There’s three Beatrix Potter stories in the mix, along with some adaptations of a few folk tales, and classic children’s stories by Rudyard Kipling (and two by Washington Irving). There’s even a few characters from history, whose lives are being re-told in special biographies for younger readers. To see the selection, just point your browser to tinyurl.com/DollarKidBooks. It looks like some of these books are brand new, and they normally sell for $7.77 — so it’s a pretty big savings.

Here’s a list of the 45 children’s books that have been reduced in price to just 99 cents!

The Velveteen Rabbit
Beatrix Potter’s A Tale of Two Bad Mice
The Three Little Pigs
How the Leopard Got his Spots by Rudyard Kipling
The Three Bill Goats Gruff
Johnny Appleseed
The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen
How the Camel Get His Hump by Rudyard Kipling
Jack and the Beanstalk
Goldilocks
Pecos Bill
Rip Van Winkle
Rumpelstiltskin
The Elephant’s Child by Rudyard Kipling
John Henry
How the Rhinocerous Got His Skin
Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby
The Night Before Christmas
Anansi
Red Riding Hood
Tom Thumb
Noah and the Ark
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
The Emperor’s New Clothes
Paul Bunyan
Pinocchio
Annie Oakley
Davy Crocket
Parables That Jesus Told
Aladdin
Beatrix Potter’s Tales of Mr. Jeremy Fisher
Mose the Fireman
The Bremen Town Musicians
Beatrix Potter’s The Tailor of Gloucester
The Emperor and the Nightingale by Hans Christian Andersen
Princess Scargo and the Birthday Pumpkin
The Boy Who Drew Cats
The Firebird
Follow the Drinking Gord
The Tiger and the Brahmin
Peachboy
The Monkey People
Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit
The Steadfast Tin Soldier
Squanto and the First Thanksgiving
The Fisherman and his Wife
Stormalong

“May is proving to be a great month for readers of all tastes,” Amazon bragged in an e-mail that touted all the special offers. And I have to admit that I’m impressed by how many magazines are available for the
free 90-day subscriptions. Most of them are big-name publications that have been around for decades. To browse the selection, visit tinyurl.com/FreeKindleMagazines. Here’s a list of the 18 magazines that you can read for free for 90 days on your Kindle!

   Field & Stream
   Ladies’ Home Journal
   TV Guide
   ESPN The Magazine
   Family Circle
   The American Scholar
   Outdoor Life
   More
   Every Day with Rachael Ray
   Country Woman
   Healthy Cooking
   Do It Yourself
   Simple & Delicious
   EatingWell
   Traditional Home
   Midwest Living
   Siempre Mujer
   Diabetic Living

And as an added bonus, that page also lists six more magazines that are available as free color apps for your Kindle Fire tablet (or any other Android-connected device).

   Readers’ Digest
   Vogue Magazine
   Bon Appetit
   Better Homes and Gardens
   Parents Magazine
   Fitness Magzine

It’s a great reminder that a Kindle can read magazines as well as ebooks. (Even after the 90-day trial ends, you can continue your subscription to most of these magazines for just $1.00 a month.)
This is a limited-time offer, so sign up this week if you’re interested in a free trial subscription. This offer ends on Thursday, May 31.

In the same e-mail, Amazon also called attention to a nice selection of discounted thriller novels. (For an easy-to-remember short-cut, just go to tinyurl.com/CheapKindleThrills. They’re all available for $2.99 or less. Here’s a list of the discounted thriller novels.

   Already Gone by John Rector
   The Shop by J. Carson Black
   Vaccine Nation by David Lender
   The Immortalists by Kyle Mills
   Liquid Fear by Scott Nicholson
   Resuscitation by D.M. Annechino
   A Small Fortune by Audrey Braun

And finally, Amazon’s also discounted some children’s picture books. (Each one available for just $1.99!) Just point your web browser to tinyurl.com/199KindleKidsBooks. I have to admit that I smiled at some of the silly titles. Here’s a complete list.

   There Was an Old Monkey Who Swallowed a Frog
   The Hiccupotamus
   What If Everybody Did That?
   Too Many Fairies: A Celtic Tale
   If Beaver Had A Fever
   Sneeze, Big Bear, Sneeze!
   Stars! Stars! Stars!
   Nancy Elizabeth Wallace
   Jack and the Giant Barbecue

“The quality of the entries continues to climb…” one Amazon official announced this week, citing reports from their panels of expert judges. The novels get better every year, making this the most competitive contest yet, and he warns that when it comes time for Amazon’s customers to choose a winner, “they’ll have have a challenge picking a favorite.”

That’s right — you get to pick the winner. Amazon’s collecting votes through a web page at http://www.amazon.com/abna , and they’re keeping things honest with a one-vote-per-account rule. You can also read what the judges have already said about each entry, and there’s even a “Meet the Finalists” page, where you can read each novel’s reviews. And – of course — you can also download a free excerpt for your Kindle.

There’s three finalists each in two different categories — “General Fiction” and “Young Adult.” Here’s the three “breakthrough novels” that made it into the finals in the “general fiction” category.

   The Beautiful Land by Alan Averill
   Grace Humiston and the Vanishing by Charles Kelly
   A Chant of Love and Lamentation by Brian Reeves

And here’s the three “breakthrough novels” that reached the final round in the “Young Adult Fiction” category.

   Dreamcatchers by Casey (Cassandra) Griffin
   Out of Nowhere by Rebecca Phillips
   On Little Wings by Regina Sirois

Two grand prize winners will be selected — one in each category — and each winner will receive not only a publishing contract with Penguin Group, but also a hefty $15,000 advance! Amazon and Penguin teamed up with CreateSpace to deliver this event, and Publisher’s Weekly also played a role, providing reviewers for each novel that reached the semi-finals. And Amazon’s even promoting the creation of “local chapters” supporting new authors and offering events “to cheer each other on as the contest progresses.”

Amazon will announce the winners on June 16th at an awards ceremony in Seattle. (So remember, Amazon has to receive your votes by Wednesday, May 30th.) This is the fifth year that Amazon’s held the event, but it seems like a fun way to discover fresh new talent at the start of their career. I’ve always wondered if self-publishing will change the kind of fiction that authors write.

And if it does, it’s possible that they’ll find their first audiences through Amazon’s breakthrough novel contest!

All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Heriot

“Veterinarian James Herriot recalls life in England during World War II,” reads the book’s description on Amazon, “when the great forces of the modern world came even to his sleepy Yorkshire hamlet.” This heart-warming classic about the people in his village — and the animals that they love — normally costs $14.99, but for the month of May Amazon’s reduced the price to just $3.99. (It’s quite a deal, since the print edition was nearly 500 pages long!)

The Year the Music Changed by Diane Thomas

I’ve always been fascinated by the life of Elvis Presley, but it’s also inspired some very imaginative novels!. The Year the Music changed invents a new story, told with imaginary letters between a 14-year-old fan and the 20-year-old singer who was about to change the world forever. A review from Publisher’s Weekly reports that author Diane Thomas “delved into Presley biographies, communed with his fans on the Internet and produced a warm, lively and immensely readable novel that will especially touch fans of ‘the King. ‘” One Georgia newspaper even wrote that the novel “may engrave itself into the memories of more readers than “To Kill a Mockingbird.” . . . [It's] the most satisfying novel I’ve read in many years.”

Drawn with the Sword : Reflections on the American Civil War by James M. McPherson

I was surprised to learn that the author of this book had already won a Pulitzer Prize for an earlier book about the Civil War — and, according to Wikipedia, that he’s even on the editorial board for Encyclopedia Britannica. James McPherson is considered a real authority, and when this book was first released in 1996, Publisher’s Weekly applauded its four themes — how the war started, why it ended the way it did, Abraham Lincoln’s role, and how it ultimately affected America. Plus, it ends with a rousing and thought-provoking essay about what wrong with modern historians!

What Color is My World by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

This March saw the release of a unique new book by a famous basketball player. (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar still holds the all-time record for points scored during his 20-year career in the NBA — 38,387 points!) But at the age of 65, he turned his attention to a book for children about overlooked African-American inventors, both past and present. “I was surprised at how many inventors that affected our everyday life had been left out of what we learned in school…” he revealed in an exclusive interview that appears on the book’s page at Amazon.com. “I’ve said many times that if I hadn’t become a professional basketball player, I would have become a history teacher. There’s so much to learn from history.”

There’s also several cookbooks that Amazon’s offering at a big discount, including Rice & Curry: Sri Lankan Home Cooking and The Pharsoh’s Kitchen: Recipes from Ancient Egypt’s Enduring Food Traditions. Maybe Amazon is celebrating the arrival of spring, since they’ve also discounted an ebook called Fast, Fresh and Green, and there’s even an advice book about vegetable gardens. But of course, the book I was most intrigued by was Southern Cakes: Sweet and Irresistible Recipes for Everyday Celebrations.

Maybe I should buy a copy of that for my girlfriend, since for my birthday this year, she’s promised to bake me a tasty cake!

Here’s what’s on the list…

In One Person

John Irving wrote some of the most famous novels of the last 50 years — everything from The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire to The Cider-House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. But this time he’s written a more poltical story, according to the book’s description on Amazon, which calls it “precisely the kind of astonishing alchemy we associate with a John Irving novel…, brilliant, political, provocative, tragic, and funny!”

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk: a Novel

Eight American soldiers survive an intense firefight in Iraq, only to be honored with a guest appearance beside the Dallas Cowboys during a Thanksgiving halftime show. There they meet a wild cast of characters, according to the book’s description on Amazon, and “Over the course of this day, Billy will begin to understand difficult truths about himself, his country, his struggling family, and his brothers-in-arms – soldiers both dead and alive. In the final few hours before returning to Iraq, Billy will drink and brawl, yearn for home and mourn those missing, face a heart-wrenching decision, and discover pure love and a bitter wisdom far beyond his years.”

An Uncommon Education

This thought-provoking novel tells the story of a woman in college who’s “consumed by loneliness,” according to the book’s description on Amazon, “until the day she sees a girl fall into the freezing waters of a lake.” There’s a secret Shakespeare society, rituals, friendship, and enthusiastic students, offering a “compelling portrait of a quest for greatness and the grace of human limitations,” and a novel that’s both “poignant and wise.”

Season of the Witch
This is a fascinating history of San Francisco during a period of transformation — from 1967 to 1982. A reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle called it “A gritty corrective to our rosy memories…enthralling, news-driven history…smart and briskly paced tale…” (They added, “I found it hard to put down!”) This 482-page book looks absolutely fascinating, and it was written by David Talbot, who co-founded Salon.com and (according to Wikipedia) has also written for The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Time Magazine.

Home

Toni Morrison has already won a Nobel prize, so it’s a literary event when she releases a brand new novel. “Nobody owns a sentence like Ms. Morrison,” Amazon writes in their review, describing its “slender, lyrical prose” that tells the story of a Korean war veteran and his sister who’s been abandoned by her husband. One newspaper called it “an intimate story with epic implications,” and another said author Toni Morrison was “at her best,” calling Home “her finest work since the groundbreaking 1992 novel Beloved.”

Trapeze

The story of a female spy in World War II is based on the author’s own memories of her personal connection to a real-life spy. Her mother worked in England’s Women’s Auxiliary Air Force alongside another woman who was recruited for Britain’s “Special Operations Executive” program. “The role of SOE was destruction, not intelligence,” the author remembers on the book’s page at Amazon. “In the famous words of Winston Churchill, they were to ‘set Europe ablaze’.” The author’s father, a pilot in the Royal Air Force, air-dropped supplies to the same undercover agents when she behind enemy lines in France. Amazon describes the book as “a smart, well-paced spy thriller based on the true, extraordinary story of the SOE…”

The Passage of Power

Biographer Robert A. Caro has spent several decades producing a series of definitive books about the life of President Lyndon Johnson. And according to the book’s description on Amazon, he’s still delivering the pieces of a very powerful portrait. “Book Four of Robert A. Caro’s monumental The Years of Lyndon Johnson displays all the narrative energy and illuminating insight that led the Times of London to acclaim it as ‘one of the truly great political biographies of the modern age. A masterpiece’.”

“This is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming…”

This book actually has a very long subtitle that sardonically lists out all the things it will help the reader overcome. (Like grief, disease, shyness, decrepitude “and more. For Young and Old Alike.”) But it’s really a new dark humor advice memoir by Augusten Burroughs, delivering “raw, hard-knock-life advice,” according to Amazon, “veering from brutal to hilarious to deeply compassionate.” It looks brutal but intriguing, and it’s described on Amazon’s page as a “no-holds barred” book that “will challenge your notion of self-help books!”

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power

This isn’t just any investigation into a wealthy energy producer. It was written by a staff writer for The New Yorker who also spent 20 years as a reporter at The Washington Post, where he’d won a Pulitzer Prize, according to the book’s page on Amazon. Various reviewers described the book as masterful, magisterial, meticulous, or multi-angled, with one calling it a “must-read” that at the same time is both “riveting and appalling.” And one Amazon customer even warned that “You can’t put this book down. It just grabs you!”

To claim the credit, just visit this web page — or go to tinyurl.com/TwoFreeMp3s — and then just complete this sentence. “My favorite song right now is: ____.” A blue button lets you share your response with your friends on Facebook — and then claim your $2.00 credit for music downloads from Amazon!

You can even combine Amazon’s credit with the other discounts they’re already offering on their music page. For example, they’re offering downloads of entire albums for just five dollars — and sometimes even less. Madonna’s new album Mdna — released just seven weeks ago — is available for just $3.99, and so is Coldplay’s newest album, Mylo Xyloto. Plus, there’s a section of free song downloads, even songs by big-name, major-label recording artists like the Flaming Lips, Heart, Spoon, and Ziggy Marley. (I was excited to find some free classical tracks — one by Luciano Pavarotti, and a Rachmaninoff piano concerto by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.)

I’ve been uploading Amazon’s .mp3-format music files onto my Kindle, trying to create the perfect “background music” effect while reading certain ebooks. (When I read U.S. history, I like to listen to Aaron Copland!) Sometimes I’ll keep skipping through my music files, trying to find the right fit for the ebook I’m reading. And of course, I’m also a big fan of listening to music files while I’m surfing the web on my computer!

If you’re a movie lover, Amazon’s discounted the cost of downloading the entire soundtrack albums for some of this summer’s biggest blockbusters. Avengers: Assemble is just $5.99 (with music “from and inspired by” the movie.) And Amazon’s offering the same low price for The Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond. (Or, for $5.00, there’s a similar collection of songs from Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax. ) Remember, that’s the price before you subtract the special $2.00 credit that Amazon’s giving away online.

This means that all of Amazon’s $5.00 albums now cost just $3.00 — including the Go-Go’s Beauty and the Beat album and Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band’s Live Bullet. And some albums are even cheaper. For example, for $3.99 — or, $1.99, after applying the discount — Amazon will sell you one of nearly 400 different five-song collections from Rhino Records, commemorating classic rock artists like Foreigner, Foghat, Deep Purple, as well as “oldies” groups like The Coasters, The Drifters, Little Richard, or Otis Redding, plus collections of Ray Charles, John Coltrane, or Sammy Davis Jr.

I was really impressed by the wide variety of $3.99 $1.99 five-song collections that Rhino Records has available as .mp3 downloads. There were collections for 1960s bands like the Grateful Dead, The Association, and The Monkees, and there were collections for 1980s bands like The Cars, the B-52s, the Roches, and even Twisted Sister. (Also available were collections from some favorite light rock artists, like Gordon Lightfoot, James Taylor, George Benson, and Bread.) Plus, Rhino’s even selling discounted collections with five comedy tracks from Steve Martin, Bill Cosby, or Cheech and Chong. There’s some rap albums in the mix, with collections of Busta Rhymes, Coolio, or Ice-T — and more “alternative” bands like They Might Be Giants, the Rembrandts, and the Ramones…

There’s some other interesting full-length albums that are also available for just $3.99 $1.99 , including “99 Must-Have Christmas songs,” which Amazon pointed out was a $92.04 savings over the cost of buying each .mp3 individually. And for the same price, you can also buy Bill Cosby’s classic comedy album, 200 m.p.h..I think my all-time favorite title for any album on the site was Yeah Yeah Yeah by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. By the end of the afternoon, I’d spent nearly an hour browsing through all the choices before finally spending my $2.00 credit.

So what’s your current favorite song right now?

Ironically, their source also contradicts an earlier rumor. Just last weekend the technology blogs claimed that Amazon was already ordering parts for a color E-Ink Kindle — but the article from Reuters is reporting very different information. “The source said that there was very little chance of Amazon launching one this year. Though Amazon has held can talks with E Ink, the companies haven’t reached any concrete decisions yet, he said.” And they’ve tracked down another on-the-record source — an analyst who tracks the supply chains for electronic components — who had doubts about the last color E-ink parts that they’d seen in October. To be used on a mass scale, they’d require more refinements, he told the news organization on Tuesday, adding pointedly that “I doubt if the color Kindle is ready for a launch.”

Besides, Amazon already has their color, touchscreen tablets, the Kindle Fire, and Amazon also has some new plans for that product line, according to Reuters. According to their source, Amazon is planning a larger version of the tablet — its screen will measure 8.9 inches diagonally — but they won’t release it until later in 2012, when it’s closer to the big Christmas shopping season. Of course, it’s hard to know where the Kindle is really going just from reading predictions in newspapers. Each one seems to have small bits of information — which sometimes contradict each other!

For example, the sales of the Kindle Fire are actually slumping, according to one source. “Amazon wasn’t able to sustain its tablet sales momentum during the first quarter…” reports eWeek, noting that after the big burst of Christmas sales, Amazon’s share of the tablet market for the next three months “fell from nearly 17 percent…to just above 4 percent.” The statistics come from the technology analysts at IDC, whose figures suggest that in the first three months of 2012, where Apple sold 11.8 million iPads, Amazon sold about 700,000 Kindle Fire tablets.

Of course, maybe the larger screen will improve the sales of Amazon’s color tablets. Or maybe there’ll be a surge in new owners for the E-Ink Kindles, if the front-lighting turns out to be surprisingly popular. A columnist at Forbes magazine even suggests that Amazon might eventually end up selling their ebooks to Nook owners! When you’re talking about the future, anything is possible.

That’s one of the fun things about being part of the Kindle revolution…

Every day Amazon offers a big one-day discount on one special ebook. It’s on a special web page called “the Kindle Daily Deal” (available at this shortcut: tinyurl.com/DailyKindleDeal ) But today’s deal is even better than usual. Because on Sunday — for one day only — Amazon is discounting twenty different ebooks!

“Today only, 20 great novels that inspired movies are just $0.99 each on Kindle,” Amazon explains at the top of the page. It’s a series of books from a publishing house named Rosetta (titled — what else? — “Books into Film”.) “Individual Daily Deal titles may have additional territory restrictions, and not all deals are available in all territories,” Amazon warns at the top of the web page. But if you’re lucky enough to be in the right country — and you can make it to the web page before midnight — there’s some very intriguing titles on the list!

For example, they’re offering a 99-cent version of the book Shoeless Joe, which was the basis for Kevin Costner’s baseball movie, Field of Dreams. There’s also a discounted version of I am Legend, which was made into a movie starring Will Smith, and even the original book version for Village of the Damned. But they’ve also discounted books that inspired some of the great classic movies, like In the Heat of the Night, and even Marilyn Monroe’s first movie, the noir classic Asphalt Jungle. I was surprised to see the books behind some of the ground-breaking films from the 1960s, including Midnight Cowboy and even Dr. Strangelove. And Slaughterhouse-Five, the great anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut, also made it onto the list too — available all day Sunday for just 99 cents.

Here’s the complete list of all the “Books into Film” Kindle ebooks that on sale Sunday for just 99 cents.

     Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
     I Am Legend
     Wizard’s First Rule (the basis for “Legend of the Seeker”)
     The Day of the Triffids
     To Dance with the White Dog: A Novel of Life, Loss, Mystery, and Hope
     Who Goes There (the basis for “The Thing”)
     Shoeless Joe (the basis for “Field of Dreams”)
     Girl in Hyacinth Blue
     Midwich Cuckoos (basis for “Village of the Damned”)
     Red Alert (The basis for “Dr. Strangelove”)
     Make Room! Make Room! (The basis for “Soylent Green”)
     In the Heat of the Night
     Midnight Cowboy
     Friday the Rabbi Slept Late
     The Sand Pebbles
     Fuzz
     Bang the Drum Slowly
     The Asphalt Jungle
     An American Tragedy (the basis for “A Place in the Sun”)
     The Brave Cowboy (the basis for “Lonely are the Brave”)

I just want to add that this is a deal so big, it took two different Amazon services to bring it to the web. The Kindle Daily Deal page combined forces with Amazon’s special Gold Box page (which offers their own “Deal of the Day”, plus other big discounts throughout the day which sometimes last for only a few hours.) It’s another page worth watching, and I’ve created a shorter URL so it’s easier to get there: tinyurl.com/GoldBoxPage

I think the only thing better than a good ebook is a good ebook that costs 99 cents!

This apparently isn’t the touchscreen Kindle Fire tablets, but the regular Kindles that display ebooks (and games) without a backlit screen. I saw this rumor on the “ToyBoy” technology blog at Ziff-Davis’s web site, but they’re citing a report from DigiTimes, a well-respected technology newspaper, who attributed their information to “industry sources”. They’d report that “makers in the supply chain” are believed to be shipping parts and components this month for a color e-book reader. And the blogger at Ziff-Davis had just one question left: what took them so long?

Amazon’s Kindle uses E-Ink’s screen technology, and that manufacturer has offered a color version of their screens since at least 2010. Last year they gave a demonstration of their 4,096-color screen at a tradeshow, according to Ziff-Davis’s blogger, but it was plagued with a “fairly lackluster color saturation,” and even Amazon’s CEO reportedly described the colors as “very pale.”

The blogger also links to an interview with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos at the web site for Consumer Reports from exactly one year ago. But if you read the rest of his comments, it sounds like Bezos was already interested in the idea of a color screen. He tells the interviewer that color e-ink technology “continues to be improved,” and that a low-power color screen that’s not back-lit like a computer monitor “makes a lot of sense… I think that’s something you could build a fantastic product around.”

We may be getting close to the day when Amazon finally launches a color Kindle. Maybe it’s a way for e-book readers to enjoy some of the same perks that are available in the bookstore for the Kindle Fire tablet. It is fun to see a full-color picture for the cover of your ebooks — and if you’re reading a magazine, there’d even be color pictures!

I just hope that when I’m finally ready to go back to reading — the words on the page stay in black and white!

I was sad to hear that Maurice Sendak died on Tuesday. He wrote “Where the Wild Things Are,” and also wrote or illustrated several dozen more books — all just as original, and just as exciting. So it’s surprising that there aren’t any Kindle ebooks available by Maurice Sendak. But there is one way to get Maurice Sendak’s works onto your Kindle — by listening to an audiobook!

And amazingly, there’s also a full-length novel adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are that was written by Dave Eggers!

The audiobook is narrated by Peter Schickele, who is better known as the classical music humorist, P.D.Q. Bach. Schickele also composed a lively musical score for the story, which plays in the background as he reads the book’s short dialogue. (Sendak’s story famously has only 10 sentences in it — just 338 words — but with the additional music, the audiobook version is six minutes long.) “Schickele narrates with infectious enthusiasm,” wrote one reviewer on Amazon, “bringing life to the words, sounding as if he’s telling his favorite story…”

It’s also available as a DVD with animated versions of Sendak’s original pictures — along with adaptations of more Sendak stories. The DVD includes versions of the four short poems in “The Nutshell Library” — Pierre, One Was Johnny, Alligators All Around, and Chicken Soup With Rice — sung and set to music by Carol King.) Just point your web browser to tinyurl.com/SendakCartoons. And that collection concludes with Schikele’s version of Sendak’s “In the Night Kitchen.”

Audible.com is also selling an audiobook which contains a 25-minute interview with Sendak on the PBS radio show, Fresh Air. (Sendak was one of two guests on the show, which also includes another 25-minute interview with actress Patricia Clarkson.) It was recorded in 2003, when 75-year-old Sendak had just released a new book called Brundibar that was based on a dramatic Czechoslovakian opera. The audiobook offers a fun to hear Maurice Sendak’s voice coming out of your Kindle!

Finally, “Where the Wild Things Are” was adapted into a live-action movie in 2009, with a screenplay that was co-written by the award-winning novelist Dave Eggers (who was once also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize). I’ve been a fan of Eggers since he wrote A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and along with the movie’s screenplay, he also wrote a full-length novel version of Sendak’s story. The San Francisco Chronicle called it a “funny and touching novelization of Maurice Sendak’s picture book,” saying that Eggers was “brilliant at portraying the exuberance and chaos of a young boy’s mind and heart.” And it’s available as a Kindle ebook. (Just aail your web browser away to tinyurl.com/SendakNovel )

I’m a big fan of Sendak. One year before he wrote Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak even drew the illustrations for a dark little children’s story by Robert Graves (the 67-year-old author of I, Claudius). People are remembering their favorite Sendak stories today, all around the web.

And it’s nice to know there’s also ways to remember Sendak with your Kindle!