Cover Art for Chris Colfer's The Land of Stories Released
Chris Colfer, known to many as Kurt Hummel on Fox's Glee, signed a two book deal with Little, Brown Books last June for a children's fantasy series. The cover for the first book in the series, The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell, has been released. The cover is illustrated by Brandon Dorman.
The Land of Stories tells the tale of twins Alex and Conner Bailey. The twins leave their world behind and find themselves in a foreign land full of wonder and magic. The characters come face-to-face with the characters they grew up reading about, including witches, wolves, goblins, and trolls.
EWreports that the publication date for the book has also been moved up from August 7 to July 17.
Jill Biden to Publish Children's Book in June
Second Lady Jill Biden will publish an illustrated children's book, Don't Forget Nana, God Bless Our Troops, with Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. The book will be illustrated by Raul Colon. The cover art has not yet been released. The book will arrive in stores on June 5, 2012. Dr. Biden is donating all net author proceeds to charities to support military families and children. She did not accept an advance for the book.
Jill Biden says, "As a military mom and a teacher, I wanted to write this book to make all Americans, especially children, aware of the unique experience of children who have a parent or other relative deployed in our armed forces. I saw with my own grandchildren just how difficult it is to carry on
while you are worried about a parent who is serving in a war zone … and I also learned what a difference it makes when members of the community show support. I hope my granddaughter Natalie's story, which inspired the book, gives readers some insight into the strength and character of our military families, and encourages them to reach out in their neighborhoods and communities."
The story in the book will be told through the eyes of Vice President Joe and Jill Biden's granddaughter, Natalie Biden. The story is inspired by Natalie's life at home when her father was deployed. Natalie's father, Beau Biden, is a Major in the Delaware Army National Guard and was deployed to Iraq for a year.
Readers will follow Natalie's experience as she learns to cope with missing her father and finds comfort in the kindness of members of her community. The book also includes resources about what readers can do to support military service members and their families serving at home and abroad.
DK Launches Electronic Textbooks for Apple's iBooks Platform
Apple recently launched a new digital textbook platform as well as a partnership with major textbook publishers. DK is one of the educational publishers providing digital textbooks for Apple's iBooks, which can be purchased on iTunes. DK's four new titles include My First ABC, Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Life, DK Natural History: Insects and DK Natural History: Mammals-Carnivores.
Some of the interactive highlights of these new digital textbooks include:
A 3-D model of a velociraptor skeleton
An animation showing the step-by-step formation of a fossil
A movie of a tiger hunting and a brown bear catching salmon
Microscopic images of insects' eyes and wings
The sound of a Madagascan hissing cockroach
The DinoSpread pictured above is from DK's Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Life iBook.
HarperCollins to Publish Burt Bacharach's Memoir
HarperCollins has announced plans to publish songwriter Burt Bacharach's memoir, Anyone Who Had a Heart. The book was written with Robert Greenfield. The book is tentatively scheduled for publication in November 2012.
Bacharach has had seventy Top Forty hits in his career. He has won three Academy Awards, eight Grammys, an Emmy, and been nominated for a Tony Award. Along with his longtime songwriting partner Hal David, Bacharach was recently named the winner of the prestigious Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, an award previously given to Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, and Paul McCartney.
The book will provide readers with a backstage pass into show business. It will also cover Bacharach's personal life. Bacharach's first three marriages to singer Paula Stewart, actress Angie Dickinson, and songwriter Carole Bayer Sager ended in divorce. His long partnership with Hal David fell apart after they wrote the soundtrack for a film, Lost Horizon, that was such an artistic and commercial disaster that the two men wound up suing one another and did not speak for seventeen years. Bacharach's daughter Nikki committed suicide at the age of forty.
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Rachael Ray Signs Three Book Deal With Atria Books
Rachael Ray has signed a three book deal with Atria Books. The Book of Burger will be the first book published under the agreement. It will arrive in stores in early summer 2012. Rachael's Year in Meals will be published in the fall of 2012 and a third book will be published in 2013. Rachael Ray will also publish titled by up and coming cooks and food writers with Atria Books through the Rachael Ray Presents imprint.
Rachael says, "I couldn't be more excited to be working with Atria Books. They are the perfect partner for me to collaborate with in bringing books to life for our readers in many new ways - especially on the digital front. And the 'Rachael Ray Presents imprint will allow me to continue to develop new, emerging talent and help them to bring their content directly to consumers."
Rachael Ray has sold over ten million copies of her 20 published books. She has nine No. 1 New York Times bestsellers, which is an impressive accomplishment.
HarperCollins to Publish Children's Fantasy Series by Chris Columbus and Ned Vizzini
HarperCollins has bought the rights to a three-book middle-grade series written by Chris Columbus and Ned Vizzini. The series, House of Secrets, is set in a large, mysterious house in San Francisco that was built by a troubled fantasy writer. The first book in the series is set to be published in Spring 2013.
Here is a description of the series from HarperCollins:
The Pagett kids had it all: loving parents, a big house in San Francisco, all the latest video games . . . But everything changed when their father lost his job as a result of an inexplicable transgression. Now the family is moving into Kristoff House, a mysterious place built nearly a century earlier by a troubled fantasy writer with a penchant for the occult. Suddenly the siblings find themselves launched on an epic journey into a mash-up world born of Kristoff's dangerous imagination, to retrieve a dark book of untold power, uncover the Pagett family's secret history and save their parents . . . and maybe even the world.
Columbus has directed many films, including the first two Harry Potter movies and Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. Columbus also wrote the screenplays for the Gremlins and Goonies movies. Ned Vizzini is the author of It's Kind of a Funny Story, Be More Chill, Teen Angst? Naaaah..., and the forthcoming The Other Normals.
Columbus says, "The opportunity to write this novel is a dream come true. I have lived with the characters of this novel and their world for many years, and was saving them for something very special. Working on House of Secrets with Ned has been a thrill."
2011 Costa Book Award Winners Announced
Costa Coffee has announced the Costa Book Awards 2011 winners in the Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children's Book categories. The winners each receive a check for 5,000 pounds (about $7,800 U.S.). They will also each be up for the 2011 Costa Book of the Year, which will be announced on January 24. The winner will receive another 30,000 pounds (about $46,275 U.S.).
Britain's poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy was the winner in the poetry category for her book, The Bees. Andrew Miller defeated 2011 Man Book Prize winner Julian Barnes to claim the Costa Novel Award.
The Starz' series Spartacus has inspired a new series of novels. Spartacus: Swords and Ashes by J.M. Clements (Titan Books) will arrive in bookstores and on Amazon.com on January 3rd. Spartacus: Morituri by Paul Kearney, will arrive on March 6.
J.M. Clements dedicated Spartacus: Swords and Ashes to actor Andy Whitfield (Spartacus) who died of cancer. Liam McIntyre will play Spartacus in the upcoming Starz series, Spartacus: Vengeance.
USA Today has an excerpt of Spartacus: Swords and Asheshere.
Scholastic Announces Infinity Ring Series Scholastic has announced plans to launch Infinity Ring, an alternate-history time travel series for readers ages 8-12. The series will be written by a team of six authors. The series will combine books, an interactive Hystorian's Guide map and an online game experience.
In the series two kids discover a hand-held device (The Infinity Ring) that acts as the key to time travel. They discover a battle for the fate of manking that has been raging for centuries. Here is Scholastic's description of the series:
History is broken, and a long-feared Cataclysm seems imminent. The capital of the United States is Boston. Lincoln's face is nowhere to be seen on Mount Rushmore. Everyone's buzzing about the French royal wedding. And an international group of men and women known as the SQ is more powerful than kings, richer than nations, and more fearsome than armies. When best friends Dak Smyth and Sera Froste stumble upon the key to time travel – a hand-held device known as the Infinity Ring – they're swept up in a centuries-long secret war for the fate of mankind. Recruited by the Hystorians, a secret society that dates back to Aristotle, the kids learn that history has gone completely, and disastrously, off-course. Now it's up to Dak, Sera, and teenage Hystorian-in-training Riq to travel back in time to fix the "Great Breaks" ... and to save Dak's missing parents while they're at it. First stop: Spain, 1492, where a sailor named Christopher Columbus is about to be thrown overboard in a deadly mutiny!
Infinity Ring will launch simultaneously in September 2012 in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Book 1: A Mutiny in Time is written by author James Dashner, who also outlined the program's overall story arc. Dashner will be followed Carrie Ryan (Book 2; November 2012), Lisa McMann (Book 3; February 2013), Matt de la Pena (Book 4; June 2013), Matthew Kirby (Book 5; September 2013), and Jennifer Nielsen (Book 6; December 2013). The last book in the Infinity Ring series also will be written by James Dashner (Book 7; March 2014).
Scholastic has announced plans to launch Infinity Ring, an alternate-history time travel series for readers ages 8-12. The series will be written by a team of six authors. The series will combine books, an interactive Hystorian's Guide map and an online game experience.
