As a child growing up amidst the harsh beauty of Alaska, Sarah Palin sought to find her purpose in life. But this small-town girl never dreamed that God's plan would lead her to become a household name. Feeling called to make a change in the world, Sarah got involved in politics, eventually running for vice president of the United States. Even under constant political pressure, Sarah stood tall. Her steady faith in God kept her strong, along with the love and support of her family. Sarah's story inspires each of us to follow our dreams without compromising our beliefs.

• Author of the Year: James Patterson for Max (A Maximum Ride Novel) (Little, Brown)
• Illustrator of the Year: Peter Brown for The Curious Garden (Little, Brown)
• Kindergarten to Second Grade Book of the Year: Lulu the Big Little Chick written and illustrated by Paulette Bogan (Bloomsbury USA)
• Third Grade to Fourth Grade Book of the Year: Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute written and illustrated by Jarrett J. Krosoczka (Knopf/Random House)
• Fifth Grade to Sixth Grade Book of the Year: Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-so-fabulous Life written and illustrated by Rachel Renee Russell (Aladdin/Simon & Schuster)
• Teen Choice Book of the Year: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic)

Baumbach is in talks to direct Stiller in 20th Century Fox's "Mr. Popper's Penguins," based on the beloved 1938 children's book. Stiller also is in talks at this point; no deal has been made.

John Davis is producing through his Davis Entertainment production company.

Clea Raymond is a talented young photojournalist who has spent her entire life in the spotlight as the daughter of a Washington politician and a renowned surgeon. Haunted by the strange appearance of a mysterious young man in her photographs, Clea travels the globe with her best friends, Rayna and Ben, in a race against time to unravel a centuries-old mystery that could unlock the key to her soulmate's true identity and the secret of her father's disappearance--and ultimately save all their lives.

Spelling, whose acting credits include TV show Beverly Hills 90210, has already written an autobiography sTORI Telling and follow-up book Mommywood about being a Hollywood mother of young children. Her third adult book, tentatively titled Uncharted terriTORI, is due to go on sale in June.

***

"I love reading to my kids. It's our special time together. That and my passion for story telling inspired me to write a children's book of my own to read to them and children everywhere," said Spelling, 36, in a statement.

The new book, Sweet Valley Confidential, takes place 12 years after the high school series, when the twins and their friends are in their late 20s and early 30s. It will, according to publisher St Martin's Press, see "the real world intrude after a perfect childhood". "I've had thousand of queries from fans over the years wondering what Jessica and Elizabeth would be like as adults. Well, Sweet Valley Confidential should give them all the answers," said Pascal, who was originally inspired to write the series by the experiences of her three daughters. "And I can guarantee they will be very surprised. Actually, more like shocked."

*****

St Martin's Press, which will publish the novel in early 2011, gave away little about the plot but fans are already speculating about which direction Pascal will take her characters. "Most everyone hopes Elizabeth and Todd are married, but we all have an idea Liz is having an affair if that's the case," said one reader, who has written about the entire series on her blog, Shannon's Sweet Valley High blog. "We figure Jessica has probably gone to Hollywood to be a star, but some of us are kind of hoping she's failed. Because seriously, that girl has had it too easy. And of course we all want to see the return of Lila, Bruce and the other side characters. It just wouldn't be Sweet Valley without them. A few of my readers are hoping Lila and Bruce are married, but I'd rather see Lila and Jessica trolling for guys together like they always have."

After being printed overseas, the books were shipped by boat to the west coast, then transferred to a train and later a truck; the driver discovered the books were missing after a stop in the Midwest.

Flanimals Pop-Up, illustrated by Rob Steen, will be released on March 9. According to the publisher, the theft will have no impact on the book's availability on that date. Flanimals Pop-Up is the first Flanimals title from Candlewick; Putnam has published two Flanimals picture books: Flanimals (2005) and More Flanimals (2006).

This March, UK-based Kommixx Entertainment, the film and television production company backed by Swiss venture fund EAM Private Capital, intends to go out into the market for RHCSE in March. It may yet approach an existing film and television financier such as Aramid Capital to help it raise the money. The $100M will be used to develop cartoons and live-action films and television series based on RHCB properties, as well as video games and toys. The deal includes authors like Jacqueline Wilson, whose Tracy Beaker character is already a hit for the BBC, The Golden Compass author Philip Pullman; and Terry Pratchett, whose Discworld novels are enormously popular with UK readers. Children's illustrators on Random House’s books include Quentin Blake, Shirley Hughes and John Burningham.

Pullman, 63, told the Western Mail: "If Sam is right then I am very disappointed because it obviously would have been very good to have seen the other two films made."

Catholic League leader Bill Donahue has said he is "delighted" by the effectiveness of his religious boycott – "I knew if we could hurt the box office receipts here, it might put the brakes on the next movie."

Pullman said of Donahue's triumphalism: "It's disgusting, but only the sort of behaviour I expect of these people. It's rubbish [that the Golden Compass introduces children to atheism]."

He added that he was particularly disappointed because the film adaptation of Northern Lights finished about three quarters of the way into the book. "So there were a number of very important scenes that were shot and were very good, but we didn't see them in the film. "Their justification was that they were going to use the scenes they'd shot, but at the start of the second film. It sort of made sense, but if what Sam Elliott says is true we won't see those scenes."

Although it is unclear when the last issue of Kirkus Reviews will be published, the staff for the prepub book review will be gone by the end of the year, a spokesperson for parent company Nielsen Business Media said. On Thursday morning, Nielsen announced that Kirkus, along with Editor & Publisher, will cease operations while the company sells its core business-to-business magazines to the newly formed investment group e5 Global Media Holdings. There are no plans to run online Kirkus reviews or a strategy to try to keep the Kirkus brand alive. It is also uncertain what Nielsen will do with the Kirkus review archive. A total of 18 people worked at Kirkus and E&P.

• Fiction: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (Random House)
• Nonfiction: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T. J. Stiles (Alfred A. Knopf)
• Poetry: Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy by Keith Waldrop (University of California Press)
• Young People's Literature: Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Waterstone's has launched a standalone Marketplace site in conjunction with Alibris, the giant online bookshop that sells used and rare books via a network of independent bookellers. In addition, individual book searches on the Waterstone's site now show secondhand copies, which are available to buy via a marketplace link.

Waterstone's said the development meant it could offer "access to tens of millions of items stocked by independent sellers from 45 countries around the world". Featured shops on the marketplace site include, Bailey Hill Book Shop, Castle Cary, Somerset; Literary Cat Books and Prints, Wales; Cromer Books; and Spinetinglers, Ballygowan.

Academic bookseller Blackwell signed a similar deal with Alibris in February last year. Borders made the same deal in September thus year. Waterstone's will also be competing with Amazon and Play.com, which both offer secondhand books.

"There was a different ending to 'New Moon.' Originally it was much quieter [and took place] in Bella's head," she said. Meyer changed it at the urging of her mom, Candy Morgan. She introduced the Volturi earlier, and — voila! — a Volturi smack-down jazzes up the end. Thanks, Candy.

Otherwise, Oprah and Meyer went over very familiar territory: "Twilight" came to Meyer in a dream; she imagined a hot vampire who was in love with a mortal girl; she wanted to know more; that dream became Chapter 13 of "Twilight." "In the dream it was two people in a circular meadow and one of them was a sparkly boy and one was just a girl who was human and normal and the boy was a vampire, which was bizarre," Meyer said. "It was a passion and frenzy when I started writing."

And of course, there was a question about Robert Pattinson. His hygiene having often been called into question, Oprah wanted to know, "What does he smell like?" "He smells great," Meyer said. "Rob is hilarious. He is the funniest person. He's not at all like the Edward character. He's so different. He just doesn't look like anyone else, in a good way. He's very striking looking."

"To stand that kind of test of time is pretty formidable," says Levy, who will produce the film through his company, 21 Laps. "People read them as kids and can now read them to their kids. Any piece of culture that proves that enduring has something special in its DNA."

Though his next film is the more adult Tina Fey-Steve Carell comedy Date Night, the Berenstain films "happen to fit firmly within the wheelhouse of family-genre comedy I do, whether it's Cheaper by the Dozen or Night at the Museum," Levy says. "It's warm-hearted comedy about family, and a different kind of family."

Writers have yet to be hired, but Levy says he wants the film to be an original story incorporating details from some of the more popular Berenstain books.

"I'd like the film to be un-ironic about its family connections but have a wry comedic sensibility that isn't oblivious to the fact that they're bears," Levy says. "The comedy comes from this bear family coexisting in a more recognizably real world."

• And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
• His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
• TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
• Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
• Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
• Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
• Uncle Bobby's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen
• The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
• Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper

Back in the 1980s, Nelson Mandela was front and center on the world stage. Now, Macmillan aims to see history repeat itself, thanks to a global, 13-language launch of the picture-book adaptation of his autobiography. The company's unprecedented release of Long Walk to Freedom "was intended to reflect Nelson Mandela's importance to South Africa and the world," says Emma Hopkin, managing director of Macmillan Children’s Books in the U.K.

*****

Those numerous and simultaneous translations were, in fact, an essential part of the deal for the Foundation and Little, Brown. Although English is South Africa's lingua franca, it is actually the first language of only a small minority of the country's children. Hopkin explains that "because of Nelson Mandela’s importance to South Africa, the goal was that every South African child would have the opportunity to read this book." To achieve this end, Macmillan printed Long Walk to Freedom not only in Afrikaans, but in isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sesotho and the rest of South Africa's 11 official languages.

Sarah Ferguson told the Daily Mail she had signed a deal with a major US movie company to work on big-screen versions of the five books, which are aimed at four-to-eight-year-olds and centre on a red-headed girl and her various adventures. The deal also includes the 49-year-old's most recent effort, Tea for Ruby, a book for under-fours about an accident-prone red-haired child who is invited to meet the Queen.

"The films will run as a series. I cannot yet tell you the name of the film company," Ferguson said, adding, "I cannot tell you how exciting that is for me. America has been so good to me. "I failed in Britain, and when I gave it a go in America I was ready to fail there, too - but they have really embraced me," she said.

The "Sweet Valley" novels followed the lives of identical twins with dissimilar personalities -- the sensitive and practical Elizabeth and the flighty and boy-crazy Jessica -- in the fictional town of Sweet Valley. There were more than 150 books in the series between 1983 and 2003 and a TV series with 88 episodes between 1994 and 1997.

U put out the word last week that it's not spending money for the rest of this year to advance development projects -- unless they're being fast-tracked or greenlit (Daily Variety, Sept. 18). Deal comes on the heels of a tepid opening for "Jennifer's Body," which Cody scripted.

Dr Jamie Tehrani, a cultural anthropologist at Durham University, studied 35 versions of Little Red Riding Hood from around the world. Whilst the European version tells the story of a little girl who is tricked by a wolf masquerading as her grandmother, in the Chinese version a tiger replaces the wolf. In Iran, where it would be considered odd for a young girl to roam alone, the story features a little boy.

Contrary to the view that the tale originated in France shortly before Charles Perrault produced the first written version in the 17th century, Dr Tehrani found that the varients shared a common ancestor dating back more than 2,600 years. He said: "Over time these folk tales have been subtly changed and have evolved just like an biological organism. Because many of them were not written down until much later, they have been misremembered or reinvented through hundreds of generations. By looking at how these folk tales have spread and changed it tells us something about human psychology and what sort of things we find memorable. The oldest tale we found was an Aesopic fable that dated from about the sixth century BC, so the last common ancestor of all these tales certainly predated this. We are looking at a very ancient tale that evolved over time."

Dr Tehrani, who will present his work on Tuesday at the British Science Festival in Guildford, Surrey, identified 70 variables in plot and characters between different versions of Little Red Riding Hood. He found that the stories could be grouped into distinct families according to how they evolved over time. The original ancestor is thought to be similar to another tale, The Wolf and the Kids, in which a wolf pretends to be a nanny goat to gain entry to a house full of young goats.

Germany has complained that Google had scanned books from U.S. libraries for a database without asking the owners, and there are also fears the service will be expensive for libraries as it is unclear what Google may charge them. "We hope that the court will not give its approval to the accord, or at least that it will remove German authors and publishers ... so they are unaffected," said German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries in a ministry statement.

If that happens, Germans could decide for themselves whether to make their works available to Google. German officials will take part in a fairness hearing on Oct. 7, said the ministry. Last week, the European Union's media commissioner said she backed the Google deal.

Academic bookseller Blackwell signed a similar deal with Alibris in February last year. Borders will also be competing with Amazon and Play.com, which both offer secondhand books. Borders UK head of e-commerce Julie Howkins said that the retailer had decided to set up the new offer on its website to "make sure we're offering our customers the greatest range of books possible". Howkins added that "cash-strapped parents and students have now got another alternative" for back to school titles.

Individual product pages now offer second hand books where available along side other variations, such as hardback or e-book. Howkins said that this would insure that customers had the "widest selection possible". The section launched at the beginning of August, however Howkins said she expects sales to increase with the back to school season.

As many as 10,000 retail stores will close nationwide this year, led by clothing stores, electronics and food-and-beverage stores, and department stores, in that order, a study released Tuesday shows.

If the forecast holds, the store closings this year will be nearly double that of last year, when store closings stood at 5,100, said Sandra Reese, a principal at Grant Thornton LLP's offices in Chicago. Last year, the biggest store closings occurred in electronics, followed by home improvement-furnishings stores and in third place, apparel stores.

"It's been amazing to me how, in conversations, everyone from the low-end to the high-end shopper is cutting back on spending and not spending on lavish purchases," Reese said.

*****

Though bookstores represented only a fraction of the total, their closings are forecast to jump 500 percent from last year, to 400 stores.

Peter Brantley, a director at coalition co-founder Internet Archive said the group, whose members will be formally disclosed in the next couple of weeks, is being co-led by Gary Reback, a Silicon Valley lawyer involved in the Department of Justice's antitrust investigation against Microsoft Corp. last decade. Microsoft, Amazon.com Inc. and Yahoo Inc. have agreed to join the group. Mr. Reback did not reply to requests for comment.

Microsoft and Yahoo confirmed their participation. Amazon declined to comment. The coalition is the latest sign that Google's rapid ascent has made it a prime target for competitors, just as Microsoft was reviled as the industry's bully in the 1990s.

*****

The U.S. Justice Department and state attorneys general are continuing to investigate the settlement and have been discussing their concerns with Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. The Justice Department sent the U.S. District Court reviewing the agreement a letter last month saying that it was investigating the agreement. The court gave the Justice Department until Sept. 18 to submit any concerns in writing.

But some of Google's close commercial rivals have held their fire publicly, while sharing their views with regulators.

The latest objection, filed with the Manhattan court today, comes from a Washington-based lawyer and writer who specialises in class-action law and monopolies. In his 47-page complaint, Scott Gant argues that potentially millions of authors in America and around the world are being coerced into accepting the deal without being fully informed about its implications.

"Anyone taking part in this project should be doing so as a conscious choice to participate knowing fully what they are doing. In fact, people are being forced to hand over to Google some of their intellectual property often with no understanding of what that means," Gant said.

Under US class-action law, authors and publishers who do not specifically opt out of the settlement are deemed to have signed up to it. But Gant points out that as an author himself — he wrote a book on the digital information revolution called We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age — he has never received any legal notice about the case.

*****

Other opponents of the deal include the National Writers Union and the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Eighteen professors within the University of California system have also written to the court objecting that the settlement fails to protect the interests of academic authors and puts profit before the public's right to information.

Early Friday afternoon, the studio completed a deal to purchase pre-emptively the film rights to "I Am Number Four," an unpublished science fiction book, for Bay to produce and possibly direct. It is the first in a planned six-volume series co-written by "A Million Little Pieces" author James Frey.

Neither the studio nor WME, which represents Frey and Bay, would confirm Frey or divulge the name of the other author. The deal is in the high-six figures.

WME began shopping the book's feature and publishing rights early in the week to a number of producers and studios. The agency used a pseudonym for the authors presumably because Frey is notable mainly for his scandal-ridden fudging of facts in his ostensible memoir of addiction and subsequent high-profile dressing down by Oprah Winfrey on her show.

The "Four" story line involves nine alien teens assimilating to high school on Earth after their planet is destroyed by an enemy species. The fourth of the group discovers that the enemy is now after him on Earth.

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.