Adam Hines won the award in the graphic novel category at this year's LA Times Book Festival. He won for his book Duncan the Wonder Dog: Show One (AdHouse Books). He faced stiff competition in the category: Carol Tyler's Collateral Damage, Dash Shaw's Bodyworld, Karl Stevens' The Lodger, and Jim Woodring's Weathercraft. Congratulations to Adam for the win, and congratulations to all the nominees!

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Attendees of the recent Texas Library Association (TLA) annual conference—which took place April 12–15 in Austin—were greeted with a nice graphic-novel welcome this year: Besides panels about graphic novels and a forum featuring some well-known creators and the $20,000 Great Graphic Novel Library Giveaway, the book selected for the One Book, One Conference reading group was Audrey Niffenegger’s The Night Bookmobile. The graphic novel, which tells the story of a woman who one night discovers a supernatural library that houses every single thing she’s ever read and who subsequently spends the rest of her life looking for it again, is a beautifully illustrated and haunting story. It’s also a book that contains its fair share of controversy and discussion points, as evidenced by the healthy, invigorating discussion that took place when TLA attendees got together to talk about the book. Here, Texas Tech University Associate Humanities Librarian Rob Weiner, who moderated the One Book, One Conference panel at the show, gives us the scoop on the book and the discussion around it.

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Maureen Bakis is a 12th-grade English teacher at Masconomet Regional High School in Topsfield, Massachusetts. She’s also been using comics in her classroom for a while now, to great success. We talked to her to glean her expert advice on how to use comics to reach students.

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And I am a George R.R. Martin fan. As HBO begins what looks like a great adaptation of Game of Thrones (and I realize I need to start a subscription to HBO...I don't think I can miss this), the New York Times runs a great pro-comic book quote from the amazing writer. It's from 1981 (I wish I had known about it back then...it would have been very helpful to me when dealing with my parents and teachers). I think my favorite part is this gem: "My teachers soon began to marvel that I read with such 'expression,' while the rest of my class read . . .

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Last month, artist Shaun Tan won an Academy Award. This weekend, he won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in Sweden, the largest children's literature award. (It comes with a significant monetary prize as well, so good for you, Shaun!) Here's the full story.

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It was sad news to hear that Joanne Siegel, wife of the late Jerry Siegel, who cocreated Superman, passed away last month. She was a remarkable woman, and reportedly the inspiration for the fiesty, hard-hitting Lois Lane, the one and only earthwoman who could conquer Superman's heart. But this weekend brought a new column by Nikki Finke showing just how much of a fighter Joanne Siegel really was, even as she was in her early 90s and suffering from several health problems.

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I'm a big fan of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, and I really loved the first film adaptation. So I'm thrilled to see that the sequel, Rodrick Rules, made a huge impact at the box office this weekend. It's such a funny, delightful series that I hope its $24.4 million weekend (beating out Sucker Punch) will draw a lot of attention to these worthwhile books.

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Even if you missed last weekend's C2E2 conference, you can still check out one of the more interesting presentations from the event. Toby Greenwalt's informative Comic Books, Libraries, and Innovation slideshow is now online at his website. Toby is the adult services librarian at the Skokie, Illinois, public library and he's passionate about what he does. Check it out!

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Today on Publishing Perspectives comes a report on the Leipzig Book Fair last week. While the piece is on Germany's publishing industry as a whole, there's an interesting comics-related tidbit about tablets and comics readers: Namely, that Germany's digital comics readers prefer using their PCs far more than any mobile devices. The big deterrent to e-readers seems to be cost, as comics fans there don't want to commit to the expense.

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A couple of years ago, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting and interviewing Shaun Tan. Shaun's a charming, humble, and incredibly talented artist, and he's created one of the most stunning graphic novels of the past few years, The Arrival. As of last night, he's also an Academy Award winner! Congratulations to him for winning for his wonderful film The Lost Thing, based on his equally wonderful book. Shaun has to be one of the nicest guys ever to win an Oscar, and he's definitely deserving of it!

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