EarlyWord

Claire Danes, who began her career with the realistic portrayal of a teenager in the TV series, My So-Called Life, will soon appear on the big screen as the mother of a teenage girl, in As Cool As I Am, based on a coming-of-age novel by Pete Fromm. Published in 2004, Kirkus said it explores “the sexual evolution of a cynical teenage girl who has the spunk and wit to survive two flaky parents and the urges of unbridled adolescence. ”

The trailer was just released (via Deadline). The movie begins a limited run on June 7.

Tie-in:
As Cool As I Am, Pete Fromm
On Sale Date: June 4, 2013
9781250045577, 1250045576
Paperback / softback / Trade paperback (US)
$16.00 US / $18.50 Can

Olympic gold medal soccer player Alex Morgan, currently playing for the Portland Thorns, scores with the first book in a planned middle grade series, The Kicks. Book one, Saving the Team (S&S Young Readers), debuts on the NYT Middle Grade Best Seller list at #7 during its in its first week on sale.

The second book in the series, Sabotage Season will be published in September. A third one  is in the works.

Best Seller lists used to be the domain of newly-released titles, but e-books are beginning to change that.

The Oracle Glass, by Judith Merkle Riley, a title originally published in 1994, was released by Sourcebooks last fall in both trade paperback and as a $1.99 e-book. On May 6, it was offered as both a Kindle “Daily Deal” and a Nook “Daily Find.” It debuted at #8 on the NYT Combined Print & E-Books best seller list this week (arriving at #7 on the NYT e-book only list but not on the trade paperback list).

The author, who died in 2010, was not able to enjoy her book’s belated success. Sourcebooks will release another of her historical novels, Master of All Desires, in July. Her books are available from library e-book vendors.

The “New Adult” genre has been labeled as the hot new category by the media (see USA Today and the NYT). Many of the titles had their success as self-published e-books, showing up on combined best seller lists, such as USA Today‘s and the NYT‘s combined adult lists.

One of the first “New Adult” titles to hit the NYT Young Adult list appeared last week, due to a change in the way the Times calculates the lists. Back in December, YA and Middle Grade lists, formerly lumped together under “Chapter Books,” were separated out, but more importantly for the “New Adult” category, the sales of e-books and print were combined.

On the YA list at #6, after two weeks is a title that won’t be released in print until August, While it Lasts, by Abbi Glines. A self-published success as an e-book, it was acquired by S&S’s Simon Pulse imprint last fall. A recent $1.99 offer for the e-book edition helped to propel sales, landing it on the list.

Glines’ earlier “New Adult” series, The Vincent Brothers was released by Simon Pulse in December, with an “Extended and Uncut” steamier version released as e-book only. A print boxed set (with “double the sexiness and seduction”) arrives in October.

While It Lasts is the third in the Sea Breeze series; Breathe will be published by Simon Pulse on June 4. Because of Low follows in July and Just for Now in late August.

Join us for YA GalleyChat to discuss forthcoming YA titles.

Tuesday, May 21 at 4 p.m., Eastern (3:30 for virtual cocktails)

Hashtag #ewyagc.

More details here.

Landing next week are several titles from big names who need no introductions. John Grisham continues his series featuring 13-year-old  legal prodigy, Theodore Boone (you may have to squint to see the title on the cover; it’s The Activist) … Friends Elephant & Piggie return in their 19th adventure in Mo Willems’ A Big Guy Took My Ball!  … Jennifer Brown again keys in to a hot teen subject, with a book on sexting, about a girl who sends her bodyfriend a picture that even a Thousand Words can’t take back.

The titles highlighted here and more arriving next week are on our downloadable spreadsheet, Kids New Title Radar, Week of May 20.

Picture Books

Ben Rides On, Matt Davies, (Macmillan/Roaring Brook Press)

Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Matt Davies ventures into the world of children’s books with his first title. While it addresses the familiar theme of facing a bully, the subject is made fresh with illustrations that recall David Catrow crossed with Ralph Steadman and capture Ben’s big feelings as he faces his nemesis.

How to Negotiate Everything Lisa Lutz, Illus. Jaime Temairik, (S & S BYR)

Not familiar with co-author David Spellman, (featured on the cover)? As a fan of Lisa Lutz’s Spellman Files mystery series, I am pleased to report that her first picture book exhibits her dry sense of humor and appreciation of the absurd, beginning with her faux co-author, the lawyer/older brother/ “good child” from her adult books. Sammy, the protagonist dispenses advice on how to get to “yes” whether making a deal for an ice cream or negotiating for a pet. Illustrator Jaime Temairik wows in her picture book debut with an animated cartoon style and judicious use of infographics.

 P.S. Be Eleven, Rita Williams-Garcia, (HarperCollins/Amisted)

The sequel to the Coretta Scott King Award winner (and Newbery honor title), One Crazy Summer has received starred reviews from all the prepub sources. In this story, the three sisters return to Brooklyn from their summer in California with their mother and the Black Panthers, portrayed in the previous book. The title, P.S. Be Eleven comes from their mother’s letters to her oldest daughter, Delphine; a caution to not grow up too fast.

Hotly anticipated ever since its release was announced in January, the big book of next week is Khaled Hosseini’s And the Mountains Echoed. Can it live up to expectations set by the author’s previous titles? Entertainment Weekly thinks so … A debut that begins in another strife-torn area of the world, We Need New Names gets a rare advance rave from the NYT‘s Michiko Kakutani … Alex Grecian, whose first mystery, The Yard was a librarian favorite, publishes a sequel, The Black Country… Norwegian author Jo Nesbo releases a new thriller, The Redeemer,  and Jeff Shaara views the Siege of Vicksburg in The Chain of Thunder … plus, released for the first time is a previously unpublished long narrative poem by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Full ordering information for all the titles highlighted here, plus many more, are available on our downloadable spreadsheet, New Title Radar, Week of May 20.

Watch List

We Need New Names, NoViolet Bulawayo, (Hachette/Little, Brown)

Called a “deeply felt and fiercely written debut novel,” in an early review by Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times, this debut is about a young woman escaping the brutality of Zimbabwe to live with her aunt in “Destroyedmichygen” (Detroit, Michigan). Says Kakutani, “Darling is 10 when we first meet her, and the voice Ms. Bulawayo has fashioned for her is utterly distinctive — by turns unsparing and lyrical, unsentimental and poetic, spiky and meditative.” It is also an IndieNext pick for June.

Media Magnets

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, George Packer, (Macmillan/FSG)

The author of the award-winning The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, Packer writes here about the U.S. “unwinding” into polarized factions and warns that it is  “a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams, its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer working.” Says the New Yorker (for which Packer is a staff writer), “Packer unpacks the current state of United States democracy by weaving together profiles of Americans as varied as tobacco farmers, Washington insiders, Newt Gingrich, and Jay-Z.”

Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success, Phil Jackson with Hugh Delehanty, (Penguin Press)

Prepub attention (in the L.A. Times and the Chicago Tribune, of course) is already causing legendary basketball coach Jackson’s memoir cum self-help leadership book to rise on Amazon

Margaret Thatcher: From Grantham to the Falklands, Charles Moore, (RH/Knopf)

This authorized biography is scheduled for coverage next week on the CBS Early Show, NPR’s Diane Rehm Show and MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

Neil Gaiman’s Make Good Art speech to Philadelphia’s University of the Arts’ 2012 graduating class became a viral hit. Released in book form (HarperCollins/Morrow) this week, it is rising on Amazon.

John Green’s speech to the graduating class of Butler University may not be far behind.

Predating both of them is David Foster Wallace’s speech to Kenyon College in 2005, a viral success later released in book form, This Is Water, (Hachette/Little,Brown). Recently, a short film based on the original was posted to YouTube and has been viewed nearly 5 million times in just ten days.

The “raining-on-the-parade” genre may have begun with a speech that wasn’t actually a speech. It was column by Mary Schmich in the Chicago Tribune in 1997 about what she would say if she had been asked to give a commencement address (which she hadn’t). An urban legend grew up that this was actually a speech given by Kurt Vonnegut at an MIT graduation. Vonnegut ruefully said he wished that were true, but it wasn’t. The column ended up being published as a gift book by Andrews and McMeel as Wear Sunscreen (the one piece of advice that Shmich found irrefutable) and re-released in a 10th anniversay edition in 2008. Baz Lurhmann turned it into a music video “Everyone’s Free to Wear Sunscreen.”

Pat Conroy’s beloved novel The Great Santini is based on the author’s troubled relationship with his abusive father.

In October, Conroy will publish a memoir, The Death of Santini, (RH/Nan A. Talese; RH Audio; RH Large Print) which, according to the publisher, describes how the two became closer and that love can “conquer even the meanest of men.”

At their Upfront Presentations yesterday, ABC debuted a trailer for Once Upon A Time In Wonderland, a spinoff of the Once Upon a Time series. It is scheduled to begin this fall on Thursdays at 8 p.m. (Once Upon a Time begins its third season on Sundays).

This is a bit confusing since rival network NBC greenlighted a pilot in early January for another series also loosely based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, called, Wonderland. Even “Curiouser and curiouser,” as Alice would say, NBC acquired that project from ABC Studios. In February, NBC announced that it was being pushed back, “because of the scale and complexity of the production, including visual effects” and would be filmed this summer for a possible mid-season pickup.

As enjoyable as rival Alice series might be, we are dubious that the NBC project will come to pass.

Below is the trailer for the ABC series:

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., a spinoff of the The Avengers film, will debut as a series on ABC this fall on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. Director Joss Whedon presented the trailer yesterday to media and advertisers gathered in New York for the network’s Upfront Prsentations.

In October, Marvel will  release S.H.I.E.L.D.: Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. illus. by Paul Neary, text by Bob Harras. The publisher’s sell lines suggest anticipating “an increase in demand for S.H.I.E.L.D. product, similar to what happened to the Infinity Gauntlet coming out of the Avengers film.” and notes, this is “one of the few classic S.H.I.E.L.D. series we will have on hand for the [TV] launch.”

The long-running 2007 bestseller, Lone Survivor (Hachette/Little, Brown), Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell’s memoir about how he survived a failed 2005 mission to capture a Taliban leader in Afghanistan, has been adapted as a movie that was just scheduled for release on Jan. 10, 2014.

Directed by Peter Berg (Battleship and Friday Night Lights), it stars Mark Wahlberg as Luttrell with Eric Bana, Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster as his fellow SEALs.

Interviewed earlier in Wall Street Journal, Berg said that his research included being embedded with the military in Iraq two years ago. He commented that, after the controversy about military cooperation with filmmakers on Zero Dark Thirty and author Chris Kyle on American Sniper, (HarperCollins/Morrow, 2012) that kind of access might not be possible today.

Last month, it was announced that Stephen Spielberg will direct a movie based on the latter, starring Bradley Cooper. Production is expected to begin in early 2014, just as Lone Survivor hits theaters.

Downton Abbey returns to PBS for an eight-week run, beginning January 5, 2014.

American fans will again be frustrated as spoilers emerge from the UK where the series debuts in the fall.

As we wrote earlier, both Shirley MacLaine and Maggie Smith will return to the show. However, Siobhan Finneran, who played the conniving lady’s maid O’Brien, will not be back.

The author of the best selling Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey (RH/Broadway; Tantor Media), Countess Fiona Carnarvon, is publishing a new book about Highclere Castle this fall, featuring Lady Almina’s successor, Lady Catherine, the Earl, and the Real Downton Abbey (RH/Broadway).

Of the 5 pilots based on books that NBC had green lighted, only About a Boy, is definitely on the fall schedule (although it may be based more on the movie, starring Hugh Grant, than the book by Nick Hornby). It was included in the upfront presentations to media and advertisers on Monday. Starring Minnie Driver and David Walton (New Girl), the half-hour show will air on the midseason schedule, Tuesdays at 9 p.m.

The other projects are either delayed or cancelled:

Girlfriend in a Coma – based on Douglas Coupland’s 1998 novel (HarperCollins). Christina Ricci has walked away from the lead, delaying the project.

I Am Victor – based on Jo Nesbo’s forthcoming, but not yet scheduled, book, was not mentioned in the upfront presentations, so may have been rejected.

The Sixth Gun –  based on the Oni Press graphic novel, a supernatural Western series that follows the story of six mythical guns, the sixth being the most powerful and dangerous –  Rejected

Wonderland – NBC – in which a girl named Clara wages war in Wonderland against an evil Queen once known as Alice – Production pushed back due to cost.

One of the new shows on the fall schedule is Dracula, but it appears to bear only passing acquaintance with Bram Stoker’s book. The hour-long show will air this fall on Fridays at 10 p.m.
 

Among the new series that FOX just announced for its fall lineup, is a loose adaptation of a classic, about a captain from the Revolutionary War named Ichabod who lands in the present day via a time warp and becomes a detective. The trailer for Sleepy Hollow, scheduled for  Monday nights, has just been released.

FOX announced last week that it is passing on its other possible series based on a book, the YA dystopian novel by Lauren Oliver, Delirium.

Official Web site: Fox.com/Sleepy-Hollow