Dead is the New Black, by Marlene Perez
Marlene Perez’s Dead is the New Black is a supernatural mystery/romance aimed at reluctant teen readers*. Her protagonist is Daisy Giordano, the youngest daughter of one of the strangest families ...
Flora's Dare, by Ysabeau S. Wilce
Middle series installments frequently feel like stopgaps, but Ysabeau S. Wilce’s Flora’s Dare, the sequel to 2007’s Flora Segunda, is in all ways exceptional. As the story opens, fourteen-year-old Flora has discovered that her formerly crazy father was actually a lot easier to live with back when he was nuts...
Speaking of movies...
...Will Smith has signed on to star in a prequel to the blockbuster I Am Legend (which was based on a novel by acclaimed horror/sci-fi writer Richard Matheson). According to Variety, the film wil...
Dupond et Dupont!
Rumors are afloat that Shaun of the Dead's Simon Pegg and Nick Frost will join the cast of Steven Spielberg's adaptations of Hergé's The Adventures of TinTin, thereby increasing the project's cool...
Typecasting
In news that should surprise exactly no one, Johnny Depp has agreed to play the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton's upcoming film adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Brilliant? Or has the B...
So much more entertaining than the books themselves...
I was thinking of doing a blog post on Twilight-inspired Halloween costumes (and trust me: there's plenty of material out there), but I found myself distracted by the impressive number of awesome ...
Breaking records
According to Publishers Weekly, Brisingr, the third volume in Christopher Paolini's "Inheritance Cycle", sold 550,000 copies on its first day. The sales numbers broke records for Random House Chil...
Mark your calendars...
Wordcandy-approved authors like Michael Dobbs, Neil Gaiman, and Jon Scieszka are going to be there!
Scholastic abandons Bratz
According to an article in The New York Times, children's publisher Scholastic Inc. has decided to stop offering chapter books and spinoff products based on the "Bratz" product line at its popular...
Sanitizing Rapunzel
Boston Globe critic Joanna Weiss posted an article yesterday about the trend towards kinder, gentler fairytales for children, and suggests that important messages are being lost in the translation...
The Debs, by Susan McBride
Much like Gossip Girl, The A-List, Clique, and countless other titles in the booming subgenre of YA literature about rich, beautiful teens cavorting in the wealthiest communities in America...
Eoin Colfer + Hitchhiker's Guide = OMG!!!
The world is a more glorious place this morning, dear readers, due to Wednesday's announcement that Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer has been given the opportunity to write a sixth book in Douglas ...
The Masque of the Red Death: anime-style
AnimeNewsNetwork has an interesting article up about The Masque of the Black Death, the last script co-written by legendary director Akira Kurosawa before his death in 1998. The script is an adapt...
Read-a-thon!
If you're going to be in New York next week, consider checking out Scholastic's all-day read-a-thon of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on September 23rd. The event is being held in honor of ...
The horror, the horror...
Forget all that dire news from the financial markets. The news that Miley Cyrus is going to be starring in one of Nicholas Sparks's shamelessly manipulative tearjerkers? Yeah, now that's clear pr...
SaTC for the young'uns.
I'd like to think this news is a joke, but it's the headlining article on Variety right now: Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell has inked a deal to write two new Carrie Bradshaw novels aimed...
Susan Juby takes on a new genre.
Man, September 30th is going to be an v. expensive day. In addition to must-buy books (for me, anyway) by Lisa Kleypas and Tomoko Hayakawa, perennial Wordcandy favorite Susan Juby has a new book ...
Much like the vampires she writes about, Meyer's series just won't die.
Twelve chapters of Stephenie Meyer’s WIP Midnight Sun (a re-telling of Bella and Edward's story from Edward’s POV) were apparently leaked onto the Internet, and Meyer has chosen to post the draft ...
First the O.C., then the UES, now Palm Beach...
Sooner or later they will run out of American book series featuring semi-exotic locales full of filthy-rich PYTs, won't they? We're not going to be forced to watch a show about the crazy antics o...
Pharmakon, by Dirk Wittenborn
Well-written but fundamentally bleak, Dirk Wittenborn’s Pharmakon traces the downfall of a unique American family. As the novel opens in the early 1950s, Dr. Will Friedrich, a Yale psychopharmaco...
Brave or foolhardy? It's a tough call.
Have any of you read Abigail Reynolds's Pride and Prejudice "variations"? She appears to have written several, each one featuring an alternate ending for the novel. Her previous stories are availa...
Lisa Kleypas book trailers!
I'm hypnotized by these:Okay, the Seduce Me at Sunrise one was awful, but the Wallflower Christmas one was kind of funny....
Supersaturated
Just in case The Hills star Lauren Conrad wasn't overexposed enough already, now she's adding "young adult novelist" to her résumé... and something tells me her books will be just as original and ...
Nodame in Paris
The promo video for the upcoming Nodame Cantabile Paris arc anime is up. It's all in Japanese, but that's okay--Nodame's awesomeness needs no translation:This series will premiere in Japan on Oct...