July 16 will find her book, Slumdog Dreaming, simulatenously released in the U.S. and U.K. Publisher Transworld, says, besides recounting Oscar night, Ali will tell her story of "playing marbles with her friends beside the sewers of Garib Nagar in Mumbai, to dancing along to the Bollywood films she and her family watch on their old television set.

"Rubina brings alive a world of wastelands and rat-infested shanty dwellings, and shows us her home, a wooden shack with a tarpaulin roof, where she grew up with her beloved father and siblings," says the statement.

Bog Child, the story of a teenage boy who finds the body of a child in an Irish bog, was finished by Dowd in May 2007. She died of cancer that August at the age of 47, having only turned to writing in 2003. In just four short years, she penned four children's books: her first, A Swift Pure Cry, was also shortlisted for the Carnegie.

"It's infuriating that she didn't start writing earlier, that she couldn't go on. We've lost one of our great new voices, and they don't come along that often, not at Siobhan's standards," said her publisher and editor, David Fickling, who accepted the Carnegie medal on her behalf this lunchtime. "Bog Child was written with great intensity, when Siobhan was at the height of her powers, all the while being very ill ... You get to the end and are uplifted, and that's what she was like in person, too. She buoyed you up."

The book is "an absolutely astonishing piece of writing", said the librarian Joy Court, chair of the judging panel (the Carnegie medal winner is selected by 13 librarians from around the UK). "To be able to write like that when she was going through what she was going through is just astonishing – the sheer beauty of the language, the descriptions of the environment; she has such an amazing sense of place."

Bog Child intertwines two stories: that of the 16-year-old Fergus, who discovers the child in the bog in 1981 and thinks she has been murdered by the IRA, and that of the bog child, Mel, who turns out to have lived 2,000 years ago during the iron age. Fergus smuggles packages across the Northern Ireland border each day, believing them to contain semtex, while his brother goes on hunger strike in prison in an attempt to free Northern Ireland from "the misery of it. The mourning and the weeping. The vale of tears." Dowd's command of language is "extraordinary", said Fickling, as in her description of Mel's death: "Silver light fizzed and shot apart. Love fell in particles, like snow."

The complaint, which according to the American Library Association also demands $120,000 (£72,000) in compensatory damages for being exposed to the book in a display at West Bend Community Memorial Library, was lodged by four men from the Christian Civil Liberties Union. Their suit says that "the plaintiffs, all of whom are elderly, claim their mental and emotional well-being was damaged by this book at the library," and that it contains derogatory language that could "put one's life in possible jeopardy, adults and children alike."

"The word 'faggot' is very derogatory and slanderous to all males," the suit continues. "Using the word 'N****r' is dangerously offensive, disrespectful to all people. These words can permeate violence." The suit also claims that the book "constitutes a hate crime, and that it degrades the community".

"They've filed a claim against the city of West Bend and the city has to decide if it is valid," said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, acting director of the ALA's office for intellectual freedom. "Their insurance company is evaluating the claim, but I would be very surprised if they found any merit in it ... Should they find any merit in this claim, we would certainly support the library in fighting it."

The Breaking Dawn special edition will feature a DVD of the Breaking Dawn Concert Series, including a performance by Blue October's Justin Furstenfeld and conversation between author Stephenie Meyer and Furstenfeld. LB is printing "only" one million copies of this edition; it goes on sale August 4 for $24.99. Also that day, the publisher will release a trade paperback edition of Eclipse, the third book in the series.

The $24.99 journals set consists of four journals packaged in a tin, and will go on sale October 13. In addition to the mass market tie-in edition of New Moon, LB will also release New Moon Collector's Edition, slipcased with a ribbon bookmark and cloth cover, for $30; and New Moon: The Complete Illustrated Movie Companion for $18.99, both on October 6.

Gervais will voice the lead character in the film version, which is being adapted for the screen by The Simpsons writer and producer Matt Selman. Flanimals, a four-volume series written by Gervais and illustrated by Rob Steen, introduced readers to a world of weird creatures, ranging from Grundit, a dopey, muscular blue Flanimal with a bump on its head, to Honk, a small Flanimal that spends most of its time asleep, but occasionally wakes to emit a loud honk.

Gervais's character, Puddy the Puddloflaj, is a pudgy, perspiring purple creature who spends most of its days avoiding the Grundit. "It will be great to play a short, fat, sweaty loser for a change," Gervais said. The film is being produced by Chris Meledandri under the auspices of new Universal offshoot Illumination. Flanimals does not as yet have a director or full voice cast.

It's not elegant and it's not sexy – it looks like a large photocopier – but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible. Launching today at Blackwell's Charing Cross Road branch in London, the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.

Signalling the end, says Blackwell, to the frustration of being told by a bookseller that a title is out of print, or not in stock, the Espresso offers access to almost half a million books, from a facsimile of Lewis Carroll's original manuscript for Alice in Wonderland to Mrs Beeton's Book of Needlework. Blackwell hopes to increase this to over a million titles by the end of the summer – the equivalent of 23.6 miles of shelf space, or over 50 bookshops rolled into one. The majority of these books are currently out-of-copyright works, but Blackwell is working with publishers throughout the UK to increase access to in-copyright writings, and says the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Candlewick president and publisher Karen Lotz acquired the book and will also edit; Jennifer Gates at Zachary Shuster Harmsworth brokered the deal.

Ladder to the Moon imagines what lessons Soetoro-Ng's four-year-old daughter might have learned from her grandmother (Soetoro-Ng's and Obama's mother) if the two had ever met. Soetoro-Ng is currently a high school teacher at an all-girls school in Hawaii; Ladder to the Moon is her first book.

Dear Friends,

My wife Bobbie and I are sending our best wishes to all who are celebrating the 40th Anniversary of The Very Hungry Caterpillar today and our heartfelt gratitude for all of the messages from readers from around the world.

We have heard of celebrations taking place in Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, England, Puerto Rico, New York, California, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Singapore and in other cities and countries around the world.

It is a wonderful day!

Eric and Bobbie Carle

The winning bidder was a vintage comic book collector from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. His wife is a fan of the Harry Potter series. "Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone," was one of only 200 copies from the first printing issued with illustrated wrappers by London publisher Bloomsbury. The 1997 book includes an illustrated card signed by author J. K. Rowling.

Forever Princess

"It's bittersweet," says Cabot, 41, who, with husband Benjamin and cats Henrietta and Gem, lives in an 1870s-era home in Florida. "It's a lot harder than I thought it would be to say goodbye."

Cabot introduced teens to Mia Thermopolis, princess of Genovia, in 2000's The Princess Diaries. Since then, readers have followed the adventures of the modern American girl, who at 14 found that ruling a (fictional) kingdom was her destiny. Ending the series with Mia graduating from high school was always Cabot's goal: "I really didn't plan anything beyond when she was 18."

The series has spent a combined 82 weeks on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list. More than 5 million copies have been sold in the USA and 15 million worldwide.

Separately, a spokesman for the Knopf Publishing Group that assumed control of the Doubleday and Nan A. Talese imprints in the recent reorganization said that there had been layoffs Wednesday in the Doubleday imprint. A spokesman for the Crown Publishing Group said there had also been an unspecified number of layoffs at the Broadway imprint.

Ms. Kamil, who has headed the Dial Press since 1993, recently shepherded the best-seller "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, and has worked with authors including Allegra Goodman and Elizabeth McCracken.

Ms. Kamil will continue in her role as editorial director at Dial while taking on the new editor-in-chief post at what is known colloquially as Little Random. She will report to Gina Centrello, who is president and publisher of the Random House Publishing Group. Under the reorganization announced by Markus Dohle, the chief executive of Random House, Ms. Centrello's empire expanded to include Dial Press, Bantam Dell, and Spiegel & Grau, formerly a part of Doubleday.

• A Curse Dark As Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic )
• Graceling by Kristin Cashore (Harcourt)
• Absolute Brightness by James Lecesne (HarperTeen)
• Madapple by hristina Meldrum (Knopf)
• Me, the Missing, and the Dead by Jenny Valentine (HarperTeen)

In his bio--and speaking backstage after winning an Oscar for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe--Berger said that his fascination with special effects started with his mother, a teacher, as she read him Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. "That's what started this for me," Berger said.

So was he disappointed not to work on the film version of his favorite book? "No, I'm not," Berger said with a laugh. "We were approached four times, and we turned it down four times. [We turned it down] because I'm in love with it so much. I respect it too much. What is happening is what I thought would happen."

*****

Whether those reports are true or not, Berger said: "The direction that they were taking in the movie was certainly not the direction that I would have taken. It was potentially a catastrophe. I had a sinking feeling about it. I didn't want to get myself in it. It's a horrible idea."

Berger and his partner, Greg Nicotero of KNB EFX Group, in Van Nuys, Calif., met with Jonze, who is helming the movie for Warner Brothers. Berger worked on Star Wars: Episode III--Revenge of the Sith, Land of the Dead and Transformers, as well as The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, which comes out on DVD on Dec. 2.

"Even when I heard about it I thought, 'I don't want to do it,'" Berger said. "Greg and I met with Spike Jonze a couple of times, and they kept asking us if would we do it."

• Fiction: Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country (Modern Library)
• Nonfiction: Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (W.W. Norton & Company)
• Poetry: Mark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (HarperCollins)
• Young People's Literature: Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic)

"Cornelia Funke is that rare breed of writer in the tradition of the master storytellers from the Brothers Grimm and Charles Dickens to Roald Dahl and Philip Pullman," said Megan Tingley, senior v-p and publisher at Little, Brown BFYR, in a statement. "We are honored to be the new U.S. publishing home of this magnificent talent."

Tingley and editorial director Jennifer Hunt, who will edit Funke, have acquired North American rights for a publishing program that will include middle-grade and young adult novels, as well as a picture book. Funke's first title with Little, Brown will be the novel Reckless, about two modern brothers in a magical 19th century world reminiscent of Grimm's fairy tales. Reckless is tentatively scheduled for 2010 publication and will be followed by the middle-grade novel The Knight and the Boy.

In a memo sent to employees last week, Barnes & Noble chairman Len Riggio said with the retail environment the worst he has ever seen as a bookseller, the nation's largest bookstore chain is "bracing for a terrible holiday, and expect[s] the trend to continue well into 2009, and perhaps beyond." The release of the memo was first reported this afternoon by the Wall Street Journal.

*****

While Riggio said he still expects B&N to post a "decent profit" this year, the difficult financial environment means the retailer will need to be even more diligent with expense controls, inventory management and capital expenditures. B&N will continue to invest in its systems, but new store openings will be curtailed and discretionary spending "cut to the bone," Riggio wrote. In its second quarter report, B&N said it was reducing new store openings in 2009 to 20 to 25, down from its usual openings of 30 to 35 stores.

"Walter the Farting Dog," the movie, will feature the Jonas Brothers, the pop music, heartthrob trio that has attracted a legion of teenage fans - most of them girls. "It's been amazing," Murray said Wednesday from his home in Fredericton, still somewhat stunned by the global phenomenon Walter has become.

Since it was first published in 2001, the book and its four sequels have sold millions of copies worldwide. Murray says the stories grew out of a brief but hilarious tale his longtime friend and co-author William Kotzwinkle once told about meeting a dog in the 1970s whose farts were so objectionable that he cleared an entire stationery store in Fredericton.

The movie will be produced by Bobby and Peter Farrelly, the slightly warped duo who also created "Dumb and Dumber" and "There's Something about Mary." The screenplay will be written by Alec Sokolow ("Toy Story," "Garfield") and Joel Cohen ("No Country For Old Men," "Fargo," "O Brother, Where Art Thou?").

The young Jonas brothers - Kevin, Joe, Nick and the youngest brother, Frankie - will be making their feature film debut as a musical group that has to adopt the gassy canine when their aunt dies. Murray says he still can't believe that a story about a chronically flatulent dog could become such a media sensation.

The agreement, which is still subject to approval from the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, will see Google paying out $125m in total, of which a minimum of $45m will go to authors and publishers whose books were digitised without their approval. Google will also pay $34.5m to establish a book rights registry, and will cover legal fees.

Authors Guild president Roy Blount Jr said the deal made "good sense". "As an author, well, we appreciate payment when people use our work," he said. "It's hard work writing a book, and even harder work getting paid for it."

The agreement follows outrage from American publishers and authors three years ago, when they learnt of agreements struck by Google with certain American universities to scan books which were still in copyright, which would then be digitised and searchable online. American authors' body the Authors Guild led the charge against the search engine, filing suit in September 2005 along with a number of authors.

Under the terms of the agreement, US readers will be able to preview up to 20% of most out-of-print books for free, with authors and rights holders of in-copyright but out of print works able to opt out of the arrangement if they choose.

For in-copyright books that are still in print, readers will be able to find the books, but will not be able to view any portion of it unless its publisher has signed up to Google's partner programme.

Since 1939, generations have cherished the old house in Paris covered in vines and the 12 little girls in two straight lines, including the smallest one with a can-do streak and a penchant for calamity. But why tamper with a character so endearing? "I had always thought, 'Boy, it's never going to go away,' but classics do fade," said the 38-year-old Marciano, who lives in Brooklyn and spent years studying the drawing technique of his grandfather, Ludwig Bemelmans, for his "Madeline and the Cats of Rome."

Marciano, who's touring to promote the recent release, is far from a newbie children's writer, with three books on other subjects to his credit. In fact, he's not even a newbie "Madeline" purveyor. While sifting through Ludwig's personal papers for his acclaimed tribute book about his grandfather's life and work, Marciano discovered unfinished text and pencil drawings that led him to illustrate and complete the story for "Madeline in America" in 1999. He also turned Madeline into a good-etiquette advocate in "Madeline Says Merci" and created a rhyming board book featuring the spunky French redhead in "Madeline Loves Animals."

But "Madeline and the Cats of Rome" is the first full-length story book using the character. In it, Marciano sends teacher Ms. Clavel and the girls on vacation. Once in Rome, there's petty crime, a curly haired antagonist turned do-gooder and a creaky old house full of cats.

Chair of judges and Guardian children's books editor Julia Eccleshare said the panel of judges, made up of children's authors Mary Hoffman, Mal Peet and last year's winner Jenny Valentine, were blown away by the "breathtaking quality" of Ness's writing. "It's challenging but not bleak - an excitingly different book," she added.

The Knife of Never Letting Go traces the journey of 12-year-old Todd Hewitt after he is forced to flee the stifling male-only environs of Prentisstown, where the thoughts of each inhabitant, man and beast, are a never-ending swell of Noise. With only his singularly chatty dog Manchee ("Need a poo, Todd") and the mysteriously silent Viola for company, Todd fights to survive and to learn the dark secrets behind Prentisstown's facade.

Ness said he was "genuinely astonished" to win. "I think it was a super-strong shortlist. Before I Die is a huge hit, Frank is a great writer, and I'm reading Siobhan Dowd now, it's really great and I kind of thought she would win."

A corporate writer at a cable company in the US until he was made redundant and used the payoff to set up as a novelist in the UK, Ness has previously written a novel, The Crash of Hennington, and a short story collection, Topics About Which I Know Nothing, both for adults. He turned to children's fiction after he had the idea of a world where information overload is inescapable, and knew it was a book for teenagers.

It was the highest opening ever for a Random House children's book, but far below the 8.3 million copies in the United States alone for the launch of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," and the 1.3 million for Stephenie Meyer's "Breaking Dawn," released at midnight on Aug. 2.

The largest distributor of children's books to Canadian schools has decided to yank all Bratz books from its roster after parents and psychologists complained that the controversial dolls promoted "precocious sexuality."

Scholastic Inc. distributes its products through school-based book fairs and clubs, selling books to students and teachers at discounted prices. But after a persuasive North American campaign spearheaded by the Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, the company has relented and pulled books and products featuring the popular Bratz dolls.

The company confirmed yesterday that its fall product line for schools no longer includes the Bratz brand -- a switch from last year, when Scholastic said the books appealed to "reluctant readers" and its job was to "offer materials that appeal to children where they are, not where we would like them to be."

The Bratz book line is a spinoff of MGA Entertainment Inc.'s top-selling fashion dolls, which have gained notoriety for their skimpy wardrobe of miniskirts, high-heel boots and feather boas. A New Yorker article about the powerhouse of marketing behind the brand described the appearance of the dolls as being akin to "kept girls," "pole dancers on their way to work at a gentlemen's club," and, most critically, wearing "the sly, dozy expression of a party girl after one too many mojitos."

A Bollywood children's film, Hari Puttar, has been forced to postpone its premiere after the Hollywood studio behind the Harry Potter blockbusters took the Indian producers to court over the film's title. Warner Brothers claims the Bollywood film sounds too similar to the teenage wizard and has refused the Indian studio's offer of putting a disclaimer in the title sequence. The Harry Potter films have grossed $4.5bn (£2.5bn) since 2001.

Hari Puttar was due to open last Friday but will now be shown later this month after Indian television networks refused to run promos for the film. A Delhi court is due to hear the case this month. "The movie will come out on [September] 26," said a spokesman for the Mumbai studio Mirchi Movies. "We do not know about the exact legal position as of now."

Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors is a comedy shot in Yorkshire about a 10-year-old Indian boy whose family moves to England and becomes embroiled in a plan to save the world from two criminals. Hari is a popular Indian name and Puttar means "son" in Punjabi.

The fifth and final of Rick Riordan's million-selling "Percy Jackson and the Olympian" books, "The Last Olympian," is coming out May 5, 2009. The first four adventures of the 12-year-old boy descended from a Greek god include such popular stories as "The Lightning Thief" and "The Sea of Monsters."

A leading publisher has admitted that the introduction of age banding to children's books has been poorly handled. The initiative has prompted a widespread rebellion amongst children's authors, with a website attracting almost 800 signatures from authors including Philip Pullman, JK Rowling, Jacqueline Wilson and Terry Pratchett.

"I would suggest – and I am speaking entirely as myself, rather than as the representative of anyone else or anybody here – that there were some regrettable errors in how publishers went about the introduction of age guidance," said Scholastic group managing director Kate Wilson. "I think most of them, if they had their time again, would do it differently and in greater consultation with authors."

She was the only representative of the publishing industry who accepted an invitation to a specially-organised debate at the Children's Writers and Illustrators conference at which Philip Pullman condemned the initiative, branding the labels "not true" and questioning the research which motivated their introduction.

Wilson, responding as an individual publisher, albeit one which has supported the policy, was conciliatory on the principle of consultation. But she was vigorous in her defence of the research and the need for children's books to find a more competitive edge against other forms of spending on children. "Age guidance isn't perfect but it is another ingredient added to the marketing mix that the majority of book buyers surveyed said they'd welcome."

Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling announced on Thursday that she will publish a book of wizarding fairy tales in December and donate an expected $8 million (4 million pounds) in proceeds to her charity for vulnerable children. "The Tales of Beedle the Bard," which will be published on December 4, is mentioned in the seventh -- and final -- Potter book as having been left to Harry's friend Hermione Granger by Professor Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of their school Hogwarts.

Rowling initially only produced seven copies of "The Tales," bound in brown Moroccan leather and decorated in silver and moonstones. She gave six copies to people closely connected to the Potter books and auctioned off the seventh, which was bought in December by Amazon.com Inc, the Web retailer known for selling books, for about $4 million.

Bloomsbury Publishing and Scholastic will now publish editions with an introduction by Rowling, selling for $12.99, while Amazon will produce up to 100,000 collector's edition copies, which will aim to replicate the look and feel of the original book and sell for $100. "The new edition will include the Tales themselves, translated from the original runes by Hermione Granger, and with illustrations by me, but also notes by Professor Albus Dumbledore, which appear by generous permission of the Hogwarts Headmasters' Archive," Rowling said in a statement.

She said the proceeds from the book would be donated to the Children's High Level Group, a charity she founded in 2005 to help the 1 million children across Europe still living in large residential institutions.

The statement from the Publishers Association follows a meeting it had last week with the Society of Authors and Pullman, representing the campaign against age banding.

Speaking today, Pullman was unconvinced: "Our point of view remains that consultation is not enough," he said. "We could consult and consult to the point of nausea and publishers could still turn around and insist that a book be banded."

For the Publishers Association, Children's Book Group secretary Kate Bostock conceded that one new book, Keith Gray's Ostrich Boys, had already been published with a teen logo by Random House against the author's wishes. "It was a dreadful in-house mistake," she said, "but that's the only author affected". For the rest, Bostock said, "well over half of the books being published this autumn will have age guidance, but all of them have agreement from the authors."

Diane Sanabria, the youth librarian in Leominster Public Library's Robert Cormier Center for Young Adults, said many teens that come through the doors are falling in love with a series about vampires. "Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" series is the hottest thing right now," Sanabria said. "The new book in the series, "Breaking Dawn" comes out August 1st." The series began in 2006 and tells the story of a teenage girl in love with a vampire. McCarron agreed Meyer's books are a huge hit and noted they are geared more toward female readers, but boys read them too.

*****

Both librarians noted a series by James Patterson called "Maximum Ride" is very popular with teens. The series chronicles a group of teens who escape from a lab where they were bred as 98 percent human and 2 percent bird. "Those books are really popular with both genders," McCarron said.

Vincent Puglisi's decision to reject a plea bargain carrying a 30-year sentence backfired on Tuesday when a jury convicted him of first-degree murder and robbery with a deadly weapon. Now he will be sentenced to either death or life in prison for the frenzied stabbing and bludgeoning death of Alan Shalleck, 76, of Boynton Beach, who collaborated on many of the Curious George films and books. Puglisi nodded his head in agreement as each of the guilty verdicts was read.

*****

Shalleck was repeatedly stabbed and clobbered with a paddle in his home on Super Bowl Sunday in February 2006. Ditto used one of Shalleck's own steak knives to stab him, and it broke, Puglisi later told investigators. Then he used a second steak knife, and it broke.

"He just kept saying the son-of-a-bitch won't die," Puglisi told authorities. But Shalleck did die, and was left in his driveway inside large garbage bags "like a piece of trash outside," Assistant State Attorney Andy Slater told jurors.

According to Rowling's agent, Christopher Little, the seven Harry Potter books have so far been translated into 67 languages, amassing the 400m figure since the publication of the first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, in 1997.

Despite the furious pace of sales, Harry Potter will still have his work cut out to catch the Bible, which, according to the Guinness Book of Records, has sold 2.5bn copies since 1815, and has been translated into 2,233 languages or dialects. Rowling would be more likely to catch Mao Zedong's Little Red Book, which has reportedly sold 900m copies, but its sales are slowing down.

Little, Brown is increasing the first printing of Breaking Dawn, the fourth and final book in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga, from 2.5 million to 3.2 million copies, making it the largest-ever first printing for the Hachette Book Group. The book pubs at midnight on August 2, and hundreds of bookstores will be holding midnight parties, a la Harry Potter. According to spokesperson Melanie Chang, the print run was upped after internal discussions about excitement from accounts were combined with bookseller feedback at BEA. The Twilight saga has a combined 6.5 million copies in print.

The Book Industry Study Group, a nonprofit organization supported by the publishing industry, projects a 3 percent to 4 percent growth through 2011, when revenues should top $43 billion. The BISG expects little change in the actual number of books sold and sees a drop in the general trade market by more than 60 million, from 2.282 billion copies in 2007 to 2.220 billion in 2011.

"The hits will keep doing well, but other books will have troubles," says BISG senior researcher Albert N. Greco, a professor of marketing at the Fordham University Graduate School of Business. The findings were announced at BookExpo America, being held this weekend at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Barring another Potter-like phenomenon, Greco believes the children's market will barely break even. Modest gains are projected in most adult categories, although that could change once Brown comes out with his long-awaited follow-up to "The Da Vinci Code." No release date has been set for the novel, which also features protagonist Robert Langdon, a Harvard University professor who interprets symbols.

The biggest losers likely will be mass market paperbacks, which continue to plunge as baby boomers seek formats with larger print, while religious books should keep growing, by more than 5 percent annually. The hottest market, according to the industry study group, isn't books, but standardized tests, boosted by the requirements of the No Child Left Behind legislation. Growth of 8 percent or better is expected through at least 2009.

A first book of motion for kids, it shows a horse in full gallop and a turtle swimming up the page. A dog runs, a cat springs, an eagle soars, and a butterfly flutters. Created by Rufus Butler Seder, an inventor, artist, and filmmaker fascinated by antique optical toys, Scanimation is a state-of-the-art six-phase animation process that combines the "persistence of vision" principle with a striped acetate overlay to give the illusion of movement. It harkens back to the old magical days of the kinetoscope, and the effect is astonishing, like a Muybridge photo series springing into action—or, in terms kids can relate to, like a video without a screen. Complementing the art is a delightful rhyming text full of simple questions and fun, nonsense replies: Can you gallop like a horse? giddyup-a-loo! Can you strut like a rooster? cock-a-doodle-doo!

Readers will gasp with delight when they open this book, produced as paper-over-board: a hidden tab in each heavy page slides an acetate layer printed with vertical black lines over an encoded, detailed image of a horse, rooster, turtle or other creature, and the layers' interaction creates the illusion of motion. The black-and-white images openly reference the motion photography of Eadweard Muybridge (an influence that Seder acknowledges on the copyright page) and they contrast with the bright palette used for the spare, reader-directed text.

Reading to young children stimulates their development and gives them a head start when they reach school, according to researchers who have reviewed studies on the effects of reading. Apart from helping their reading, sharing a bedtime story with a child promotes their motor skills, through learning to turn the pages, and their memory. It also improves their emotional and social development.

"You can imagine if someone technologically came up with a widget that would stimulate all aspects of a two-year-old's development, everyone would want to buy it," said Professor Barry Zuckerman, of the department of paediatrics at Boston University school of medicine, who led the study.

Studies show that children who are read to from an earlier age have better language development and tend to have better language scores later in life. Getting children to grip pages with their thumb and forefinger improves their motor skills.

Most important, though, said Zuckerman, is that reading aloud is a period of shared attention and emotion between parent and child. This reinforces reading as a pleasurable activity. "Children ultimately learn to love books because they are sharing it with someone they love," he said. The research is published in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Longtime children's book editor and publisher Joanna Cotler is stepping down from her position at HarperCollins Children's Books. Cotler, who has spent the last 13 years as publisher of her eponymous imprint, Joanna Cotler Books, will become editor-at-large at the publisher as of May 13.

Cotler, whose current title is senior v-p and publisher, is leaving to focus on her sideline passion, painting. She will continue to edit select titles after her departure; moving forward these will be the only titles published under the Joanna Cotler Books banner. The imprint currently issues 15 titles a year; it has not yet been determined how many books Cotler will do once she transitions to editor-at-large.

*****

Over the years Cotler has worked with a distinguished list of authors, including William Steig, Art Spiegelman, Sharon Creech, Francesca Lia Block and Jamie Lee Curtis. In thanking her colleagues at HarperCollins, Cotler added that she was "most deeply honored by the authors and artists who chose to work with me. I love them all and have been so privileged to publish their books."

The first instalment of the series finale will open on November 19, 2010, with the second released the following summer. Earlier reports indicated that Part II would premiere in May 2011. The studio announced the decision to split J.K. Rowling's final book in the popular wizard series into two films last month.

David Yates will return to direct the Deathly Hallows films, making him the series's most prolific helmer, steering four of the eight Potter movies. The sixth Potter film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, opens in cinemas this November.

Google, the Internet's leader in search and advertising, says the process it developed and is using for scanning the majority of the books in Book Search is proprietary. Employees will not discuss it except to say it is much faster than what Mitchel is doing and it's not destructive. "It took us quite a while to develop it so we do keep that confidential," said a library manager for Book Search, Ben Bunnell, who declined even to say where Google does the scanning.

Many libraries began digitizing books a decade ago to preserve them. Funding from Google allows the 28 libraries it's working with to cut their digitizing costs because they don't have to pay for scanning the books Google wants to include in Book Search.

Through Book Search, users can track down a book on any topic they're interested in and read a small portion. If the book's not protected by copyright, users can download the whole thing. If it is, or if they just want to read an original, they can use Book Search to find copies to buy or borrow. More than 1 million rare or fragile books have been digitized through the Google-Michigan partnership since it began in 2004, with an estimated 6 million to go.

Reps for JKR have now confirmed to TLC that there will indeed be an extract of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows contained in this new book, along with two new illustrations of the story from author and artist Quentin Blake. Along with the contribution from Jo, others such as Philip Pullman and Jacqueline Wilson are contributing to the birthday book for The Prince of Wales, with new material due from Philip Ardagh and Anthony Horowitz. In addition to the new illustrations from Quentin Blake, other artists contributing are Axel Scheffler, Posy Simmonds and Emily Gravett. The Birthday Book will be published on November 6, with all proceeds to benefit The Prince's Foundation for Children and the Arts, a charity which”provides schoolchildren with opportunities to visit theatres, orchestras, museums and galleries."

Vander Ark wiped away tears when he was asked to reflect on what the case has done to his relationship with the community of Harry Potter fans. The former middle school librarian, who fell in love with the books in the late 90s and has devoted years to studying them and indexing their content online, could barely speak. "It's been ... it's been," he stammered, choking on his words. "It's been difficult because there has been a lot of criticism, obviously, and that was never the intention. ... This has been an important part of my life for the last nine years or so."

*****

During his testimony Tuesday, Vander Ark acknowledged that he, too, had substantial concerns all along about whether publishing an encyclopedia based on Rowling's Potter universe would constitute copyright infringement. He said he was talked into doing it by the publishing company.

Q: Did having writers in your family lead you to write?

A: "Growing up surrounded by people who wrote for a living made it seen like a viable reality. Had I grown up with parents or grandparents in classic nine-to-five jobs, it would have felt further away. It was always something I wanted to do."

Q: Do you mind people comparing you work to your grandfather's — or even your mother, Tessa Dahl, who is a writer?

A: "It is such an easy route to take, comparing me with my grandfather, but I couldn't take that sort of comparison or criticism on board. It is really irrelevant as you are talking about totally different mediums. He was a genius, beloved pretty universally, a great children's writer and adult fiction writer. I am just at the beginning of my career."

Q: Did you get on with him? (Roald Dahl died in 1990)

A: "I adored him. I grew up spending a lot of time with him, with all my grandparents. He was a great story-teller. He was sparky and wonderful and curious and never patronized children, which comes across in his writing."

Reporting its 2007 results, its pre-tax profit more than tripled to £17.86m - from £5.2m in 2006, a year when there was no book about the young wizard. As well as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it said Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner had sold well.

The firm said 2008 had started well with "a strong pipeline of new titles". The global success of the Harry Potter books has historically generated bumper profits for Bloomsbury, but the company is now entering a new phase. Chief executive Nigel Newton said: "We are now well positioned for the post Harry Potter era. "We have reduced overhead costs, are successfully developing new business areas in specialist publishing, and have a strong pipeline of titles."

*****

However, not all experts believe the Harry Potter-effect has quite ended. A note from Numis Media Analysts said: "While the final Harry Potter book was released in 2007, we believe the group will be able profitably to mine the franchise for several years, including a paperback edition of Harry Potter 7 [The Deathly Hallows] possibly this year. "Beyond this, we expect the group to diversify either through organic growth or acquisitions."

For those who remember, he was the young boy who gets the girl in the film Love Actually. For those who don't, Thomas Sangster may yet become a household name. The sixth-former from south London, the Guardian can reveal, has been chosen by Steven Spielberg to be his Tintin for a three-movie adaptation of the boy reporter's adventures. The trilogy is likely to give the 17-year-old the same profile as Daniel Radcliffe, aka Harry Potter, or Elijah Wood, who shot to international stardom as Frodo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings series.

Spielberg has been working with Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings and King Kong, on how to bring Tintin to life. Now the production has taken another significant step with the casting of Sangster, alongside Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in the adaptation of Tolkien's books, as Captain Haddock. Both actors spent a week in Los Angeles before Easter running through scenes for Spielberg and Jackson; work begins in earnest in September, with a view to releasing the first film in 2010.

Sangster admitted to the Guardian that he had not read Tintin until a few days ago. "But I've always loved the cartoons. I never saw the books because I was never that big on reading. When I was really young I watched some episodes and loved it.

"You can really escape into this fantasy world ... I love cars and aeroplanes and stuff, any car or any aeroplane or any gun that was ever used in Tintin would always be real, an exact copy of it so if it was a car it would be a Citroen and if it was a gun it would be a Luger."

"Tintin is like a super boy scout. He knows how to fly these things. He knows how to drive these things. It's just like common sense: he jumps in and goes, he doesn't need to think about any safety, he just goes where he pleases. For such a small kid he's very good at beating people up and, being a cartoon, nowadays you know, there's all that 'we can't be violent'".

A rare 1937 first issue of the first edition of the childrens' classic was sold at Bonhams earlier today, going for twice its pre-sale estimate. The copy, inscribed by the author with a message of thanks to his friend Elaine Griffiths, who helped the author see the work into print, went to an anonymous telephone bidder. The £60,000 price tag sets a new world record for signed copies of the book, which remains Tolkien's bestselling work, having sold over 100m copies since its first publication.

Also included in the sale was the first foreign language edition of The Hobbit, also inscribed to Elaine Griffiths. The Swedish version, dating from 1947, went for £1,560, almost four times its estimated sale price.

The last known photograph of Tolkien, taken by his grandson Michael on August 9 1973, was also included in the auction. The photograph shows the author in the Botanical Gardens of Oxford, where Tolkien taught Anglo-Saxon language and literature, leaning against his favourite tree, the Black Pine he named Laocoon after the mythical Trojan prophet. The photograph was a gift to Elaine Griffiths from Tolkien's daughter Priscilla, who wrote on the back "For Elaine with love from Priscilla".

The aviation pioneer's Lockheed Lightning P-38 disappeared July 31, 1944. In a forthcoming book, former Luftwaffe pilot Horst Rippert says he believes that he shot down the plane - although he is not completely sure. Le Figaro magazine published extracts of the book, "Saint-Exupery, the ultimate secret," this weekend. "I shot down Exupery," the magazine quoted Rippert as saying.

But the former Messerschmitt pilot also added: "I didn't see the pilot, and it would have been impossible for me to know that it was Exupery. I hoped, and I still hope, that it wasn't him." Saint-Exupery was 44. A scuba diver since found the wreckage of his plane on the Mediterranean seabed, offshore between Marseille and Cassis.

He has become one of France's most admired figures, in part because of "The Little Prince," a tender fable about a prince from an asteroid who explores the planets and then falls to earth. Saint-Exupery's other works, which largely deal with his aviation experiences, include "Wind, Sand and Stars" and "Flight to Arras," about a doomed reconnaissance mission.

The German pilot, Rippert, says in the book that he was a fan of the author's works. "In our youth, at school, we had all read him. We loved his books," he said. "If I had known, I would not have opened fire. Not on him!"

The Cat in the Cat, Horton Hears a Who!, Green Eggs and Ham, Hop on Pop and other Dr. Seuss classics are going digital, thanks to a partnership between Dr. Seuss Enterprises and kidthing, a new content distribution platform. Digital versions of the books—with extras such as voiceovers, sound effects and music—will roll out on kidthing.com starting in March, along with digital games based on the characters.

"We're honored to be able to work with Dr. Seuss Enterprises," says Larry Hitchcock, kidthing's CEO. "We all have our favorite Dr. Seuss properties or books that we read as a child and are reading to our own kids now."

Content is downloaded on an a la carte basis, with fees ranging from $.99 to $10.00; content owners determine the prices. It is then played offline on kidthing's free digital media player. Hitchcock says the service was designed to provide a safe environment where children can use digital content at home and in school, and to provide publishers and other content owners with a secure way to distribute and monetize their content.

In March, the National Education Association will partner with kidthing to distribute a free digital read-along version of Horton Hears a Who! to classrooms in conjunction with the Read Across America initiative. That will be followed by a classroom version of The Lorax in celebration of Earth Day in April. Both titles will be available for purchase online as well.

The studio purchased all rights to the five novels, composed of handwriting and animation, chronicling the daily indignities faced by middle school student Greg Heffley. Former Buena Vista president Nina Jacobson will produce the first feature, with more to possibly follow. Carla Hacken is overseeing the film's development for the studio.

Author/illustrator Kinney's first two books, last spring's "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" and February's "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules," both hit No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list, with the first book staying there for 45 weeks. The author launched his underdog hero's story on Funbrain.com in 2004, attracting more than 50 million visits from fans.

Fox 2000 young adult book scout Riley Ellis met with Kinney a year ago and brought in the project, helping make the rights deal with agent Sylvie Rabineau and attorney Keith Fleer. The studio is currently seeking a director and screenwriter for the project.