ABRAMS has partnered with Tumblr to launch poetrybomb.tumblr.com — a tumblr blog which invites people to read, share, reblog and submit poetry. All month long we will be showcasing emerging and established poets, as well as other poetry campaigns from various publishers and organizations.

Today, we are thrilled to celebrate the official release of ART2-D2’S GUIDE TO FOLDING AND DOODLING! The companion activity book to our New York Times bestselling ORIGAMI YODA series by Tom Angleberger. Tom will show you how to fold your own Art2-D2 in a really cool instructional video after the break!

THIS IS MADNESS with Darth Paper, Art2-D2 and Origami Yoda! Vote for R2-D2 on StarWars.com!

Looking for something classier than green beer? A little more unique than corned beef & cabbage? Yvette van Boven’s Home Made Winter includes quite a few authentic Irish recipes (Colcannon, Irish Stew, DIY Irish Cream Liqueur), but I settled on the “Dublin Lawyer” for this piece. The two main ingredients are lobster and Irish whiskey – how could I resist?! Yvette’s headnote for this recipe reads: Because lawyers from Dublin are fat, rich, and always drunk…

It’s been a big week for Design*Sponge managing editor Amy Azzarito. Her first book, Past & Present: 24 Favorite Moments in Decorative Arts History and 24 Modern DIY Projects Inspired by Them, has hit stores, and we couldn’t be more excited!

Today we are celebrating the release of Bruised by debut author Sarah Skilton! When Imogen, a sixteen-year-old black belt in Tae Kwon Do, freezes during a holdup at a local diner, the gunman is shot and killed by the police, and she blames herself for his death. Before the shooting, she believed that her black belt made her stronger than everyone else—more responsible, more capable. But now that her sense of self has been challenged, she must rebuild her life, a process that includes redefining her relationship with her family and navigating first love with the boy who was at the diner with her during the shoot-out.

We made it to Kansas City and back! Despite major snowstorms before and after, Erica Warshal and I made it safely to and from the American Booksellers Association’s 8th Annual Winter Institute last week. We are thrilled to take part each year with other publishing houses, big and small. This year’s institute was particularly strong for ABRAMS, with informative panels, a new bookseller focus session, and with a debut author for Amulet Books taking the spotlight.

Created by Dawn “The Doodle Queen” Sokol, Art Doodle Loveis an interactive fill-in book full of prompts that will motivate you to discover yourself while developing your artistic skills. The pages provide fun, colorful backdrops that are sure to jumpstart your creativity.  

Eager to put markers to paper, we picked a prompt from the book and challenged some people around the office to let their creative juices flow, doodling what they saw within the splotches and drips. We were amazed by the different ways each person interpreted and altered the page. See what we came up with over on the STC Craft Blog.

In mid-January of this year, the Children’s book group headed up to Midtown to take a behind-the-scenes tour of Grand Central Terminal. We were lucky to have as our tour guide a Grand Central legend: the extremely knowledgeable Danny Brucker. Danny has been giving tours at Grand Central for over two decades, and his energy and ceaseless enthusiasm for the history of the building were infectious.

Hold on to your hat: Yoko Ono, who was born in Tokyo on February 18, 1933, turns eighty today. I remember reading a quote from a few years back—damned if I can find it now—in which Yoko said that she didn’t think she had accomplished much in her then seventy-something years of life. It’s because my collaborator, Carolyn Boriss-Krimsky, and I so feverishly disagree with her on this point that we took it upon ourselves to tell her story by way of Yoko Ono: Collector of Skies.