So there was one particular heart-warming moment from BEA that I wanted to share with you all. Back in undergrad I interened with a children’s publisher back in Atlanta called Peachtree Publishers. It was my first ever forray into the publishing world, and in marketing no less which largely helped to lead me to my next two internships (one in scholarly marketing, the next in children’s editorial) and then finally my current job. What was really great about that particular internship was that I got to do tasks for the other departments from time to time and was invited to sit in on the acquisitions meetings. I got the broad spectrum of the process and it was great. Prior to the acquisitions meetings, we got to read the manuscripts and practice filling out reader’s reports for each. At one such meeting there was a manuscript that would become Mind Your Manner’s Alice Roosevelt, a children’s picture book pubbing this fall, and at BEA last weekend I got to flip through the BLAD.
Mind Your Manners Alice Roosevelt
By Leslie Kimmelman Illustrated by Adam Gustavson
ISBN: 978-1561454921 List Price: $16.95
Pub Date: September 1, 2009
Publisher: Peachtree Publishers
I smiled from ear to ear. This was the first time that I could say, I remember where it all began. It’s nearly the finished product; talk about your warm fuzzies. This was a pretty major milestone. Anyway, just felt like sharing. I know I don’t usually blog about picture books here, but I want you all to by this book if you’ve got a tiny tike in your life. Personal bias aside, the artwork is lovely and the story is a cute one with a some educational value in the details it reveals about Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency. What I also liked was that Alice is a young woman and not a child (historically true). There is a lot of anxiety for them when trying to relate to one’s elders and especially teenagers. For children sometimes its nice to see older folks behaving a little mischievous. I know I had the hardest time with my cousins when I was a child. I was all of six when the eldest was fifteen. She acted like an adult, but sometimes she would play with me on my level. But the mood swings were lightning fast and it was just all together too stressful to be fun. I just couldn’t keep up or act old enough for her with my pretty princess make-up kit. So I waited glumly until she felt like being “immature” once again.
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