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In the News |
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Embracing Technology in a YA World |
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Speakers Lisa McMann
and David Levithan. |
"The future is now," said David Levithan, author and executive editorial director at Scholastic, stressing that YA publishing needs to adapt to changes brought on by teens’ use of technology. Levithan’s remarks were part of his keynote address at the books and publishing preconference of this week’s Ypulse Mashup in San Francisco, an annual event focusing on youth media, marketing and technology. YA authors and publishing executives alike spoke at subsequent panels about how technology is already changing how they publicize—and even produce—books. |
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More News |
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'Moribito' Heads to America in Print and on Screen |
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Beginning August 24, Cartoon Network's [adult swim] will air Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, a popular Japanese anime series, two months after Scholastic's publication of a newly translated edition of the novel on which the series is based.
The novel, which shares its name with the anime, is the first in a series of 10 books by author Nahoko Uehashi, and was first published in Japan in 1996 by Kaisei-Sha. The series has gone on to sell more than 500,000 copies in its home market, spawning this 26-episode anime series (based on the first novel only), from which manga titles were in turn adapted. Media Blasters LLC handles the licensing of the TV series, which debuted last year in Japan and is directed by Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex). DVDs of the anime will also be available in the U.S. at a later date.
Uehashi's series first came to attention of Scholastic's Arthur Levine at the 2001 Bologna Fair via the Japan Foreign Rights Centre, but it wasn't until he learned of the anime series in 2006 that he decided to bring the property to the U.S. "We found out there was this wonderful Japanese television show that was being produced, and that there was a good chance of it coming to American TV," says Cheryl Klein, senior editor at Arthur A. Levine Books, who is editing the Moribito books. "We took the series forward, and people [at Scholastic] were sort of blown away by all the action in it and the fantasy elements." |
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Book News |
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Renowned Pianist Tells His Story |
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Chinese prodigy Lang Lang began playing the piano at the age of three. Two years later, he won his first musical competition and gave his debut public recital. Now 26, Lang Lang has performed with many major symphony orchestras around the world, playing at such venues as the White House, Beijing's Great Hall of the People and London's Royal Albert Hall. To relay his remarkable life story, the pianist teamed up with Michael French to pen Lang Lang: Playing with Flying Keys, out this month from Delacorte. Doubleday's Spiegel & Grau imprint is simultaneously releasing an adult version, Lang Lang: Journey of a Thousand Miles, which Lang Lang wrote with David Ritz.
The young virtuoso, whose recordings repeatedly land atop classical music charts, hopes the book will help him achieve what he describes as his professional ambition: "to make classical music known to all young children around the world—to make classical music cool." This week, Lang Lang is promoting his books with signings and performances in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Through his autobiography, he wants to provide children insight into his experiences and his deep love of music. "The purpose in writing this book is to get more connected to children and also for them to understand the process of growing as a musician," he says. "I believe it will inspire the young generation to have the passion to learn music." |
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Retailing News |
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Midnight Party Madness |
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Fans as far as the eye can
see, for a Meyer signing last year
at Borders in Fairfax, Va. |
Last summer, as town squares filled with thousands of families celebrating the final Harry Potter volume, customer expectations were forever changed for big children's book releases. Many kids and parents now expect an activities-packed evening that peaks at the stroke of midnight with a coveted new book. But are midnight parties necessarily the best way to boost sales and reading excitement?
One year after the late-night celebrations for HP7, two books are about to put the midnight-party concept to the test: Breaking Dawn, the fourth and final book in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga (Aug. 2), and Brisingr, third in Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle (Sept. 20). Weighing in with 3.2 million copies, Breaking Dawn is breaking Little, Brown's previous record for largest first printing, while Brisingr with 2.5 million marks the first time Random House Children's Books has had a Saturday release. Final preparations for thousands of events are under way for Breaking Dawn, while many Paolini events are still in the planning stage.
In our story, many retailers, large and small, offer their take on whether they'll be participating in more midnight madness. |
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More Retailing News |
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Lowry's to Offer Limited-Edition David Small Prints |
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Bookseller Tom Lowry, owner of Lowry’s Books in Three Rivers. Mich., and children’s book illustrator David Small are collaborating in a venture to make Small’s art available to collectors. The two are producing a limited number of giclée ink-jet prints of Small’s work, which will be sold exclusively through Lowry’s Books, both in-store and on its Web site. Each print, which will be numbered and signed in 75 to 100-copy print runs, will retail for $495 (unframed). The prints are the same size (11-1/2 x 9) as the original art. “They’re extraordinary,” says Small. “I use a little pastel in my
work—there’s a bit of a trompe l’oeil effect with giclée. You feel that if you touch the pastel, the chalk will come off on your fingers.”
According to Lowry, 12 illustrations from Small’s best-known works will be produced initially, taken from Imogene’s Antlers by Small; The Friend by Sarah Stewart (Small’s wife); The Library by Stewart; The Gardener by Stewart; and So You Want to be President? by Judith St. George. “It takes an hour for each print,” Lowry explains. “These are very high-quality prints.”
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In Brief |
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Riordan Goes to Camp |
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| Photo: Andrew Sansome. |
Earlier this spring, Disney Book Group held a sweepstakes on the Percy Jackson Web site in support of The Battle of the Labyrinth, fourth in Rick Riordan's series. The winner was to receive a spot at a session of Camp Half Blood Day Camp in Austin, Tex., based on the camp featured in the novels. Last week, sweepstakes winner David Castellanos attended the sold-out third session and, along with his sister Jessica, got to meet the author (seen here). |
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Lowry's First Play |
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Author Lois Lowry is adapting her 2006 novel Gossamer into a play, the first time she has written for the stage. "To take a new look at something already written and published—to go at it again, in a new way, is a chance few writers get," Lowry said in a statement. The play, which is being co-commissioned by the Oregon Children's Theatre of Portland and Milwaukee's First Stage Children's Theater, will have its world premiere on September 19 at First Stage, running there through October 5 before moving to Portland October 18 to November 9. Lowry collaborated with the artistic directors of both theaters on the play, and while they will use the same script, the staging will be unique to each theater's production. |
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A Royal Welcome in Tokyo |
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Children's publisher Clavis got some regal attention at last week's Tokyo International Book Fair. Each year, the royal family selects one domestic and one foreign publisher to visit at the fair, and this year in the latter category it chose Clavis, which recently began selling its titles in the U.S. Here, publisher Philippe Werck greets Princess Kiko and Prince Akishino. The publisher presented the royal couple with three autographed books by author/illustrator Guido van Genechten for their son, Prince Hisahito.
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Q&A |
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In the Winners' Circle |
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Jenny Downham and David
Fickling (front row); their
awards were presented by
Linda Buckley-Archer and
Philip Pullman (back row).
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On July 9, the 2008 Branford Boase Award was awarded to debut author Jenny Downham and her editor David Fickling for Before I Die. Before I Die had already won the Waterstone's First Book Award and has been named to the longlist for the Guardian Children's Book Award. Downham and Fickling were given their awards by Philip Pullman at a party at Walker Books, which hosts the award, established in memory of Walker fiction editor Wendy Boase and author Henrietta Branford, both of whom died of cancer. "I am incredibly grateful to David Fickling for being a sensitive and energetic champion of the book," Downham said. "With just one book published and a second book half-written, winning this award is an enormous confidence boost." It was Fickling's second win in a row, as he
also edited last year's winner, Siobhan Dowd's A Swift Pure Cry. Finding Violet Park by Jenny Valentine, edited by Stella Paskins at HarperCollins, was highly commended for the award.
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Featured Reviews |
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 Frankenstein Takes the Cake |
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 Adam Rex. Harcourt, $16 (40p) ISBN 978-0-15-206235-4
With maniacal glee, Rex (Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich) delivers spot-on rhymes about B-movie monsters, loosely organized around the nuptials of Frankenstein and his bride. An oil painting of the wedding cake is as creamy as a Wayne Thiebaud confection, and an author bio in haiku silences quibblers: "He knows Frankenstein's/ the doctor, not the monster/ Enough already." In a digital comics sequence, Frankenstein's mother-in-law frets over her daughter's resurrection and engagement ("I'm an open-minded person.... but I never thought my little girl would marry someone green. There, I said it"); later, the Bride questions her betrothed but decides, "I'm not getting any less dead." Rex's ideal audience may be pop-culture buffs: he spoofs Peanuts with a vampiric Charlie
Brown; plans the Frankensteins' reception menu around monsters' food allergies (no garlic for Dracula); sets up the Headless Horseman's photo blog on the tribulations of having a pumpkin head; and creates a running gag about "The Raven," where a sarcastic bird mocks Edgar Allan Poe. Rex's eclectic imagery and freewheeling verse will have readers going back for seconds. Ages 5–10. (Sept.)
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The Midnight Twins |
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 Jacquelyn Mitchard. Razorbill, $16.99 (240p) ISBN 978-1-59514-160-6
Experimenting with genre, Mitchard (The Deep End of the Ocean) proffers the first of a projected trilogy about identical twins Mallory and Meredith, born two minutes apart—one on New Year's Eve, the other on New Year's Day. The two are perfect opposites, mirrors of each other; they share each other's dreams and feel each other's thoughts—until their 13th birthday, when they nearly die in a terrible fire that has been deliberately set. The fire leaves one of them scarred—they are no longer physically identical—and both of them endowed with psychic powers: one can see the future, the other far into the past. However familiar some of these elements, Mitchard uses them to conjure genuine horror in the form of a villain who begins by torturing neighborhood pets
and graduates to murdering young women. The plot moves quickly, propelled by the mysteries of the sisters' relationship. Members of the target audience will be particularly vulnerable to the twins' heightened intimacy and extra-sensitive to any possibility of rupture; the girls' supernatural knowledge is a delicious bonus. Ages 12–up. (July)
Reviews from the July 14 issue of Publishers Weekly.
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see all of this week's reviews
including our web exclusive Annex *
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Bestsellers |
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Movie Alert |
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The pants still fit! The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, the second film based on Ann Brashares's novels about a peripatetic pair of jeans and the four friends who share them, arrives in theaters August 6. The film's 2005 predecessor grossed just over $39 million in the U.S. at the box office, according to Variety. The sequel, produced by Alcon Entertainment and distributed by Warner Bros., reunites the four stars of the first film—Alexis Bledel, America Ferrara, Blake Lively and Amber Tamblyn—under a new director, Sanaa Hamri.
Last month, Delacorte Press released a trade paperback tie-in novel, which includes the complete text of the fourth book in the series, Forever in Blue (the new film centers on events from that book, as well as some plot points from the second and third books), as well as a color photo insert and five excerpted scenes from the previous books in the series. The tie-in had a 275,000-copy first printing, and Random House sponsored a "Win a Trip to the Movie Premiere!" contest with flip.com, which ended last month. For the contest, teens designed a pair of jeans using the site's software, and author Brashares selected the winner: 19-year-old Blanca Hiriart, who receives a trip for two to the film's New York
City premiere on July 28 at the Ziegfeld Theatre.
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People |
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Scholastic has several new hires and promotions. David Posner has joined Scholastic as subsidiary rights associate; he had worked at Infinity Management. Zachary Clark has joined Scholastic as cross-channel assistant; he was previously an intern with Scholastic Press. Greg Rutty was promoted to associate editor, Scholastic Press; he was an assistant editor at Scholastic Paperbacks. Jonathan Valuckas has joined Scholastic Paperbacks as editorial coordinator; he was previously executive assistant at Scholastic. Rafi Mittlefehldt has been promoted to operations analyst; he was previously a temporary assistant.
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Rights Report |
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The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi is being made into a film starring Morgan Freeman, Pierce Brosnan and Saoirse Ronan, according to Variety. Danny DeVito has written the screenplay and will also direct. DeVito also directed the 1996 film adaptation of Roald Dahl's Matilda. Charlotte Doyle is in pre-production, with shooting to begin in September. |
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Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, the 1982 picture book from Judi and Ron Barrett, was optioned back in 2006. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Sony Pictures Animation has now set a release date: January 15, 2010. The film will be the company's first stereoscopic 3-D digital release.
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In the Media |
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From Entertainment Weekly: This week's issue devotes nine pages to a cover feature about the phenomenon that is Stephenie Meyer. See their cover story and also an update on the Twilight movie.
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And more Twilight Saga coverage in the New York Times: columnist Gail Collins writes about Meyer's heroine Bella as "virginal Goth girl," admitting, "Every so often I discover that the whole world seems obsessed with a pop-culture phenomenon that I've missed out on completely."
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From Newsweek: Post-apocalyptic books, including The Hunger Games, the City of Ember series, and Life As We Knew It, are on the rise.
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Also from Newsweek: What to do when you're publishing a book about a presidential candidate, and she is no longer a candidate? S&S is facing that issue right now.
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From The Bookseller: The paperback of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is just out in the U.K.; some booksellers complained that the launch was "low-key," but its publisher says it's "delighted" with retailer support.
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From the New York Times:
There are more than 2,000 children's authors and illustrators living near New York City, and they often turn to their local schools and playgrounds for inspiration in their books.
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Also from the Times:
A communications professor concluded in her thesis that in today's teen romance series, "brands are more important than romantic relationships to female protagonists' popularity."
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From the Los Angeles Times:
Columnist-turned-blogger Patrick Goldstein spoke with Alan Horn, head of Warner Brothers, about the delay for Where the Wild Things Are movie.
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New in ShelfTalker |
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This week Alison gives a photographic tour of Mt. Auburn Cemetery, in which many famous writers and publishers are buried (including Charles C. Little and James C. Brown—of Little, Brown fame), and raves about a few spring 2009 titles she can't wait to sell. See all her latest posts here.
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