Hey, everyone! Nothing to see here. Just another Monday. Early spring. Springtime Monday! The flowers are blooming, the birds are chirping, the mice are freezing.

Wait…what?! OK. Won’t lie. We don’t really want to prank you, dear readers. We want to help you prank others on this practical jokiest of holidays. So how about learning how to make a computer mouse appear as if it’s busted? Or printing out some hilarious signs that you can attach to your car windows and confuse every passerby? Or what about a few simple computer pranks that you can pull on your friends? So many options! And it’s okay if you haven’t given today’s pranks too much thought, because these can be executed immediately.

Now get out there, pranksters, and make someone’s (your own, of course) day.

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Want lots more of the funniest, grossest, craziest, not-mean pranks on the planet? Check out Pranklopedia by Julie Winterbottom (her real name, we swear).

Sandra Boynton’s piggie knows how to celebrate with style.

You guys, it’s finally here! The most beautiful, mathematical time of the year: March 14th (3.14), otherwise known in the coolest circles* as Pi Day. Extra fun fact about this year? The date, 3.14.13, is also a palindrome. (We know. Mind blown.)

On this geekiest of holidays, fans of constant numbers like pi (which is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter**), celebrate the awesomeness of this magical number in, well, lots of different ways. Since we here at Workman love learning, math, and celebrations of all kinds, we’ve got some suggestions for how you can honor this very special day.

• Those of you who down-right love math can take a page out of Sean Connolly’s The Book of Perfectly Perilous Math and solve some of the most entertaining word problems ever (seriously). You want math-based stories about vampires, zombies, spy missions, and evil, scheming dukes who force you to play a do-or-die version of Let’s Make a Deal? Of course you do! Well, this book has got ‘em.
• For the competitive, but less mathematically inclined, why not head over to RecordSetter and set (or create) a new world record involving pi? We just know one of you wants to take on the “Most Digits Of Pi Recited While Blindfolded And Spinning A Dreidel” record.
• Or, you can, as some of us have done in years past, enjoy a slice of pie. Delicious and thematically appropriate.

Now get out there and do something pi(e)-themed!

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* Pun totally intended.
** But we’re sure you already knew that, you geniuses you.

A visual demonstration of what happens when you accept Workman Publishing as your nonexclusive, no-strings-attached Valentine.

Things may get racy.

Continue Reading »

“I took the liberty of redecorating your office! -JM”

Congratulations to Jordan Matter, whose beautiful book Dancers Among Us comes out next week!

In the New York area? Join us to celebrate the book’s release next Tuesday October 23 at the Paul Taylor Dance Company. Click to learn more and purchase tickets, which includes a signed copy and drink tickets.

Halloween is quickly approaching, and this year promises to be Spooktacular! Impress the ghouls & goblins in your life by making your own delicious candy from The Liddabit Sweets Candy Cookbook. From classics like Nutty Bars and mouthwatering Sea Salt Caramels to family-friendly treats like lollipops, this cookbook has everything you need!

Need help with candy making recipes or methods? Tweet using the #Liddabit hashtag, and send us your tips or questions about how to replicate your favorite candies. Your tweet will qualify as an entry for a chance to win a copy of The Liddabit Sweets Candy Cookbook by Liz Gutman and Jen King!

On Tuesday 10/16/2012 at 8pm ET/7PM CT, we will announce the winners during a live Twitter chat with the authors (@liddabitsweets). Follow the chat with the hashtag #Liddabit and get the answers to all of your questions & more!

5 Winners will receive:
1 copy of The Liddabit Sweets Candy Cookbook

To enter the #Liddabit contest, follow these steps:

1)         Follow WorkmanPub on Twitter (so we can contact you via DM if you win!).

2)         Tweet at Workman Publishing using the #Liddabit hashtag with your tips or questions about candy making recipes or methods. Both qualify as an entry for a chance to win. Entries must be received between noon ET on Tuesday 10/2/2012 and midnight ET on Tuesday 10/16/2012.

3)         Each Twitter account is allowed multiple entries – keep entering!

4)         Join the live Twitter chat with the authors (@liddabitsweets) on Tuesday 10/16/2012 at 8pm ET/7PM CT with the hashtag #Liddabit, to find out if you’ve won!

   Authors’ Site

Authors on Twitter

Authors on Facebook

See the official rules here.

“I couldn’t help but think that — as is the case with fresh-squeezed orange juice — [this] tonic would stand up well to a slug of vodka.” –John T. Edge, about Nancye Benson’s “Grapefruit Fizz” (from the Moxie Rx trailer, RIP) in The Truck Food Cookbook

Well, once John T. put it out there, we just couldn’t stop thinking about adding that slug of vodka. So we decided to try it, and used our BEA-weary friends in the publishing world as our guinea pigs when we served it alongside the spread of snacks at the annual Workman Open House party. Long story made short, it was a success. Adding a healthy splash of alcohol proved a worthy endeavor, and by popular demand, here’s the recipe (we’ll leave it to you to add the vodka and multiply the recipe as desired):

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Grapefruit Fizz
(Makes 2)

1 grapefruit
3 basil leaves
2 teaspoons agave nectar
Ice
2 pints soda water

Juice the grapefruit and add the basil. Pour the mixture into a blender and whir until the basil is pulverized. While the blender is running, add the agave nectar. Place ice in 2 pint glasses. Pour the grapefruit juice mixture over the ice, dividing it evenly between the 2 glasses. Top each serving with soda water, setting the remaining soda water aside for another use. Quaff.

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Happy Monday from your friends at Workman!

Can you believe it’s already less than 365 days until BEA ’13!?! Okay, okay — I know we’re all still recovering from the festival of fun that was #BEA12, so we thought we’d take a moment to share some BEA bites from this year. Why don’t you just sit back, relax, and enjoy the forklift ride….

Setting up a booth for a giant convention show is never a walk in the park — lifting and moving heavy boxes (oh, but they’re filled with books!), laying carpet, constructing shelves, all under those fluorescent lights…but this year — oh, this year, it was leaps and bounds and even arabesques better, with photographer Jordan Matter and some amazingly talented Alvin Ailey dancers on the scene (see Dylis Croman, above!). Besides the forklift, dancers (like Aisha Mitchell, below) took to the air and the rafters of the Javits Center to promote Jordan’s forthcoming book, Dancers Among Us.

I do think that hanging from the Workman clock tower is perhaps the best way to experience  Book Expo America. (Though Sarah Daley makes it look easy, the rest of us might need to invest in some crampons.)

For the record, I will from now on be transporting and unpacking boxes exclusively using the technique below as demonstrated by Cirque de Soleil dancer Luke McCollum. Because it does seem to be the best way.

Once the Great Wall of Workman was built (that’s a nearly 20-foot high fortress of books), and the first ARCs (Advance Reading Copies, for you non-book industry folks) were unpacked, it was time to pound the pavement carpeting to celebrate that other great tradition (besides the books) in publishing…the TOTE BAG.

Here are a few of the totally notable totes that we came home with — thanks to Chronicle Books (“See Things Differently” illustrated by Mike Perry), Quirk Books (celebrating their 10th Anniversary!), and Little, Brown (looking quite fetching for 175 years old)….and the Workman tote (of course), celebrating The Art of Procrastination.

And take a gander at the Quirk Books poster that inspired their tote –  a wonderful ode, and a sweet stack of books!

And while we’re showing off loot, here’s the ARC bounty that we are so excited to dig into:

Justice at Caldwell Ranch by B.J. Daniels (Harlequin), Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson (Basic Books), Return to Me by Justina Chen Headley (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers), All the Right Stuff by Walter Dean Myers (Amistad), The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers (Little, Brown), The Round House by Louise Erdrich (Harper), Zom-B by Darren Shan (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers), Does This Church Make Me Look Fat? by Rhoda Janzen (Grand Central Publishing), So Close to You by Rachel Carter (HarperTeen), White Truffles in Winter by N.M. Kelby (W. W. Norton & Company), Next Time You See Me by Katia Leif (Avon), and The Other by Thomas Tryon (NYRB Classics). And a couple we missed, but are looking forward to reading when the books come out: Burn for Burn by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian (Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers) and Princess Elizabeth’s Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal (Bantam) — who happens to be the wife of Workman author, Noel MacNeal!)

And because BEA was the real party (like we need to point out our party favors again), we’ll call the Workman Open House the after party — where everyone got to take a photo booth SAFARI. From book editors, to sellers, to publishers, to readers — the savanna was crawling with bookish types!

And at the end of the day, author/photographer Jordan Matter crept out from behind his camera and traded those graceful dancers for his charming editors!

Till BEA ’13…(Seriously, though, our studio is already at work designing the model for the Workman booth for next year!).

The last weekend in April saw Workmanites at events of all kinds, from a crafter’s wedding paradise at the Etsy wedding expo to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Sakura Matsuri, a Japanese cultural celebration. But the other big event of the weekend was the USA Science and Engineering Festival, a free event for families and kids to get up close and personal with real examples of science at work. I was lucky enough to represent Workman—and all of our awesome science books—at the two-day celebration, and I’m excited to share the details with you now!

The adventure began on Friday morning, when Maggie, John, and I hit the road in our amazing custom Brain Quest minivan!! This year marks Brain Quest’s 20th anniversary, and we’ve teamed up with Chrysler to give away over $25,000 in scholarship money and other prizes through the Brain Quest College Tuition Sweepstakes. Be sure to enter online!

Maggie and John are ready to hit the road in style.

It’s a long drive from New York City to Washington, D.C., but we came prepared: In addition to Brain Quest for the Car and Natan Last’s crossword puzzle book Word., we also brought a copy of All-American Car-I-Oke—and busted out a car-rocking rendition of “Proud Mary.”

Maggie bringing down the house---er, car.

When we arrived at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, we pulled the van into our booth, which was decked out with some truly amazing signage, made by our great studio team.

Brain Quest has never looked better.

After a good night’s sleep, we got up bright and early to greet the crowds! Thousands of eager science enthusiasts flocked to the convention center to get some hands-on scientific action. As you could probably guess, a huge part of our weekend was about Brain Quest. Lots of kids stopped by the booth to be quizzed on math and science topics from their grade levels. And we unveiled the brand new free Brain Quest app for iPad, iPhone, and Nook!

Jessica quizzes some Girl Scouts/future Marie Curies, while two others play with the new Brain Quest app for iPad (right).

Plus, just in case you think we were too easy on the Brain Questers, Selina fired questions at kids while they hula hooped.

"I'll take the physical challenge!"

We also had the distinct pleasure of hosting not one but two Workman authors in our booth. The first was Sean Connolly, author of The Book of Potentially Catastrophic Science and The Book of Totally Irresponsible Science. Sean performed experiments from those two books as well as from his most recent endeavor, The Book of Perfectly Perilous Math. Below, Sean Connolly demonstrates some of the more surprising principles of sound waves to young science buffs.

Stop, hey, what's that sound?

And did you ever hear the story of the inventor of chess, who asked only that his only reward for inventing such a spectacular game be a piece of rice for the first square of the board, two for the next, four for the next, and so on, doubling the amount for each square? Below, Sean uses a real chess board to show that the reward wasn’t as measly as you might think.

Scientists of all ages are amazed by Sean's math skills.

Also in attendance was Allen Kurzweil, author and inventor of Potato Chip Science, a book and kit that includes everything you need to complete 30 science experiments involving potatoes and potato chips. Allen showed us how to turn an ordinary potato into a mind-blowing display of Boyle’s Law, which states that volume and pressure are inversely related. In other words, as pressure increases, volume decreases (and vice versa). In other other words, load a chunk of raw potato into either end of a patented Potato Propulsion Pipe, apply pressure, and BAM! Potato goes flying! Science!!

A budding rocket scientist loads his Potato Propulsion Pipe.

No one can resist a mad scientist who advocates launching veggies in the air.

The USA Science and Engineering Festival was a truly wonderful experience, and I’m so glad I got to be a part of it. Seeing all those kids learning about the way science affects their everyday lives proved something I’ve been pretty sure of all along: It’s FUN to be smart!

—Avery, who got to stand about 50 yards from her childhood hero Bill Nye the Science Guy. BILL! BILL! BILL! BILL!

Last weekend was FULL of Workman author events! There was a crew dispatched to Washington, D.C. to the USA Science and Engineering Festival (#scifest) to celebrate BrainQuest‘s 20th anniversary. In the fray, too, were authors Sean Connolly and Allen Kurzweil, conducting totally irresponsible, potentially catastrophic, and otherwise potato-related science experiments. Back in Brooklyn, the Godfather of Sudoku himself, Maki Kaji, was tending to the crowds that flocked to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens to see the cherry blossoms and celebrate Sakura Matsuri. More on all those events in the coming days, but in the meantime, we hopped a train into Manhattan where author Kayte Terry (the creative brain behind this amazing chandelier) demonstrated a project from her new book at Etsy’s first ever wedding expo!

More than 700 visitors (mostly brides-to-be, their grooms, moms, and bridal brigades) came through the intimate space festooned in handmade goodness. There were baked treats, signature cocktails, letterpress stationery, gowns, neckties, shoes, head pieces, and other keepsakes, and in the midst of it all, Kayte (the only craft star in attendance with a make-and-take activity!) helped guests fold paper favor boxes from scavenged decorative papers (old book pages, vintage maps, magazine clippings, scrapbook bits, etc.).

Did you catch that paper fascinator in Kayte’s hair? Perfect for the Paper Made! bride… (also found on page 126 in the book!).

So many adorable brides….

So many favor boxes…wrangle those bridesmaids together for a pre-wedding paper folding extravaganza!

This happy duo happen to be getting hitched on my 5-year anniversary!

So much paper folding, so many sparkling ring fingers!

Some stunning save-the-date cards on display…

Cake toppers, anyone?

All the ribbon and trim decor was subtle and fairy tale-like — so dreamy!

One of our editorial assistants was totally crushing on this dress; I’m feeling smitten with this Fantastic Mr. Fox-inspired neckwear.

And it’s nice to know that some wedding decor can last well after the honeymoon — that bridge poster print hangs in my baby’s nursery! And a lasting sentiment to honor the day…

If you missed the Etsy event last weekend, COME THIS MONDAY May 7, 2012 to PowerHouse Arena in DUMBO, Brooklyn,where Kayte will be launching her book officially with more paper crafting make-and-takes, a photo booth, some bubbly concoctions (will they be served in paper cups?), books for sale, books for signing, and more!

It’s 3/14, so you nerds know what that means: It’s Pi Day*! We here at Workman love anything that brings out our geekiest sides, so we’re celebrating this most mathematical of days with the release of The Book of Perfectly Perilous Math by Sean Connolly. If you want to make middle school math fun–really, it’s possible!–you need this book.

Let’s say a vampire has moved onto your block, and every month he feeds on two people in your town, turning them into vampires. One month later, he and the new vampires are all capable of turning two more people into vampires—a pattern that continues until some brave individual intervenes. Approximately how many months will it take for your 500,000-person town to become populated entirely by blood-sucking fiends if they’re not stopped?

Did we just ask a word problem about a vampire invasion? Yeah, we did! If you want more life-or-death scenarios, this book has got ‘em, including questions about killer tornadoes, deadly spiders, lethal lasers, and out-of-control asteroids.

Now, if you’ll excuse us, it’s time to solve circumference problems while eating varieties of pie. A perfect Pi Day? We think so.

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*3.14 are the first three digits of pi, of course!