COVER REVEAL: My Mad Scientist Mom: Saved by the Smell

~ Jarrett Lerner ~ 1 Comment

I am beyond excited to reveal here the cover for the first book in a brand-new illustrated chapter book series of mine. Check it out below!

The series, My Mad Scientist Mom, is all about Ari — that boy in the stinky orange T-shirt up there — and his Mom, Professor Fingerman, who is (as you might’ve guessed) a MAD SCIENTIST. Each book in the series sees Ari’s Mom attempting to solve one domestic problem or another with a mad science-y solution.

In Saved by the Smell, the problem is laundry. Neither Ari nor his mom have done it a long time (which is why Ari’s T-shirt is so stinky and why his mom’s lab coat is covered in stains). When confronted with this problem, Ari suggests that he and his mom just suck it up and, as much as they dislike doing laundry, spend the day washing and drying all their clothes. A sensible idea, right? Unfortunately, though, the Fingerman’s washing machine is currently out of commission. Ari’s mom accidentally sort of blew the thing up . . . But that’s nothing to worry about, Professor Fingerman assures her son. Why? Because she has built a time portal. This device will allow Ari and his mom to travel back in time. Six weeks back in time, to be exact, which was the last time Ari and his mom did laundry. Once in the past, Ari and his mom will gather up all the freshly laundered clothes they can, leap back into the present, and — voila! — they’ll have enough clean T-shirts and lab coats to last them few another six weeks. It’s a good plan. But Professor Fingerman’s plans have a tendency to go a bit awry, and in this case (as you might’ve also guessed after taking a look at the book’s cover), they very much do.

As entertaining and lovable as I hope you’ll find Ari and his mom, they aren’t the only characters you’ll find in these books. You’ll also meet Fred, Ari’s lettuce-obsessed pet turtle, as well as TED, a snooty, ice cube-sized supercomputer that (much to Ari’s annoyance) serves as his mom’s pseudo-assistant. There’s also the Fingerman’s next door neighbor, Mr. Jakes, an awkward, somewhat bumbling but well-intentioned man who seems oddly eager to get to know Ari and his mom.

That’s as much as I’ll tell you about this first book in the My Mad Scientist Mom series, as I don’t want to spoil anything. But there are two more things about this series (and this first book’s cover in particular) that I want to share about with you.

Number 1:

I, Jarrett Lerner, really truly do have a scientist for a mom. But, I should probably add, she is not a MAD scientist. I should probably also say that Professor Fingerman, the character, is not based on my mom (she would never avoid doing laundry for six whole weeks). However, the design of the character is very much based on my mom. Specifically my mom back when I was Ari’s age. Here’s a picture of us at that time:

The two of us certainly look a lot less panicked (and more clean) than Ari and his mom do on the cover of Saved by the Smell, but I hope you can still see the resemblance.

The second thing about this book cover that I thought I’d share with you is this: IT TOOK ME FOREVER. I mean, every book cover takes me a long time, and before landing on a final design, my team and I always try a whole bunch of different things. But the process behind this one was particularly lengthy, and I think that pulling back the curtain and sharing a bit more about it all could be illuminating, interesting, and maybe even instructive. So, here it is — the story of how this book cover (and how all book covers, generally speaking) get made . . .

Making books are a team effort, and in terms of the cover, there are three important team members you need to know about. One, pretty obviously, is the illustrator (who in the case of Saved by the Smell also happens to be the book’s author, but a lot of times is not). The other two are the art director and cover designer. (Sometimes, as was the case with this book, the art director and cover designer are the same person, but not always.) The cover designer’s job is to develop and pitch a handful of possible cover concepts, considering things like how the book will look on a shelf, how it will compare to other books similar to it, and what potential readers will make of it all. Once those concepts are ready to be shared, the art director will work with the illustrator to help them execute those concepts. For Saved by the Smell, I was pitched three concepts, and because I thought they were all strong and didn’t feel immediately drawn to one or another, I decided to do sketches of all three.

Cover Concept #1
Cover Concept #2
Cover Concept #3

Once my art director had received these sketches, she brought them to a meeting with a bunch of other people at my publisher — not just my editor and design team, but also sales and marketing people, who will be the ones in charge of promoting the book, and know a lot about what the purchasers of books are excited by and attracted to.

Ultimately, Concept #1 was ditched. It was a bit too busy, and we knew that the amount of space all the elements took up might prevent us from being able to fit both the series’ and book title on the cover in a way that didn’t make it feel squeezed-in or crunched.

The next step was to more carefully draw each of the remaining concepts, and to also add color.

Cover Concept #2 (colored)
Cover Concept #3 (colored)

My team seemed to be leaning toward Concept #2 — but at this point in the process, I was leaning toward Concept #3. Something about the framed, slightly askew picture on the wall captured this feeling of wonky domesticity that is very much a part of the series and that I loved having at the forefront of things. (You can also see, at this point, that we were playing around with a couple different approaches to the “series and title treatment” — the words on the cover, that is, and how they are rendered.) We went back and forth and back and forth some more, weighing the pros and cons of one versus the other, seeking the feedback of even more people, and looking at dozens (maybe even hundreds) of other book covers (especially those that we deemed either super successful or super unsuccessful).

Depending on how familiar you are with the book-making process, it might sound strange to you that the concept that I — the book’s author-illustrator, after all — was leaning toward wasn’t the one that was ultimately chosen. And honestly, if I had pushed and insisted that Concept #3 was the one I wanted, my team probably would’ve gone along with it. But I would be a fool not to seriously consider the opinion of every single member of my team. Saved by the Smell will be my 21st published book, and thanks to that team of mine, each of those books is way, way, WAY better than it would’ve been if I’d made it alone.

In the end, we decided to move forward with Concept #2. And what did it for me, what finally convinced me that my team was on to something, was the thing that always steers me in the best direction when I’m unsure about something related to my books and the work I do around them. I put myself, as best I could, in the heads of my readers. Which of these cover concepts, I asked myself, would a kid be more excited by? Which of these cover concepts would be more likely to get a kid picking up the book and reading? The kids, of course, are the most important thing. And reminding myself of that always helps set me straight and make good decisions.

So, that was that — Concept #2 it was. And that’s when the real work started . . .

My art director and I took a hyper-critical look at every element of the artwork, questioning how it each bit could, and whether it should, be changed to improve the thing. Before starting this part of the process, it’s super important to state, as clearly and specifically as possible, what the goal of the image is. As with a lot of covers, our goal was to interest and excite potential readers while (1) showing them some (but not all) of what they’d find inside the book and (2) including some fun, subtle details that would be more meaningful (and delightful) to them once they’d finished reading the book. Another thing I think about, as I do when I’m revising the insides of my books, too: each page of a book (whether full of text, art, or some of both) is the result of dozens, even hundreds of decisions. I try to identify each of those decisions, whether consciously or unconsciously made. This jolts me out of my own reflexive perspective, helping me consider things from a more detached, critical standpoint.

Eventually, we ended up here:

As you probably noticed, the dinosaur has become more vicious and is now running toward the viewer, as are Ari and his mom. Also, the background has gotten more dynamic, with a more curved horizon line, a variety of mountain heights, and a volcano mid-eruption. But even after all these tweaks, we still weren’t done. Because now it was time to add color. And for me, color is often the most challenging part. I mean, there are just so many of them. Colors, that is. Like, sure — maybe you know the grass in your drawing should be green. But what kind of green? What hue? And should it all be the same green, or a few different shades?

I’m not going to show you all the iterations I went through during the coloring process (there are way too many). I’m just going to show you two: the final one, and the one that came right before it, which we nearly went with. Here’s the latter:

As you can see, these colors are mostly realistic, though the sky does have a slight, mad science-y vibe to it. And for a while, this was it. My art director and I were just figuring out some final details (whether the clouds in the sky and those rising up out of the volcano should be outlined, how the tones of the mountains should vary, etc.) before moving onto the series and title treatment.

But then she (my art director) had a brilliant burst of inspiration. She asked if I wouldn’t mind playing around with a more nighttime-y, otherworldly palette for the cover’s background, amplifying that mad science-y vibe that the first version only kind of showed. And that is how we (eventually — because yes, there were a bunch more iterations in our attempt to accomplish this) got to here:

If you’ve got a good memory and a sharp eye, you might’ve noticed that, at this point, we still hadn’t figured out the series and title treatment. That was a whole long process in itself. (There were at least half a dozen different versions of the beaker that stands in for the “A” in the series title’s “MAD.”) And it was also only at the very end of the process (a day or two, I think, before the cover art was set to feed out to the public and begin appearing on my publisher’s and all online retailers’ websites) that we decided to outline all of “My MAD SCIENTIST Mom” with a white border, making it pop out a bit more and grab a tad of the focus back from the dinosaur. (And if you’ve got a very sharp eye, you might even be able to tell that, also at the last minute, the color of the sky was brightened just the slightest bit. Seriously, the edits never end.)

And there you have it. Did you know just how much work went into making a book cover? At school visits, when kids ask me about covers, I always start by quoting that age-old advice: “Never judge a book by its cover.” I tell them that this is excellent advice — for everything BUT book covers. Because, as you now know if you didn’t before, a whole lot of people put a whole lot of time and effort into making sure that people judge these covers we make. We just want to make sure the judgements they make are precisely the ones we want them to.

If you read all this, THANKS! I hope it’s increased your excitement for this new series of mine. Saved by the Smell comes out March 4th, 2025 (with Book 2 to follow later on in the year), but is already available for preorder wherever books are sold. As always, if you preorder the book from my local independent bookstore, the Silver Unicorn, I will sign, doodle in, and personalize (if you want) your copy or copies. You can click HERE to do that.

~ Jarrett

NAT THE CAT HAS A SNACK and A WORK IN PROGRESS (paperback) Pub Day!

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Okay, fine: the title of this post is a bit misleading. TODAY is not actually the pub day for the books mentioned above. It was last week. But last week, I was busy in New Jersey with school visits, and so didn’t get a chance to post until now. So, a bit belatedly, here’s my celebratory shout: Happy Book Birthday to Nat the Cat Has a Snack and the paperback edition of A Work in Progress! Phew. I’ve been holding that in for nearly a week.

First up: Nat!

The third/newest Nat the Cat book is all about SHARING. More specifically, the book is about how we can share both GOOD things (like snacks!) and BAD things (like problems!) with our friends, and how, even if it’s not always EASY to share, it’s basically always BETTER when we do.

Next up, the paperback edition of A Work in Progress.

To me, the most exciting thing about this edition of the book is that it’s (comparatively) CHEAP! It’s half the list price of the hardcover edition. I hope the means the book ends up reaching the hands of many, many more kids than it already has. This cheaper price also means it’s easier for teachers, librarians, and schools to purchase sets of the book for reading groups and book clubs. The second most exciting thing about this edition of the book is that the cover has this fancy cutaway (you can see it in the picture up there), meaning you can glimpse the notebook lines that carry throughout the book, as well as a few of Will’s scribbles.

In other A Work in Progress news, over the course of the past few months the book has popped up on a bunch of state award lists: Kentucky’s, Georgia’s, Florida’s, and my home state of Massachusetts’s, too.

This means that kids all over these states will spend the year reading A Work in Progress (in addition to the other books on the nominee lists) and then have a chance to vote for their favorites. And while winning would of course be incredible, I am super honored and grateful to simply be nominated. The list of nominees are created by teams of librarians who spent the past year reading more or less EVERY SINGLE BOOK published for kids before deciding on what they deem the 10 to 12 very, very best. Also, being nominated means your work will reach thousands and thousands of kids that it otherwise might not. So, to all the committees who’ve nominated A Work in Progress so far: THANK YOU!

As always, if you want signed/personalized/doodled-in copies of Nat the Cat Has a Snack and/or the paperback edition of A Work in Progress (and/or ANY of my books), you can order them from my wonderful local indie, The Silver Unicorn.

~ Jarrett

A COVER REVEAL and a ONE-MONTH COUNTDOWN!

~ Jarrett Lerner ~ 1 Comment

Happy April 7th?

What am I celebrating?

In just one month, on May 7th, TWO big books of mine are coming out: (1) my next Nat the Cat early reader, Nat the Cat Has a Snack, and (2) the paperback edition of A Work in Progress.

Nat the Cat Has a Snack — the third book starring Nat and his rat pal, Pat — is about SHARING. Both the beauty of it . . . and the difficulty of it. My hope is that kids get a kick out of watching Nat discover that things are almost always better when we share with friends, and also learn that we can share both good things with friends (like snacks!) and also bad things (like hard-to-solve problems!).

If you read this blog and/or follow me, I surely don’t need to tell you what A Work in Progress is about. But I definitely do need to tell you that the paperback edition of the book — which, again, you can get your hands on in just ONE MONTH — is not only more lightweight and portable than the hardcover, it’s also cheaper. (Hooray!) I hope the lower price leads to the book reaching the hands of many, many more kids. And hey — if you plan to get a copy of the book, you can do it now and enter the book’s paperback preorder giveaway, which’ll give you a chance to win a whole class set of the books! Find more info about that in the image caption below.

To enter the A Work in Progress paperback preorder giveaway: Preorder the paperback edition of the book and send proof of preorder to AWIPpreorder@gmail.com. You will be entered to win an additional 20 extra copies! Multiple preorders and/or preorders from independent bookstores are counted as multiple entries.

And now, last but certainly not least, as promised . . . a COVER REVEAL!

Yes, the first volume of my newest series, Scare School Diaries, is not even out yet (it will be on July 16th), but we are already promoting the second volume, because — excitingly! — it comes out just three and a half months after the first. It’s not unusual for kids to have to wait a whole year, and sometimes even longer, for a subsequent installment of a book series to publish. But, along with my amazing team at Aladdin/Simon & Schuster, I am always aiming to grow readers and keep kids happy, so we’ve worked hard to keep the books coming.

Forest Frights is about one of the scariest things kids will encounter during their educational careers: the dreaded GROUP PROJECT. Here’s my publisher’s official writeup for the book:

At the start of his second session at Scare School, the world’s premiere institution for elementary scare instruction, Bash is feeling a bit more confident and excited about his classes starting up again. But when Vlad and Vicky, the mischievous vampires, join his group project, Bash starts worrying if this mean-spirited duo are going to take a bite out of his good grade!

You can preorder Forest Frights — along with, of course, the first book in the Scare School Diaries series, Welcome to Scare School — anywhere books are sold. As always, if you order and/or preorder any of my books from my local indie, the Silver Unicorn, I can sign, personalize, and doodle in your copies. Click HERE to do that. And THANKS!

~ Jarrett

Nat the “NOTABLE” Cat!

~ Jarrett Lerner ~ 1 Comment

I had a pretty busy end of January and start of February, and so it’s taken me a while to get around to sharing this news — but I am delighted to share that Nat the Cat Takes a Nap has been named an ALSC/ALA Notable Book!

If you’re not super familiar with the world of children’s literature, this news might leave you with a few questions. Like, What’s the ALSC? And what about the ALA? And what does it mean when they say a book is “notable”?

Well, the ALSC is the Association for Library Service to Children, and the ALA is the American Library Association, and at the end of every calendar year, various committees formed by these groups meet up to discuss all the children’s books that have been published over the course of the previous dozen months. From this mountain of titles, a small number are chosen and given that above-mentioned designation of “notable” — which, according to the ALSC/ALA, means:

Worthy of note or notice, important, distinguished, outstanding. As applied to children’s books, notable should be thought to include books of especially commendable quality, books that exhibit venturesome creativity, and books of fiction, information, poetry and pictures for all age levels (birth through age 14) that reflect and encourage children’s interests in exemplary ways.

Pretty nice, right?!

I was beyond delighted to get this news, and want to once again thank the ALSC and ALA — and, specifically, the Notable Books committee — for this honor. Below is a graphic my publisher posted, celebrating all of their books that were named notable. Nat the Cat and Pat the Rat are keeping some truly excellent company!

Want to see the full list of ALSC/ALA Notable Books? Click HERE!

~ Jarrett

Happy New Year — And A Whole Bunch of Updates!

~ Jarrett Lerner ~ Leave a comment

Happy new year!

I managed to spend the last week or so of 2023 away from my computer and drawing tablet. It was lovely, and much needed — but I’m excited to be back. Especially because I’ve got a whole bunch of exciting updates to share.

First up, some Nat the Cat news!

My curmudgeonly feline friend has been popping up in some exciting places, like on Betsy Bird’s absolutely spectacular Fuse 8 blog. If you don’t know Betsy and her work, you ought to change that immediately. I’ve been a fan of Betsy’s work since before I had a book published. Over the years, I have learned about SO many amazing books from her — books I most likely would’ve otherwise missed. Also, Betsy’s writing — whether on her blog or in her books — is simply wonderful. Her voice is so strong, her sentences such a delight to read. Take a peek at her blog and you’ll quickly get what I mean.

Anyway, one of the coolest (and most impressive) things Betsy does on her blog is her annual “31 Days, 31 Lists” marathon of, well, lists. Every year, for each day of December, Betsy posts a list — a round up of what she considers the best kids’ books published in a variety of categories. I look forward to these lists every year, and usually read them with a pad and pen so I can write down all the titles I missed and want to check out. So you can imagine how excited I was when I spotted none other than Nat on one of Betsy’s lists. Specifically, Nat the Cat Takes a Nap and Nat the Cat Takes a Bath appeared on Betsy’s 2023 Easy Books and Early Chapter Books list.

Before I tell you what Betsy said about Nat’s books, I first want to share with you a bit from Betsy’s introduction to the post. She begins by asking a question: “Is the most difficult kind of book to write for children a picture book, a poetry book for kids, an easy book, or an early chapter book?” After ruling out picture book and poetry, she finally comes to a conclusion: it’s a tie between so-called easy books and early chapter books. Why? First of all, “A truly great easy book must use literally the simplest of words to convey a title so interesting that it makes a child want to know how to read.” And early chapter books? Each one has “the additional obligation of transitioning children from those easy books into long chapter books. If it fails, it sets the kid back.”

I have long felt this way about these deceptively “easy” books — and only felt it more so after I began publishing both kinds. It’s why I typically use the term “early reader” as opposed to “easy books.” They are extremely challenging to make, and not at all easy for the emerging readers who are their target audience. The only people they are easy for, in fact, are already-fluent readers (like the adults who are putting the books into the hands of the kids who need them). Probably because they’ve read these kinds of books by the hundred, if not thousand, all the librarians and educators I’ve met understand just how hard these books are to make. And any grownup who doesn’t get it should sit down and try their hand at making one themselves. The difficulties will pretty much immediately become apparent.

It was so nice to read Betsy’s take on all this — and then I scrolled down and got a look at Nat, followed by a bunch of very kind words from Betsy. Here’s her write-up in full:

Oo! A new easy book character to read relentlessly for years! And read I shall! Here we have Nat, a semi-rectangular feline with triangle ears. In Takes a Bath, with the requisite number of flies buzzing about his ears, Nat is slated to take a bath… and he don’t wanna. So how do you get a whole book out of that? As it turns out, the delay tactics of children with limited vocabularies transfer perfectly over to cats who feel the same way. Meanwhile, in Takes a Nap, Nat is trying to sleep but the book’s narrator is keeping him from his forty winks with funny results.  I thought the text in both books nicely appropriate for kids first wrapping their heads around slightly longer words like “because” and “bubbles” and “scared”. Now with Nat and the Rat named Pat’s dialogue balloons, coupled with the simpler narration, it would be possible to have a child reading aloud the narrator’s part, alongside a better reader doing Nat’s. Particularly since Nat gets all the good emotional moments (I was particularly fond of him going “And… and… and…”)

Just a couple days after finding Nat the Cat on Betsy’s blog, I received some news about another one of my books — A Work in Progress. The book was among those selected for the 2024 edition of ProjectLIT.

To quote the people behind the project: “Born out of one classroom in Nashville, TN, in 2016, our grassroots literacy movement now includes more than 2,000 schools (or “chapters”) across all 50 states, all committed to increasing book access and promoting a love of reading, and all led by incredible students, teachers, and librarians.” In the seven years since its inception, ProjectLIT has made the kid lit world dramatically better in all kinds of ways. The best way to learn more about ProjectLIT and to see the amazing things it does, follow @projectlitcomm on Instagram and elsewhere. You can also search the hashtag, follow some of the individual chapter accounts, or look for interviews with ProjectLIT founder Jared Amato.

Not long after all this, just before the end of the year, I got some more good news: I learned that Nat the Cat Takes a Nap had been given a 2023 Nerdy Book Award. If you’re not familiar with the Nerdy Book Club and the crew of brilliant, big-hearted people behind it, it’s another thing you must change. They have influenced and inspired me for years, and if you think I’m good at what I do, it’s in large part because of all of what I’ve learned from people like Donalyn Miller, Pernille Ripp, Colby Sharp, Travis Jonker, John Schu, and many of the other nerds making up the initial core of the “club.” So to find out that a book of mine had been selected by them as one of the best of the year — it was a special honor.

The day after Nat got his award, another batch of Nerdy Book Awards were announced — these ones for poetry and novels in verse.

And guess what showed up on there?

A Work in Progress also showed up on Colby Sharp’s personal blog on his round up on Amazing 2023 Books.

All of this made for a fantastic end to 2023, and the first week of 2024 has been pretty great, too. On the first day of the year, Nat popped up yet again — this time as a finalist for a Cybils Award. The Cybils are a unique and wonderful award, and rather than try to describe them myself, I’ll quote them directly:

At its heart, the Cybils Awards is a group of readers passionate about seeking out and recognizing books that portray diversity, inclusion, and appropriate representation for children and teens. To accomplish that goal, the Cybils Awards works to recognize books written for children and young adults that combine both the highest literary merit and popular appeal.

As one of the two original founders put it, between the brussels sprouts of literary merit and the gummy bears of popularity contests, we are the organic chicken nuggets–both yummy and nutritious!

If you didn’t know about the Cybils Awards before, surely you can now imagine how honored I am for Nat the Cat Takes a Nap to have received one. Even more awesome, Nat is in some absolutely amazing company — some of my favorite books of the year!

The last bit of news to report is that I was in a newspaper — specifically, the Boston Globe. I was interviewed by parenting columnist Kara Baskin about my background, my work, and the importance of making books that reflect the full and true spectrum of boys’ emotional lives. It was an enormous thrill to see myself and my work and words in print like it was. My kids, meanwhile, were mostly just excited that there was a picture of Taylor Swift right below my interview. You can check out the piece in the Globe‘s January 5th print edition, or online HERE.

All in all, I had quite an incredible end of 2023 and beginning of 2024. I don’t take any of these special shouts-outs for granted, and am humbled by every single one. The biggest thing I take away from it all is that the people behind these honors and awards, all of whom I know to be most focused on the kids that these books are all for, believe I’m doing some good work. And the biggest thing that does for me is make me eager to keep working — to make more of the kinds of books that kids both want and need. I plan to do exactly this year and beyond.

THANK YOU to all of the above-mentioned individuals and groups for reading my books, and for considering — and ultimately choosing them — for all of this awesome recognition. And THANK YOU to you if you’ve made it through this long (and pretty braggy, I know…) blog post, and for any and all of the support you gave me and my work in 2023.

In addition to the links embedded above, you can find all the posts mentioned above listed on my Press page. Once again: Happy new year!

~ Jarrett

MORE Best of 2023 News!

~ Jarrett Lerner ~ 2 Comments

A few weeks ago, I hopped on here to talk about how the end of the year meant the arrival of all sorts of Best Of lists — and I shared that the audiobook edition of A Work in Progress had popped up on none other than Audible’s Best of 2023. (Click HERE to check out that post.)

Well, in the time since I’ve written that, lots more lists have appeared, and I’m super delighted and wildly honored to let you know that my books have popped up on even more of them!

First up, New York Public Library’s (yep — the one with the famous lions out front) Best Books of 2023 list, on which A Work in Progress appeared:

And now, another wonderful city’s equally wondering public library — Chicago Public Library’s 2023 Best of the Best list, on which A Work in Progress was included:

Leaving behind the public libraries and heading into schools, Nat the Cat — and his second book, Nat the Cat Takes a Nap — showed up on School Library Journal’s Best Books list:

And last but definitely not least, I made a pair of appearances on another list — one that I look forward to every single year. The list is compiled by author-illustrator-librarian Travis Jonker, and published on his brilliant 100 Scope Notes blog. (You really should subscribe to it, if you don’t already.) The list, Travis’s annual “Year in Miscellanea,” is a collection of amusing, exciting, and fun things that have happened in the kid lit world throughout the calendar year. As soon as Travis posts the list, I open it up and read it, because it’s never not a delight. So imagine my surprise when I saw my name on there — twice. Best of all, my appearances on the list have nothing to do with anything I’ve done. Except, I suppose, celebrate some of the amazing creations of my fans. Here — take a look. First, at these fabulous cookies:

And now, feast your eyes on this incredible work of art:

Yes, those are Rubik’s Cubes. Dozens and dozens of them. (I’m pretty sure they told me how many, but I can’t remember. If you want, you can zoom in and count.)

Amazing. All of it. I am humbled and very, very happy.

I want to once again thank all the librarians, both public and school, for considering my books and ultimately honoring them in this way. It means that they will reach — and, hopefully, positively impact — even more readers than they would otherwise. And that, at the end of the day, is all I’m really after.

~ Jarrett

A WORK IN PROGRESS: An Audible Best Book of 2023!

~ Jarrett Lerner ~ 2 Comments

It’s getting toward the end of the calendar year (hard to believe, I know!), and at the end of the year, all the Best Of lists begin to come out. And just a couple weeks ago, A Work in Progress appeared on a pretty big one.

That’s right: the book was chosen as an Audible Best Book of 2023! Of course, I share this honor with the hugely talented Eric Yang, the narrator of the audio version of A Work in Progress, who delivered a gut-wrenching (but ultimately hopeful and uplifting) reading of my words.

At the beginning of this year, several months before A Work in Progress published, Eric was on a list of narrator candidates that my publisher sent me. I listened to samples of everyone’s previous work — and Eric quickly emerged as a frontrunner. When I sent him a handful of poems to read from the book, we got back a five-minute audio file. But I knew after just five seconds that Eric was it. I opened up my email as I continued listening to Eric’s reading, and well before the five-minute mark, I’d fired off a note asking my publisher to please offer Eric the job. And Eric — he did not disappoint. His performance is absolutely incredible, and I am so, so pleased that he has received this recognition as well.

Here’s what an Audible editor said about the book — and Eric’s performance — on their Best Of list:

When I saw an anti-fatphobic audiobook aimed at middle-grade boys, I was thrilled! When I downloaded and listened to it, I was gobsmacked. Jarrett Lerner lays bare the embarrassment and shame a kid feels realizing that others’ views of him affect how he views himself. Because the protagonist is looking back from a safe, adult perspective, the story is appropriate for young readers, and the influence of a character who positively shifts Will’s self-image triumphs in the end. It’s Will’s pain, however, narrated by Eric Yang, that makes this story—and the redemptive arc—exceptionally satisfying for any listener.

Thank you to Audible for their kind words and for honoring A Work in Progress in this way. Thank you to Eric Yang for all of the work he put in to crush his reading like he did. And thank you to my wonderful, brilliant team at Simon & Schuster, for doing countless big and small things to help make my work shine.

Click HERE to check out more of Audible’s Best Of picks, and whether or not you’ve read A Work in Progress yet, I encourage you to go and take a listen to Eric’s reading the book. He’ll knock your socks off.

~ Jarrett

TWO Cover Reveals + A Paperback Release Date

~ Jarrett Lerner ~ 1 Comment

I had a very busy October, and that is why I am only coming on here now, in November, to share a whole bunch of very exciting stuff — specifically, a pair of cover reveals (one of which also happens to be a series reveal) and a paperback release date.

First up, the cover reveal for Welcome to Scare School, the first book in my new series, Scare School Diaries:

Welcome to Scare School is a chapter book — but save for its length, it’s very different from most chapter books you’ll open. The book is what my editor, agent, and I have begun to call a “hybrid,” a blend of both written and illustrated elements that are put together in a way that make it difficult to classify according to traditional categories. In other words, it’s not a straightforward chapter book, with mostly text and some occasionally illustrations. And it’s a not a graphic novel, with comic paneling on every page. The book is set up as a diary (that of Bash, a young ghost just beginning his education at Scare School), but while each entry begins with text, it soon gives way to a mix of spot illustrations and comics. In other words, with each page turn, the reader never knows what they’ll see next! I find storytelling in this form the most natural for me (if you’ve ever seen photos of drafts, which I often share on social media, they almost always appear in this way, whether or not the final product is a novel, a graphic novel, or whatever).

I can’t wait to share more about this book (and series!) with you, which comes out on July 16, 2024, but is already available for preorder wherever books are sold. (As always, if you preorder from the Silver Unicorn, I will sign/personalize — and doodle in! — your copies. Click HERE to do that.)

Lastly, here’s my publisher’s description of the book:

Bash, a young ghost who’s never been good at “ghost stuff” is heading off to Scare School, the world’s leading institution for elementary scare instruction, and he’s not happy about it. In fact, he’s kind of scared! His older sister Bella, precocious in every way, was a star student there and he knows the classes are hard and the teachers are tough.

Even before his first day of school, Bash is worried about how he’s going to make it through the rigorous curriculum when he hasn’t been able to get the hang of basics like making himself invisible or passing through walls (without bonking his head!). Will the young ghost get booooted out of Scare School?

Next up, the cover reveal for my next (the third) Nat the Cat early reader: Nat the Cat Has a Snack!

I’m a bit nervous that if I let myself ramble a bit about this book, I’ll end up spoiling everything. So I’m going to limit myself to saying that it comes out on May 7, 2024, but like Welcome to Scare School, it is already available for preorder wherever books are sold. (And also like Welcome to Scare School — as well as all my other books — if you preorder from the Silver Unicorn, I will sign/personalize/doodle in your copies. Click HERE to do that.) Beyond that, I’m going to let my publisher describe the book for you:

Nat that Cat has a snack. Pat the Rat wants a snack. Nat the Cat can share, right? Nat the Cat does not want to share!

And for my last bit of news today, I’m thrilled to share that A Work in Progress now has a paperback release date!

This significantly cheaper and much more portable edition of the book will come out alongside Nat’s newest adventure, on May 7, 2024. I don’t know much about the paperback A Work in Progress beyond the release date, but I know my publishers are currently working on it, and are exploring some pretty cool design ideas. I’ll be sharing more information about it — and the other two books mentioned above — as soon as I can, in addition to more news about all the other stuff I’ve been working on these past handful of months. Oh! How could I forget? The paperback edition of A Work in Progress is, like Welcome to Scare School and Nat the Cat Has a Snack, available for preorder wherever books are sold. And you know the drill, right? Preorder from the Silver Unicorn if you want YOUR copies signed/personalized/doodled in. Click HERE to do that.

And THANKS!

~ Jarrett

Global Read Aloud Resources

~ Jarrett Lerner ~ 1 Comment

Next week marks the start of this year’s Global Read Aloud, of which my illustrated novel in verse, A Work in Progress, is a part. (To learn more about this year’s Global Read Aloud and/or the project in general, you can click HERE and HERE.)

Before things get underway, I wanted to make sure to once more share about some of the resources available to those reading and discussing the book (either now, for the GRA, or whenever in the future). Specifically, if you head over to the A WORK IN PROGRESS page of this website, you’ll find two very handy things: first, the incredible Educator’s Guide (created by media specialist extraordinaire Carrie Friday), and second, the series of “behind the scenes” videos I put together about the book. There are six of these videos in all, each one covering one of the GRA’s six weeks of scheduled readings. You can watch these videos directly on my website or over on my YouTube channel (where you’ll find a bunch more cool stuff).

To everyone participating in this year’s Global Read Aloud, I look forward to connecting with you! And I hope the resources I (and Carrie!) have prepared prove useful in your exploration of A Work in Progress.

~ Jarrett

GEEGER THE ROBOT: FIELD DAY pub day (plus more Geeger the Robot news)!

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Today is a big day for me — and for Geeger the Robot, too. The sixth and final book in my early chapter series is officially here!

Starting today, you can get your hands on the book wherever you prefer to do so — your local independent bookstore or library, or from the online retailer of your choice. As always, if you want signed and/or personalized (and doodled in, too!) copies of the book — and/or any of my books — place your order through my local independent bookstore, the wonderful Silver Unicorn. (Click HERE to order the latest Geeger from the Silver Unicorn. And click HERE to browse all my books at their shop.)

All six of the Geeger the Robot books.

Field Trip is, in my opinion, the best of the Geeger the Robot books I’ve made. I did my darnedest to pack the thing full of as much humor and heart as possible. It’s the first one in which we see Geeger venture out of the now-familiar comfort and safety of Amblerville Elementary School and out into the wider world. It’s adventure, brimming with excitement and delight and surprises — but those surprises turn out to be both good and bad. And maybe it was in part because I was sad to be saying goodbye to Geeger, but the ending of the book . . . well, it’s the only one of the Geeger books that I’ve gotten teary-eyed while finishing. I think I really stuck the landing.

In other Geeger the Robot news, the first book in the series — Geeger the Robot Goes to School — was recently named an Amazon “Teachers’ Pick.”

What does it mean for a book to be a Teachers’ Pick? It means that it joins an elite list of books that have been praised and celebrated by hundreds of educators and librarians, and have also been positively reviewed by Amazon’s own in-house editors. It also means that that nifty little banner will now permanently fly above the book on Amazon.com.

Completing this series has been a bittersweet thing. Never say never, I suppose — but just in case this is the last Geeger adventure I get to share with my readers, I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone and anyone who has read, shared, and/or otherwise supported these books of mine. They have been an absolute blast to make, and have brought me some of the most rewarding moments of my career so far. I’ve lost count of the number of messages I’ve received about one or another of the Geeger books being a young reader’s first chapter book they’ve ever read on their own — and the books were carefully constructed and designed to lend themselves to being just that. Like all my work, I hope the Geeger the Robot books either convince or confirm for kids that reading can be an enjoyable, rewarding experience, and I hope the reading of the books helps them grow into more capable, confident, and eager readers. To have been informed on countless occasions that the books have done just that is a true gift. I’m grateful to every person whose had a hand in helping make those moments happen. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

~ Jarrett