Benjamin Apel here, standing in again for Patrick Carman, fantastically busy summer writer. The second Trackers Mission has launched! Join 5,000+ other players as Lewis introduces the Deckard and go head to head with your friends on games like Chromatix and Memory Maze, designed to test your Tracking skills.

Trackers Missions

Skeleton Creek has been nominated for not just one state book award, but two. Both the Delaware Diamonds Booklist and the Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice Awards include Skeleton Creek this year. These statewide awards are chosen by readers, so if you happen to be in either Delaware or Pennsylvania and you want to vote for Skeleton Creek or just find out more, please visit the websites listed below.

www.doe.k12.de.us/dsra/deldiamonds.htm
www.psla.org/index.php/grants-a-awards/pa-young-readers-choice-awards/38-information-for-participation

Keep on rockin’ the summer – and head over to www.trackersbook.com, where I’m helping thousands of readers become Trackers! Ben

Can fart jokes save the reading souls of boys?

You better hope so.

Boys have lagged behind girls in reading achievement for more than 20 years, but the gender gap now exists in nearly every state and has widened to mammoth proportions — as much as 10 percentage points in some, according to the Center on Education Policy.

“It certainly should set off alarm bells,” said the center’s director, Jack Jennings. “It’s a significant separation.”

Read the rest here – The Associated Press

by Patrick Carman

“Summer Reading”

When I was ten I would not have positioned those two words so closely together on my own. I had a lot of other summer combos on my mind, like the following list of must-dos:

Summer: Swim, ride my skateboard, watch cartoons!
Summer: Jump my bike over my mom’s car!
Summer: Put ice cubes down my brother’s shirt, run for my life!
Summer: Sleep in until noon, eat pancakes for lunch, build a fort out of garbage, shave the dog!

Thank goodness for my mom, because she’s the one who made me put an exclamation point on the summer combo that probably made me a writer: Summer READING!

Read the rest of the article here – bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com

Benjamin Apel here, the PC Studio Director of Marketing. Patrick is currently on lockdown right now, writing his newest trilogy, so he asked me to deliver the update. The biggest news as of late is the recently released cover to the third Skeleton Creek book. It turned out even creepier than we expected, in a good way of course! If you are looking for more hints about what is going on with Ryan and Sarah, check out Ryan’s Facebook page called Skeleton Creek Investigations, www.facebook.com/skeletoncreek.

Get ready for the Trackers Missions, set to launch on Monday, June 28th. You’ll train with the best in order to fine-tune your digital tracking skills so you too can become a genuine TRACKER. To join the fun, check out the TRACKERS site by visiting www.trackersbook.com.

If you haven’t already, make sure to enter the Justine Magazine essay contest for your chance to win a trip to Comic Con to meet Patrick Carman himself! All you have to do is write about what you would do if you were indestructible. What else are you going to do with all your free time anyways? It’s summer vacation! So get to writing, and maybe you could be the one to win a trip to San Diego! Find out more info here.