Mundie Moms

Friday, September 5, 2014

Cassandra Clare Announces The Iron Trial Tour Dates



Cassandra Clare & Holly Black recently announced their tour dates for their upcoming release of The Iron Trial. Their middle grade book will be hitting shelves NEXT TUESDAY! Check out where you'll be able to see them at: 

Magisterium Launch Event in New York

September 9th - 5PM 
Magisterium Launch Event in New York
with Holly Black

Books of Wonder 
18 West 18th Street 
New York, NY
Open to: the public!

September 13th - 7PM Magisterium Event in New Hampshire
with Holly Black
Barnes & Noble 
235 Daniel Webster Hwy
Nashua, NH 03060 `
Open to: the public!


September 14th - 4PM Magisterium Event in Massachusetts
with Holly Black
The Jones Library in conjunction with Odyssey Books
Woodbury Room 
43 Amity Street 
Amherst, MA 
Open to: ticketed event - to book tickets, go here


September 26th - 7PM Magisterium Event in Illinois
with Holly Black
The Niles Public Library in conjunction with The Book Stall
6960 West Oakton St. 
Niles, IL 
Open to: the public!


September 27th - ALL DAY Anderson’s 11th Annual Young Adult Literature Conference
with Holly Black

Hotel Arista
2139 City Gate Lane
Naperville, IL 60563 
Open to: Registered guests! To register, go here.


October 4th - 6PM Bath Kids Writer’s Festival
with Holly Black

Guildhall 
Open to: ticketed event - to book tickets, go here


October 5th - 2:30PM Magisterium Spoken Word Event in Nottingham
with Holly Black

Nottingham Playhouse
Wellington Circus
Nottingham, NG1 5AF 
Open to: Ticket holders - for tickets go here


October 6th - 6:30PM Magisterium Signing at Waterstones London
with Holly Black

The Amnesty International Human Rights Act
ion Centre
17 – 25 New Inn Yard, London EC2A 3EA 
Open to: Ticket holders - for tickets go here


October 7th - 6:30PM Magisterium Signing at Waterstones Liverpool
with Holly Black

OH ME OH MY West Africa House
25 Water Street, Liverpool L2 0RG
Open to: Ticket holders - for tickets go here

In NOVEMBER, Holly and I are going to be in Portugal, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands. Dates to come!


Don't forget! When you pre-order your signed copy of The Iron Trial, you'll be entered to win a SIGNED copy of The Bane Chronicles, from Books of Wonder!! More info here *open internationally*.


My Bibi Always Remembers: An Interview With Author Toni Buzzeo & Illustrator Mike Wohnoutka

Aside from reading and reviewing YA, I'm a huge fan of children's books and picture books. I recently had the chance to read an adorable picture book, My Bibi Always Remembers, written by Toni Buzzeo and illustrated by Mike Wohnoutka. Normally I feature children's authors on Mundie Kids, but sometimes I feel the need to feature them on both sites. Today I'm thrilled to share my recent interview with Toni and Mike, talking about their newest release (which I highly recommend picking up). 



Hi Toni and Mike, welcome to Mundie Moms / Mundie Kids!

Toni, congratulations on your recent release, My Bibi Always Remembers. This was such a wonderful story. I recently read it with my daughter, who loves elephants. What inspired you to write a story about these magnificent animals, and what kind of research went into writing My Bibi Always Remembers?

I am a school librarian by profession, though I write full time now, so for me, research is always the first step in writing. I did both primary and secondary research. First, I’ve visited Kenya twice and spent time with the elephants of Amboseli National Park. I have truly have fallen in love with these magnificent, huge creatures. 



They live in families, nurture their babies, and work as a group to ensure the safety of all members. They are led by grandmothers, matriarchs who carry the wisdom of the family with them. In addition to visiting them in person, I read every single thing I could about elephant families and watched video after video. I love research!


And how could a girl like me not fall in love with a family led by a grandmother? My own Grandma Mae was the single most important person in my life.


From the day I was born, she loved me, cared for me, nurtured me and gave me all the time and attention she had to give. We walked for miles, we read for hours, we played for days. So when I saw the grandmother elephants leading their families, memories of my own loving grandma flooded me and I knew how I would tell the story!

Mike, your artwork is amazing! I absolutely loved the way you were able to capture and bring to life Toni's story. What was your illustration process like for My Bibi Always Remembers? Do you read the book, and visualize certain moments, or do you collaborate with Toni, and ask her how she would like you to illustrate each page?


Thank you!  As the illustrator for a picture book all I get is the text.  No art suggestions are given.  Most people are surprised to learn that the author does not get a say in what the illustrations will look like, and the author and illustrator do not work together. The publisher wants the illustrator to bring their unique vision to the story. However, with Toni it was a little different since she’s an expert on her subject, and it’s a more realistic book. After reading the story many, many times I started with very rough thumbnail sketches. When I felt like the sketches were ready I sent them to the publisher. This was where Toni got involved, but, only talking to the publisher. Toni always had very keen observations, like in my original sketches I had the elephants tusks going up rather than down.  I generally don’t look at reference material when I start the sketches for a book. I feel if you use too much photo reference when working on those first rough sketches the drawings can get rather stiff and the photos start dictating poses and scenes.  After seeing the comments from the editor (and Toni) I made revisions (now using lots of reference material) and once those sketches were approved, I did color studies and then the final paintings.


Toni, I love that your story is one that both educates readers about elephants, but also tells a story about Little Tembo and her family as they travel together. Was that something you had set out to do when you first started writing Tembo's story?

Tembo and her Grandmother. Those were the two characters I wanted you to know, and so I studied elephants, both little and big, young and old, during the research process. But as you say, I also wanted to tell a STORY. So I needed to find a compelling problem for the elephant family as a whole.  A drought is, unfortunately, not an uncommon problem for the animals of Kenya, which is why I chose it. It would then be important for Bibi, the grandmother, to get her family to water in a distant place she remembered from the last drought.


But little Tembo would continue to be her cute, playful, curious self, unconcerned about the necessity of finding that water, just like any young child would be.




I DID set out to introduce my young readers to elephants while telling a story they could relate to because it is likely they have been as curious and playful as Tembo!

Mike, what was one of your favorite pages to illustrate? 

Every time I start the paintings for a new book I feel like I can’t do it.  But with every book there’s always one painting that stands out for me and makes me feel like, yes, I can do it. For this book it’s the painting of Tembo following her mother on page 13, which was also used on the Title Page.


Toni and Mike, what is one of your favorite pictures books you'd recommend to our readers to pick up?

Toni: I just adore picture books, so it’s hard to choose just one! I hope your readers will read the other two companion books to My Bibi Always Remembers, of course, 


but I also hope that they’ll read Mama Built a Little Nest by Jennifer Ward, illustrated by Steve Jenkins, to learn more about animals—this time birds!


Mike: I have two children (Franklin, 9 and Olivia, 6).  We read together a lot - mostly picture books.  We have something we call “Battle of the Books”, where I read 4 or 5 picture books per night.  Each night we do a secret ballot ranking them.  The winner of each “battle” goes into a bracket where they will eventually face off in a picture book tournament, not unlike the NCAA basketball tournament.  This is a great springboard for conversations about what we like in a book.  After reading more than 275 picture books the winner was “The Salamander Room” by Anne Mazer and illustrated by Steve Johnson, which is one of my all-time favorites. Toni’s “One Cool Friend”, another favorite, made it to the Final Four.



Thank you to Toni and Mike for being here today! If you're a fan of children's picture books, go pick this one up! You can never go wrong with a book written by Toni, illustrated by Mike, and published by Disney!

Exciting News From Jennifer Armentrout About The Dark Elements Series

Jennifer Armentrout announced some exciting news yesterday about her The Dark Elements series! Fans get to choose who Layla ends up with! 


Fans every where are internally screaming over this.... *all Supernatural gifs are from Jennifer's post*


Next month fans of her series get to choose who they want Layla to end up with.... Zayne or Roth. Now I don't know about you guys, but I seriously may end up voting for Team Layla, or I might end up voting for each guy every other day. I'm seriously so torn on who I want her to choose. 

Here's how the voting will work, per Jennifer:

Here’s how this is going to work:
Beginning on Tuesday, October 21st, the day Stone Cold Touch goes on sale, you’ll have 3 weeks to visit the series website, www.thedarkelementsseries.com to take a poll and decide which guy Layla should ultimately choose in the final book in the trilogy, Every Last Breath.
At the end of 3 weeks, we will tally all the votes, and that’s when I’ll start writing Every Last Breath. The guy who gets the most votes is the one Layla will pick.
To prevent early spoilers, I’m not going to reveal who won the poll in advance…you’ll have to wait until Every Last Breath goes on sale on July 28th, 2015 to find out whether Zayne or Roth wins Layla in the end. I promise the book will be epic and definitely worth the wait!
I’ve always had the world’s most devoted and outspoken readers, so I know Layla’s fate is in the best of hands with you guys, and I’m counting on you to get out there and vote and tell all your friends to do the same. And if you haven’t yet read the Dark Elements, you’ve got plenty of time to get up to speed before it’s time to vote: the e-prequel novella, Bitter Sweet Love, and White Hot Kiss are both available now [ Amazon , B&N , iBooks], and you can preorder Stone Cold Touch here [Amazon , B&N , iBooks].

Who will you choose? 



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