Lauded author Jonathan Franzen held the first press conference of his career this week at the Hay Festival, a literature and arts festival held in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, where he will serve as a headline speaker. The writer spoke on several weighty topics such as politics and religion, and expressed his thoughts on the inferiority of eBooks, when compared to traditional printed books. “The technology I like is the American paperback edition of Freedom. I can spill water on it and it would still work! So it’s pretty good technology. And what’s more, it will work great 10 years from now. So no wonder the capitalists hate it. It’s a bad business model,” Franzen is reported as saying in The Telegraph.

“I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change. Read more…

Modern American society seems to prize the extrovert, those with brash, outgoing personalities often climb to the tops of both corporate and social ladders. Yet, as former attorney, Susan Cain, writes in her new book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, introverts have their own subtle advantages. The Harvard law school alumna viewed her own cautious manner as a sort of hindrance in her professional life, until research into the introverted personality helped her realize that many traits that society views as faults are actually very powerful attributes. Quiet, the result of her research, draws from personal interviews, as well as the latest finds in neuroscience and psychology, and works to correct misconceptions of introverts and empower them to embrace their nature. Read more…

In a recent interview with The Children’s Book Review, celebrated children’s book author Patricia Polacco spoke about her gift of storytelling. When asked if it was a gift she was born with, the author replied: “I don’t know that story tellers are born. I think I was shaped into one by being raised by amazing story tellers. My dad was a wonderful story teller, his family was Irish. My mother’s people were Russian and Ukrainian, natural story tellers. So I literally, inherited it from both sides.”

Polacco has certainly nurtured the talents her ancestors passed on to her, as is evident in her numerous awards and the impressive list of over 50 picture books that she has written and illustrated, including Bun Bun Button, The Art of Miss Chew, and The Keeping Quilt. But it is not only her personal history that inspires her stories, but also cultural and folkloric history as well. Her latest book, Just in Time, Abraham Lincoln, takes two young boys on a trip through time to meet President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. While the beloved story Babushka Baba Yaga, was based on Russian folklore. Read more…

By John Green
Dutton Juvenile | 336pgs
Release Date: January 10, 2012

Summary:
Award-winning young adult author John Green addresses the serious issues of sickness and death in his latest novel The Fault in Our Stars. Protagonist Hazel ­Lancaster is a teenager grappling with her terminal cancer diagnosis when she meets Augustus Waters in a cancer support group. Their shared enthusiasm for ultra-violent video games and Dutch author Peter van Houten fosters a love that grows despite their illnesses. Told with a spark of humor to balance the gravity of the subject matter, Green crafts a story that is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. Read more…

After a six-year break, children’s author Dav Pilkey will publish two new books in his Captain Underpants series. Hugely popular with the elementary school set, the stories follow the hijinks of practical jokers George and Harold and their comic book creation Captain Underpants. The titles, both of which will evoke quite a few giggles from readers, are slated for release over the next year. Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers will hit stores on August 28, 2012, and Captain Underpants and the Revolting Revenge of the Radioactive Robo-Boxers will arrive in January 2013. Read more…

This month, McDonald’s restaurants may earn the unlikely title of UK’s biggest children’s book seller, as it begins a promotion that includes one of Michael Morpurgo’s Mudpuddle Farm books with every Happy Meal. Partnering with Harper Collins publishing house, the fast food chain is set to give out 9 million books over the next four weeks. As reported in The Telegraph, last year, children’s book sales in the UK averaged about 1.16 million a week, or 6.4 million in a four week stretch. McDonald’s is poised to distribute a much higher volume of books. Read more…

Last Fall, fans of British history and historical fiction were twice blessed with new books from bestselling historical novelist Philippa Gregory. Esteemed historians David Baldwin and Michael Jones joined the author in writing The Women of the Cousins’ War (Touchstone, 352pgs), a book of factual essays on three influential female figures during the events of England’s Wars of the Roses (1455–1485). Baldwin writes of Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV, who was noted as being the first commoner in England to marry a king for love. Jones, outlines the life of Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, and one of the lesser known women of the Tudor dynasty. Gregory presents the early life of Jacquetta, duchess of Bedford, who at one time stood trial for witchcraft. Along with this non-fiction account, Gregory also published The Lady of the Rivers (Touchstone, 464pgs), a fictional telling of Jacquetta’s life. Read more…

By Kitty Ferguson
Palgrave Macmillan | 320pgs
Release Date: January 3, 2012

Science writer Kitty Ferguson builds a revealing profile of physicist Stephen Hawking’s early life in the new book Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind. Hawking, best known for his research in the areas of theoretical cosmology and quantum gravity, is one of the world’s most renown scientists. With his lectures and writings, he has made highly complicated scientific theories interesting and palatable to the general public. “It’s not dumbing down [science]; it’s really making it accessible, hopefully, to a lot of people,” explains the author in an interview with NPR’s Fresh Air. Her book focuses on Hawking’s early childhood through his undergraduate and graduate work at Oxford and Cambridge respectively, and his diagnosis of ALS disease in the early 1960′s. At the time, doctors predicted he would not survive his 20′s, but the physicist has beaten the odds, and will celebrate his 70th birthday on January 8th. Read more…