Cover art for the first volume of "Saint Young Men" manga series, published by Kodansha.

Ever wondered what a young Buddha and Jesus would do if they left their celestial realms to take a stealth vacation in modern day Tokyo? This is the premise for Saint Young Men (Seinto Oniisan), a manga series that is hugely popular in Japan. Written and Illustrated by Hikaru Nakamura, the series follows the lives of best friends, Buddha and Jesus, as they live together in Tachikawa, a western suburb of Tokyo. The roomies do many of the things that average twenty-something guys do, like blogging, playing video games and going to amusement parks, all while attempting to keep their true heavenly identities a secret. Though the besties try to blend in with modern Japanese society, their unique appearances sometimes attract attention. Teenage school girls often remark on Jesus’ Johnny Depp-like good looks, and Buddha’s unique bun-style hairdo is a subject of teasing with the neighborhood boys. Their divine nature unavoidably shows through at times, as when Buddha grows incandescent with heavenly excitement and Jesus inadvertently changes the local public bath water into wine. Read more…

As the final days of 2010 wind down, many websites and blogs are busy compiling their “Best of” lists for the year, including line-ups for the best in book cover design. Anis Shivani at The Huffington Post has selected 21 “cool” covers and spoken with the authors and designers to get a feel for the creative process that goes into designing a successful cover. Many of the titles selected are by lesser-known authors, but the design quality of several of the selections is top-notch. The cover created for The Line by Olga Grushin plays on the contrast of color and gray scale, positive and negative space, the austere and the lyrical to create a simple, yet intriguing cover. “Everyone immediately loved this one…A perfect cover should capture the feel of the book, and this one does so wonderfully: there is the contrast between the grim reality and the world of fantasy, hope and beauty; there are individual stories, each one unique; and I read a Nabokov reference into the butterflies, which makes me even happier,” comments Grushin. Read more…

During the summer of 2008, as journalist Ted Gup sifted through the dusty contents of an old suitcase once belonging to his grandfather, he made a surprising discovery. A trove of letters, heartfelt pleas for help written during the dark days of the Depression, was uncovered. Further investigation found that Gup’s grandfather, Sam Stone, had placed a small ad in a Canton, Ohio newspaper days before Christmas in 1933 calling on people to write to him about their need, and offering “Financial aid”. Stone used the alias, B. Virdot, and promised all the letter writers confidentiality. Good to his word, the man sent $5 to 150 families, about $12,400 translated into today’s money. These honest, raw letters and his grandfather’s simple act of kindness served as the impetus for Gup’s book A Secret Gift (The Penguin Press HC, 368pgs). Read more…

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff searches for the real woman behind the centuries old myths in the new biography Cleopatra: A Life (Little, Brown and Company, 384pgs). Historical propaganda has often painted the Egyptian queen as a scheming beauty who seduced powerful men like Julius Caesar and Marc Antony for political gain. But Schiff’s research revealed a much more intelligent and nuanced personality. “It’s astonishing how tenacious a myth is. I mean, Plutarch is the first to say that her beauty was by no means as remarkable as was her charm and her intellect. And here we are 2,000 years later and we’re still stressing the beauty,” says Schiff in an interview with SFGate. “Here you have an incredibly ambitious, accomplished woman who comes up against some of the same problems that women in power come up against today. Cleopatra plays an oddly pivotal role in world history as well; in her lifetime, Alexandria is the center of the universe, Rome is still a backwater.” Read more…

Indie band Pomplamoose (Nataly Dawn left and Jack Conte right) created the Richmond Book Drive program to benefit the struggling school district in Richmond, CA.

Indie band Pomplamoose, is so passionate about literacy that they’ve created the Richmond Book Drive program and are offering everyone who donates a book to the struggling school district in Richmond, CA a free copy of their new Christmas album. Pomplamoose, made up of Nataly Dawn and boyfriend Jack Conte, have developed quite a fan following on YouTube, and have recently gained more visibility with their quirky Hyundai commercial that has been rocking the airwaves this holiday season. The Christmas album is not for sale, and can only be obtained through the purchase and donation of books on the Richmond wish list via Amazon. According to the Richmond Book Drive website their mission is “to put compelling, relevant books into the hands of young people throughout the City of Richmond, California. We aim to provide students — be they reluctant or voracious readers — with books that they will love, books that will turn them into lifelong readers and learners. In the process, we hope to spread the message that all students are worthy of investment, that none are beyond repair, and that ours is a city full of curiosity and hope.” Read more…

Mashable names "PopOut! The Tale of Peter Rabbit" as one of the top interactive children's books for the iPad.

In previous posts, In the Stax has discussed the merits of the iPad as an eReader and as an educational tool for young children. This engaging device also offers a unique platform for app developers to combine these two functions and produce stand-out interactive interpretations of classic children’s stories. Mashable recently posted a list of their Top 5 classic children’s books designed for the iPad. Each selection was chosen for the eBook’s ability to engage young readers and provide a variety of interactive experiences through out the story. Read more…

Award-winning author and illustrator David Shannon has released his latest rambunctious adventure in his David series just in time for the holidays. In the new picture book It’s Christmas, David! (The Blue Sky Press, 32pgs), the irresistibly naughty little boy faces new challenges and temptations as he struggles to keep himself on Santa’s “Nice” list in the days before Christmas. Shannon, who based the mischievous David on his younger self, has special empathy for kids at this time of year. “Christmas is when you get in the most trouble and you get told ‘no’ the most. There’s all this excitement that you have to be patient for,” he explains in a interview with the Los Angeles Times. But at the end of the book, Shannon also illustrates the upside to Christmas. “It’s the biggest ‘yes’ of the year when it finally comes. That’s the other side of being told no: The ‘yes’ that comes after it.” Read more…

On Monday, Google debuted their new Google eBookstore, and will now compete with Apple and Amazon for a share of the lucrative eBooks pie. As announced on the company’s official blog, consumers will be able to “browse and search through the largest eBooks collection in the world with more than three million titles including hundreds of thousands for sale.” This launch is significant in that Google eBooks are not linked to a specific device but are compatible across many platforms “— everything from laptops to netbooks to tablets to smartphones to e-readers.” The books themselves are stored in the cloud instead of on an individual piece of hardware. “That means you can access your eBooks like you would messages in Gmail or photos in Picasa – using a free, password-protected Google account with unlimited eBooks storage.” Read more…

Avi Steinberg’s intelligent and amusing new memoir Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian (Nan A. Talese, 416pgs) recounts his two year stint working as a librarian at Boston’s Deer Island prison library. The poorly motivated, but highly educated Harvard grad found the job posted innocuously listed on Craigslist, and was hired even though he did not hold a degree in Library Science. Despite poor conditions, strict prison regulations and interacting with felons on a daily basis, Steinberg found the job oddly appealing. In addition to duties common to most librarians such as checking out books and helping patrons with research, the 20-something academic also had the more colorful duties of examining books for “kites”, prohibited messages traded between prisoners of the opposite sex, and keeping an eye out for any library materials that could potentially be fashioned into weapons. “I am living my (quixotic) dream: a book-slinger with a badge and a streetwise attitude, part bookworm, part badass,” quotes a review in USA TODAY. Read more…

A man of many talents and interests, Steve Martin is best known for his comedic work on film and television. But the funny man has a cerebral side, too, and is also a Grammy-winning bluegrass banjo musician and author of several books, plays and memoirs. His latest novel, An Object of Beauty (Grand Central Publishing, 304pgs) debuted last week to much critical praise. The story follows Lacey Yeager, an ambitious young art dealer, through her rise in the art world and is narrated by an art critic friend who observes her climb to the top. We here at In the Stax try to avoid works by celebrity authors in general, since the writing and plot lines are usually mediocre at best. But experience with Martin’s past work has proved that he is a wry and insightful writer. Hopefully An Object of Beauty continues in that vein. Read more…