Publishing Magic Comes to Durham
Posted on September 12, 2010 by admin
– DURHAM, North Carolina —
Sleepy Hollow Books, a new children’s book publishing company, has been launched in Durham, North Carolina. The publisher, Amy Caroline Spaulding is a third-generation children’s book publisher. Her grandfather, William Ellsworth Spaulding, was the Chairman of Houghton Mifflin Publishing Company and challenged Dr. Seuss to write THE CAT IN THE HAT. Her uncle, John P. Spaulding, was the former president of Scholastic, and her father, Richard, worked at Scholastic for over 45 years and was inducted into the Educational Publisher’s Hall of Fame (2005).
Spaulding founded Sleepy Hollow Books in Durham, North Carolina in order to publish children’s books by great writers who might not be discovered in the slush piles of larger publishing houses. She also wanted to publish books for a special demographic – pre-adolescent readers. “That time of age is special and a little tricky. Preteens are on the brink of adulthood, and while their intellects may be sharp, their emotional life is still quite tender. Plus, books are a great way to see the world when you don’t have your driver’s license.”
Spaulding put out a call for submissions through the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and the North Carolina Arts Council. Soon she had submissions pouring in from writers from around the world. But it wasn’t until Sept. 2009, when she got a manuscript with the working title, “Aunt Yuri” by Maureen Wartski, that she felt she had struck gold. ”I read the very first line,” reported Spaulding, “and thought, ‘This is going to be good.’” Spaulding read the first few chapters and then enlisted her son, Nick, to take a look. “Nick would come home from school and the first thing he would say is, ‘Mom, can we read some ‘Aunt Yuri’? Then at night, he’d want another chapter. Then he would read it before school. When he got to the end, he said, ‘Mom, when is the next ‘Aunt Yuri’ book coming out?’ That’s when I knew we had a winner.”
YURI’S BRUSH WITH MAGIC is the story of a famous painter from Japan who comes to North Carolina to take care of Tammy and Ken, her great niece and nephew. while their mother is in the hospital. The children have never met Aunt Yuri, but have heard terrible things about her. They do all they can to make her life difficult so she’ll send them back home. Soon Ken uncovers an old family secret and Tammy’s work with a sea turtle rescue helps her deal with fears about her mother’s recovery. The magic begins when Aunt Yuri paints on the beach and recounts the Japanese folktales of the pictures she paints. Suddenly Aunt Yuri’s pictures come to life and Tammy and Ken must solve a mystery — the secret to Yuri’s magic.
Author Maureen Crane Wartski was born in Ashiya, Japan in 1942 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1962. She taught high school English in Sharon, Massachusetts and now lives in Raleigh and on Emerald Isle, North Carolina with her husband, Max. She has authored many middle-grade and young adult novels, among them the award winning A BOAT TO NOWHERE (Bank Street College of Education Award, 1980) and the critically acclaimed CANDLE IN THE WIND. Wartski is a frequent contributor to magazines such as Boys’ Life, and has authored The Writer’s Workbench, a manual for teaching writing in the secondary schools. Two of her novels (A Boat to Nowthere and its sequel, A Long Way from Home) have been selected by the California Department of Education’s Reading List for Middle Schoolers, grades 6-8.
Ruth Moose, author of THE LIBRARIAN and a UNC Creative Writing faculty member since 1995, writes, “No one creates characters you love and learn from like Maureen Wartski, a masterful writer at the top of her craft.”
First-editions of YURI’S BRUSH WITH MAGIC are available at www.sleepyhollowbooks.com or from Amazon.com.
The book launch party for Yuri’s Brush with Magic, is scheduled for December 4, 2010 at 3:00pm at the Regulator Bookshop, 720 Ninth Street, Durham, NC 27705 (www.regulatorbookshop.com.) Maureen Wartski will read from Yuri’s Brush with Magic and be available to sign copies of this first edition. Josh Lozoff, of Deep Magic, will entertain guests during the signing with his strolling magic. For more information, visit www.sleepyhollowbooks.com.
For more information contact:
Amy C. Spaulding, Publisher (919) 724-0250
amy@sleepyhollowbooks.com
or
Maureen Crane Wartski, Author
maureen@wartski.org
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