HarperCollins Children’s Books editorial director and SVP Barbara Lalicki will retire at the end of the month after 40 years in publishing.

Rosemary Brosnan will be promoted to replace Lalicki. Editor in chief Kate Jackson broke the news in an internal memo. Here’s more from the EIC:

Barbara began her career at Coward, McCann/Putnam, moved to Four Winds Press/Scholastic, and Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, and then served as Vice-President and Editorial Director at Bradbury Press/Macmillan, National Geographic Society, Morrow Junior Books, and HarperCollins, where she has been Senior Vice- President and Editorial Director since 1999. Barbara has worked on many award-winning books, including the Newbery Honor Books Hatchet by Gary Paulsen and Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun by Rhoda Blumberg, and the Coretta Scott King Award winner Justin and the Best Biscuits in the World and the Coretta Scott King Honor Book Mississippi Challenge, both by Mildred Pitts Walter. She also worked extensively with Beverly Cleary, Dan Gutman and Susan Jeffers.

I mean, after the initial flurry of activity surrounding the prospect of a Jenna Bush book deal, there’s barely a ripple when HarperCollins announces it wins, and that the book will be published this fall? Ah, well. Anyway, USA TODAY reports that the co-first daughter says her forthcoming book for teens – about a 17-year-old single mother in Panama who is living with HIV – will end with a “call to action.” She adds that her book, which will be supported by a tour to schools, libraries and bookstores, is aimed at “getting kids thinking and involved,” Bush said Monday by phone from Panama, where she has worked since September as an unpaid intern for UNICEF.

Bush, a former public school teacher in Washington, D.C., says: “I’m aware that not all kids can pick up and fly to Panama. I’m very lucky.” But, Bush says, “there’s so much they can do” to deal with issues of “exclusion” – from research on HIV discrimination to “inviting new kids to sit with them in the cafeteria.” Her book has an expected print run of 500,000 copies; Kate Jackson at HarperCollins Children’s Books was the acquiring editor.