The C.H. Booth Library in Newtown, CT where the Author Reception was held.

This past weekend, I attended the Turning the Page: New Stories for Newtown event in Connecticut. The tragedy that befell the people of Newtown at Sandy Hook Elementary School this past December left so many of us wishing we could reach out and help the community recover. This literary festival, cosponsored by the Children’s Book Council (CBC), the C.H. Booth Library’s Books Heal Hearts fund, and many children’s book publishers, including ABRAMS, had an important impact on the community. The two-day event occurred during the ninety-fourth celebration of Children’s Book Week; author/illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi (THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES) proposed this incredible project to the CBC. Robin Adelson, executive director of the CBC, described the program wonderfully, saying that Turning the Page recognized “the healing powers of storytelling and the desire to create new and positive memories for all those in Newtown who continue to suffer.”

On Friday, May 17^th, authors and illustrators, including our own Jeff Kinney and Michael Buckley, visited Connecticut schools. I attended Michael’s presentation to grades five through eight at St. Rose of Lima School. The students enjoyed the entire session and laughed the whole way through it. The presentation included Michael having to make the final decision on a school-wide conundrum: Who would win in a fight, a watermelon or a pineapple?  (Michael chose a watermelon.) And the crowd erupted in cheers when Michael revealed TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD as his favorite book. After his presentation, a librarian asked me to thank Michael for visiting the school and relayed to me “just how much these kids need to laugh.”

On Saturday, May 18^th, the CBC held a book festival at Newtown Middle School that included themed presentations as well as meet and greets with Newtown families, school librarians, and teachers. I was in awe that so many distinguished authors and illustrators took time out of their busy schedules to attend this event: R. L. Stine, Brian Selznick, Christopher Paolini, Peter Brown, Barbara McClintock, Jerry Pinkney, and Jane O’Connor, just to name a few. I heard two school employees share a moment of disbelief about just “how big of a deal” this event really was. The festival presentation topics ranged from “Reimagined Fairytales” to “Iconic Characters” to “Books into Movies,” but there was a collective thread: the beauty and importance of stories, of sharing, and of creating new memories.

Again, Robin Adelson said it best: “This is the kind of outreach that the town wants and needs.” The event inspired and uplifted the attendees, and the sense of gratitude from both the members of the Newtown community and the authors/illustrators themselves was heartwarming. Jeff, Michael, and I were incredibly grateful to attend Turning the Page on behalf of ABRAMS.

Here are some photos from the event:

Reimagined Fairytales” presentation with Barbara McClintock, Jerry Pinkney, and Nick Bruel. Moderated by Tony DiTerlizzi.

Morgan Dubin and R.L. Stine at Newtown Middle School.

Michael Buckley and his son, Finn Buckley, signing copies of SISTERS GRIMM: BOOK NINE.

Brian Selznick, author and illustrator of THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET.

Michael Buckley, Tony DiTerlizzi, and Peter Brown outside the auditorium at Newtown Middle School.

Morgan Dubin is a publicity & marketing associate at ABRAMS. 

Francisca Matteoli is author of the new book World Tour: Vintage Hotel Labels from the Collection of Gaston-Louis Vuitton as well as an internationally published and award-winning travel writer, contributing to Condé Nast Traveler and National Geographic, among others. Chilean, with a Scottish mother, she resides in Paris. Her books have been published in more than ten countries and translated in several languages worldwide. She is also the creator of the popular blog franciscamatteoli.com/blog.

What inspires your stories? 

Everything. My family story – Funny, sad, wonderful things or experiences, people, places… Inspirations can come from unlikely sources. If it touches me, it’s a good start.

Has your background influenced you in becoming a travel writer?

Definitely. I’ve always been surrounded by travelers and also by adventurers. My Scottish mother and my Chilean father knew the golden age of travel and were also driven by an intense curiosity. Thanks to them, I have been used to thinking that I belong in many places and am part of the world. That is why in all my books, I always write about a lot of different places and not just one. I feel blessed being able to mentally adapt from one side of the planet to another. I am not attached to one single place,  it’s important to be able to move and not to stick to only one culture or one mentality. So yes, like everyone I think, I have been influenced by my background and as I come from South America where everyone likes to tell stories, it was kind of natural for me to mix stories and travels.

How you choose your destinations?

It depends on my mood, what I want to talk about, where I give my travel talks,  my curiosity, or boredom, just for the pleasure of being elsewhere and seeing something different. I went to Shanghai recently to give a travel talk, and I was totally amazed – in a good way. The audiance was fantastic. The organisation incredible.  I never saw so much energy and enthusiasm.  It was really a discovery for me and I wrote several stories on my blog about this experience. I’ll certainly include this trip in my next book and I hope I can return. I am very curious to see how it is going to continue opening to the outside world.

How did you get started travelling?

With my family, when we left Chile to live in France. It was not only a travel, but also an incredible adventure. Epic, tragic, crazy… not a picnic, I can tell you!

How did you ge started writing?

First, I published some stories for magazines but  I really started to write seriously after I went to Rwanda with the French doctors and did a story for National Geographic. I wanted very much to write something about this experience so I went to see the editor of the magazine and asked him if he was interested by a story. I had never written for such an important magazine before but I knew that very few people had been to Rwanda in those conditions and had the opportunity to see the country from that angle and I felt that it was going to be a once in a lifetime experience. The editor of National Geographic said he was interested in a story, he asked a photographer from Magnum agency to join me, and that is how I started writing real travel stories. That was my first real work as a travel writer.

What is the biggest reward of life as a travel writer? 

Being able to change the false impression that somebody has on a country and people.

What was your favorite part about working on World Tour?

The 21 stories related to different destinations that brought back so many memories. I could write about places in the world that are really very special to me and mix adventure, humour, colorful characters, and extravaganza of a crazy time when travelers could live real adventures and not waste all their time stripping in the airports!

Did any place change you?

Rwanda of course, and all the experiences I shared with the French doctors and also Brazil where I lived for a while. All of those places make me understand that people are extremely complex, that there are a million ways of perciving things and places, and that life is a kaleidoscope. We never get to see all the colors or all the sides because they are changing all the time and we are changing too. But, it is so exciting to try to catch most of it, no?

Favorite summer destinations?

Greece, on a boat, because I love to swim and feel the freedom of an empty sea. England and the gardens for the peace and beauty. Scotland, Chile and the Atacama desert. I try to go to places where there is action, and also where you can contemplate and recuparate. In fact, I always wanted to be like Mary Poppins and jump into a destination like into a painting.

What are you working on?

A new book of travel stories and also a novel. I have no idea which one will be finished first!

World Tour: Vintage Hotel Labels from the Collection of Gaston-Louis Vuitton by Francisca Matteoli is available now wherever books are sold.

Patricia Barey and Therese Burson are writers and filmmakers who own an award-winning media  company. Ardent fans of Julia Child, they discovered she had a passion for pussycats and a recipe for living the good life: find something you love and do it every day.  For these two authors, that something was writing a book about Julia and her cats.

Julia’s Cats: Julia Child’s Life in the Company of Cats explores the beloved Queen of Cuisine’s lifelong passion for pussycats, which she discovered along with the other great loves of her life – French food and her true vocation – when she and husband Paul moved to Paris in 1948. Minette came to help rid their kitchen of mice, but the “sly, gay, cream-and-mud-colored little thing” won their hearts and became an essential part of their household.

The former dog owners began to notice cats everywhere in Paris. Paul photographed them lurking in alleys and doorways, basking on windowsills and prowling the gutters. Julia gushed, “They were such interesting, independent-minded creatures. I began to equate them with Paris.” (My Life in France, 35)

After those magical Paris years, there were always cats in Julia’s life, but no children of her own, so some have speculated that her feline fixation was merely misplaced maternal instinct. But as we delved deeper into Julia and Paul’s voluminous letters and diaries and spoke with people who knew her, we rejected such facile conclusions. The Julia we came to know simply adored cats, and they her. As Paul once wrote “a cat – any cat – is necessary” to Julia’s happiness.

Julia and cats were kindred spirits.  In fact, all of the feline qualities that she found endearing could be applied to Julia herself:  confident, curious, commanding (one of Julia’s classmates said she could be “imperious”), playful, spunky, always hungry, and with savoir-fare to spare.

All of Julia’s cats answered to some variation of Minou / Minette, the generic French term for “kitty,” and she loved them equally.  The country cats who hung around her kitchen in Provence acquired simple descriptive names, le gros Gris, “the big gray one,” “le Petit Prince,” the pampered one, and Minimere, “the little mama.”  Julia doted on Minimere because she kept their household supplied with adorable kittens.

The fertile kitty once gave Julia a “Mother’s Day” surprise she and Paul would never forget. When they arrived at La Pitchoune, they found Minimere predictably pregnant, so Julia made sure her dish was always overflowing, while Paul fretted that the little mama was looking for a cozy cupboard or warm bed to deliver her brood. They both went on kitten-watch. One evening, as they were savoring a ragout Provencale, the wily cat managed to slink in and find a closet-cum- wine cellar for her delivery room.  While arranging her nest, she sent several treasured bottles crashing to the floor.  Initial alarm soon turned to hoots of laughter, a fond toast to the feisty mother-to-be, and a new Julia-ism:  There’s no use crying over spilled wine.

To all mothers, including the four-legged kind:  “A votre santé !”

Julia’s Cats: Julia Child’s Life in the Company of Cats by Patricia Barey & Therese Burson is available wherever books are sold. 

April has passed and so has this year’s National Poetry Month. That hasn’t stopped me, however,  from sending around a few bonus poems and tracks as habits–even recently acquired ones–sometimes die hard.

Since I started sending a poem-a-day (more or less) to the US and UK staff six weeks ago, having started a week early when I was in Bologna,  you’ve received around 40 poems from more than 35  poets.

Mostly, they’ve been poems that I knew or had discovered or poems that I came across by chance or by association.  They are poems that, for some reason or another, struck me or poems that I had stashed in a “drafts folder” on my laptop waiting to be sent or not sent if or when the mood struck.

Usually, I sent them early in my day, often before full morning light and before my senses were completely about me. And I was mindful that, before I over-edited my choices, or gave in to my hesitations, before I thought too, too hard about the audience (you) for the poems, in other words, when there still seemed to be some “risk” involved via misinterpretation or the desire that they be liked by all or hated by some, that a “first principle” of trusting my instincts and embracing that risk would be my guide.

Often the poems were really ways of having others more talented than I describe the world as experienced or imagined as in a picture or a painting, a photograph, a film a song, a conversation conjured in images, in lines, in stanzas, in verses, in  words.

At other times they were to just see what might touch whom and how and when and to have others, if  I was lucky, let me know why.

In the end, the poems are and were just sketches by somewhat unreliable narrators–with yours truly as interlocutor–and signs pointing toward where I or you or they had been. Or, of where we might be going, where we wish we’d been, where we wanted to go. I hope that through these poems, these sketches, these reminders of things you knew but forgot or never knew but perhaps were vaguely reminded or remembered you had a chance to imagine yourself in a world of your making.

Me–for better or worse, I’ve lately been beset with a bad case of the “Emilys” as I am both deeply in thrall of and horribly confounded by an ongoing encounter with the Belle of Amherst.  She, whose thoughts and sounds, syllables and images as always both entice and elude and leave me, in the morning, at noon, in the dusk of evening and in the dark, starlit night in awe of her words:

The Red—Blaze—is the Morning—
The Violet—is Noon–
The Yellow—Day—is falling–
And after that—is none–

But Miles of Sparks—at Evening–
Reveal the Width that burned–
The Territory Argent—that
Never yet—consumed–

Michael Jacobs is President & CEO of ABRAMS.

Creativity isn’t 24/7. It doesn’t occur 9 to 5. It doesn’t have a schedule. Creativity rarely sticks around when I need it the most. Creativity loves to play games with my head. It keeps me awake at night when I would love to be sleeping. It lies dormant for days on end when I’m trying desperately to work on a project. Creativity likes to elude me. It hides and laughs at me from dark corners, it taunts me when I’m missing it so, it tells me I don’t deserve it in my life.

We’ve had poems scattered throughout the office by four anonymous staffers and it’s been great fun to discover the new ones each week.

For some reason, the refrigerators are always early targets. The white paper in the center is a reminder to keep the fridge tidy, not a poem. Butter and Oysters, however, are.

And speaking of festooning, conference room B got garlands of stars with poetry about stars…and that is a Factory Window poem on the window.

A Scotch poem, in a scotch bottle in the hallway, by Robert Burns (the poem of course, not the placement).

Twelve little lines in six little boxes, in the Open Design area.

Poetry with little badges reminding us to remember to be civil spirits was sprinkled lightly through the halls.

Of course it all starts at the front door.

The month is nearly over! Walk around and be inspired!

Merle Browne is Executive Assistant to ABRAMS CEO, Michael Jacobs.

In celebration of 4/20 ABRAMS has asked Ryan Nerz, author of Marajuanamerica (out this month) to post about the demon weed. Alfred Ryan Nerz is a freelance journalist whose pieces have appeared in Esquire, the Village Voice, and Time Out New York. In addition, he has written for NPR and produced television shows on Spike TV and the Biography channel.

Of the myriad theories that have been used to demonize weed, none has been more stubbornly persistent than the “gateway theory.” This theory claims that marijuana use may not be so harmful on its own, but that its real damage is that it leads to the abuse of more destructive drugs like heroin and cocaine.

On the surface, the gateway theory seems to hold water. If you go to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, it’s true that many addicts will begin their drug histories with a story about experimenting with pot. And there is some correlation there. In MARIJUANAMERICA, I readily concede that I might never have felt comfortable experimenting with psychedelics like mushrooms and Ecstasy had I not first discovered I liked marijuana’s effects. (That said, the illegality of marijuana also contributed to this, as black market weed dealers were the first people to offer me mushrooms and ecstasy.) And according to a study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a person who smokes marijuana is more than 104 times more likely to try cocaine than someone who hasn’t tried weed.

But I’m not a cokehead. My point is: correlation doesn’t imply cause. Numerous studies (like this one) have debunked the gateway theory for this reason. The fact is, marijuana is by far the most widely used (and available) illegal drug, so it would stand to reason that people would use it first. Further, drug use studies have shown that most Americans actually try alcohol and tobacco before they try marijuana. And a very small percentage of marijuana users go on to actually become addicted to weed.

In the words of Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, “the gateway theory is an ounce of truth embedded in a pound of bull…The notion that we should try to reduce the number of people getting addicted to heroin by focusing on adolescent use of marijuana is like trying to reduce motorcycle fatalities by discouraging bike riding.”

Marijuanamerica: One Man’s Quest to Understand America’s Dysfunctional Love Affair with Weed by Alfred Ryan Nerz (Abrams Image, 2013) is available now wherever books are sold.

Today is national Poem in Your Pocket Day! According to the Academy of American Poets, today is a day to select a poem, carry it with you, and share it with others throughout the day. Poem in Your Pocket is a big day at ABRAMS —including a trip to The Today Show with the children’s group to share some poetry and spread the word, as well as pocket-sized poems on the desk of every employee. (This morning’s poem was “Exultation is the going” by Emily Dickinson.) But this particular holiday is just one small part of April, National Poetry Month. You can learn more about how ABRAMS is celebrating National Poetry Month (with Tumblr and the Academy of American Poets) here on our blog. A poetry bomb of our entire office is just one small part of all the joy and sharing of this month.

Here is a fun video from the Academy of American Poets about Poem In Your Pocket Day:

Poem in Your Pocket and Poem in Your Pocket for Young Poets are both available wherever books are sold!
 

Morgan Dubin is a Publicity & Marketing Associate for ABRAMS. 

WHY KNOT? How to Tie More Than Sixty Ingenious, Useful, Beautiful, Livesaving, and Secure Knots! Written & Illustrated by “Man on Wire” Philippe Petit is available now wherever books are sold.

About the book:
On August 7, 1974, Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire illegally rigged between the New York World Trade Center’s twin towers, where he performed for nearly an hour. During this history-making walk, and many others throughout his celebrated career, knots have always been indispensable components—the guardian angels protecting his life in the sky.

After years of hands-on research, Philippe presents WHY KNOT?, a guide to tying his essential knots. Philippe’s own practical sketches illustrate original methods and clear, clever tying instructions. Photographs in which special knots were used during spectacular high-wire walks, quirky knot trivia, personal anecdotes, helpful tips, magic tricks, and special tying challenges ensure that, if you’re not already nuts for knots, Petit will transform you into a knot aficionado.

What people are saying:
“In reading Philippe’s book we are cogently reminded that without the ability to secure a rope, or tether a goat, or make fast the sheets of a galley, much of the civilization that we take for granted would disappear as easily as a slipknot in the hands of a Vegas conjuror.” —STING

“Philippe Petit is an artist of knots: We get taken and sprung free at the same time. This is a dynamic book, eclectic, fun, and practical. From Nabokov to the World Trade Center to improvised handcuffs! Wonderful.”
—COLUM McCANN

“Read this book and pop it in your pocket. . . . One day it may save your life!”
—MELISSA LEO

“This is not your normal book for Boy Scouts. This is for those with a sense of poetry—the poetry and the mystery of the Bowline in the Bight, the Highwayman’s Hitch, and the Monkey’s Fist—revealed to us by a man whose life depends on ropes and knots.”
—WERNER HERZOG

“Petit’s distinct and deeply insightful philosophy through the guise of mere knots forever binds us to surprising new joys.”
—ELIZABETH STREB