed monster toy – just in time for bed.
“Little ones will enjoy the parade of silly creatures…while also learning colors and matching.The sweet ending shows that even those with sharp teeth and scratchy claws can be cuddly,turning the monster-under-the-bed trope on its head.” – School Library Journal
Authors of the Future with Holly Niner
Authors of the Future
Blog Post by Holly Niner, author of The Day I Ran Away
The release of The Day I Ran Away has given me some wonderful opportunities to connect with students. While I’m not sure it’s deserved, the students are usually a bit wide-eyed that they are meeting an author. In turn, I am inspired by their questions and their belief that they too CAN be an author! While I often receive a thank you after the visit, I don’t get to see the student’s stories. Until this year, when a unique opportunity was presented to me.
Denise Phillips, owner of Gathering Volumes and mother of 2nd and 4th grade students at Woodland Elementary in Perrysburg OH, was putting together a pilot Young Author program for the school and asked if I would be one of three (two authors and an illustrator) to speak to the 4th and 5th grade excel classes. In May I would return to hear the student’s stories and do an author signing at her store.
So in February one author spoke about getting ideas, I presented on picture book construction and creating a “page turner” and an illustrator talked with the classes. The students began writing…
Meanwhile, a second grade teacher was interested in having an author visit via Skype. When I “appeared” on the big screen in the student’s classroom their faces were priceless. They quickly positioned themselves on the floor so we could all “see” each other. In spite of a few frozen screen moments, it was a success with students asking great questions. The teacher summed it up:
Thank you for meeting with us Holly. The boys and girls were so excited to Skype! With all of the technology available to us, that is one thing they do not do. It was a lot of fun and your conversation with them was perfect! They heard things from a REAL AUTHOR that their boring, old teacher has said. 🙂
Then on May 6 I returned to Perrysburg where a wonderful day of celebration was planned for the young authors. Throughout the day 30 of the 40 students read their book to family and friends and then signed copies for their families and a party for all followed in the evening. It was a wonderful example of partnership between an independent bookstore and its community.
It was a treat to speak with these young authors and their families and to hear them read their stories. I was impressed by unique story lines, wonderful illustrations and soaring imaginations. While the future is uncertain in many ways, rest assured there will be wonderful stories to transport you, created by the next generation!
Mom’s Choice Awards Interviews Holly Niner
Blog Post taken from Mom’s Choice Awards
Originally Published April 20, 2017
Today we’re sharing the second post in our new interview series where we chat with the inventors, designers, publishers, and others behind some of our favorite family-friendly products.
We were fortunate enough to speak with Holly L. Niner, author of the Mom’s Choice Award-winning children’ book, The Day I Ran Way. We loved hearing her perspective on writing, reading, and parenting. The full interview is published below.
MCA: The Day I Ran Away is about a little girl who throws a tantrum, gets banished to her room, and runs away. Why write a children’s book about this? What was your inspiration?
The idea for The Day I Ran Away came from an America’s Funniest Home Video I saw on TV in the early 2000s. A little boy was outside his house with his back pack asking, “how can I run away when I’m not allowed to cross the street?” For me, that captured a dilemma of childhood. You want to be grown up, but you can’t. It captured a feeling that’s not just relegated to children; haven’t we all wished we could run away at some point? But maybe what we really need—as both children and adults—is just a “timeout” from our real or perceived troubles.Holly Niner: Story ideas come from many places. A little snippet of something seems to stick in the “what if” side of my brain and sometimes turns into a story. I try to write those snippets down as they come to me or else the day-to-day of life may push it out of my brain forever. Continue reading “Mom’s Choice Awards Interviews Holly Niner”
Super School Visit
“Had the most splendiferous visit with the bright eyes & minds at Fairview Elementary in Bloomfield, NJ yesterday, sharing When a Dragon Moves In and When a Dragon Moves In Again. Warm squishy hugs & love to all the students, teachers, and of course, the library goddess, Nancy Clark!” -Jodi Moore, Author
Too Much Glue Ranks #2 in Amazon’s Hot New Releases!
As of this morning, Too Much Glue (written by Jason Lefebvre, illustrated by Zac Retz) was listed as the second “hottest” new release on Amazon in the Children’s Literature category!
This pretty much sums up how we feel about it:
Available now on Amazon, B&N and at your local bookstore!
“…debut illustrator Retz’s artwork is created digitally, but there’s a sculptural quality to it that almost suggests he could be using glue as a medium, too…. First-time author LeFebvre presents a rowdy tale about the disruptive forms that creativity can take.” — Publishers Weekly
Arrrr You Ready for Adventure?
Sailing into a store near you: our newest book, Victricia Malicia: Book-Loving Buccaneer, written by Carrie L. Clickard and illustrated by Mark Meyers.
Publishers Weekly says:
Clickard takes rhyme and meter seriously, achieving, at her best, a Gilbert and Sullivan–like patter…. Meyers… provides lots of pirate detail and even an ironic moment or two…. Rollicking, sea-chantey verse and slapstick humor make this a promising readaloud.
Although Victricia Malicia Calamity Barrett was born on her family’s pirate ship, this mild-mannered, book-loving girl is sick of the sea:
“I gag when my lunch is Spaghetti Tentacular,
hate when my sisters speak pirate vernacular,
want a new pet that’s not scaly or spiny,
and wish I could keep my books somewhere less briny!”
To find out more about Victricia’s seafaring adventure, her mishaps on board, and her encounter with a terrifying sea serpent, see the PDF preview of Victricia Malicia. Check out the newly released Victricia Malicia trailer and sing-along here, and be sure to dig into the treasure trove of free printable activities and games at VictriciaMalicia.com
Buckmeister Busy at Books of Wonder
Debut author Linda Ravin Lodding appeared yesterday at Books of Wonder in NYC, alongside Caldecott Award winner Chris Raschka and 8 other fantastic picture book creators, to sign copies of her first picture book, The Busy Life of Ernestine Buckmeister.
Enjoy the fun beyond the book with our many printable activity pages.
Like all Flashlight Press books, Ernestine is distributed by IPG and is available at your local or online bookseller.
Take a Look at our Monster NOOK
Just in time for Halloween, I Need My Monster is now available in a NOOK edition. Read it yourself or enable audio to have it read to you… but don’t get SCARED!
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