Blockbuster books = blockbuster movies

Saoirse Ronan in How I Live Now. Photo by Magnolia Pictures.

Meg Rosoff’s acclaimed How I Live Now (Random, 2004) is about a NYC girl who spends an idyllic summer with her cousins in England right before an unnamed aggressor invades the UK and threatens the world’s existence. Academy Award-winning director Kevin Macdonald is at the helm and Saoirse Ronan and George MacKay star. The film debuts this fall.

The movie adaptation of 2006 bestseller The Book Thief (Random) by Markus Zusak is already building Oscar buzz and will be in theaters on November 15. This World War II drama is directed by Brian Percival, and stars Sophie Nelisse as the titular heroine Liesel, and Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson as her adoptive parents.

Seventh Son is based on the first installment in Joseph Delaney’s “The Last Apprentice” series (HarperCollins). In this dark fantasy, 14-year-old Tom Ward, a seventh son of a seventh son, goes on adventures as the Spook’s apprentice. Sergei Bodrov directs and Ben Barnes, Jeff Bridges, and Julianne Moore star. It features music composed by Tuomas Kantelinen. Originally scheduled to release on October 18, 2013, it will be out in theaters in 3-D and IMAX 3D on January 17, 2014.

Richelle Mead’s NYT-bestselling Vampire Academy (Penguin, 2007) is getting the film treatment in time for Valentine’s Day, 2014. Written by Daniel Waters of Heathers fame, and directed by his brother Mark Waters of Mean Girls fame, the story of best friends Rose, half-human/half-vampire, and Lissa, a mortal vampire princess who wreak havoc and fall in love at St. Vladimir’s Academy, is in capable hands. Starring Zoey Deutch, Lucy Fry, and Danila Kozlovsky, the movie is due out on February 14, 2014.

Positioned to be the next “Hunger Games” franchise, the movie adaptation of Veronica Roth’s Divergent (HarperCollins, 2011), featuring Hollywood’s latest sweetheart, Shailene Woodley, will be in theaters on March 21, 2014.

John Green’s chair on the set of In the Fault of Our Stars

One of the most celebrated YA novels of 2012, John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars (Dutton), also starring Shailene Woodley (Hazel), began filming last week in Pittsburgh, and the acclaimed author has been excitedly tweeting and Tumbling from the set with updates. He will be making a cameo appearance in the book-to-film about two teen cancer patients who fall in love. Ansel Elgort plays the male lead, Auggie, Nat Wolff is cast as Isaac, his best friend, and it was recently revealed that Laura Dern will play Hazel’s mother. No film release date yet.

Fans of Gayle Forman’s If I Stay (Dutton, 2009) can breathe a sigh of relief. The film, starring Chloë Moretz, was dropped by Summit earlier this year, but it has since been picked up by MGM. The tearjerker—about a girl who has an out-of-body experience following a car accident that puts her in a coma and kills the rest of her family—will be produced by Denise DiNovi and Alison Greenspan of DiNovi Pictures. No release date yet.

And while Samantha Shannon’s The Bone Season, just published this month, the first in a projected seven-book fantasy series by 21-year-old recent college graduate, is already building buzz for adult and teen audiences. It was recently chosen as the first Today Show book club selection, and the film rights have been acquired by Andy Serkis and Jonathan Cavendish, founders of The Imaginarium production company.

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

Sequels and more sequels
There’s been lots of casting news for Lionsgate’s final “Hunger Games” installments, based on Suzanne Collins’s books (Scholastic). The studio is currently eyeing Julianne Moore to play President Coin in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay. Natalie Dormer has been cast in the role of Cressida, while Evan Ross is set to play Messalla, Cressida’s cameraman, and Stef Dawson will step in as Finnick Odair’s love interest, Annie Cresta. In the meantime, fans still have Catching Fire to look forward to, in theaters on November 22, 2013.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Ashes is slated to begin production in the fall with Harald Zwart returning to direct, along with stars Lily Collins and Jamie Campbell. A taste of the sequel was to premiere in Cannes, but general consensus on The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones is still pending.

Already banking on Divergent’s future success as a film, Brian Duffield been commissioned to begin working on the sequel, Insurgent (HarperCollins, 2012).

A dystopian horizon

Directed by Wes Ball, the movie version of James Dashner’s NYT-bestselling The Maze Runner (Delacorte, 2009), about a group of teens trying to survive in an enclosed environment called “The Glade,” is set to premiere in theaters on February 14, 2014. Patricia Clarkson has joined Dylan O’Brien (Thomas) and Kaya Scodelario (Teresa) in the cast as Chancellor Ava Paige.

A film based on Andy Mulligan’s Trash (Random, 2010), seems to be on its way to theaters soon. Rooney Mara (NGO worker named Olivia), Martin Sheen (Father Julliard), and Wagner Moura are now on board. Three street kids—Raphael (Rickson Tevez), Gardo (Eduardo Luis), and Rat (Gabriel Weinstein) live in an unnamed third-world country picking trash, and discover a mysterious bag that triggers a life-changing chain of events. Stephen Daldry is attached as director and Richard Curtis will write the script. Production starts in Rio de Janeiro and it’s already slated for a May 2014 release from Universal.

Many kidlit fans can attest that Lois Lowry’s Newbery-winning The Giver (Houghton, 1993) is the precursor to many of today’s dystopian YAs. Finally, the wheels for a film adaption have been set in motion. Brenton Thwaites will play an aged-up Jonas (the Receiver of memories) and Jeff Bridges is cast as the title character. Meryl Streep is in talks to play the society’s Chief Elder, tasked with assigning roles to the young denizens of a seemingly perfect world. Philip Noyce is attached as director and no release date has been yet announced.

Another pre-Hunger Games may be coming to a theater near you. Scott Westerfeld’s “Uglies” series (S & S) is possibly in the pipeline again. The Australian author revealed via Twitter in July that Davis Entertainment and Lola VFX are in talks to team up and produce his NYT-best-selling trilogy, which chronicles the adventures of Tally Youngblood, a teen who unravels her “pretty” world’s ugly secrets.

SLJ Best Adult Book for Teens The Age of Miracles (Random, 2012) by Karen Thompson Walker, finally has a director lined up for its highly anticipated movie adaptation: Catherine Hardwicke, of Twilight-fame. River Road Entertainment’s Bill Pohlad will produce and Seth Lochhead is writing the screenplay based on the novel about a teen’s coming of age while the Earth’s rotation has begun to slow down.

Rick Yancey’s The 5^th Wave (Putnam, 2013) is inching closer to the big screen. Tobey Maguire’s production company has acquired the rights, and Oscar-nominated Susannah Grant is adapting the dark novel about Cassie’s struggle to survive on an Earth that is slowly being destroyed by aliens.

Paramount Pictures has acquired rights to Joelle Charbonneau’s The Testing (Houghton Harcourt 2013), a YA novel in which a teen is selected for a United Commonwealth program that selects the best and brightest to become possible leaders of the slowly revitalizing post-war civilization. Very few survive The Testing.

Classic kidlit on screen

Photo by Disney.

Maleficent, the Robert Stromberg-directed Disney film that stars Angelina Jolie as the title character, Elle Fanning as Princess Aurora, and Brenton Thwaites as the prince, will tell the story of Sleeping Beauty from the Queen’s point of view. It is set to release on July 2, 2014.

Jennifer Garner, Steve Carell, Ed Oxenbould, and Bella Thorne have been filming Disney’s Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, based on the award-winning picture book by Judith Viorst that follows young Alexander through the trials of one very bad day. Coming to theaters on October 10, 2014, the live-action movie is directed Miguel Arteta, and was adapted by Rob Lieber.

The Cinderella fairy tale is also getting another treatment in a film directed by Kenneth Branagh. The star-studded cast includes Lily James as the title character, Richard Madden as Prince Charming, Cate Blanchett as the evil stepmother Lady Tremaine, Helena Bonham Carter as Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother, Hayley Atwell as Cinderella’s biological mother, and Stellan Skarsgard as the Grand Duke. It’s due in theaters on March 13, 2015.

The classic French novella The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery will get a star-studded cast for its future film animated adaptation.  Marion Cotillard, James Franco, Rachel McAdams, Jeff Bridges, Benicio Del Toro, Mackenzie Foy and Paul Giamatti are already on board to voice characters in sweet story about a pilot who crash-lands in the desert and meets a boy who claims to have fallen to Earth from his home on an asteroid. Bridges will voice the pilot and Cotillard is in talks to take on the part of a rose. Mark Osborne is attached to direct.

Warner Bros. is making a movie based on the Archie comics series. The long-running comic about a teen and his friends set in the fictional Riverdale will be adapted by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and directed by Jason Moore. It will feature the comics’ first openly gay character, Kevin Keller, and rivals for Archie’s heart, Betty and Veronica, among other Riverdale residents.

Warner Bros. is also in final negotiations to pick up the movie rights to the iconic “Encyclopedia Brown” (Penguin) children’s book series for an adaptation to be produced by Roy Lee and Howard David Deutsch. Donald J. Sobol wrote 28 books, from 1963 until his death in 2012, about the intrepid young detective and his friends.

For middle grade moviegoers

Laika Entertainment has scheduled a release date for The Boxtrolls on September 26, 2014, a stop-motion animated film based on Alan Snow’s graphic novel series “The Ratbridge Chronicles” (S & S). Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi have teamed up to direct this project about a boy who allies himself with boxtrolls, cabbageheads, pirates, rats, a retired lawyer, and other silly characters to save the town of Ratbridge from villainous kidnappers. The cast of voice actors includes Elle Fanning, Simon Pegg, Ben Kingsley, Toni Collette, Nick Frost, and Jared Harris.

Disney has teamed up with the Weinstein Co. to develop a book-to-film adaptation of Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl (Disney, 2001). The movie will be based on the first two books in the “Artemis Fowl” series, which chronicles the adventures of a 12-year-old criminal millionaire mastermind. Screenwriter Michael Goldenberg will handle the script for the live-action film, while Robert DeNiro and Jane Rosenthal will producer alongside Weinstein.

In development

Addison Timlin and Jeremy Irvine are set to star in Fallen, an adaptation of Lauren Kate’s best-selling YA series about fallen angels. Produced by Lotus Entertainment and Mayhem Pictures, the film will be directed by Scott Hicks and has been adapted by Kathryn Price, Nicole Millard, and Michael Ross.

Film rights to Emmy Laybourne’s Monument 14 (Feiwel & Friends, 2012) have been acquired by Strange Weather Films. The YA novel focuses on a group of 14 kids who survive an apocalyptic event, and must continue to battle the elements from the shelter of a superstore. Director/Screenwriter Brad Peyton is attached.

Universal Pictures has landed the film rights to Lauren Oliver’s next young adult novel, Panic (2014). Marc Platt will produce the project. The realistic novel is described as Oliver’s return to the grittiness of her first book, Before I Fall (2010, both HarperCollins), which was optioned by Fox 2000.

Ally Carter has two series optioned for film. The rights for “Gallagher Girls” have been acquired by Tonik Productions. These best-selling books share the stories of a group of sexy high-school-aged spies. The “Heist Society” series (both published by Disney/Hyperion) is now with Lionsgate with Max Handelman and Elizabeth Banks attached as producers. This series follows a reformed teen thief as she tries to make good and get out of the family con business.

Bryce Clyde Jenkins (from left), Skai Jackson, Anika Noni Rose, Wood Harris and Harrison Knight star as the Watson family in the Hallmark Channel movie The Watsons Go to Birmingham. (Photo courtesy of Crown Media)

On the small screen
Christopher Paul Curtis’s 1995 historical fiction novel, The Watsons Go To Birmingham, has been adapted for the Hallmark Channel by Tonya Lewis Lee. Directed by Kenny Leo, the film centers on an African American family living in the town of Flint, Michigan, who visit their grandmother’s home in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, a turbulent time during the civil rights movement. The cast includes: Anika Noni Rose, David Alan Grier, Skai Jackson, LaTanya Richardson, Wood Harris, Bryce Jenkins, Pauletta Washington and Harrison Knight. It will have its world premiere on Friday, September 20 (8pm ET).

Kass Morgan’s The 100 (Little, Brown, 2013), a postapocalyptic YA novel, will premiere as a television series on The CW in its 2013–14 midseason.

Roald Dahl’s 1990 illustrated children’s book, Esio Trot, about elderly lovebirds and tortoises, will be adapted into a movie for the BBC, starring Dustin Hoffman and Dame Judi Dench as the couple. Dearbhla Walsh will direct the project, which starts filming in England next month.

 See also:

Page to Screen: Summer Reading Blockbusters, Dystopian Teen Lit, and Childhood Classics

Page to Screen: Upcoming Kids’ Books Set for Film Adaptations

Same Sun Here (Brilliance), written by Silas House and Neela Vaswani and read by the authors, was the winner of the Children’s Title for Ages 8–12. Alexander McCall Smith’s The Great Cake Mystery: Precious Ramotswe’s Very First Case (Listening Library), read by Adjoa Andoh, received the award in the Children’s Titles for Ages Up to 8 category, while The Fault in Our Stars (Brilliance) by John Green, read by Kate Rudd, won in the Teens category.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Audible), read by a full cast including Alan Cumming, Tim Curry, Simon Vance, Katherine Kellgren, Simon Prebble, and others, garnered the awards for Distinguished Achievement in Production as well as Multi-Voiced Performance. The judges remarked that “in this age when encounters with vampires seem to come with the regularity of trips to the grocery store, it is a chilling pleasure to listen to this startlingly terrifying original book.” A complete list of finalists and award winners can be found on the APA’s website.

Michele Cobb, President of the APA, said: “Another great night, another great year, another great list of winners. As the industry grows and thrives we reach new heights of visibility, quality and enthusiasm for the format–all reflected in every one of tonight’s nominees and winners!”

The Audio Publishers Association is a not-for-profit trade organization whose primary goals are to “promote awareness of the audiobook industry, gather and disseminate industry statistics, encourage high production standards, and represent the interests of audiobook publishers.”

Jeff Kinney

“Wimpy Kid” author/illustrator Jeff Kinney and “Fancy Nancy” illustrator Robin Preiss Glasser scored the top prizes last night at the sixth annual Children’s & Teen Choice Book Awards (CCBAs) gala, a charity event organized by the Children’s Book Council and Every Child a Reader. The honorees were selected by young readers across the country, who cast ballots at bookstores, school libraries, and on bookweekonline.com for their favorite books, author, and illustrator.

The gala heralds the official start of the yearly Children’s Book Week celebration. The CCBAs is the only national book awards program in which the winning titles are chosen by kids and teens.

More than 1,000,000 votes were tallied, and the winners are:

KINDERGARTEN TO SECOND GRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR

Nighttime Ninja by Barbara DaCosta, illus. by Ed Young (Little, Brown)

THIRD GRADE TO FOURTH GRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR

Bad Kitty for President by Nick Bruel (Roaring Brook/Macmillan)

FIFTH GRADE TO SIXTH GRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR

Dork Diaries 4: Tales from a Not-So-Graceful Ice Princess by Rachel Renée Russell (S & S/Aladdin)

Robin Preiss Glasser

TEEN BOOK OF THE YEAR

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Dutton)

** SLJ Best Book 2012

AUTHOR OF THE YEAR

Jeff Kinney for Diary of a Wimpy Kid 7: The Third Wheel (Abrams/Amulet)

ILLUSTRATOR OF THE YEAR

Robin Preiss Glasser for Fancy Nancy and the Mermaid Ballet (HarperCollins)

In fact, 2013 already promises a packed calendar of book-related film projects based on popular kid and young adult titles. Check out this roundup of releases that will have your students and patrons heading to the theater—and, hopefully, to bookshelves as well.

Coming Soon

The following adaptations, in order of release date, will be debuting in movie theaters in the coming weeks and months.

Oz the Great and Powerful (PG), starring James Franco, Michelle Williams, and Mila Kunis, opens in theaters everywhere on March 8. Directed by Spiderman trilogy master Sam Raimi, it’s inspired by Frank L. Baum’s classic, The Wizard of Oz.

Hoping to replicate the Twilight saga’s runaway success, the film version (PG-13) of Stephenie Meyer’s The Host (Little, Brown, 2008), which chronicles the tale of Melanie Stryder’s (Saoirse Ronan) struggle against a parasitic alien that wants to use her to destroy humanity, premieres March 29.

The Roaring Twenties come to life in Baz Lurhmann’s dizzying adaptation (PG) of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. On May 10, moviegoers will watch a star-studded cast, including Leonardo DiCaprio (Jay Gatsby), Carey Mulligan (Daisy Buchanan), and Tobey Maguire (Nick Carraway). Though not a children’s book, it’s certainly a high school curriculum favorite.

Logan Lerman, fresh off his leading role in Perks of Being a Wallflower, steps back into demigod shoes on August 16 in Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, the sequel to Percy Jackson: Lightning Thief, both based on Rick Riordan’s bestselling series.

The first title in Cassandra Clare’s “The Mortal Instruments” series, City of Bones (S & S, 2007), will be making its way to the big screen on August 23. Lily Collins portrays Clary Fray, a teen from New York City who discovers the secret world of Shadowhunters (super-powered half-angels) when her mother (Lena Headey) is kidnapped by a demon.

The Seventh Son will be coming to theaters on October 18. This dark fantasy is based on the first installment of Joseph Delaney’s “Wardstone Chronicles” (HarperCollins), The Spook’s Apprentice. Ben Barnes plays the title character, and Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore also star.

Sci-fi classic Ender’s Game (St. Martin’s Pr., 1985) by Orson Scott Card will finally be getting the film treatment in this November 1 release. Asa Butterfield, the movie’s star who has been in several book adaptations (Hugo Cabret, Boy in the Striped Pajamas), portrays a military child genius who must save the world from evil aliens. Gavin Hood is both the director and screenwriter. The cast also includes Abigail Breslin (Valentine Wiggin0, Hailee Steinfeld (Petra Arkanian), Harrison Ford (Colonel Hyrum Graff), and Sir Ben Kingsley (Mazer Rackham). Not originally published as a YA novel, it has an avid teen following.

In the Pipeline

Below are several book-to-movie adaptations, scheduled to hit theaters next year, for which fans are already anxiously waiting.

The Maze Runner (Delacorte, 2009) by James Dashner is set for a February 14, 2014, release date; the film will be directed by Wes Bell.

Vampire Academy (Penguin/Razorbill, 2007) by Richelle Meade is also set for a February 14, 2014 release; the film adaptation, called Blood Sisters, will be directed by Mark Waters from a screen play by Daniel Waters. It will star Zooey Deutch (Rose Hathaway), Lucy Fry (Princess Lissa), and Danila Kozlovsky (Dimitri).

Divergent (HarperCollins, 2011) by Veronica Roth will be released on March 21, 2014, directed by Neil Burger from a screenplay by Evan Daugherty. It reportedly will star Shailene Woodley (Tris) and Kate Winslet.

Building Buzz

Several more adaptations have just been announced in recent weeks, although firm details about those projects are continuing to unfold.

John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars (Dutton, 2012) will be produced by Fox 2000 and directed by Josh Boone from a screenplay by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. It reportedly will star either Shailene Woodley or Hailee Steinfeld.

Gayle Forman’s If I Stay (Dutton, 2009) will be produced by Summit Entertainment and directed by RJ Cutler. It will star Chloë Moretz (Mia).

Marcus Zusak’s The Book Thief (Knopf, 2006) will be produced by Karen Rosenfelt at Fox 2000 and directed by Brian Percival. It will star Sophie Nélisse (Liesel), Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson (foster parents), Ben Schnetzer (Max), and Nico Liersch.

A live-action adaptation of John Rocco’s Blackout (Hyperion/Disney, 2011) will be produced by John Rocco and Ivana Schecter-Garcia at Fox 2000. Will Davies is writing the screenplay. A director has not yet been named.

A new version of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden will be produced by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Johnson from a screenplay by Lucy Alibar. It will be reportedly set in the American Southwest. A director has not yet been named.

Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (HarperCollins, 2008) will be produced by Disney and directed by Ron Howard.

Lois Lowry’s The Giver (Houghton Mifflin, 1992) will be produced by Nikki Silver and reportedly directed by Phillip Noyce. It is set to star Jeff Bridges (The Giver).

Kendare Blake’s Anna Dressed in Blood (Tor Teen, 2011) will be produced by Stephenie Meyer for Fickle Fish.

Not Yet Published

Several film adaptations are reportedly in the works for as-yet unpublished works.

An adaptation of Margaret Stohl’s Icons (Little, Brown, 2013) will be produced by Alcon Entertainment from a screenplay by Massy Tadjedin. A director has not yet been named.

The film version of Josin L. McQuein’s Arclight (HarperCollins/Greenwillow, 2013) will be produced by Universal Pictures/Imagine Entertainment from a screenplay by Matthew Sand. A director has not yet been named.

Meanwhile, on the Small Screen

Film producers aren’t the only ones mining the bookshelf for great ideas. Television network Nick Jr. has already premiered its new CG-animated series The Tales of Peter Rabbit on February 19; it follows the adventures of Peter Rabbit and many other of Beatrix Potter’s beloved animal characters. Other small-screen adaptions include:

Kiera Cass’s The Selection (HarperCollins, 2012) is set to premiere on the CW network. It will be directed by Mark Piznarski, written by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain, and will star Yael Grobglas (America Singer), Peta Sergeant (Commander Gaia Woods), and Sean Patrick Thomas (Sylvan Santos).

Lauren Oliver’s Delirum (HarperCollins, 2011) will debut on Fox. It will be written by Karyn Usher and produced by Karyn Usher, Peter Chernin, Katherine Pope, Paul Mazur, and Mitchell Kaplan at 20th Television. It wills tar Emma Roberts (Lena), Daren Kagasoff (Alex), and Billy Campbell (Thomas Fineman).

Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian’s Burn for Burn (S & S, 2012) will be produced by Barry Josephson Entertainment. A network has not yet been named.

Lucy Maud Montgomery’s beloved classic Anne of Green Gables will get yet a modern-day, contemporary update with this adaptation produced by Joan Lambur at Breakthrough Entertainment. A network has not yet been named.

In the three-minute clip (below), Green recounts his attempt to discern the provenance of a poster (pictured) based on characters from his novel The Fault in Our Stars, revealing the complexities of copyright in the digital age along the way.

“We really don’t have a good way of defining the difference between nerdfighters [Green's community of fans] making something on YouTube and Viacom making something on CBS,” says Green. “Until the laws get better, we’re going to have to police ourselves. The good news is the Internet is pretty good at that.”

In the meantime, Green encourages the creation of fan fiction and other art inspired by his books. And the work that started it all? With the permission of his two 16-year-old collaborators, one Norwegian, the other in the Phillipines, Green’s made the poster available on his DFTBA (don’t forget to be awesome) site.

John Green at Carnegie Hall for “An Evening of Awesome” on January 15.

On Thursday, February 14 at 4:50 p.m. EST, popular young adult author John Green will participate in a Google+ “fireside” Hangout with President Obama, following up on the State of the Union address to Congress. A group of participants, including John Green, will ask the president their own questions as well as those submitted by the public.

Viewers can tune in via the White House Google+ page or YouTube channel, and submit questions of their own via video or text through the channel. The deadline for submission of is 11:59 p.m. EST on Wednesday, February 13.

John Green is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and The Fault in Our Stars.

Google+ Hangouts allow up to 10 people to “hang out” via video chat. This is the President’s second time answering Americans’ questions via Hangout. In order to participate in a Hangout, a user has to sign in to Google+ and create a simple profile page.

Photo credit: Andrea Fischman.

New York City’s famed Carnegie Hall has hosted thousands of legendary performers since it opened in 1891, from the New York Philharmonic to jazz greats Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday to modern notables Isaac Stern and Renée Fleming. Joining their ranks this week? John Green—the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Alaska (Dutton, 2005), An Abundance of Katherines (Dutton, 2006), and Paper Towns (Dutton, 2008)—and his brother Hank Green, who took to the stage on Tuesday to entertain over 2,800 fans. “An Evening of Awesome,” featuring numerous special guests, was also lived-streamed to sites around the country through a special partnership with Tumblr.

Photo credit: Andrea Fischman.

The much-anticipated and hyped event was part of a 17-city tour celebrating the first anniversary of Green’s most recent bestselling YA fiction book, The Fault in Our Stars (Dutton, 2012); the tour has sold over 11,300 tickets.

For the uninitiated, the Green brothers are also known for their popular YouTube video blog series Vlogbrothers, which has close to a million subscribers. Passionate fans of the series, who call themselves “nerdfighters,” are so numerous and so well organized that they have created their own online social networking group to, as they declare,  “increase awesome and decrease suck.”

“It brought to life the Nerdfighter community,” says Elazar Nudell, 30, of the site. Nudell traveled all the way from Springfield, MA, to attend the sold-out event along with Max Schnaper, 21, and Sasha Zacharia, 21.

However, most of the live audience at Carnegie Hall was comprised of teenage girls.

“John Green understands teen girls,” 17-year-old Samantha from Merrick, NY, tells School Library Journal. She feels that Green’s books helped her during a troubling time in her life. “He made me realize that how I felt was OK.”

Her schoolmate, 16-year-old Johanna, claims that the author encouraged her to be a thoughtful person. While waiting for the show to begin, Johanna read to Sam from a book by her other favorite author, Kurt Vonnegut.

The evening was part rock concert, part author and literary reading, and part talk show.

Shouts of  “We love you!” rang out through the hall as the tuxedo-clad duo took the stage. John entertained the audience with a monologue about his life and work. He told them, “My life is like a very long Emily Dickinson poem.”

Hank sang songs of his own composition on such topics as Helen Hunt, Harry Potter, and Quarks. Grammy-winning musician and former member of The Moldy Peaches, Kimya Dawson, and the folk rock band The Mountain Goats also performed during the evening.

Later, Ashley Clements and Daniel Vincent Gordh, actors in the The Lizzie Bennet Diaries Web series developed by Hank Green, appeared to do a dramatic reading from The Fault in Our Star. The night’s special guests also were on hand to perform a Readers Theater scene from Paper Towns.

The surprise guest of the evening was Neil Gaiman. The award-winning author of The Graveyard Book (HarperCollins, 2008), participated in the Q&A portion of the evening, asking John Green such questions and queries as “Where do people go when they die?” (“Narnia,” interjected Hank) and “Describe yourself in three words,” to which John finally agreed on Handsome, Awesome, and Tall—after some prompting from Hank, Neil, and the audience.  Also during the Q&A, Hank Green admitted to having a crush on his high school English teacher.

During the event, Carnegie Hall became a trending topic on Twitter; already by noon on Wednesday there were more than 35,000 additional views of the event and 18,000 comments. Additional meetups around this event are scheduled for upcoming days; a schedule can be found here.

“This Year” singalong. Photo credit: Andrea Fischman.

For additional photos of this event from School Library Journal, check out our Tumblr feed!

Held at the at the New York Public Library, the speakers on the “The Changing Relationship Between Reader and Writer” panel discussed how much of their personal lives they share with readers. Moderator Karen Halpenny, vice president of Children’s Media Association, a nonprofit organization dedicated to distributing quality media to kids and young adults, brought up author John Green’s relationship to his audience as an example of the problems that can arise from a strong online presence. Although Green is famous for his enthusiastic interaction with his readers, he includes a page on his Tumblr site in which he urges fans to observe appropriate behavior when contacting him—and asks them not to come to his house or locate his address.

Adele Griffin prefers to maintain a healthy distance from her fans. She talked about her respect for Newbery-winning author and National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Katherine Paterson, and her approach to meeting fans. While Griffin feels a strong connection with the beloved children’s book author and appreciates her books, she found Paterson much more reserved in person. Similarly, Griffin strives to establish a sense of intimacy with her readers through her written work rather than through real life encounters.

Sheinmel addressed how her fans perceive her, as well as her sense of obligation toward them. Because her upcoming novel, Stone Girl (Knopf, 2012), about a teenager coping with anorexia and bulimia, is based on personal experience, she feels a duty to handle body image issues responsibly when talking to readers. While the advanced reader copy of Stone Girl included a note detailing her own history with these disorders, Sheinmel ultimately decided to remove it, saying that she didn’t want it to affect the way fans viewed either her or her work.

Michael Northrop discussed interactions with adult fans. Because writers usually show a carefully crafted, optimal persona when communicating with fans online, he believes that some fans mistake these positive interactions for real friendship. However, he acknowledged that this response is simply part of being a writer with an online presence.

The authors also described the most effective ways of using social media to connect to fans. Gayle Forman devotes much time and energy into blogging, usually taking an entire day to compose a post. Though she finds blogging time-consuming, she prefers it to Twitter because she enjoys the opportunity to have longer, more drawn out conversations with her readers through the comments section.

While the writers feel that establishing an online identity can be challenging, they all remain committed to their fans.

For more coverage of KidLitCon 2012, please see our article on Critical Reviewing in the Age of Twitter.

Bryan Collier at the National Book Festival in DC.

More than 800 fans showed up to see Green, a New York Times bestselling author who’s received numerous awards including the Printz and a Printz Honor. Kinney spent four hours Saturday morning signing books for close to 2,000 fans. In all, 125 authors gathered for the two-day celebration, which took place September 22 and 23.

The festival began Friday evening, with invited guests gathered at the Library of Congress’s Jefferson Building to hear authors such as Patricia Cornwell talk about their craft. Cornwell recalled how she  always played detective—and how as a child she would read her school library sign out cards to gather information on the reading habits of her classmates. As in past years, the crowds were filled with teachers and librarians who make the annual pilgrimage to the capital.

Caryn Levy, a media coordinator at Leicester Elementary School in Leicester, NC, traveled to the event with her colleague Vicki Kolomechuk, a school librarian at Valley Spring Middle School in Bumcombe County, NC. They arrived early to get front row seats to hear author and illustrator Bryan Collier speak on Sunday. Meanwhile, the Junior Library Friends group from Weedsport, NY, made their annual trip to the festival to meet their favorite authors and tour the Pavilion of States.

Rafael Lopez, a Pura Belpre Award-winning illustrator, created the poster for this year’s festival with vivid colorful animals, birds, and insects peering down at child readers. Festival attendees received autographed copies of the poster. (View a slideshow of how the National Book Festival poster evolved).

Check out School Library Journal’s photo slideshow from this year’s National Book Festival.  Click on Show Info (upper right) to view captions.

Star Wars: National Star Wars Reads Day is October 6. The event is an initiative of Lucasfilm and its publishing partners, Abrams, Chronicle Books, Dark Horse, Del Rey, DK, Scholastic, Titan Magazines, and Workman. Although the sign-up period to receive a free Star Wars event kit from the sponsors (1000 libraries signed up) has ended, there is another option available for libraries that want to participate in the event. ABDO Publishing is offering a free Star Wars event guide containing teacher’s guides, promotional posters, interviews with celebrities connected to the franchise, a list of nearly 300 Star Wars universe terms, a video of the event that was held in the Hennepin County Library in Minneapolis, and an order form for the 68 ABDO/Spotlight Star Wars library editions. You can also follow Star Wars Reads Day on Facebook.

Game On

Free online game: Electronic Arts’s Star Wars: The Old Republic, previously a subscription only massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), will be available online for free starting this fall. The free version allows players “to play free to Level 50, with game play restrictions that limit game options and access to certain game content,” according to Jeff Hickman, the game’s executive producer. Those who continue to subscribe for $15 per month will have free unlimited access to all game features and game updates. The publisher will rely on players buying premium content and virtual items to make money.

Digitally Yours

Multimedia ebooks: eBoost is ABDO Digital’s new multimedia line of flip book ebooks that are combined with related media links. Among the multimedia features of ABDO’s flip books is the ability for readers to turn pages and make them larger. Each ebook in the new eBoost line also includes Web links; downloadable content; embedded videos; RSS and/or Twitter feeds; notes and custom links fields for teacher comments, posting messages, and student assignments; and more. The eBoost titles, featuring secure Web-based hosting by ABDO, are compatible with Macs, PCs, iPads, and Android-based tablets such as Kindle Fire or the Nook. The new line is being launched with 164 titles for elementary through middle grade students. Titles can be ordered individually or in bundles such as Animal Kingdom, Body Systems, The Civil War, Planet Earth, and more. eBoost is sold as a site license with simultaneous access for multiple users.

Granted

Public awareness campaign: The 2013 Scholastic Library Publishing National Library Week Grant is an annual $3000 award open to all libraries. To apply for the grant, libraries must come up with a public awareness campaign using the National Library Week Theme—“Communities matter @ your library—and involving at least one other community organization. An application form and guidelines are available on the Scholastic Library Publishing National Library Week Grant website. The application deadline is September 30. The winner will be announced after the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Seattle in January 2013. The winner must provide documentation of their activities and submit a report to ALA’s Public Awareness Committee by May 20. The grant is sponsored by Scholastic Library Publishing and is administered by the Public awareness Committee of the American Library Association (ALA).

Read On

Literacy initiative: Author John Green, Michael L. Printz and Edgar Award winner, has been named the spokesperson for the 2012 Teen Read Week, a literacy initiative of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). The theme of this year’s Teen Read Week—celebrated October 14-20—is “It Came from the Library!” “Getting more teens to pick up a book and make it a regular habit” is what Teen Read Week is all about says Jack Martin, YALSA president. Among his duties, Green will host a national event to kick off the celebration and will judge a contest in which teens are charged with creating a video about their favorite book.

“Our director of schools reviewed it and decided it probably shouldn’t be required reading,” says Jeremy Johnson, spokesperson for Sumner County Schools, where the book was pulled. “We’re not using it in the curriculum, but it will still be used in the libraries.

The decision came after students in an English class at White House High School chose the YA novel for a class assignment this spring. Johnson says the district had some “inquiries from parents,” and the principal went through the book himself, deciding to pull it because he “thought it had a sex scene that was a bit much for the curriculum,” explains Johnson. The district followed, banning it in all classes.

Johnson says the teacher failed to follow “standard procedures” by having the book pre-approved by the school principal prior to assigning it to students. The book also wasn’t sent home on a syllabus earlier in the year as part of the class assigned materials—two more reasons the principal cited for his decision to remove the book from the curriculum.

Looking for Alaska, Green’s debut novel and 2006 Michael L. Printz award-winner about a teen who attends boarding school and falls in with a wild crowd, has come under fire in the past for oral sex scenes that take place between students at a boarding school in Alabama. The book was withdrawn from schools in Depew, NY in 2008, and in March from classes in Knox County, TN, according to The Tennessean.

Sumner County Schools’ decision has angered groups from the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression to the National Coalition Against Censorship, which this week sent a letter to Director of Schools Del Phillips, condemning the district’s decision to withdraw the book.

“As a result, the district has imposed one viewpoint on the entire student body, without regard to the educational consequences for students,” says the letter, adding that it “is irrelevant that the book is still in the library and that students are free to read it on their own time.”

Librarian Doreen Brown from Station Camp High School in Sumner County says although her principal hasn’t asked her to pull the book from her library, she wrote a letter herself expressing her frustration with the decision.

“It’s really outraged a lot of school librarians in our county,” she says.

Green addressed complaints about his book on YouTube in 2008 and tweeted about recent news accounts on the ban in Sumner County. Emails to Green and his publisher were not returned. Waiting for Alaska made the American Library Association‘s 2005 Top 10 Best Book for Young Adults. Paramount purchased the film rights in 2005, and the movie is scheduled to be released in 2013.