Zoom! JacketFlap is MUCH faster now!

We've been hard at work for the last several weeks improving the software that powers JacketFlap. I don't know about you, but for me, the speed increase is incredible! Pages that took 10 - 20 seconds to load last week now load in less than a second. We have a bunch of new features that we'll be releasing shortly, but we want to be sure the overall site is as fast as possible first. Please leave a comment here if you run into a slow-loading pages or other problems, and we'll get them fixed ASAP.

Thanks!
Tracy

Children's Choice Book Awards Widget

Children's Book Week is approaching, and a new feature of this year's Children's Book Week is a national child-selected book awards program called the Children's Choice Book Awards. Kids across the country can vote electronically online or in their school, library, or bookstore via paper ballot for the five favorite books published in 2007 in five categories - three grade categories: K-2, 3-4, 5-6 as well as Favorite Author, and Favorite Illustrator. The winner in each category will be named at a gala during Children's Book Week 2008 in New York City. You can see a list of the 25 finalists as well as information on voting at the following URL:
http://www.bookweekonline.com

To enhance the awareness of the awards, the Children's Book Council worked with JacketFlap to create a Children's Choice Book Awards Widget. The Widget displays a different finalist book every time it loads on a web site or blog, and there are links where people can click to vote for the Children's Choice Book Awards. You can get the Widget for your own blog or web site here:
http://www.jacketflap.com/widgets/widget.asp?widgetname=cbc1

In the past 24 hours, Publishers, authors, illustrators, librarians, and children's literature bloggers have been adding the widget to their blogs and web sites, effectively bringing the voting to the places where people learn about children's books. Below are some examples where you can see the widget live from the 40+ web sites that have installed the Children's Choice Book Awards Widget in the past 24 hours:

Publisher blog examples:
http://charlesbridge.blogspot.com/
http://kanemillerkidlit.blogspot.com/

Author blog examples:
http://beverlystowemcclure.blogspot.com/
http://debloganwrites.blogspot.com/
http://umakrishnaswami.blogspot.com/
http://mpbarker.blogspot.com/

Illustrator blog examples:
http://dulemba.com/blogger.html

Librarian blog examples:
http://shelf-employed.blogspot.com/

Children's Literature blog examples:
http://cwim.blogspot.com/
http://thereadingtub.blogspot.com/
http://writingforchildrencenter.com/
http://scbwi-za-news.blogspot.com/

Robin Adelson and the team at the Children's Book Council have really done a great job with this year's Children's Book Week! Be sure to visit the web site at: http://www.bookweekonline.com

Tracy

Award winning JacketFlap members and new Joe Hemingmouse

What a great way to start the week!

New Joe Hemingmouse

As many of you know, our new Joe Hemingmouse cartoon by Peter Hannan is updated every Monday, and this week's cartoon is to the right.

As always, you can click the link below this week's cartoon on our home page to leave a comment and read comments from other members.

If you missed last week's debut cartoon, you can still see and comment about it.

Awards

I've been busily reading posts in our blog reader about the ALA (American Library Association) award winners, which were announced yesterday. Please join me in congratulating two JacketFlap members for their award winning books:

Tracie Vaughn Zimmer is the winner of a Schneider Family Book Award for Reaching for Sun!


You can leave a comment on Tracie's JacketFlap profile to congratulate her.






And, Yuyi Morales received the Pura Belpre Illustrator Award for Los Gatos Black on Halloween.

You can leave a comment on Yuyi's JacketFlap profile to congratulate her.






Congratulations to Tracie, Yuyi, and all the other winners!

Tracy

JacketFlap.com Signs CatDog Creator Peter Hannan for Weekly Cartoon about Children's Book Publishing

Hi everyone!

I wanted to share some exciting news with you. We've signed CatDog creator Peter Hannan to create a weekly cartoon on JacketFlap about Children's Book Publishing. The cartoon, "Joe Hemingmouse", will follow the trials and tribulations of a mouse aspiring to be a children's book writer and illustrator. The first cartoon is live on JacketFlap's home page now:

http://www.jacketflap.com

As you may already know, Peter created and executive produced the popular Nickelodeon animated television series CatDog and is the author and illustrator of Super Goofballs, a series of illustrated chapter books from HarperCollins. He has long wanted to write a regular cartoon about the life of a writer/illustrator. Here's what Peter said about why he's working with us on this cartoon - "After working in television with a big crew and bigger hysterics, writing and illustrating children's books is a refreshing change of pace. However, the independence can sometimes feel curiously like solitary confinement. Any creative endeavor is a series of setbacks and successes, and it's crucial to keep one's sense of humor. Luckily, I've always found my foibles, and those of friends and colleagues, funny."

Please take a look at Joe Hemingmouse, and use the discussion link below the cartoon to let us know what you think!

Tracy

Tracy Grand interview in WOW! magazine

The amazing Angela Mackintosh has posted an interview with me about JacketFlap in her WOW! e-zine . I am very flattered! Click here to read the interview.

WOW! is a global magazine, designed to support women's creativity, energy, blood, sweat and tears, throughout all stages of the writing process. WOW!'s concept is unique, as it fills in the missing gap between writing websites and women's magazines. Thanks Angela!

Tracy

Pirate Day, congratulations to Wendy Mass and Carrie Jones

Pirate Day!

September 19th is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. I searched for Pirate Day in JacketFlap's blog reader, and I saw that the wonderful & talented Elizabeth O. Dulemba has graciously posted a pirate-themed coloring book page for all to download and color in her fabulous style. My kids will now have an after-school activity to do. Thanks Elizabeth!

And speaking of Pirate Day, I was browsing JacketFlap's Newly Published books section, and I noticed that Eloise's Pirate Adventure was published yesterday (Sept. 18th) by Aladdin Paperbacks. Great timing!

Congratulations to our members!

I'd like to send a big congratulations today to two JacketFlap members. Wendy Mass, author of such fabulous books as Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life and A Mango-Shaped Space emailed to say that her new book Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall is now available, written for seventh graders and up.


Also congratulations to Carrie Jones who sold two books to Bloomsbury. The first book is called NEED. Read her Super Great News post for the details. Great job!


Book Stores in the news

Jessica Stockton of The Written Nerd blog did a great job of summing up some recent news articles regarding independent book stores versus the big chains. It is quite interesting to take note that while big chains like Barnes and Nobles are closing shops the independent ma & pa shops might be making a come-back. Read her post here.


New Member Welcome

I always get a kick out of checking JacketFlap's New Members page to see the faces of the people that just joined the site. From time to time, I'm going to introduce some of our new members here in my blog. I'd like everyone to join me today in welcoming Marjorie van Heerden. Since the publication of her first children’s picture book in 1983 Marjorie has written and/or illustrated more than 80 children’s books and has been published in 33 languages in Africa, England, Europe, Canada and the USA. She was born in South Africa, lived in Stellenbosch near Cape Town for 20 years, in Linden, Johannesburg for a decade, travelled for eighteen months on honeymoon in a camper van around Europe, lived for a year on the banks of Lake Michigan in the USA and for four years in a forest on a mountain north of Athens in Greece. Now her studio overlooks False Bay, once again near Cape Town, South Africa. Please leave a comment on Marjorie's profile page to welcome her to JacketFlap!

Tracy

What are your JacketFlap Friends up to?

Hi everyone!

I had a fantastic time meeting so many of you this weekend at the SCBWI conference. I'll write up a separate post about that shortly. Right now, I want to tell you about a new feature that I absolutely love - My JacketFlap Updates. There's so much going on in the Kitlitosphere, and I always feel like it's impossible to keep on top of everything. With a single click, you can now see everything that your JacketFlap Friends have been up to lately. This includes:

• Updates to your Friends' JacketFlap Profile pages
• Your Friends' new blog posts
• Blogs your Friends have subscribed to in the Blog Reader
  
• People your Friends have Friended
• Comments your Friends have left on other people's Profile pages
• Pictures your Friends have added to their Picture galleries
  
• Books your Friends have added to their Bookshelf
• Book Discussions your Friends are participating in (more on that in another post)
  

Below is a screenshot of a few of the recent updates on my own My Updates page:
In each line, there is a description of the update followed by short summaries for things like blog posts and comments, and you can click the links in each summary to view the entire post, comments, and other changes.

You can see how many updates are waiting for you by looking at the new "My JacketFlap Updates" indicator in the toolbar at the top of every page on JacketFlap:


Clicking on My JacketFlap Updates will take you to your own My Updates page. The number in the parenthesis indicates the number of new updates since you last visited JacketFlap, and the number changes in real time, so you can see instantly if there are new updates while you are browsing JacketFlap.

When you are on your My Updates page, you can change the time period of the updates displayed by using the "Since" pull-down menu in the top of your My Updates section. I like looking at updates in the Past week to be sure I haven't missed anything.

In addition to letting you see the updates from all your Friends, there is now a version of the Updates page as part of every member's Profile page. This version lets you see all of the updates for just that member, and you can get there by clicking the Updates tab at the top of any member's Profile:
Finally, we have also added a Blog Reader Updates box in the right column of your My Updates page. You can see a screenshot showing the Blog Reader Updates box on my own My Updates page to the right.

I love this, because it shows me a quick summary of Updates to my own blog, the blogs I have subscribed to in My JacketFlap, as well as all of the blogs in our public Blog Reader list (492 at the moment!).

You can click on any of the links in the box to see just those posts or comments. This is really nice, because you can also use the "Since" pull-down menu at the top of the box to change the time period. This can help ensure you haven't missed any important posts. You can also keep up with posts that have new comments.

If you have a blog in our Blog Reader, you will see the statistics for your blog at the top of the Blog Reader Updates box.

I know this has been a long post, and you probably have lots of questions and ideas. Please don't be shy! Post your thoughts here in our comments section.

I hope this helps you keep up with all of the great things happening in the Kitlitosphere as much as it's helped me!

Best,
Tracy

First annual kidlitosphere drink night at the SCBWI Summer Conference

As you may have already heard via Greg Pincus at GottaBook, we're planning a get-together in LA this Friday night during the SCBWI Conference. It's even got a catchy name - the first annual kidlitosphere drink night at the SCBWI Summer Conference (FAKDN@SSC). Greg says that there are other groups meeting Friday night, but all we've heard of are meeting earlier. Come by anyways, as we'll be there for a while!

We're planning to meet on the patio outside the lobby bar area at 9PM. I'll be there along with a number of other KidLit Bloggers like Greg, the Disco Mermaids, Lisa Yee, Kelly Herold, and more. I'll be the one giving out JacketFlap hats (I'm bringing 200 of them, so first come first serve). I hope to see you there!

Tracy

Who's that blogging about me?

We just added a feature to our JacketFlap profile pages that I like quite a bit. You will notice a new "Recent Blog Posts" box in the right-side of every JacketFlap profile page. It lists the 10 most recent blog posts from the kitlitosphere mentioning the person whose profile you are viewing.

On the right you'll see an example of the Recent Blog Posts box from my JacketFlap profile page. It takes a few seconds to search through the 100,000+ posts archived in our reader, and you'll see a cute little wheel spinning until the box loads. You can then click on the titles of the posts to read any that interest you.

Let me know what you think here in the comments!

Tracy

new JacketFlap Blogs List Page

Hi everyone! We've just released a major change to our Blogs list page that should make it much easier to explore the 475+ blogs in the public JacketFlap blog reader. Previously, the Blogs list page was a single long list of all of our blogs. Given the great response we had to our experimental "New Blogs on JacketFlap" emails, we've updated our Blogs list page to make it easy to sort and filter the list of blogs to find blogs that might interest you.

With this new release, you can check the new Blogs list page a few times a week. There you can now sort and filter the list of blogs on JacketFlap. Each blog listing comes complete with a short descriptions of the blog, a count of the number of JacketFlap members subscribing to that blog in their custom My JacketFlap Blog Reader, a list of the blog's categories, and an Add Link that you can use to Subscribe to the blog. You can choose how many blogs to display on each page of the list using the "# per page" pull-down menu:


Sorting

You can sort the Blogs list using the "Sort by" pull-down menu. The list can be sorted by Blog Name, Date Added, and # of Subscribers. You can use the Date Added sort to find blogs recently added to JacketFlap. Or you can use the # of Subscribers sort to find the blogs most subscribed to by JacketFlap's members.


Filtering

Another nice feature is the ability to filter the Blogs list by Category. For example, you can see just the Illustrator blogs changing the value in the "Category" pull-down menu. You can also combine sorting and filtering. So, for example, you can display the Illustrator blogs sorted by Date Added to find the most recent Illustrator blogs added to JacketFlap. Or, you could sort by # of Subscribers (as in the example to the right) to see the most popular Illustrator blogs.


Newly Added List and Top 10 Blogs Boxes

In the left-hand column of the Blogs list page, you'll see two new boxes that display lists of the Top 10 Blogs based on the # of Subscribers on JacketFlap and a list of Blogs added to JacketFlap in the past 7 Days.

I know, you're wondering, how do I get my blog in the Top 10? Besides having great content, our stats indicate that it doesn't hurt to have a Subscribe to this Blog on JacketFlap button displayed on your blog.


Please try out these new features & let us know any thoughts using the comments feature here on our blog. Following is a link to our Blogs list page:

http://www.jacketflap.com/megablog/myfeeds.asp

Tracy

New Publisher Detail page features

Hi everyone! We've just released a major change to our Publisher Detail page that should make it much easier to explore the catalog of titles for each publisher. Previously, the Publisher Detail page listed only the top 50 titles for each publisher. With this new release, you can now page through all of a publisher's titles. Here's an example screen shot from the Bloomsbury Publisher Detail page. As you can see, you can now navigate through pages of titles, and you can choose how many titles to display on each page using the "# per page" pull-down menu:


Sorting

You can also sort the list in new ways using the "Sort by" pull-down menu. Previously, we only displayed the list sorted by Amazon.com's Salesrank (tm). Now, you can sort the list by Publication date, Salesrank, and Alphabetical titles.

Future Titles

It's always interesting to see what titles are soon-to-be-published. JacketFlap now provides this feature for each publisher in our database. To see a publisher's upcoming releases, select "Future Titles" in the Sort by pull-down menu.

Filtering

Another new feature is the ability to filter the list of a publisher's titles by reading level. For example, you can see just the titles for Ages 4 - 8 by changing the value in the "Ages" pull-down menu. You can also combine sorting and filtering. So, for example, you can display the Ages 4 - 8 titles sorted by publication date.

Please try out these new features & let us know any thoughts using the comments feature here on our blog. Following is an example URL for Bloomsbury. Scroll down to the list of titles to try out the new features:

http://www.jacketflap.com/pubdetail.asp?pub=392

Tracy

Charlotte is 1 month old!

Hi my JFF (aka, JacketFlap Friends),

I can hardly believe it has been a month since Charlotte, aka, Charlie was born. She is so YUMMY! Having a 7 & 10 - year gap between my daughters, I definitely forgot how amazing this stage felt with the baby smells and cooing. I also forgot about the sleep deprivation, but having my oldest daughter going into fourth grade puts a new perspective on the sleep deprivation. It is a blink of an eye until my little Charlie will be going into the fourth grade. So I will try to enjoy the 12 a.m., 2 a.m., and 4 a.m. feeding, and I definitely will STOP BLINKING!! I just wanted to send out one big THANK YOU to all of you for your sweet messages regarding the arrival of Charlie. I hope to meet many of you at the SCBWI conference in Los Angeles this August.

Best, Tracy

JacketFlap interview in The Edge of the Forest

Kelly Herold of Big A little A has written a fantastic article about JacketFlap in the May issue of the Edge of the Forest. Over the past few months, Kelly has provided us with valuable input into features for JacketFlap's Blog Reader. I'm thrilled to have had a chance to do the interview with her, and I am glad that she's become part of our community here at JacketFlap. You can read the article here.

JacketFlap interview in Cynsations!

The wonderful Cynthia Leitich Smith has posted an interview with me about JacketFlap in her Cynsations blog today. I am very flattered! You can read the interview here.