This year’s free summer reading program is “Make a Splash — READ!” Children will explore the world of water and water fun through stories, songs, games and other activities about oceans, rivers, lakes and pools and the creatures that live in those bodies of water.

Children also will have the opportunity to take a guided boat trip on the Ohio River in a sternwheeler, see and touch turtles and learn how to care for bodies of water.

The library also is hosting is annual Battle of the Books competition.

The 2010 Summer Reading Program is open to all children, from pre-school to young adults. Children can register at any of the eight library locations throughout the county. For every 10 books read, a child receives a raffle ticket. Children also can win raffle tickets by answering questions in the summer reading game, “Catch a Fish.”

Children who join the summer program also can enter a drawing for prizes, such as a book bag and Camden Park passes.

The program runs from Thursday, June 10, to Tuesday, Aug. 3.

Among the events scheduled throughout the summer are:

The Turtle Lady, Nancy Lockard, will have her turtles, bearded dragon, geckos and snakes. She will share basic information about each of the animals.

6 p.m., Monday, June 14, main library; 9:30 a.m., Tuesday, June 15, Barboursville; 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, June 15, Cox Landing; 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 15, Milton; 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, June 16, Salt Rock; 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, June 16, Guyandotte; 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 16, West; 10 a.m. Thursday, June 17, Gallaher.

Pirate Crew Stew Story Hour, hosted by volunteer Greg Goode, will engage aspiring pirates with stories and games.

10:30 a.m. Monday, July 13, Salt Rock; 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, July 13, Barboursville; 1 p.m. Tuesday, July 13, Guyandotte; 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, July 14, main library; 1 p.m. Wednesday, July 14, Cox Landing; 10 a.m. Thursday, July 15, Gallaher; 1 p.m. Thursday, July 15, Milton; 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, July 20, West.

Where Does the Rain Go? Conservation Specialist Mark Buchanan will use a model to demonstrate where water goes after it rains.

Monday, June 28, Salt Rock; Tuesday, June 29, Milton; Wednesday, June 30, Cox Landing; Thursday, July 1, Barboursville; Tuesday, July 6, Gallaher; Wednesday, July 7, Guyandotte; and Thursday, July 8, West. All are scheduled for 10 a.m.

Health Check-Up of the River with Melissa Mann, who will encourage kids to be a scientist for the day by performing several tests of Ohio River water.

10 a.m., main library; 11:30 a.m., Gallaher; 2 p.m., Milton. All sessions are Monday, July 26.

Falling Water is Music to My Ears with Joni Pappas, a music therapist and music educator. She will have children sing, dance and making music with a variety of instruments.

2 p.m. Monday, June 21, Guyandotte; 2 p.m. Tuesday, June 22, Salt Rock; 2 p.m. Wednesday, June 23, Cox Landing; 10 a.m. Thursday, June 24, Gallaher; 2 p.m. Thursday, June 24, West; 10 a.m. Friday, June 25, Barboursville; and 2 p.m. Friday, June 25, Milton.

Fishing in the Tri-State Area with Elwin Layman, who will share his fishing stories and provide hands-on opportunities with his fishing equipment.

Monday, July 19, main library; Thursday, July 22, West; Tuesday, July 27, Barboursville; and Friday, July 30, Guyandotte. All sessions are scheduled for 10:30 a.m.

Fun with Legos with Linda Hamilton, a Marshall University math professor and part of the Nick J. Rahall Transportation Institute. She will bring a vast collection of Legos and lead children in creating a city with vehicles and places to work.

Monday, June 28, main library; Wednesday, June 30, West; Tuesday, July 6, Salt Rock; Wednesday, July 7, Cox Landing; Thursday, July 8, Gallaher; Friday, June 9, Milton. All times are 10 a.m.

10:30 a.m., Tuesday, June 29, Barboursville; 1 p.m. Tuesday, June 29, Guyandotte.

The Scrop Frogs Story Hour with author E.B. McCoy, who will read from her children’s book, “The Scrog Frogs.” An activity and healthy snack will follow.

Thursday, July 1, Milton; Wednesday, July 7, Barboursville; Monday, July 12, Cox Landing; Monday, July 26, Guyandotte; Tuesday, July 27, Salt Rock; Thursday, July 29, West; Friday, July 30, Gallaher. All sessions are at 1:30 p.m.

Explore the Ohio River. At 10 a.m. Friday, July 16, children in grades third and up are invited for a two-hour tour aboard the “Mark Twain” sternwheeler. Children will learn about bridges, locks and dams and water treatment plants. They’ll also learn about species of birds, plants, fish and wildlife found in and along the river.

For more information regarding registration for the cruise on the Ohio River, contact the Main Library, Youth Services Department at 304-528-5700 ext. 141, or your local branch library.

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Curious George has a new place to get into trouble, your cell phone. Children’s book authors and publishers are rushing to transform their paper book stories into digital versions on smart phones, blending their once-upon-a-time plots with elaborate sound effects, animation and 3D effects. Some of the newest versions of these books even allow parents and children to record their own page-by-page narration, making them a personal literacy tool.

In just the last few months, Dr. Seuss, Curious George, Mr. Bump, Alice in Wonderland and a slew of other major kids book icons have burst onto the mobile phone scene, often with a digital sticker price a fraction what the paper book version costs.

“The sky is open to anything we want to do with digital,” said Michael Kripalani, a former video game publisher in San Diego whose company, Oceanhouse Media Inc., won the rights to publish Dr. Seuss stories on cell phones. “We’re working as fast as we can and shipping two to three new titles a week.” Such books open a range of issues in the kid’s book genre. For authors, a digital platform opens up vast options for interacting with readers in more creative ways.

For book publishers, there’s potential new revenue, especially from selling games linked to stories. For parents, this means yet another reason kids will want to borrow Mom or Dad’s cell phone, or demand one of their own. In the nascent and anything goes market of cell phone apps, publishers count as veterans if they’ve been selling kids titles for more than a year. Over the last year, Oceanhouse won the rights to publish 44 Dr. Seuss titles, partly because Kripalani had a personal connection to Audrey Geisel, the widow of Dr. Seuss creator Theodor Seuss Geisel. Sales figures are still closely held, but Kripalani said they’re selling tens of thousands of copies a month, and expect that figure to reach several hundred thousand a year soon. While a hardback version of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas may cost $15, the iPhone version costs $2.99. And with no need for printing, storage or shipping, a digital publisher incurs no more cost to produce 1,000 copies than just one. Still, there are hurdles. “It may be something that sounds easy, just putting an illustrated book on a cell phone screen,” Kripalani said.

But there are lots of challenges, like how to shrink a two-page illustration to a 2-inch screen. For now, zooming in and panning the image seems the best solution. To help kids read and follow the text, Kripalani’s version highlights each word as a narrator reads along, and kids can touch an object on the screen – like a chair, a fish or a toy – and the system reads that word aloud. To generate extra revenue, Oceanhouse built a separate Cat In The Hat game for another $1.99 that lets users take pictures and put people’s faces into a Grinch character image to e-mail to a friend. In the $1.99 Lorax game, players cultivate virtual Trufulla trees.

If kids don’t like the professional narration, the ScrollMotion company of New York City lets parents and kids record their own page-by-page narration to make the story personal. ScrollMotion has secured rights to stories from Sesame Street (a.k.a. the Elmo franchise) Veggie Tales, the Candlewick series of “Maisy” books, and books by author Todd Parr among others. For now, Apple seems to be in the lead with mobile phone kids books, with dozens of titles for sale in its iTunes catalog. But other formats are getting involved as well. Publishers are experimenting with versions that run on Google’s Android platform. And BlackBerry has a few titles in its app store as well. All this presents something of a dilemma for the centuries-old industry of children’s literature.

To be sure, the stories themselves can count as literature. But they’re not exactly “books” anymore if they exist on cell phones. Children’s literature authors may still covet the honored Newbery Medal for their stories, and illustrators may still hope for a Caldecott Medal. But it’s undefined how library groups that give out some of the most prestigious awards would approach a digital book that doesn’t exactly exist in a physical library. “The award category just does not exist yet,” for books on phones, said Macey Morales, a spokeswoman for the American Library Association. Meanwhile, authors are fast leaving traditional publishers behind.

Wallace Keller, for instance, saw his kids book “Wrong Side of the Bed,” go out of print more than five years ago, but he retained the copyright. When he saw potential on cell phones, he thought “why not just do it ourselves,” he said. Keller and a few colleagues basically created See Here Studios in San Francisco, and started working around the clock to make his story ready for the April launch of the iPad, with him as the narrator. Their hook – images in 3D that bring a new dimension to the story of a boy who wakes up in a world that’s upside down. Now the title is in the top 10 best seller list on Apple iTunes for books. “I have friends still in publishing in New York, and we get into lengthy debates about where this is all going,” Keller said. “It seems like there’s now a mild civil war between new and old publishers.” Newer versions take stories a step further.

One of the several Alice in Wonderland versions for the iPad incorporates animation. And in the spirit of the jabberwocky drama, as readers turn the pad, objects on the screen “fall” down to the bottom. Part-time author Hayes Roberts saw what he considers huge success by shifting from the book world to cell phone literature. In 2006, he self-published a couple kids books, but only sold two hundred copies. Then, the company iStoryTime asked to publish his titles on phones.

One of the first was “The Wiener Dog Magnet,” about a young monkey who earns enough allowance from cleaning her room to buy what turns out to be a magical magnet that attracts wiener dogs. The story has been downloaded more than 5,000 times, Roberts said, and he’s seen other titles translated into 10 languages, “which is phenomenally better than paper books for me. And it’s simpler, cheaper and more fantastic.” His story “Brave Monkey Pirate” about a monkey who needs to get a shot at the doctor, may have sold just 100 copies in print, but in more than 2,500 copies for cell phones in the last few months. If kids spending all this time with cell phones seems a bit strange, Roberts has a bit of irony to offer. His next story will be on a cell phone, but it will feature a young monkey who “lives in a world where everyone is always looking at little computer screens all the time, and he just wants to play outside instead.”

Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at (813) 259-7919.

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This week librarians, book publishers, booksellers, and students from across the country commemorate Children’s Book Week with a range of events designed to celebrate the love of books and reading.

The May 10-16 festivities will be marked with official events taking place in 10 cities, from Atlanta, GA, to Webster Groves, MO, with dozens of schools, libraries, and bookstores taking part in local events. For example, yesterday in New York City, Katherine Paterson, the current National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and Jon Scieszka, her predecessor, spoke about children’s literature at a special event hosted by the Children’s Book Council called Writers on Writers, which took place at an uptown Barnes & Noble.

California’s Altadena Public Library has asked children to create a poster of their favorite book, and the Potomac Community Library in Prince William, MD, is celebrating with its very own carnival.

The highlight of the week is this evening’s announcement of the Children’s Choice Book Awards winners at a New York City gala hosted by Mo Willems, the 2009 kindergarten to second grade book of the year winner for The Pigeon Wants a Puppy! (Hyperion, 2008). The Children Choice Awards finalists were determined by close to 15,000 children and teens, and it marks the oldest national literacy event in the United States. In addition, Kyle Zimmer, the co-founder and president of nonprofit organization First Book, will receive the Impact Award for her contributions to children and books. First Book provides new books to children in need to promote literacy.

Jon J Muth, last year’s Children Choice Illustrator of the Year, created this year’s Children’s Book Week poster, featuring pandas Stillwater and Koo and siblings Karl, Addy, and Michael from Muth’s book Zen Ties (Scholastic, 2008). Posters are available free of charge by sending a 9” x 12” self-addressed envelope with $0.65 postage attached to the Children’s Book Council, Poster Order, 12 West 37th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10018.

Frederic G. Melcher, the editor of Publishers Weekly, and Anne Carroll Moore, the superintendent of Children’s Works at the New York Public Library, along with Franklin K. Matthiews, the librarian of the Boy Scouts of America, created Children’s Book Week in 1919. Melcher said at the time “A great nation is a reading nation.” The Children’s Book Council has administered the celebration since 1944.

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Go here should you wish to get published with your childrens book at Xlibris Corporation.Get more news on publishing here.

If you have children who are budding writers, you can encourage them to continue in their writing by publishing books or publishing ebooks that they have written. With many print-on-demand publishers out there, it’s relatively easy to publish books written by kids. By doing so, you’ll create a keepsake for the family and encourage your children at the same time. Start out by finding online print-on-demand publishers through lists on websites such as Bookmarket.com or Booksandtales.com (see Resources).

Type the contents of the book in a word processing program on your computer. Format the pages in whatever style is appropriate for the book you are creating. If you would like a 5-by-8-inch book, format your pages to be 5 inches by 8 inches. You will also need a margin of 1/2 inch to 1 inch from the top, right, left and bottom of each page. Books usually are printed in a font from 12 to 14 points.

Step 2Proofread the book for grammar and spelling errors, then have someone from outside the family–perhaps a friend or colleague–read it over for mistakes.

Step 3Convert the pages into a portable document file (PDF) format. Most print-on-demand publishers accept only this type of format. Download a free program (see Resources) that will transfer your document into PDF format. You can then view your finished document using a program such as Adobe Reader, Foxit or OpenOffice.

Step 4Compare print-on-demand publishers and choose one based on the appearance of their books, customer service and their per-book price. View the forums or feedback sections on each publisher’s website and note any difficulties that people are having with the publisher’s services. Once you choose a publisher, enter the name of your project and choose the characteristics of your book. You can input the desired size, as well as the number of pages and whether you want it to be in hardcover.

Step 5Upload the PDF file of the book to the publisher’s website. Use the publisher’s free, online cover creation program to create a book cover with your child. If your publisher does not have a cover program, find someone who will create a cover for you. Most print-on-demand forums are full of people who work in related fields, so it should be easy to find someone willing to create a cover for your book for a reasonable fee.

Step 6Submit your project for approval. Once the book is approved, you can order a proof copy to preview. Approve the proof copy after checking that it’s to your satisfaction, then put the book up for sale on the publisher’s website and order copies for friends and family members. Each time a book is ordered, the book publisher prints a copy and takes care of the purchase order and the shipping.

“Friends With A Difference,” a children’s book written by Ellen Dittman Pope of Parkersburg and illustrated by Carol Dixon of Marietta, will be having a national release date of March 5.

The book is being published by national book publisher Headline Books.

Friends helping friends and friendship is the theme of the book as Sally and her unique animal friends work together to make their lives better. The book encourages those with “differences” or “disabilities” to continue to try and succeed. It also shows how careless people can cause harm to innocent animals.

Pope, a historian, librarian, author and educator, has lived and traveled extensively throughout the world. She has an MLS from the University of Hawaii and is currently reference librarian at the University of West Virginia at Parkersburg. Pope, who has more than 35 years of teaching experience, has presented her Living History programs in school districts and organizations across the world.

Dixon, who says she has been an artist all of her life, won a scholarship to the Huntington Museum of Art while still in high school in Huntington, W.Va., and pursued further training at Marshall University. She completed her education with a bachelor of arts at Marietta College, where she was introduced to illustrating with color pencils by Valdis Garoza. She now uses this medium to do most of her illustrating.

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Should you wish to find a publisher and publish your children’s book, claim your free publishing guide here.

An art exhibit with a clever premise opened recently at Western Washington University, offering some thought-provoking fun for those of us who adore children’s book publishing literature.

The show is called “An Imaginary Library: Children’s Books That Do Not (Yet) Exist.” It features the work of 72 illustrators from 32 countries, many of whom work in children’s book publishing.

A recent trip to see the exhibit made for a whimsical afternoon at the Wilson Library on the WWU campus, where the illustrations hang in the hallways on two floors.

It starts on the second floor, just up and to the left of the main circulation desk, and continues in the fourth-floor Children’s Literature Interdisciplinary Collection, a special wing of children’s books.

Each piece gives the title and a synopsis of the imagined book, along with the artist’s name and country of origin. I fancied the ideas of several Japanese illustrators, especially Komako Sakai’s wonderfully sweet and precious “The Night Story,” in which a little boy lies awake while his family sleeps.

Also fun were the cuddly stuffed bears in “Love Made of Plush” and the goofy-looking birds of “A Thousand and One Parrots.” There’s even an imagined biography of Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart.

Some works carry serious political overtones. A cover for “The Little One,” designed by Andrea Petrlik Huseinovic of Croatia, resonates with the grief of centuries-old Balkans grudges. In it, a generous and kind little boy wants to bring peace to a land seized by darkness and hatred. And “The Land of Sad People” from Iranian illustrator Pejman Rahimizade will break your heart with its premise of a country in the grip of winter.

But I think my absolute favorite was “Anton, the Night Porter,” a darkly comic story set in a Berlin hotel by German artist Regina Kehm. Anton is depicted as a kind of child-like gryphon: a boy with the feet, wings and tail of a bird.

“Imaginary Library” is on display though April 30. An exhibit catalog is available for $5 at the main circulation desk.

The rampant success of the recent film adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are proves that you don’t have to be young to enjoy or learn from children’s literature. For decades, the American Library Association’s Association for Library Service to Children has been bestowing awards on the best of the best in books for children, and the winners of the three most prestigious awards for children’s books were just recently announced.

The Caldecott Medal is given to outstanding illustrators. Famous past winners of the bronze seal include The Polar Express (1986), _Jumanji _ (1982) and Where the Wild Things Are (1964). This year’s winner was The Lion & the Mouse, an adaptation of a classic fable written and illustrated by Jerry Pinkney.

The Newbery Medal was the first award established to honor excellence in literature written especially for children. Previous honorees populate summer reading lists even today, and represent masterpieces that every person, young or old, should read. Some notables include Holes (1999), The Giver (1994), Bridge to Terabithia (1978), Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1972) and Sounder (1970). Joining the rather outstanding roster is this year’s honoree, When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. The book follows the story of Miriam, a New York sixth-grader trying to make sense of growing up.

The Printz Award is given by the ALA’s publication, Booklist, to books that represent excellence in young-adult literature. Younger than the other major children’s book awards, it picked its first winner in 2000. This year, the top prize went to Going Bovine by Libba Bray, a story about a 16-year-old boy’s struggle with Mad Cow disease.

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Here’s how to get started with publishing your children’s book

To give young readers and their parents a taste, the nonprofit group is giving access to a set of five free digital books on its Web site (ebooks.sesamestreet.org), including the classic “The Monster at the End of this Book.”

Words on the screen are highlighted as they are narrated by “Sesame Street” characters, helping kids follow along with the text.

The organization said that in the future, it will integrate mini-games to help kids learn how to read.

In the spring, Sesame Workshop plans to start selling individual books on the Web site, along with subscriptions for monthly access to its library. There will always be a rotating set of five free books on the site.

The Walt Disney Co. in September launched its own digital book store (disneydigitalbooks.go.com).

Rather than sell individual titles, however, Disney gives families access to a library of 500 books for an annual subscription fee of $79.95.

– Alex Pham

There will be hundreds of gently used and like-new children’s books to choose from just in time for holiday gift giving. Children’s videos, books on tape and DVDs will also be available. For more details, call 419.259.5358.

Friends of the Library is a nonprofit organization that encourages, promotes and supports the ongoing development and use of the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library. Friends of the Library offer support for:

Brown Bag Concerts
Authors! Authors!
Summer Reading Club Programs
Local branch activities
Levy Campaigns

“He was such an important publisher of pop-up books who really advanced them technically. The pop-up designers who worked for him were amazing creative engineers,” said Cynthia Burlingham, director of the UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts at the Hammer Museum.

In 1965, Hunt got his big break in book publishing from Bennett Cerf, then president of Random House. Hunt sold the book “Bennett Cerf’s Pop-Up Riddles” to General Foods as a product promotion that could be obtained for a dollar and two Maxwell House coffee labels.

Within two years, Hunt had 30 pop-up titles, mostly aimed at children, in production for Random House, he later said.

For decades, his firm and his team of master paper engineers dominated the market for pop-ups. As of 1996, Intervisual had produced 1,000 movable books. Disney was a major client, with 150 titles.

More than 300 works, most from his collection, were featured in a 2002 exhibit, “Pop Up! 500 Years of Movable Books” at the Los Angeles Central Library.

After retiring in 2002, he moved from his home of nearly 30 years in Encino to Springville, Calif., to live near his daughter Kimberly.

Photo from the LA Times. Go here should you wish to start your children’s book publishing.