Tag Archives: Tu Books

General

Cover Reveal: Summer of the Mariposas by Guadalupe Garcia McCall

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Like dating, designing the right cover for a book can be a long, arduous process. Sometimes a cover gives off the wrong impression. Sometimes it’s too showy, sometimes it’s too dull. Sometimes a cover says all the right things, but lacks sincerity.

But sometimes, you find The One. And you just know.

That was the case with the cover of Summer of the Mariposas, coming this fall from our Tu Books imprint. Summer of the Mariposas, by Guadalupe Garcia McCall, is a YA retelling of The Odyssey set in Mexico. It follows Odilia and her sisters on their quest to return a dead man to his family (you can read an excerpt of the book here).

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Guest Blogger Post

What your cat is really thinking: the CAT GIRL blog tour roundup

guest bloggerA few weeks ago we did a giveaway to celebrate the release of Cat Girl’s Day Off and asked readers what they’ve always wanted to ask their cats. We pulled a few of their questions and asked our resident cat translator, Natalie Ng (a.k.a. Cat Girl), to get us some answers. Straight from the cat’s mouth:

What’s the secret to always landing on your feet?

Rufus Brutus the Third: You point them towards the floor. What a silly question.

What’s the most annoying thing your pet parent does?

PD: It’s hard to pick just one thing, don’t you think? There’s the nasty medicine they make me take, for one. Not to mention the dry cat food they give me. They only give me wet food once a week, like I need to be on a diet. Ian does sneak me food from the table though, so he makes up for it a bit. Oh, and trying to keep me in the house all the time! A cat’s gotta roam, you know?

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Book News

First Look: an excerpt from Guadalupe Garcia McCall’s ‘Summer of the Mariposas’

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Today is National Siblings Day, so we thought it would be the perfect time to share a sneak peek of one of our most highly anticipated upcoming books: Morris finalist and Belpré winner Guadalupe Garcia McCall’s Summer of the Mariposas!  Out in fall 2012 from our Tu Books imprint, Summer of the Mariposas is a YA retelling of The Odyssey in which Odilia and her sisters embark on a quest through Mexico to return a dead man to his family, and must overcome monsters from Mexican folklore as they journey home.

In the excerpt below, the Garza sisters have found a dead body in their swimming hole, and Juanita, the second eldest, has hatched a harebrained scheme to take their father’s car and return the dead man to his family in Mexico. Odilia, the eldest (and narrator of Summer of the Mariposas), is trying to trick her sisters into staying home by telling them she’ll tell their mother:

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Interviews with Authors and Illustrators

Easton West takes over the blog…and there’s a giveaway

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Just one week until the release of Kimberly Pauley’s Cat Girl’s Day Off! In celebration, Cat Girl’s star celebrity blogger Easton West has commandeered the Lee & Low Blog kindly volunteered to share her thoughts on the book, her cat, Ty McKenzie’s underwear, and what it’s like being kidnapped by a crazy, psycopathic—well, let’s not give anything away…

Hello there my little poppets! O, Easton, you ask, whatever are you doing here? This isn’t your home-away-from-home-on-the-web where I go for all the celebrity news I can handle. This is the blog of a publisher. They do serious things here. They don’t gossip. They don’t talk about the color of Ty McKenzie’s underwear (red, dearies, in case you were wondering and no, I’m not going to tell you how I know that!).

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General

DiYA March: New Diverse Middle Grade and YA Novels

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Last month we announced that we’d be taking over Diversity in YA‘s roundups of new diverse middle grade and young adult books coming out each month, started by authors Cindy Pon and Malinda Lo. Using the DiYA definition, we define diversity for the purpose of this roundup as: (1) main characters or major secondary characters (e.g., a love interest or best friend kind of character) who are of color or are LGBT; or (2) written by a person of color or LGBT author.

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General

Design 101: How a book cover gets made

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In this two-part guest blog post, designer Isaac Stewart and Tu Books Editorial Director Stacy Whitman discuss how they came up with the final cover for our new YA fantasy, Vodník:

Isaac: Before brainstorming ideas for a book design, I usually get a few pieces of key information from the editor:

1.     What age-range and demographic do we want the book to target?

2.     What would the editor like the cover to convey?

3.     What has the author said they would like to see on the cover?

Here’s how Stacy answered:

1.     The book’s design should appeal to both female and male tweens and teens, but should specifically target the male teen.

2.     Stacy wanted a cover that felt ominous, fantastical, with a dash of whimsy.

3.     Bryce [Moore, the author] specifically mentioned that he found covers with bold shapes and colors both beautiful and striking. But if we decided to go for a more photographic cover, he wanted to see the vodník statue or Trenčín castle.

Trencin Castle, Slovakia
Trenčín Castle

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Book News

Cover Reveal, Part I: VODNÍK

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It’s HERE! We are super excited to share the cover of Vodník by Bryce Moore, out this March from our Tu Books imprint. About the book:

Short version: Slovakian fairy tales! Roma characters! CASTLES!!

Long version: Vodník is a YA contemporary fantasy about Tomas, a Roma teen who moves with his family from the US back to Slovakia and discovers that the folk tale creatures he befriended as a young boy are more dangerous than he knew, especially a vodník who has begun drowning local townspeople (deaths for which Roma like Tomas are blamed). When he learns that his own cousin’s life is in danger, Tomas makes a deal with Death to save her – but can anyone cheat death forever?

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Awards

Coming Soon: Tu Books!

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We are THRILLED, thrilled I say, to unveil the covers of our first three Tu Books! Tu Books is our newest imprint and will be publishing multicultural middle grade and young adult science fiction, fantasy, and mystery. We now introduce our Fall 2011 launch list—drumroll, please:

Tankborn, by Karen Sandler

Tankborn coverBest friends Kayla and Mishalla know they will be separated when the time comes for their Assignments. They are GENs, Genetically Engineered Non-humans, and in their strict caste system, GENs are at the bottom rung of society. High-status trueborns and working-class lowborns, born naturally of a mother, are free to choose their own lives. But GENs are gestated in a tank, sequestered in slums, and sent to work as slaves as soon as they reach age fifteen.

When Kayla is Assigned to care for Zul Manel, the patriarch of a trueborn family, she finds a host of secrets and surprises—not least of which is her unexpected friendship with Zul’s great-grandson. Meanwhile, the children that Mishalla is Assigned to care for are being stolen in the middle of the night. With the help of an intriguing lowborn boy, Mishalla begins to suspect that something horrible is happening to them.

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