* It’s finally official! Lionsgate has confirmed that Jennifer Lawrence will be playing Katniss in the upcoming movie adaptation of The Hunger Games. Here’s where you can get lots of information:
- Lionsgate confirms: Jennifer Lawrence is Katniss Everdeen in ‘The Hunger Games’
- Gary Ross dishes on casting Jennifer Lawrence in ‘The Hunger Games’
- Jennifer Lawrence: The Girl Who Could Be Katniss in ‘The Hunger Games’ movie
- After Katniss, what’s next for ‘The Hunger Games’ casting?
- Creative fan art shows Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss in ‘The Hunger Games’
- ‘Katniss’ becomes trending topic on Twitter after ‘The Hunger Games’ casting
* ABC Family revealed this first sneak peek at Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 … who else can’t wait for July?!
* Completing the trifecta of YA books-turned-movies, The Twilight Examiner has an excellent round-up of all the news & information to-date about The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn. This is a great way to get caught up on everything about the upcoming movie.
* MTV has debuted an exclusive clip from the upcoming movie adaptation of Water for Elephants.
* In other YA/movie news … Summit Entertainment (the folks behind all those Twilight movies) has acquired the film rights to Divergent by Veronica Roth — which is one of our favorite new books of 2011 and will be our May Book of the Month!
*Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â *Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â *
HOW YOU CAN HELP JAPAN:
* Heidi R. Kling, the author of the YA novel Sea (set in post-tsunami Indonesia), is organizing a very cool fundraiser to help out the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. How can you help? It all starts by purchasing a copy of Sea, then contacting Heidi. Get the details here.
* The Twilight fan site Edward’s Meadow is also organizing a series of contests and events to raise money for Japan. Check out Twihards for Japan here.
*Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â *Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â *
* Awesome news from our friend and fantastic author Lisa Schroeder — she has a new fantasy middle grade book on the way! Here’s the announcement from PW:
Christy Ottaviano, for her eponymous children’s imprint at Henry Holt, bought world English rights to Lisa Schroeder’s first foray into YA fantasy, Impossibly Small. Schroeder, author of the forthcoming The Day Before (Simon Pulse), works off of a Rapunzel-like setup in Impossibly Small: young Violet has spent the first 10 years of her life locked in a tower with her mother until she gets an offer to live in the castle with her captor, an evil queen. The offer forces Violet to make an impossible choice. Sara Crowe at the Harvey Klinger agency closed the deal.
(Yes, PW mistakenly wrote it was YA … Lisa confirms the book is very much MG!)
* Here’s some news that makes me feel a bit nostalgic … Patricia MacLachlan is writing a prequel to The Boxcar Children!
Albert Whitman & Company announced on Tuesday that it has signed Newbery Medalist Patricia MacLachlan to write a prequel to Gertrude Chandler Warner’s The Boxcar Children series, which has sold more than 50 million copies since its debut in 1942. The novel will be released in September 2012 and will be published simultaneously as an e-book by Open Road Integrated Media. The announcement was made at the Gertrude Chandler Warner Boxcar Children Museum in the late author’s hometown of Putnam, Conn. Among those attending the event were MacLachlan, her agent Ruben Pfeffer, Albert Whitman senior editor Wendy McClure, and several former students of Warner, an elementary-school teacher who died in 1979.
McClure, who has overseen the series editorially since 1998, calls the news “very exciting.” Over the years, she has worked on developing what she terms a “bible” for the series, which is now written by “a small, select stable of ghost writers.” The publisher annually adds four novels to this series about four big-hearted and clever orphaned siblings. Warner authored the first 19 of the 150 installments currently in print.
*Alyson Noel’s second book in the Radiance series, Shimmer, is in stores now, and we’ve got the book trailer:
Here’s more:
Having solved the matter of the Radiant Boy, Riley, Buttercup, and Bodhi are enjoying a well-deserved vacation. When Riley comes across a vicious black dog, against Bodhi’s advice, she decides to cross him over. While following the dog, she runs into a young ghost named Rebecca. Despite Rebecca’s sweet appearance, Riley soon learns she’s not at all what she seems. As the daughter of a former plantation owner, she is furious about being murdered during a slave revolt in 1733. Mired in her own anger, Rebecca is lashing out by keeping the ghosts who died along with her trapped in their worst memories. Can Riley help Rebecca forgive and forget without losing herself to her own nightmarish memories?
* We’ve also got the new trailer for Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Invincible, the second book in the Chronicles of Nick series (out on Tuesday, the 22nd):
Here’s more:
Nick Gautier’s day just keeps getting better and better. Yeah, he survived the zombie attacks, only to wake up and find himself enslaved to a world of shapeshifters and demons out to claim his soul.
His new principal thinks he’s even more of a hoodlum than the last one, his coach is trying to recruit him to things he can?t even mention and the girl he’s not seeing, but is, has secrets that terrify him.
But more than that, he’s being groomed by the darkest of powers and if he doesn’t learn how to raise the dead by the end of the week, he will become one of them…
Novel Novice 
Leave a comment