Stickers!
My book tour with Elise Broach is now over, and I had a great time. Thanks to all of the amazing bookstores and schools that hosted me, and to everyone who came to a reading! Thanks also to Tor.com for inviting me to guest blog.
Classes have ended, so I should have much more free time on my hands—and I do, but somehow not quite as much as I’d hoped. I still have a pile of papers and exams to grade. But I really can’t complain. All in all, I have the time I need to do something very necessary: finish the third and final book in the Kronos Chronicles series. Yes, the adventures of Petra, Astrophil, and their friends are winding to a close, and I’m really pushing to finish the first draft, because
A) I have a DEADLINE. And it is SOON. EEK.
B) I, you know, WANT to finish it.
C) The sooner I finish it, the sooner I’ll see what awesome cover David Frankland will create for it. Hurray for my cover artist! He’s the best.
Now, the thing about my foreign editions is that I never know when they’re coming out. Copies show up at my door, and then I realize, oh yeah, okay, there they are. They’re out and about in the Dutch (or German, or whatever the case may be) world. Last week I got my French copies of The Celestial Globe (my French in-laws are psyched about that one) and my Chinese copies of The Cabinet of Wonders. And let me tell you, the Chinese book is SO COOL. Not just because it’s written in all these pretty characters I’ll never be able to read, but also because….
It has STICKERS.
That’s right. Check them out:
It is so cool (and the dopey expression on Atalanta’s face is very close to the one I see in my head when I write her character). It seriously begs the question: why don’t all books for younger children have stickers?
My Chinese books are not long for this world. I peeled off the Marvel with the wasp and stuck it on Eliot’s hand and he was stunned with joy. Now he drags the books off the shelves and attacks the sticker pages. He also has fun turning to my photo (in the paperback English version, which he sometimes thinks has stickers in it, because it shares a cover with the Chines one) and saying, “Mama.” I’ve been kind of amazed at how he’s been able to identify me in some photos. Like my passport photo? How on earth can he recognize that that’s me? It’s HORRIBLE. It looks nothing like me.
Then again, he flipped to the back of Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, pointed to her picture, and said, “Mama.” I’m not sure if that means he thinks that I look like her, or if he really thinks that’s me. Too bad I didn’t write The Help! I’m reading it now, and it’s really, really good.
I’ll say more about it when I’ve finished, but for now I’ll just say that I’m impressed at how Stockett has created three different first person voices that are each distinct and pretty much equally appealing. I’m always sorry to shift from one to another, and yet always happy, too. Though, well, I think I like Aibileen’s voice the best. Then again, Minny made me laugh out loud, and I almost never do that with books.
Of course, this is not a book that should have stickers with it. But, back to the whole stickers thing…
In your opinion, which children’s books need stickers? What would the stickers look like?
I’ll tell you what: whoever comes up with the best description of stickers for a book will receive a signed Chinese copy from me. Yes, you probably won’t be able to read it, but….you will have STICKERS. You want them? Comment below!
Oh I HATE stickers in books: I can’t bring myself to peel them. The same deeply held feeling that it is WRONG to snap a spine or dogear a page kicks in.
You could totally learn Chinese if you wanted to.
You know what, back in my high school years I always love to put stickers on my books. I had so much fun in putting different characters of my choice, find it cute and more of a girly thing at that moment. lol
I’m sure I could learn Chinese, Mordicai. If I studied it for TWENTY YEARS.
I think I’ll just keep working on my French.
I guess, Warhammer Empire, that part of me being so delighted about the stickers is seeing my child so delighted about them. That and the fact that it’s always cool to see a physical visualization of something you only see in your head. I mean, if Pixar wanted to make a movie of my books (come on, Pixar, you know you do. Please?), I’d be psyched for similar reasons. I’m always thrilled for my book covers. And stickers, they’re also visualizations of what I see….but they STICK. Which is COOL.
I was kind of hoping somebody would come up with ironic sticker ideas. Like that there should be a sticker of all the hair Jo March chops off in Little Women. Or of Bloom’s potato from Ulysses.
Stickers would actually be helpful for the Artemis Fowl series…lots of characters there and even the strongest of middle school readers have some trouble keeping track of the various characters. Stickers would provide a visual and tactile addition to comprehension and memory and attract readers with “reading confidence” issues.
Good idea, Cathy! I never really thought about stickers as educational, but they certainly can be.
Um, yes, please hurry, because we want to read it! huge grin
Confession time: I am an adult who just put stickers on her face the other day. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?
As I was reading The Celestial Globe to my kids (we just finished it last night), I kept thinking about how this scene or that scene would be great in a movie! Add me to the list of people who would love to see Pixar make a movie of your books.
My kids are 5 years apart in age (6 and 11). That often makes it hard to find books that I can read to them both—-the oldest one gets bored with ‘little kid’ books and the youngest sometimes doesn’t understand more complicated plots. I think stickers would be a great way for younger kids to visualize the characters and keep track of them. My youngest kept grabbing your latest book to look at the pictures on the cover (yes, while I was reading) and my oldest spent the time drawing pictures of how he imagined Astrophil or places like the Spoked Wheel to look.
So, a book(s) that I would like to see come with stickers: May Bird by Jodi Lynn Anderson. The covers are wonderful—May Bird and Somber Kitty have such expressive faces. But to have had stickers of them and other characters—-Lucius, Beatrice, Captain Fabbio, Pumpkin, the Bogey, John the Jibber, ghouls. Even stickers of places—City of Ether, White Moss Manor, the Ever After—would be great. Ok, maybe a bit dark, but great!
Shveta, I’m proud of you!
Hi, RachelJ! I can’t tell you how happy I am to read about your children’s reaction to The Celestial Globe. Reading to my son is one of my favorite things in the world to do, though he’s only 1 1/2, so we stick to books like Mo Willems’ Elephant and Piggie series. I love imagining you reading The Celestial Globe to your six- and eleven-year-old.
Great post, and great suggestions for stickers!
My daughter and I have just discovered your “The Cabinet of Wonders” and are in love with it! Even though my daughter is 10 years old and an avid reader, we still read together every evening before her bedtime, as just a way to spend some time in mutual enjoyment. I came on line to see if your second book in the series was done and so relieved to see you are already almost done with the third. How exciting to know we have more to go! Books with stickers? How VERY fun! I can think of many that would work well with that. Or even trading cards with all the characters! We just recently read “The Mysterious Benedict Society” and that one would be fun with stickers. Or how about all the “Sister Grimm” series? Lots of characters there!
So just want to thank you for a wonderful read and let you know we will be looking at more of your work to share.
Thank you so much, Terri! I love that you still read with your daughter every night, and I want to do exactly the same thing with my son for as long as he’ll let me—and hopefully some day the reads will be a little more intriguing for me than Click, Clack Moo over and over again. I mean, I love that book, but three times in a row is enough!
I hope you and your daughter like the second book, and yes, I’m working away at the third. It must be submitted in a few weeks’ time!
Great sticker ideas!
I’m a big fan of both your books, and I absolutely love the sticker idea! I’m about 16, but stickers are definitely still fun.
Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching series would be great stickers. The Nac Mac Feegles are NOT your average run-of-the-mill cute pixies, and therefore would make very interesting stickers at the least.
Thanks for your time! I can’t wait for your next novel.
Thanks, Morgan! I love your Pratchett stickers idea!
I only finished the first book last morning, and by the first chapter, I was hooked. By the neck.
In other words, it was totally amazingly awesomely magnificent. Yeah.
So, back to the challenge: I think the book which should have stickers in them is the “Frog Princess” series, by E. D. Baker. You might have heard of it. I have no idea at all if I should picture Emma as a frog with warts and moist skin like a regular frog or if I should visualize her as somewhat human-like. Also, it would be nice to actually “see” how Emma, Eadric, Grassina, and all of the other (human) characters really look, rather than having to rely on my own imagination, which, if you ask me, could be pretty accurate. I think seeing Ralph, a young dragon, would be pretty awesome in sticker form too!
By the way, do you think you can tell your fans when the paperback of “The Celestial Globe” is coming out? My mother despises when I want to get a book that is hardcover, when it would save a lot of money buying paperback. Thanks!!
Hi Angela,
I don’t know the Frog Princess series. I’ll have to check it out!
Thanks so much for your kind words about The Cabinet of Wonders. It’s very encouraging—especially now, when I’m trying to finish the third book.
I actually don’t know when the paperback of Celestial will be out. I totally see your mom’s point about saving money by buying the paperback. I’ll ask my publisher about when the paperback will be out, but sometimes it’s hard to predict these things. It can depend, for example, on how well the book is selling in hardback (if a book sells well in hardback, publishers try to keep it in hardback, because they make more money. Notice that bestsellers take a while to come out in paperback), or on whether it will be picked up for book fairs (in which case, a publisher might bring out the paperback just in time for that). Cabinet came out in hardback in August 2008 and in paperback in February 2010. That’s a lag time of about a year and a half. That doesn’t mean, though, that The Celestial Globe will follow that pattern.
I guess if you don’t want to wait, there’s always your local library!
Take care,
Marie
So Kronos Chr will be 3 or 4 books total? Btw I love this series.
Hi Mia,
I’m so glad you like the series! The Kronos Chronicles will be three books total. At first, I thought it’d be 4, but just wrapped everything up in the third book, which is called The Jewel of the Kalderash. It is a very good thing it is 3 books instead of 4! The whole series is one big story, and the story just couldn’t be stretched over 4 books—it would have been a mistake to try.
Best,
Marie