I don’t know how many of you remember Scholastic Books as a kid but if you don’t, they send home from school a catalog every couple of months and you send your order through the school.  As it was when I was a kid, it’s a pretty big day around here when the catalog comes home and then whe...

Video games are hard to escape. They're advertised on television and in print, they live in our living rooms and take time that could perhaps better be spent playing outside, and they're beginning to infiltrate our libraries. Video games have now found a home at book fairs held at grade schools, and...

Trojan puts the VD in Valentine's Day (Another clever ad from the condom company's "Evolve" campaign) (Ad Age, reg. required) - Young viewers give Grammy ratings a much needed boost (drawn in by the likes of Jennifer Hudson, Miley Cyrus and The Jonas Brothers. Plus teen fave Nick Cannon is set to st...

For today's Year In Review post, I look back at the big trends and hot topics that cropped up in YA lit in 2008. That is, outside of the whole "Twilight" explosion (see my thoughts on that phenomenon in Part One of Anastasia's earlier YIR coverage.) Crossing the Young Adult/Adult Divide This year th...

Filed under: Fun & activities, Holidays, Toys & games Hard to believe, folks, and yet it is true. Not only do we have a truly historical election and to-be presidency on our hands, but we also have a toy that has at last broken the final frontier of consumerism--outselling Elmo! For those of...

Coming on the heels of a full week of hand-wringing over who Lorne Michaels would pick to play Barack Obama on Saturday Night Live (and the debate was not just confined to the web –– I overheard two hipsters arguing about candidates for “Fauxbama” in a Brooklyn bar the other night), ...

Gaming brainiac, and one-time Kotaku Editor fill-in, Ian Bogost points out that Scholastic, now in deep withdrawls from the Harry Potter series, has been casting about looking for new was to make billions of dollars. Their latest idea? A series called The 39 Clues which will feature ten books and be...