PBS Newshour is in the midst of a special summer reading series, featuring interviews with authors from last month’s Book Expo.

Yesterday, Sherman Alexie talked about his first picture book Thunder Boy Jr.,  illus. by Yuyi Morales (Hachette/Little, Brown), which was on the New York Times Children’s Picture Books best seller list for 3 weeks, and on the need for diversity in children’s book.

On Tuesday, Emma Cline was interviewed about her debut novel The Girls  (PRH/Random House; RH Audio; BOT; OverDrive Sample),, which landed on the most recent NYT Hardcover Fiction list at #3.

#MrowbackMonday
In 2008 I bought Chernow’s Hamilton bio to read on vacation.@HamiltonMusical rehearsal starts today. pic.twitter.com/C1CK2Xjdxw

— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) June 15, 2015

(via USA Today)

As a result of Miranda’s summer reading pick, Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton (Penguin Books) went back on the NYT Paperback Non-fiction list at #2 ten years after it was published in trade paperback (in 2005, its highest position was #12). Currently, it is #1 on that list.

A second full-length trailer for Tim Burton’sadaptation of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children has just been released. It gives a closer  at some of the characters, including Barron, a villain created for the film and played by Samuel L. Jackson.

Starring Asa Butterfield as 16-year-old Jacob with Eva Green (star of Showtime’s Penny Dreadful) as Miss Peregrine and Chris O’Dowd, Ella Purnell, Allison Janney, Rupert Everett, Terence Stamp and Judi Dench, the movie opens.on Sept. 30.

The tie-in:

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Movie Tie-In Edition)
Ransom Riggs
Quirk Books, Trade Paperback, August 2, 2016

Also coming is a behind-the-scenes companion book:

The Art of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children: The Art of the Film
Leah Gallo
Quirk Books, Hardcover, August 30, 2016
$39.99 USD, $49.99 CAD

If you’ve longed to attend San Diego Comic-Con, this year you can experience it vicariously. Syfy Presents Live From Comic-Con will run on the network the three nights of the show, July 21-23.

Host Will Arnett will, according to Deadline, “invite fans at the network’s outdoor stage to discuss and engage in the Con’s breaking news, insider party coverage, and exclusive content, along with sneak peeks of the most anticipated films and TV series.”

Too bad they don’t mention actual comics, but perhaps, at least, they will cover the Eisner winners. This year, by the way, a record number of women have been nominated for the award

Following on the heels of the “unexpected” success of the adaptation Me Before You (is it possible that Hollywood underestimated the female-led production?), director Thea Shamrock has her next assignment, reports Variety, directing another adaptation, the best selling YA dystopian series The Selection by Kiera Cass, (HarperTeen, 2012) as a feature film for Warner Bros.

Author Cass tweeted that she’s happy with the choice, but reminded fans that the project does not yet have the green light.

Fans don’t need the reminder. Back in 2012, as detailed by the site MoviePilot, the CW network ordered a pilot for a TV series based on the books. Not satisfied with the result, but not willing to give up, a new script was ordered and a new cast. The resulting pilot was also ultimately rejected. This may be the magic third time.

The first footage from DreamWorks Animation’s adaptation of Marla Frazee’s Boss Baby (S&S/Beach Lane, 2010) was shown to an enthusiastic audience this week during the Annecy International Animation Festival in the French Alps.

Directed by Tom McGrath (Madagascar), it features Alec Baldwin as the voice of the Baby, with Jimmy Kimmel and Lisa Kudrow playing as his parents.

Both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter praise the director’s use of CGI to mimic classic hand drawn cartoons. Variety reports that the screening “had the audience in stitches” and brought ” whoops of applause.”

The movie is described as “inspired” by Frazee’s picture book and adds several story lines. The tie-in, coming in January, is a novelization of the movie script:

The Boss Baby Junior Novelization
Tracey West
S&S/ Simon Spotlight
January 17, 2017
Hardcover and trade paperback

The fourth in the Hallmark Murder She Baked series based on JoAnne Fluke’s novels, this one titled A Deadly Recipe, premieres this Sunday.

Series star Alison Sweeney appeared on the Ellen Show yesterday to talk about the movies, working with a difficult co-star, and her own novel, Opportunity Knocks (Hachette Books. 4/5/16).

Preview the Hallmark movie here.

Tie-in:

Fudge Cupcake Murder
Joanne Fluke
Kensington: May 31, 2016
9781496711526, 1496711521
Mass Market
$7.99 USD, $8.99 CAD

The news of the death of Lois Duncan has brought an outpouring of warm appreciation for the pioneer YA suspense novelist. Even the site Jezebel took a break from snark to praise Duncan for taking “timeless literary themes—mystery, sin, longing, revenge and, of course, love—and [applying] them to teens without condescension.”

On NPR this morning, Petra Mayer says that “The Queen Of Teen Suspense” seemed to lose her taste for the genre after her  youngest daughter, Kait, was killed in 1989 in a crime that police called a random drive-by shooting. Duncan would not accept that explanation and devoted herself to trying to find the truth. According to Mayer, Warner Bros. had expressed interest in a documentary on the case just before Duncan’s sudden death.

Several movies and TV shows have been based on her books. In 2012, Stephenie Meyer bought the film rights to Down A Dark Hall. In 2014, a new adaptation of I Know What You Did Last Summer was announced 

This chat has now ended. You can read the archived version below.

For more on the Penguin Young Readers Program, click here.

If you’ve heard readers object that they don’t want to read yet another book about the problems of well-off New Yorkers, the Guardian verifies that it’s indeed a trend.

In a new twist, many of these NYC-centric novels are set in the recently trendy borough of Brooklyn. Tellingly, Emma Straub, the author of the Modern Lovers, (PRH/Riverhead), which just debuted at #14 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction list, recently told that paper that she set her book in the Ditmas Park section of Brooklyn, because she “wanted to stay as far away from the quote-unquote Brooklyn book as I could,” a fine distinction to those who are’t familiar with the differences of Brooklyn real estate.

The titles cited buy the Guardian as examples represent a range of genres, from Plum Sykes frothy Bergdorf Blondes (2004) to the multiple literary award nominee Hanya Yanagihara’s  A Little Life (2015).

The film adaptation of the best selling middle-grade novel Wonder by R.J. Palacio, (RH/ Knopf Young Readers, 2012), still on the NYT Hardcover Middle Grade list after 43 weeks. is now set for release on April 7, 2017. In the lead role is Jacob Tremblay, who starred in the Oscar-winning adaptation, Room. Julia Roberts will play his mother.

The movie is directed Stephen Chbosky, who wrote and  directed The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

It’s a week with no new movie or TV adaptations, but Disney’s Finding Dory opening on Friday has several tie-ins.

Finding Dory: The Junior Novelization (RH Disney (PRH/Disney) is aimed at kids aged 7 to 10. Also available in paperback, the hardcover edition is called the “Deluxe” version.

There’s a picture book, Finding Dory (Picture Book): Three Little Words, Amy Novesky (Hachette/Disney Press) and the image-rich Disney Pixar Finding Dory: The Essential Guide, DK (PRH/Penguin/DK Children).

The two leveled readers are Ocean of Color (Disney/Pixar Finding Dory), Bill Scollon (RH/Disney) and Dory’s Story (Disney/Pixar Finding Dory), RH Disney (RH/Disney).

The film, which recounts the continued adventures of the fish Dory following Finding Nemo, features the voices of Ellen DeGeneres, Albert Brooks, and Idris Elba.

The film adaptation of Jeannette Walls’ best selling memoir The Glass Castle, (S&S/Scribner, 2005) is about to begin production in Montreal before moving on to Welch, WVA., reports Collider.

The film stars Brie Larson, winner of the Best Actress Oscar for Room, as Walls with Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts as her dysfunctional, sometimes homeless, parents.

The release date has not yet been set.

Talk about “Hot Dudes Reading,” the Washington Post‘s book critic Ron Charles proves that being a hot dude during Summer Reading season is not as easy as it looks (happily, Ron’s tongue-in-cheek series, “Totally Hip Video Book Reviews” has returned)

It’s part of the Post‘s “Summer Reading” section, which includes a mid-year assessment, “37 Books We’ve Loved So Far In 2016,” featuring some unusual  under-the-radar picks, like Knitlandia, (Abrams, Feb. 14, the Post‘s full review, here).

Looking ahead, the editors choose the “10 Novels We’re Looking Forward To This Summer And Fall,” with titles from June through November.

Read all those picks and you can do a victory lap with Ron.

The books are hot, too:

The book:

Hot Dudes Reading
S&S/Atria
April 26, 2016

And, coming in July,

the Wall Calendar, (Chronicle)