First things first: Our 40th birthday party is coming up! Please be sure to have a look at what is going on (mostly in Amsterdam, since she’s the proper birthday girl this year), and please, if you can, drop by! We would love to see you. 
- R. I. P. Maurice Sendak, who will be eternally loved for Where the Wild Things Are, died today. The NY Times has an obituary. Thanks, Simone, for the well-timed tip.
- Awards! The Arthur C. Clarke Award was awarded to Jane Rogers for her book The Testament of Jessie Lamb. In an entirely different direction: cooks, click on over to the James Beard Foundation Awards page, where you’ll find oodles of winning cookbooks in many, many different categories (too many to name here!). Cookbook of the Year was awarded to Modernist Cuisine by Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet. Yes, it’s crazily expensive. It’s also 2400 pages and fat as an illegally stuffed goose.
- Of course, the Pulitzer Prize was not awarded in the Fiction category this year – so the NY Times did the vote again themselves. Still no majority, though.
- Lists! Authors vs. critics dustups (via flavorwire). Interesting to see how often the same people are involved…
More Awards! In the US, Children’s Book Week began yesterday with a gala and the Children’s Choice Book Awards, voted for solely by children. The winners are: Jeff Kinney for Diary of a Wimpy Kid 6: Cabin Fever (Author of the Year), Brian Selznick for Wonderstruck (Illustrator of the Year), Three Hens and a Peacock by Lester L. Laminack and Henry Cole (K – 2nd Grade), Bad Kitty Meets the Baby by Nick Bruel (3rd/4th Grade), Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt (5th/6th Grade), and Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare (Teen).
- The Guardian features an extract of the upcoming Wolf Hall sequel by Hilary Mantel, called Bring Up the Bodies. They also have a very lengthy profile on Kate Summerscale, author of award-winning The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: Or, The Murder at Road Hill House.
- Have some cash to spare and love to decipher terrible French handwriting? Two unpublished pages from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry will be auctioned later this month.