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Set to begin shooting in London at the end of the month, Vampire Academy: Blood Sisters, the adaptation of the first in a series by Richelle Mead (Penguin/Razorbill), is busily adding new cast members.
The leads were cast in February. Zoey Deutch, who had a supporting role in Beautiful Creatures, will star as Rose Hathaway, newcomer Lucy Fry as Rose’s best friend Lissa, and Russian actor Danila Kozlovsky as Rose’s mentor, Dimitri Belikov.
The latest additions are Sami Gayle, (Blue Bloods, CBS), Cameron Monaghan (Shameless), Ashley Charles (White Buffalo) and Claire Foy (White Heat).
Penguin Teen Australia has created a handy “Vampire Academy Cheat Sheet,” for those who are trying to keep track (link to the site for a larger version).
The blockbuster of the summer, Dan Brown’s Inferno, (RH/Doubleday), arrives on Tuesday, with an announced 4 million copy first printing, forcing below the radar any other title that dares to show its cover next week. But a few other books will appear; some publishers use the reverse logic that the increased foot traffic in stores works to other book’s advantage.
Many librarians will be cheering the release of the 8th in Stuart MacBride’s Logan McRae mystery series, Close to the Bone, (HarperCollins). Beloved for his dark humor in Scotland, he is less known here. HarperCollins is in the midst of bringing all his books to the American readers. If you are not yet a convert, listen to this irresistible recommendation from HarperCollins’ MidWinter Buzz session.
The media will be paying attention to two quite different memoirs. Tennis legend Jimmy Connors will appear on Rock Center with Brian Williams tonight to promote his memor, called, of course, The Outsider, (Harper). This Sunday, Jessica Buchanan appears on 60 Minutes to promote her memoir, Impossible Odds, (S&S/Atria) about which recounts her harrowing kidnapping in Somalia and rescue by Navy SEALs.
Also arriving next week are the tie-ins to the release of the summer’s next long-delayed, much-anticipated movie, World War Z, starring Brad Pitt which hits theaters on June 21.
Next week continues the picture book palooza we’ve experienced this apring, so we’re devoting most of this column to a few of the notables, and just one of the dozens of YA titles that will also arrive.
This cumulative tale larded with old West vernacular is a soon-to be story time favorite. I agree with the Kirkus assessment, “Pitch-perfect rhyming text bounces along with peppy phrases telling the tale of a cowboy who likes to keep things clean and tidy. Clyde tries tactic after tactic to catch his dog for a scrub down, each new method adding another layer of mayhem to the scene, with a lassoed hog, wet chickens and a kicking mule adding to the hilarious hijinks.”
Srinivasan struck gold with her stunning debut Little Owl’s Night (2011) mines similar early childhood territory with a lovely quiet story about the joys of companionship and solitude.
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Water in the Park, Emily Jenkinss, Stephanie Graegin, (RH/Schwartz & Wade)
Emily Jenkin has quietly created a shelf of read alouds, each one a jewel and an essential purchase. That New Animal was a completely new take on how kids feel about the arrival of a younger sibling. I was blown away byFive Creatures, a very clever exercise in critical thinking skills with a subtle nod to the Venn diagram. Last year’s Lemonade in Winter was a gift to teachers who wants to incorporate math into their literature program. And now, proving once again that she can not be pigeon holed, Water in the Park is a fresh reflection of the everyday lives of children in a neighborhood park. Jenkin’s rhythmic language ensures that this new classic will be read aloud again and again.
Mini Grey’s Traction Man series is my go-to for preschoolers who are obsessed by superheroes. In this new book, Grey puts her own unique comic spin on this familiar storybook theme of talking toys that have their own secret life.
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—————- The Mighty Lalouche, Mathew Olshan, illus. Sophie Blackall, (RH/Schwartz & Wade)
“One hundred and a few-odd years ago, in Paris, France, there lived a humble postman named Lalouche.
He was small, Lalouche, and rather bony, but his hands were nimble, his legs were fast, and his arms were strong”
And so begins this story of an underdog who became a champion.
Blackall’s paintings of the characters, boxers with nom de plumes like “Bleriot” (lighter than air, unafraid of heights) and “The Pointillist” (pinpoint accuracy, confuses the colorblind) support Olshan’s humor and wit. The illustrations are painted on paper then cutout, layered in dioramas and photographed to create a fantastical world.
Highly recommended by librarians on YA GalleyChat, this debut by screenwriter Iserson (Fox’s New Girl, NBC’s Up All Night and SNL) features an entitled rich girl forced to face real life after being expelled from private school, it called “Quirky, fun.” Kirkus notes that part of the quirkiness is and occasional “surfeit of swearing.”
Last year’s word-of-mouth debut phenomenonWonder, R.J. Palacio, (RH/ Knopf Young Readers; Brilliance Audio), which is still a #1 NYT best seller after 23 weeks, is being adapted by Lionsgate, reports Deadline.
Hired as the screenwriter is Jack Thorne, whose credits include How I Live Now, based on the novel by Meg Rosoff, currently in pre-production and an episode of the MTV series, Skins.
The cover for the third and final book in the YA Divergent trilogy, Allegiant(HarperCollins/Tegen; Dreamscape audio; both, 10/22/13), by Veronica Roth is revealed today on Entertainment Weekly‘s YA-obsessed blog, “Shelf Life.”
In Divergent movie news, the film adaptation only began shooting recently, with a plan to open on March 21 of next year, but the producers are clearly the feeling confident. Summit Entertainment has signed up a screenwriter for the sequel,
Salt Lake City librarian Josh Hanagarne is interviewed in today’s issue of USA Today for his book, The World’s Strongest Librarian, (Penguin/Gotham. 5/2/13). Both weight lifting and books have helped him deal with his Tourette’s. About being a librarian, he says, “As a breed, we’re the ultimate generalists. I’ll never know everything about anything, but I’ll know something about almost everything and that’s how I like to live.”
Somebody must like it. The movie adaptation of The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones doesn’t arrive in theaters until August 23, but the team behind it is planning on a rematch of stars Lily Collins and Jamie Campbell Bower in the sequel, The Mortal Instruments: City Of Ashes, with production set to begin this fall.
There’s plenty more material. Cassandra Clare’s series consists of six books (the final one arrives next March), as well as a 3-part prequel series, Infernal Devices, which just concluded with Clockwork Princess, (S&S/ Margaret K. McElderry, 3/19/3). That’s not all, the author has announced a new series of sequels, called The Dark Artifices, to begin in 2015.
Tom Hanks’ next movie role is based on Captain Richard Phillips’ memoir, A Captain’s Duty, about the 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates of the unarmed merchant marine ship he commanded. Phillips became a national hero by courageously leading his crew to safety.
Titled Captain Phillips, it is directed by Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum, The Bourne Supremecy), and is coming to theaters on Oct 11.
The Agatha Awards were announced on Saturday, just two days after the Edgars. Among the many well-known authors and publishers picking up awards, including Louise Penny who won Best Novel for The Beautiful Mystery(Macmillan/Minotaur), was small independent Dallas publisher Henery Press, winning Best First Novel with Lowcountry Boilby Susan M. Boyer. The Childrens/Young Adult award went to the second in the Code Busters Club series, The Haunted Lighthouse by Penney Warner (Egmont).
All the winners and nominees are listed after the jump. Download our spreadsheet with ordering information and other available formats, Agatha 2012, Winners and Nominees.
Last night, the James Beard Foundation declared Gran Cocina Latina: The Food of Latin America, Maricel Presilla (W. W. Norton) the Cookbook of the Year. It has already won acclaim, appearing on several 2012 cookbooks lists (see our downloadable spreadsheet, 2012 — Best Cookbooks) and winning the IACP Award for Best General Cookbook.
Conversely, the book that had been named IACP’s Cookbook of the Year, was a Beard category winner, for International, Jerusalem: A Cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, (Ten Speed Press).
Marcus Samuelsson’sYes, Chef: A Memoir, (Random House; RH Audio) won for Writing And Literature. It had also won the IACP’s award for a similar category, Literary Food Writing.
Inducted into the Cookbook Hall of Fame was Anne Willan, author of many titles on French cooking, including La Varenne Pratique(RH/Crown, 1989). Her next book is coming in August, One Soufflé at a Time: A Memoir of Food and France (Macmillan/St. Martin’s).
Unexpectedly, the winner in the Reference and Scholarship category is also available in audio; The Art Of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration Of Essential Concepts And Processes From Around The World, Sandor Ellix Katz, (Chelsea Green Publishing; audio, from Tantor– MP3 Audio Sample). Following the jump, the full list of winners; click here to download our spreadsheet with ordering information, James Beard Cookbook Award Winners, 2012.
Leading up to the release of Baz Luhrmann’s interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, some are debating whether the book lives up to its name.
Rick Riordan’s next publication is a short story, “The Son of Sobek,” included in the paperback edition of The Kane Chronicles, Book Three: The Serpent’s Shadow (Disney/Hyperion, releasing today; also to be released as an e-book, with audio read by the author, on June 19). The cover and an interview with Riordan are featured in today’s issue of USA Today.
In “The Son of Sobek,” Percy Jackson (of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, which features Greek mythology) and Carter Kane (of The Kane Chronicles, featuring Egyptian) come together for the first time. Riordian tells USA Today, “It was definitely reader driven. The fans wanted to see a crossover, and I thought, ‘Let’s see what happens!’”
He also notes, “Sobek is the crocodile god from Egypt, and the son of Sobek would be one of this followers. So … you can expect some major crocodile action in this book. The cover captures Carter and Percy at their first meeting … The two don’t really start on the best terms.”
Book four in the Heroes of Olympus series, The House of Hades(Disney/Hyperion; Listening Library) arrives Oct. 8.
The first trailer for the adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s Sci Fi novel, Ender’s Game, debuted online today. The movie debuts on Nov. 1 and stars:
Harrison Ford … Colonel Hyrum Graff
Abigail Breslin …Valentine Wiggin
Ben Kingsley … Mazer Rackham
Asa Butterfield … Ender Wiggin
Han Soto … Colonel Graff’s aide
Hailee Steinfeld … Petra Arkanian
Viola Davis … Major Gwen Anderson
It also happens to arrive with a good deal of fanfare. One of the first consumer reviews, Dwight Garner’s appears in the print edition of the NYT tomorrow. Noting that, since it is based on true stories of torture during the Chechen wars, it “can be sickening reading,” but he says it is leavened by the “human warmth and comedy [Marra] smuggles, like samizdat, into his busy story.” The review is only intermittently laudatory, however. Garner admits, “I admired this novel more than I warmed to it.”
There were no negatives in the review on NPR’s All Things Considered last night from a surprising source. Meg Wolitzer, who has written that men’s fiction gets more serious literary attention than does women’s, delivered a rave for this book by a male novelist, calling it “an absorbing novel about unspeakable things” that is “highly, deeply readable.”
UPDATE: Washington Post’s Ron Charles is also a fan, calling it “a flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles … At the risk of raising your expectations too high, I have to say you simply must read this book.” If you’re going to read just one review of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena,this the one. It is the most thoughtful and literate.
Expect many more reviews in the next couple of weeks. Library holds are still light at this point, but growing.
Set to begin shooting in London at the end of the month, Vampire Academy: Blood Sisters, the adaptation of the first in a series by Richelle Mead (Penguin/Razorbill), is busily adding new cast members.
