Wild Onion Press is offering $500 and publication of a story that fits their mission of Books Starring Kids with Physical Differences. This prize is inspired by Grace Mary McClelland, whose award-winning picture book educates, inspires, entertains and engenders compassion in all readers as it changes perceptions of physical difference.
The Prize Committee is made up of Wild Onion Press editors, illustrators, book designer, educational consultants as well as Grace McClelland and her family who will review the recommended final three.
Manuscripts may be of any length in the genres of picture book, chapter book, middle-grade or young adult memoir or novel. The main character must be in a heroic role in which a physical difference is not a disability but merely an outstanding characteristic. The winning manuscript will be available for sale on the Wild Onion Press website and through online booksellers, including Amazon.com
Deadline January 1, 2012. The winning manuscript will be announced May 1, 2012 with publication following.
Go to www.wildonionpress.com for more information and instructions on how to enter.
Hilariously, via the MarySue, a list of books which made the staff, as young readers, absolutely terrified of puberty. Sylvia Plath? Check. Maya Angelou? Check, check, check. I snickered that they included Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman in there, butchaknowwhat? Yeah. It fits. Any book which includes the girl running away to avoid marriage made me kind of cringe-y back in the day. Read the whole list here.
Would you pay $300K for a wee tiny book… if it were written by Charlotte Brontë? Well, someone one. The book, written when Charlotte was just fourteen, is a teensy replicated men’s ‘zine with hand-cut and lettered pages, made for fun for her sisters to enjoy. It’s adorable, tiny, and the 19-page story is suitably nutso, involving, as it does, Mr. Rochester’s first wife, Bertha, murder, and insanity. Good fun, that. It’s pre-Jane Eyre Brontë. I’m sure somewhere Edward and Bella are bidding madly.
The Bronte book is adorable. I wish I had that kind of money to fling around, period.