The above photo’s from Book2Book, which reports on Puffin‘s first-ever Picture Book Boutique to celebrate some of its creative, individual picture books and the merits of their authors and illustrators. The event was held Monday on the 10th floor of the Strand.

Booksellers, agents and the media rubbed shoulders while talks were given by Giles Andrae (author of the best-selling Captain Flinn and creator of Purple Ronnie), India Knight (Sunday Times columnist and author of The Baby), Timothy Knapman and Adam Stower (author/illustrator duo on Mungo and the Spiders from Space), Ed Vere (author and illustrator of the critically acclaimed The Getaway and forthcoming Banana) and Jeanne Willis (author of Delilah Darling is in the Library).

The Bookseller reports that Penguin Books UK is to invest a five-figure sum in a book website for teenagers, to be run by a teen editorial board. The site will be launched in September and is aimed at readers aged from 13 to 18. The move follows research by Penguin which showed that three out of four teenagers get their information about books from the internet. “We found that conventional marketing won’t reach them but that we could reach this audience online,” said Puffin publicity director Adele Minchin.

The Penguin-branded website will cover titles from across the group, including Penguin-branded teenage titles from the Puffin list. Teen authors at Puffin include Meg Rosoff, Melvin Burgess and Nick Hornby. Penguin and youth marketing agency Livity are currently recruiting nine teenagers aged from 16 to 18 to form a London-based editorial team, and additional contributors from outside the capital. The team will spend a month developing the website with Puffin and Livity before taking control.

The death of political humorist (and GalleyCat fave) Art Buchwald has been covered extensively, and deservedly, all over the place this week, but Shelf Awareness points to one obit that ran yesterday in the Vineyard Gazette, the local paper for Martha’s Vineyard, where Buchwald often spent his summers. “The world of the printed word has lost a great icon,” declared Ann Nelson, owner of the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore yesterday. Nelson said a sign went up in the bookstore bidding farewell to Buchwald. “He always told me I had the power to make or break a writer’s racket, and he said, ‘I love her especially when she puts my book in the window,’” Nelson recalled.

Meanwhile, publishing in the UK mourns the loss of Richard Horne, who wrote political cartoons and children’s books under the pseudonym of Harry Horse. Horne was found dead in his home along with his wife, Mandy. The deaths are believed to be a suicide pact-Horse’s wife had been ill with multiple sclerosis for some time. “I was Harry’s fiction editor for 10 years at Puffin, and was privileged to work on three of the Roo books with him,” commented Puffin Senior Editor Yvonne Hooker to Publishing News. “How wonderful to be the first reader of Roo and GRANDFATHER’S AMAZING JOURNEYS into worlds that only Harry could have dreamed up. I truly believe he was a genius.”