Kids Can debuts Scaredy Squirrel enhanced e-book and iPhone game
Kids Can debuts Scaredy Squirrel enhanced e-book and iPhone game | Quill & Quire.
This may well be one of my last posts as a freelance publicist. I start a job on January 3 with the above-mentioned Kids Can Press, a children’s book publisher in the Corus Entertainment family. In the meantime they asked me to work on a PR gig for the launch of the very cool interactive e-book editions of their massively successful series Scaredy Squirrel before starting there full time and, naturellement I said yes! My press release (well, a collaborative effort, in fact) was posted on Open Book and the Canadian Children’s Book Centre and the industry trade magazine interviewed both the president of Kids Can Press, Lisa Lyons, and the VP of Brands, New Media and New Channel Revenue, Lisa Charters.
Hoping to see the e-book and game app (Scaredy SOS on iTunes) included in a Globe and Mail round-up on the best in children’s books in digital formats, too.
Published by Kids Can Press; e-book developed by Open Road Integrated Media
PS: After seven years away from full time work in an office, I feel a bit like Scaredy Squirrel myself.
What Doesn’t Kill Us
What Doesn’t Kill Us, according to psychologist and author Stephen Joseph, definitely makes us stronger. He was a guest on CBC Radio’s “The Current” on Monday, November 14 to discuss how traumatic experiences become positive “game changers” in our lives. Part of The Current’s ongoing “Game Changers’ series. Listen here:
Published by Basic Books
More on TROUBLE WITH BILLIONAIRES re: OWS
Linda McQuaig was on CBC Radio’s THE SUNDAY EDITION yesterday (Sunday, Oct 16) talking about Occupy Wall Street while it spread to Canada in Vancouver and Toronto. You can listen in here: THE SUNDAY EDITION (scroll to min 7:00)
And… catch Linda on THE AGENDA on TVO this Thursday, November 17. She is on a panel discussing the psychological effects of the current recession on the middle class. http://theagenda.tvo.org/episode/141129/the-middle-class-squeeze
Published by Penguin Canada
THE TROUBLE WITH BILLIONAIRES
Toronto Star columnist and THE TROUBLE WITH BILLIONAIRES co-author Linda McQuaig was a guest on CBC TV’s “Lang & O’Leary Exchange” recently (September 22). As always, a heated debate ensued between Linda and Kevin…
The interview was booked to coincide with Obama’s proposed changes to corporate taxes, citing Warren Buffett’s claim that his secretary pays a higher rate of tax on her income than he does on his. The paperback landed in stores that week, too.
View it here {scroll to 47:15}: Linda McQuaig on Lang & O’Leary Exchange
Published by Penguin Canada
Seventeen’s Ultimate Guide to Style
Just in time for “back to school” the National Post ran a Q & A with Seventeen editor Ann Shoket on helping teen girls find their perfect look — ran Saturday, Aug 20, to coincide with the release of Seventeen Ultimate Guide to Style:
Here’s an excerpt from the interview:
Q What about for girls who can’t afford that brand new back-to-school wardrobe?
A I think this book is absolutely for those girls who want to figure out how to put their looks together based on what they have in their closet. I think [the question is] how do you find your own sense of style, and I think that that’s really important. But the other piece that’s so important about this book is that there are no hard and fast rules. You can decide one day that you’re going to put together a look that’s very girly, the next you’re going to be edgy, you might be boho on the weekends, you might try glam for a holiday party. You are meant to dip into the chapters and decide how you’re feeling in the moment.
Q What has the feedback been?
A Phenomenal. Oh my goodness. I am so warm in the heart about how girls have responded to this book. We’ve gotten tweets, we’ve gotten Facebook posts, we’ve gotten emails that girls are saying this is the book they wish they had had sooner, that they’re rushing out to the bookstores to get it. It’s really been a just over-the-top positive response from our readers.
Q What does Seventeen do to curb the pressures young girls feel today, especially if they’re looking through the pages of the guide and seeing a certain kind of girl portrayed?
A I think that diversity of body type, diversity of skin tone, diversity of hair texture, all of that is incredibly important to Seventeen, and I think if you look back you’ll see there is incredible diversity in the book. We do not have a narrow definition of beauty for our readers. In fact, we want to make sure every single girl can open the pages of Seventeen and feel validated by the girls she sees there. She’s going to find somebody who looks like her, and that is crucially important to Seventeen; it’s one of the cornerstones of our brand.
Published by Running Press
http://life.nationalpost.com/2011/08/20/qa-ann-shoket-editor-in-chief-of-seventeen-magazine/
OWL Magazine’s 35th Anniversary campaign
Back in early Spring I was hired by Owlkids to create a PR campaign for the 35th Anniversary of their flagship publication, OWL Magazine. They’d already created impressive materials — a poster featuring every cover since its first in 1976, and a “retro-style” t-shirt with the original OWL logo in both kids and adult sizes. We decided to play up the nostalgia surrounding this anniversary knowing that many parents who would have enjoyed the magazine when they were kids would now have children around the age of OWL readers.
Chris Shulgan, who writes a parenting column in The Grid (also author of Superdad, his memoir of fatherhood and addiction) was on board right away and wrote a great piece on sharing past and present issues of the magazine with his son and his son’s class. This was also picked up by the Toronto Star‘s ParentCentral page online.
There’s also a business story here and the Globe and Mail Report on Business’ media reporter Susan Krashinsky wrote an in-depth feature story on the success of OWL in a tough industry. It was featured prominently on the front banner of the cover of the ROB and included an interview with Owlkids group publisher Jennifer Canham, OWL editor Craig Battle and a fun photo of Jennifer, too.
Craig did a 10-min+ interview on CBC Radio’s “Here & Now” the day before the shared celebration at the CN Tower (also celebrating 35 years) and the last piece fell in place on July 2 with a graphic tribute to OWL magazine in the National Post‘s Books feature on children’s books:
National Post, July 2, 2011 celebrates OWL
It went really well and the client was very pleased.
Published by Bayard Press/Owlkids
UNNATURAL SELECTION: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of Living in a World Full of Men
Author Mara Hvistendahl [INTERVIEW_HVISTENDAHL] has done some great publicity in Canada via her US book tour, with a cover story in the current issue of Maclean’s magazine,
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and an appearance on CBC Radio’s “The Current” on June 14.Published by PublicAffairs
PATIENT COMMANDO & Cancer Can’t Dance Like This
I’ve been working with Zal Press who I met through the Patients’ Association of Canada on publicity for the launch of his entertainment production company called PATIENT COMMANDO. Their debut show was last night, a one-man comedic play by Daniel Stolfi called Cancer Can’t Dance Like This. It’s tough to pitch something you’ve not seen or experienced before, so now that I have I can say emphatically — go see it whenever you get a chance. Dan reads from the journal he kept during two gruelling years of chemo and he acts “in character” of the things chemo took from him — his hair is an Italian barber, his sex drive is an innuendo-loving lothario, his appetite is a guy still living in his parent’s basement waiting for that next tray of lasagna. Dan’s story has a huge effect on the audience — we were up and cheering for him by the last scene when he dances (to a Michael Jackson medley no less!) once again.
PATIENT COMMANDO is a one-of-a-kind production company in that Zal and his team (including the very wry and talented Brian Smith from Second City) produce live theatre, workshops and stand-up with the focus on the patient experience. One of the things they plan to do is take the idea of “humour therapy” into medical schools across the country, so that students understand the patient perspective early on in their medical training. Seeing a show like Stolfi’s Cancer Can’t Dance Like This can only help bring an enlightened understanding to the rigors of chemo from someone who knows it first-hand.
I managed to get a bit of media already for PATIENT COMMANDO in the National Post and on CBC Radio’s “Here & Now” and there’ll be much more to come!
Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids
A lot has happened (an understatement if ever there was one) since the launch of the Patients’ Association of Canada, but I just want to highlight one particularly popular book this month: SELFISH REASONS TO HAVE MORE KIDS: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think, by Bryan Caplan. Bryan was interviewed by Tralee Pearce in the Globe and Mail, he was a guest on CBC Radio’s The Current and he was also interviewed for the National Post’s Mother’s Day feature, all within a few days. Made for a high ranking on Amazon.ca (#56 0ver the weeekend).
THE PATIENTS’ ASSOCIATION OF CANADA | First “Patient Led, Patient Governed” organization in Canada officially launches
The release went on the wire today. The Maclean’s interview 
(see below) is now online and the CBC Radio “White Coat Black Art” interview with Dr. Brian Goldman will air on Saturday, Feb 12. Canadian Press will talk/photograph PAC president Sholom Glouberman today, local news and radio requests are coming in (CJOB in Winnipeg; three stations in Atlantic Canada). I’ve been working with Sholom and PAC since July on this project and the official launch of both the PAC and his Sholom’s book MY OPERATION: A Health Insider Becomes a Patient is next Tuesday in Toronto. Things are shaping up well. Book is available on Indigo and Amazon.ca, too!
Published by Health & Everything Publications
