Morning links.

Man, skip a few days of news round-ups, end up with eleventy-billion links to share. I'll probably do a few of these over the course of the day:

• At Egmont: Egmont Publishing closes US business. "Attempts to sell Egmont USA since October 2014 have not resulted in any final agreements. As a consequence, Egmont has decided to close the office, effective from January 31st 2015. ... The spring 2015 list will be published and books will continue to be available via Random House."
• At Publishers Weekly: Egmont USA to Close After Sale Attempt Falls Through. "Rob McMenemy, CEO of Egmont Publishing International, said the U.S. business, ultimately, "does not fit" with the company's strategy, as it has not been able to become a market leader in the States. He added that Egmont was "hoping to succeed with selling the business, unfortunately this has turned out not to be possible.”"
• At the Boston Globe: Exploring the thoughts of Curious George. "The other day, my 6-year- old, steeped in modern-day PBS nature shows, asked, out of the blue,”Why isn’t Curious George in the jungle with his mom and dad?” I stumbled around the answer, not wanting to tell the truth: “Because. . . animal trafficking.”"
• At io9: C.J. Cherryh Explains The Key To Creating Terrific Female Characters. "My goal is to create characters that men can identify with just the same as women identify with the male heroes. Everybody wants to be a hero in what they're reading."
• At the LA Times: Emily Carroll has produced a stunner of a comic in Frontier. "Here’s a beautiful curio: Frontier, a quarterly series from San Francisco indie comics publisher Youth in Decline. Each issue features a stand-alone work by a single artist. The most recent is “Ann by the Bed,” a 32-page comic by Emily Carroll, and it’s a powerhouse — a gothic horror story in which a child’s what-if scenario becomes a portal to a terror that is all too real." GIMME I NEED IT I NEED IT I NEED IT WHERE'S MY DEBIT CARD.
• At PW: Offill Wins Charlotte Zolotow Award for 'Sparky!'. "The award is given by the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and will be presented in Madison this spring. In a release, the committee said: “The marvelous humor is never overplayed as Offill skillfully maintains a measured, evenhanded tone and perfect pacing.”" LOVE SPARKY.
• At BroadwayWorld: 2015 Sydney Taylor Book Awards Announced. "Jim Aylesworth and Barbara McClintock, author and illustrator of My Grandfather's Coat, Loic Dauvillier, Marc Lizano and Greg Salsedo, authors and illustrators of Hidden: A Child's Story of the Holocaust and Donna Jo Napoli, author of Storm are the 2015 winners of the Sydney Taylor Book Award."
• At the Guardian: What's happening in children's books in 2015? A literary calendar.
• At the WaPo: James Patterson’s new book set to self-destruct. This is such a weird publicity stunt that a friend PMed me the link on the FB, asking, "Is James Patterson no longer selling well or something?"
• Current Issue (Sept/Oct 2014) at the American Book Review: Focus: The Color of Children's Literature.
• At the NYT: Finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Awards Are Announced. "The five fiction finalists are Chang-rae Lee’s eerie dystopian novel “On Such a Full Sea;” Marlon James’s novel “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” which centers on the 1976 assassination attempt on Bob Marley; Rabih Alameddine’s “An Unnecessary Woman,” a novel about a reclusive Beirut woman; Marilynne Robinson’s “Lila,” the final book in her trilogy set in the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa, and Lily King’s “Euphoria,” which was based on the life and work of the anthropologist Margaret Mead."