Jan 12 2011

Show your Judy Blume love!

Random House Audio has kicked off a Judy Blume Journal Contest. Share your favorite Blume-related story or memory online and you'll be entered to win an iPod Touch, iTunes gift card, collection o...

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Jan 11 2011

Price-gouging at Hogwarts

The NY Times recently posted an article about what they describe as the "unexpected, turbocharged success of the $265 million Potter playland" (i.e., Universal's Wizarding World of Harry Potter th...

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Jan 11 2011

Pride and Prejudice goes R-rated

And speaking of Jane Austen-related pain, check this out:The above is what its publisher describes as a "deliciously naughty updating" of Austen's Pride and Prejudice, making it "the story you lov...

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Jan 10 2011

Win-win

TVLine is reporting that ABC is planning an eight-hour-long television miniseries adaptation of Gregory Maguire's massive hit Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. And as th...

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Jan 10 2011

Sense and sensibility and OH, MY EYES

Ugh, another one?JUST STOP TRYING, HARPER COLLINS. WE'RE NEVER EVER GOING TO CONFUSE JANE AUSTEN AND STEPHENIE MEYER.

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Jan 6 2011

Camelot: now with even more potboiler action!

Arthurian legend fans take note: Starz will be airing a new drama called Camelot, debuting April 1st. This new adaptation will be heavy on the sex, sword-fighting, and magic, and (thankfully) it'...

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Jan 5 2011

Either they're missing something, or I am.

My, my. Publisher New South, Inc. is releasing a new edition of Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn that will remove the bucketload of racial slurs in Huckleberry Finn.New ...

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Jan 4 2011

The Green Lantern flexes for the big screen

I have my doubts about this Green Lantern trailer: It looks seriously hokey, and I've never really been into the whole golden-child appeal of either Blake Lively or Ryan Reynolds. However, my ...

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Jan 3 2011

Three Black Swans, by Caroline B. Cooney

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First cousins Missy and Claire, the heroines of Caroline B. Cooney's latest novel Three Black Swans, are so close they can finish each other's sentences. They also look uncannily similar, so when Missy is assigned a school project on scientific hoaxes, she and Claire successfully trick her classmates into thinking they are long-lost identical twins...

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Jan 3 2011

Finally, a chance for all that Jane Austen fanfic to pay off...

The fine people at The Republic of Pemberley are hosting a writing contest focused on Jane Austen-inspired short stories. If you are an unpublished author of legal age, your Austen-esque story co...

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Dec 30 2010

The Knight Life: Chivalry Ain't Dead, by Keith Knight

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Keith Knight's The Knight Life: Chivalry Ain't Dead is a low-key but consistently entertaining comic strip centered around Knight, an African-American cartoonist and musician living...

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Dec 29 2010

The end of book-browsing as we know it?

The New York Times posted an article last week about the year-end boom in e-reader sales, which some analysts believe will lead to a huge increase in e-book popularity in 2011. Most of the articl...

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Dec 28 2010

Gimme a Call, by Sarah Mlynowski

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I've been following Sarah Mlynowski's career ever since the publication of her first novel: 2001's Milkrun, one of the first offerings from Red Dress Ink, the now-defunct Harlequin...

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Dec 28 2010

Setting yourself up for disappointment

The BuzzSugar staff has helpfully compiled a list of 15 books to read before their film adaptations are released. Considerate of them, although why'd they leave out The Invention of Hugo Cabret?

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Dec 27 2010

The Crossbones: Skeleton Creek #3, by Patrick Carman

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We liked the first two books in Patrick Carman's Skeleton Creek horror/mystery series. Sure, we moaned about having to access hokey online videos in order to fully experience th...

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Dec 27 2010

So pretty!

Isn't this a beautiful sight to behold?The picture doesn't do it full justice, but I assure you: in real life, this recent repackaging of two of P.G. Wodehouse's full-length Jeeves and Wooster nov...

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Dec 23 2010

A gift from Scholastic to you...

The fine people at Scholastic have made Alexandra Bullen's YA novel Wish available as a free e-book download. From now until January 3rd, click here to read Wish in its entirety. (You can also p...

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Dec 22 2010

Jane Eyre on the big screen. Again.

Why, look at this, another Jane Eyre adaptation! That would be... what, the fourth version made for television or film in the past 15 years? Most of me thinks we should let poor Jane get some re...

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Dec 21 2010

Goats: Showcase Showdown, by Jonathan Rosenberg

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According to the Infinite Monkey Theorem, an immortal monkey hitting a keyboard at random for an infinite amount of time will eventually replicate the complete works of Shakespeare...

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Dec 21 2010

Electron Boy takes off

With the help of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, a Seattle-area boy battling a rare form of cancer saved the Pacific Northwest from evil last spring. (Personally, I was very grateful--I'm a huge Seat...

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Dec 20 2010

The Cardturner, by Louis Sachar

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Seventeen-year-old Alton Richards, the protagonist of Louis Sachar's novel The Cardturner, is furious when his parents insist he spend the summer working for his wealthy great-uncle Lester. Lester is blind, testy, and a master bridge player, so Alton foresees a long, dull summer spent driving his uncle to his club and helping him play the world's most boring card game...

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Dec 20 2010

Big Clay Pot, by Scott Mills

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Scott Mills's delicately illustrated graphic novel Big Clay Pot is the story of Sun Kim, a preadolescent Korean orphan who ends up in a small fishing community in ancient Japan. Sun Kim's klutziness gets her kicked out of camp after camp, until she meets Kokoro...

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Dec 16 2010

Welcome to Temptation, by Jennifer Crusie

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St. Martin's Press has recently re-released Jennifer Crusie's Welcome To Temptation, giving Crusie fans a second chance to enjoy this ridiculously fun, sexy blend of small-town pol...

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Dec 16 2010

Oscar bait

The movie trailer for Sara Gruen's Water For Elephants is out. Behold:Wow, middlebrow angst, cute animals, period costumes, and Edward Cullen? It's like they're trying to smash every successful ...

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Dec 15 2010

Books, bells, and whistles

NPR's Morning Edition recently aired a story about "multi-platform" children's books, focusing largely on our beloved 39 Clues series. Personally, we think the literary gimmick is tough to get ri...

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Dec 14 2010

Linger, by Maggie Stiefvater

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Writing the middle novel in a trilogy must be tough. Authors need to sustain their momentum and provide at least a little plot resolution, but they also have to leave enough loose...

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Dec 14 2010

Christopher Hart

Christopher Hart is the author of a number of illustrated art instruction manuals, including the bestseller Manga Mania: How to Draw Japanese Comics. His book Cartoon Cute Animals: How To Draw th...

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Dec 14 2010

Cartoon Cute Animals, by Christopher Hart

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Christopher Hart, author of the hugely popular book Manga Mania: How to Draw Japanese Comics, has written a number of bestselling illustrated art instruction manuals. His latest effort is...

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Dec 14 2010

Figure-skating... WITH THE GODS!

The official trailer for Marvel's Thor movie is out, and it left me with two burning questions. Is that dark-haired dude all in black meant to be Loki, and, if so, is he supposed to look just lik...

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Dec 13 2010

How Rocket Learned to Read, written and illustrated by Tad Hills

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How Rocket Learned to Read, the latest picture book from bestselling author and illustrator Tad Hills, is an engaging, attractively illustrated story about a small dog who transform...

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