Chronicle Books Blog

As we linger in the last days of summer, I feel nostalgic for when the season actually meant being outside all day—hanging out by the pool, savoring popsicles, hiking through the forest, sleeping under the stars—in a word, camp! It seems I’m not alone in my nostalgia for my summer camp days. I’ve noticed an uptick of all things camp-related recently in fashion, design, and pop culture…

It wasn’t a successful summer unless I came home with an arm full of friendship bracelets made during arts-and-crafts time. Now no longer limited to the under-13 set, they’ve been on everyone’s arms this summer.

Photo credit: via HonestlyWTF.com

Arrows have been showing up in my pinterest feed for awhile, in both home décor and as design elements. I loved camp afternoons spent aiming for (and missing) the bullseye on the archery range.

Photo credit: via uncovet

Photo credit: via Paper-Sparrow

Merit badges, à la girl/boyscout camp, but with cheeky twists, have been popping up everywhere. I especially love the collection by esty seller BeProud, which awards the earner for doing things like “tooting your own horn”, “being a happy camper”, and, my fave, “flipping the bird”.

Always on trend, the 2012 DesignSponge newspaper released earlier this summer, had an entire camp theme, complete with gourmet s’mores recipes and, you guessed it, a friendship bracelet curtain tie tutorial.

In the pop culture realm, the indie movie hit of the summer was Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, set at a “Khaki Scout” summer camp, Camp Ivanhoe. Tons of vintage camp eyecandy.

Photo credit: Focus Features

Photo credit: via Booooooom

And lastly, the ultimate pop culture nod to summer camp, cult-classic Wet Hot American Summer is rumored to be getting a prequel! That means the now 40-something actors will be playing 16-year-olds for even more hilarity and inside-camp-joke ridiculousness. Can’t wait for more summer camp camp with a triumphant return to Camp Firewood!

Photo credit: USA Films

Emily Dubin
Designer / Sanborn Western Camp ’93-’98 alum

Wri10 by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and illust8d Tom Lichtenheld (who last joined forces on the New York Times Bestseller Duck! Rabbit!) Wumbers offers a series of silly scenarios, such as:

Enter the Wumbers Caption Contest!
Now you can cre8 your own wumber for a chance to win two great prizes:

1. Your winning caption drawn into an original piece of artwork by Tom Lichtenheld
2. A visit to your school or library by Amy or Tom

CLICK HERE to download the entry form and to read the complete rules and regulations.

Here’s a few samples to get your gears turning:

Want More Wumbers?
Visit the Wumber Tumblr to find Activity sheets…

…and more Wumbers fun!

I’ll never forget when we gave my dad an iPhone. He’d been wanting one for a while and he was already great with his Blackberry, but there was one thing he was confused about. He held up a CD and his iPhone. “What I don’t get is how I get this onto here.” He mimicked trying to force the CD into the phone and we kids laughed… with him, mostly with him.

Every day, scores of people make the switch to reading ebooks, but I’ve realized that almost no one knows how they’re made. And so budding gumshoe that I am, I hiked up two floors and interviewed Holden and Kerri from our ebook team to get to the bottom of things.

Step 1: Clear the rights
Like most publishers, in addition to publishing nearly all of our new titles as ebooks, we’re working our way through our backlist. Many of the older contracts were written before ebooks existed and so we work with the agents, authors, and illustrators to get the ebook rights settled. With new books, the ebook rights were generally negotiated when the book was acquired.

Step 2: Find the files
For a new book, this isn’t too tricky because we would have been planning on the ebook from the start, but for older books it can be more of a challenge. What we’re looking for is the final digital file of the print book—the one that would have been sent to the printer.

Step 3: Creative planning and execution
This is one of the most interesting steps! Though most people think of ebooks as text-only “e-ink” experiences, in truth ebooks come in a variety of formats with different bells and whistles. For instance an ebook can be published as:

a reflowable ebook
which means that the user can change the size of the text, click words to look up definitions, and more

a fixed format ebook
which means that the layout is nearly identical to the print book, preserving the pretty fonts and design

an enhanced ebook
which mean that it could include bonus content like audio and video and interactive features like clickable pop-ups

a PDF

We take a hard look at each print book and decide what format and which enhancements (if any) make sense for the ebook. And then, the ebook team makes a storyboard, showing exactly where these features will go and how they will work.

You might remember from my last blog post about Chloe, Instead and Wumbers that we sometimes add audio to ebooks. Ever wonder who those voice actors are? Well, it’s us! Holden and Kerri keep an ear out around the company for people with good voices and then ask them if they can spare an afternoon to record audio parts. For some books, we tap people who can speak other languages. Peter Perez just wrapped up recording the Spanish audio for our bilingual editions of Taro Gomi’s Spring Is Here, Bus Stops, and My Friends.

Step 4: Conversion
Once the digital file for the print book is located, we send it over to an ebook conversion house that specializes in converting it into what is known as “an epub.” Epub is the standard, open-source format for ebooks.

Step 5: Q/A
Next the conversion house sends the file back to our ebook team and they begin to check the files for changes and improvements. This is also when they will add in any enhancements to the ebook, such as audio and pop-ups.

We’re very proud of the fact that our error rate is well below the industry average. Holden and Kerri make this happen through good old-fashioned hard work and long hours. It’s important to us that the ebook versions of our books are just as beautiful as their print counterparts—and we hope that shows in the final product.

Step 6: Distribution
After a book passes the Q/A process with our team, it is then sent to a distribution house. This step is very similar to the print world, where books are sent to a central warehouse to be redistributed to bookstores all over the world. The ebook distribution house takes our single file and distributes it to all our ebook retail partners (e.g., Kindle, Nook, iBookstore, Sony, Kobo, OverDrive, etc.) in their preferred formats.

And not long after the file is delivered to the ebook retailers, it goes up on their sites—where customers like you may buy it and download it to your devices.

I hope that clears up how an ebook is made, but definitely leave a comment if you have more questions for Holden and Kerri! We’ll have them chime in with answers.

In San Francisco, Baby and New York, Baby, little ones take a knee-high tour of two of the most exciting cities in the country.

We asked our friends and fans to share their photos of kids having fun in the The Big Apple and The City by the Bay, which we’ve paired with some pages from these adorable books!

Griffin visits Dolores Park!

Mabel’s having fun at Union Square!

About to have a delicious lunch in North Beach!

Ashur has a great view of the Empire State Building!

If Hunter, Bella and Sierra can make it there, they’ll make it anywhere!

Will can’t believe the size of the sandwiches at the Stage Deli!

Looking stylish for a walk in the park!

Chloe and Sasha having fun at the Met.

Will thinks a water taxi is another great way to go, go go!

There are so many more adorable images than we had room to share on our blog—check ‘em out on our Facebook page.

Lara Starr
Publicity, Children and Teens

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I have worked with Boo, the World’s Cutest Dog for over a year now, and had the opportunity to hang out with him a few times—each time is a treasured memory. Several of my friends ask if he really is as cute and charming in person and the answer is—YES! Even if I didn’t work with him, I’d still say that Boo is the cutest dog ever.

This photo of Boo and me made me popular on Instagram.

Last month we had a top secret day planned where Good Morning America’s producer Suzanne and reporter Becky came to San Francisco to tape a segment in which Boo shows Becky around the city. This was inspired by his new book, Boo: Little Dog in the Big City. It was a secret since we had to get around the city and hit four different locations in a short amount of time. We couldn’t have any distractions, and Boo being recognized can surely cause distractions.

Boo gets ready for a romp in the sand.

We started at Alamo Square Park, sight of the Painted Ladies Victorian homes that have been made famous in TV shows like Full House and Suddenly Susan. It was fun to get out in the park and see Boo run around. A group of French tourists came up and started to take photos of Boo rather than the beautiful, famous homes that line the park.

We jumped in our cars and made our way to Ghirardelli Square, which smells like melted chocolate. Yum! Suzanne filmed Becky enjoying a hot chocolate with Boo. As I sat with Boo while the crew set-up, several tourists stopped to ask if they could take his photo, and I obliged. Interestingly, these folks from Italy and England didn’t know who Boo was, but they were so charmed by his cute face and friendly manner that they couldn’t resist.

This display in our lobby has been attracting street traffic.

Next shot was at the Chronicle Books bookstore. We planned to arrive early and set it up to look like a book signing, but we ended up being so late that the store was already open and filed with customers. So, Boo made the day for some local fans. Lucky for them that they had camera phones!

Boo is a professional waiting for his cue.

Our final stop was the beach at Crissy Fields, so we could get a good shot of the Golden Gate Bridge. As is often the case, we had to consider our other celebrity: the San Francisco Fog. It was still hanging on the bridge, obscuring the top third at noon. Ah well, what is San Francisco without the fog? We filmed anyway and were surprised at how many people stopped to see Boo. One woman said, “Can I take your dog’s picture? He looks just like Boo.” And when Becky told her it was Boo, I thought she might swoon. Yup. Boo has that effect on the ladies (and a lot of guys, too).

You can see the end result of 4 hours of driving, set-up and filming in this clip which aired on Good Morning America.

To celebrate Boo’s new book, Boo: Little Dog in the Big City, one lucky dog is going to get to experience San Francisco too! Enter Boo’s San Francisco Giveaway for a chance to win a trip for two (plus doggie!) to San Francisco courtesy of Virgin America, W San Francisco, The Brixton San Francisco, and 7×7 Magazine.