Chronicle Books Blog

Most people get into children’s books because, deep down, they want to affect children’s lives and, you know, maybe make the world a better place. I may have had some of that motivation.

Then you actually start working in children’s books, and discover that you do affect children’s lives… but maybe not in the way you had in mind. I just heard from a kid who read Children’s Miscellany Too (for which I was the American editor; it was originally a British book). Her family was on a road trip, and happened to stop at a restaurant that had live chickens running around outside.

Using the book, she successfully hypnotized one of them.

If you want to know how to do it yourself, watch this great YouTube video of somebody doing essentially what the book recommends. (And if you search YouTube for “hypnotize chicken,” you’ll find there are other ways to do it, too. Evidently it takes very, very little to short-circuit a chicken brain.)

Yup, I’m changing the world. One chicken at a time.

Melissa Manlove
Chronicle Children’s Group

Splash from Hip Sips

Fire up the hibachi and cannonball into your next pool party with this inspired margarita. Flavors of almond and mandarin add a sweet, smoky finish to a warm-weather quencher. Test the waters with a spicy Caesar salad and grilled prawns, and the Splash will have you kicking off your flip-flops and diving into summer.

Cocktail ice cubes for mixing and serving
2 ounces Sauza Hornitos tequila
1/2 ounce Amaretto liqueur
1 ounce Fresh Lemon-Lime Juice (see below)
1/2 ounce Simple Syrup (see below)
2 tablespoons Mandarin Purée (see below)
1 lime slice for garnish

Fill a tempered pint glass with ice and add the tequila, Amaretto, lemon-lime juice, simple syrup, and Mandarin purée. Cap the glass with a stainless-steel cocktail shaker and shake vigorously for 10 seconds. Pour the drink and ice into a balloon wineglass. Garnish with lime slice. Serve immediately, with a straw.

Serves 1

Fresh Lemon-Lime Juice
Fresh lemon-lime juice is essential to many Hip Sips cocktails. The key is freshness. Remember that Hip Sips cocktails are based on fresh foods, not a liquid concentrate contrived in New Jersey by a scientist.

10 lemons (about 10 ounces juice)
10 limes (about 10 ounces juice)

Roll each fruit back and forth on the kitchen counter while pushing on the fruit to release the juices. Cut the fruit in half crosswise. Squeeze the juice into a medium bowl, using a handheld or stationary juicer. Combine the juices in a glass container and shake to thoroughly mix. Cover and store in the refrigerator for up to 48 hours.

Makes 20 ounces

Simple Syrup
Used in many Hip Sips recipes, simple syrup is the binding agent for spirits, fresh citrus juices, and fruit purées and adds a subtle sweetness to cocktails.

1 cup water
1 cup sugar

In a small stainless-steel saucepan, combine the water and sugar. Stir with a wooden spoon over medium heat until the sugar has completely dissolved. Remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature. Pour the syrup into a glass bottle with a pour spout. Cap, refrigerate, and use as needed.

Makes 14 ounces

Mandarin Purée
4 mandarin oranges (tangerines), peeled, segmented, and seeded if necessary
1 tablespoon baker’s sugar, plus more if needed
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice, plus more if needed

Combine the fruit, 1 tablespoon sugar, and 1 teaspoon lemon juice in a blender and pulse the ingredients until completely chopped. Purée until smooth. Taste the purée and add more sugar or lemon juice if needed. Use immediately, or freeze for up to 6 months.

Makes 1 cup

Our biggest trade show of the year was June 1st in New York. For anyone who has never been to Book Expo (aka BEA), this is like the World Series for Publishers and Booksellers. It’s nuts. Except they don’t serve beer. This is the show where we debut all of our Fall titles to the industry. Seriously. It’s HUGE and crazy busy. Thousands of booksellers came through our booth during the weekend-long show. One of our biggest titles for the Fall is Thalia Belleza!: Lessons in Lipgloss and Happiness, by internationally renowned pop superstar, Thalia.

We invited Thalia to do an autograph signing in our booth during the show. Thalia is amazing. She’s had 4 number 1 hits and sold over 12 million albums worldwide. She is adored by Telenovela fans in over 180 countries. We were all so excited with the anticipation of her coming to our booth to meet all of our favorite friends and industry colleagues. The appearance went great! Thalia was swarmed by fans and paparazzi and it was a huge success. Some booksellers waited in line to meet her for an hour! The latest news is, Thalia is preggers, and her baby girl is due at the same time we launch the book.

Here are some great shots from the show.

That’s what arrived, addressed to me in a big box along with the manuscript for a chocolate cookbook from one of my very favorite authors, Sara Perry. Not only is she a wonderful cookbook author and all-around nice person, she has the uncanny ability to find interesting gadgets, gourmet foods, kitchen utensils, and other tchochkes that are a delight to behold (and sometimes it takes us several days to figure out what it is and what it’s for).

A molinillo is a wooden whisk-esque stirrer for hot chocolate. It’s delightfully low-tech—basically, it’s a beautifully carved piece of wood with loose rings of wood around the end. When held upright and held between the palms of your hand, the molinillo is twirled back and forth in a pot of hot chocolate and creates a frothy drink that’s a giant step above the Swiss Miss of my youth.

You can learn more about molinillos at www.gourmetsleuth.com/molinillo.htm. Then try the great recipe from Sara Perry below. And if it’s too hot out there for drinking hot chocolate, try the molinillo on cold chocolate milk. Refreshing!

Hot-Chocolate-in-a-Hurry
Here’s a recipe that lets you make one cup—or a team’s worth—in a hurry. After you prepare the rich chocolaty base, you can refrigerate it for up to 10 days. When the mood strikes, making a cup is as simple as scooping out 2 or 3 heaping tablespoons and stirring them into a mug of steaming milk.

Serves 1

6 ounces whole milk
2 to 3 heaping tablespoons Hot Chocolate Mix (recipe follows)
Miniature marshmallows or Crunchy-Topped, Chocolate-Coated Marshmallows with Cacao Nibs for topping (optional)

In a small saucepan over medium heat, warm the milk until it is steaming, then pour it into a prewarmed mug. You can also warm the milk in a mug in a microwave oven. Stir in the hot chocolate mix. You may like the taste of it partially swirled or totally blended. Garnish with miniature marshmallows, if desired.

Hot Chocolate Mix
4 ounces premium unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup water
Pinch of salt
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup heavy (whipping) cream

In a heavy saucepan or in the top of a double boiler, combine the chocolate and water over low heat, whisking occasionally until smooth. (As the chocolate melts, it will appear stringy.) Add the salt and sugar and continue to cook and stir over low heat until the sugar dissolves, 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from the heat and cool to room temperature.

In a stand mixer or with a hand mixer, whisk the cream and vanilla until stiff peaks form. Fold in the cooled chocolate until blended. (Don’t worry if tiny flecks of chocolate appear. They won’t affect the delicious outcome.) Store in a covered container in the refrigerator. The mixture will keep for up to 10 days. Makes 15 to 20 servings.

Variations: For Dark Chocolate Mocha, follow the main recipe for the Hot Chocolate Mix. In a pre-warmed 8-ounce mug, top 4 ounces of coffee or a double espresso with 1 1/2-ounces brandy and 2-heaping tablespoons Hot Chocolate Mix. Stir until partially or totally blended. Either way, the brew is delicious.

We’re always looking and working ahead; seasons, years ahead. With all of the great books on the Spring list, not to mention those we’ll soon see in the Fall, much less two seasons ahead (Fall 08 will be one of the best in years, I think), I’m particularly excited about a book coming in 2009.

Apparently many others are as well. It all started when friend and author Erik Davis, in his own intrepid efforts to promote his book The Visionary State, pointed me to a blog not previously on my radar, BLDGBLOG. His description was a little confusing. It was about architecture…in the broadest senses. Not where one goes to preview the newest competition winner by your favorite starchitect, but where one reads entertaining, speculative posts on the intersections of landscape, urbanism, and architecture, as written in a cheery voice with a nod to science fiction.

I was hooked. I find it difficult to keep up with straight-up architectural press, and keep thinking that I have so much more to learn. And no matter how interesting the projects and profiles, it’s all so…conventional. BLDGBLOG and other good blogs are much more my speed: inclusive if not voracious, with pointers to past and current context that curious and open-minded readers can explore if they don’t already know what’s being referenced. Oh, and did I mention entertaining.

I contacted the guy behind BLDGBLOG, Geoff Manaugh, and met him at a cool symposium he held in Los Angeles at the Center for Land Use Interpretation. This was the model for something Geoff and I put together a few months later in San Francisco, which included a talk by Geoff, the aforementioned Erik Davis, John and Matt of the prankish design collective REBAR, architects Lisa Iwamoto and Craig Scott, and the great sound and film editor, Walter Murch. And what did Walter talk about? Oh, you know: his independent research into how the geometry of the Pantheon seems to accurately point to a heliocentric understanding of the cosmos, and how some simplified math supports an archaic theory called Bode’s Law, which correlates planetary orbits to harmonic intervals. It was an eclectic, thoroughly entertaining afternoon. It was thoroughly BLDGBLOG.

It wasn’t long before we started talking about a book. There aren’t really many models for adapting a blog to a book (yet), and I’m sure there will be pitfalls to avoid. But we are already tossing around a lot of remarkable notions, and the aim is to make the book as diverse and fascinating as the site. I think we’re going to get a lot of support in this; when Geoff enthusiastically announced the book, people took notice. Lots of comments on his site, and then news traveled fast on the internet.

This could be interesting. I think we may have a groundswell here, and as this is meant to be an innovative book, this may be a good opportunity for some radical transparency as the book progresses. Well, we’ll see how radical, but watch this space for more on this book and others in process. Book publishing is an obscure industry to those outside it, and things are changing fast. Let’s shine a little light on it all.