Flux to Issue 40th-Anniversary Edition of Seminal John Donovan Novel

Released in 1969, John Donovan’s I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip tread on turf previously considered taboo in young adult publishing. Widely regarded as the first YA novel to touch on the topic of homosexuality, the book centers on a 13-year-old whose efforts to cope with his estranged mother lead to a close friendship with another boy. Originally published by Ursula Nordstrom at Harper & Row, I’ll Get There will be reissued in fall 2010 by Flux...

Candlewick Goes Hi-Tech with DiCamillo

Kate DiCamillo has come a long way from her debut author tour in 2000, which consisted of only two bookstore appearances in Minnesota: the Red Balloon Bookshop in St. Paul, and Wild Rumpus in Minneapolis. While the turnout at both events promoting DiCamillo’s first novel was "nice," the Twin Cities resident recalls, it was only "because my friends all came." This fall, DiCamillo’s publisher is making sure the bestselling author reaches more readers than ever before.

Q & A with Shannon Hale

Q: What made you decide to write Forest Born? A: I really just go where the story takes me. It’s funny—with every one of the Bayern books, I thought each one was a stand-alone. The character of Enna was so different from Ani in Goose Girl, and after writing about Ani who was so quiet, the idea of writing about a character so fiery, so outspoken and dangerous was what attracted me to Enna Burning.

Penguin Young Readers Shares Its New Point of View

Five backlist novels and two new titles are featured in Point of View, a fall marketing initiative from Penguin Young Readers Group. The campaign, which focuses on literary books with strong, somewhat challenging themes, entails consumer and trade components and aims to connect readers who embraced such novels as Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher and Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson to new books with a similar appeal.

The Shows Go On with Lance Fensterman

Lance Fensterman is increasingly running an empire of his own. As v-p at Reed Exhibitions, not only is he the show runner for BookExpo America and the four-year-old New York Comic Con, but a growing portfolio of consumer shows, including the just-concluded video game show PAX (in partnership with founders Penny Arcade), the New York Anime Festival (to be held Sept. 25-27), and next April's C2E2 comics show in Chicago.

Tokyopop: Good News, Bad News

The past week was a mixed bag for manga publisher Tokyopop: They revealed they would no longer be doing business with the Japanese publisher Kodansha but also announced a handful of new licenses and put several stalled series back on schedule.

ADV Shuts Down; Assets, Staff Shift to New Companies

U.S. anime distributor and manga publisher AD Vision is no more. The company's assets (and an undetermined number of its employees) have been divided up among four separate companies: AEsir Holdings, SXion 23 (Section 23) Films, Valkyrie Media Partners, and Seraphim Studios. Section 23 will continue to service former ADV accounts.

September Comics Bestsellers

Jeff Kinney’s Wimpy Kid: Last Straw continues its long run at the top, followed by Viz’s Vampire Knight vol. 7, Naruto and Tokyopop’s Fruits Basket, Vol. 23. Neil Gaiman’s Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader is #5 and just below the Top Ten are Darwyn Cooke’s The Hunter, David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp and David Petersen’s Mouse Guard: Winter 1152.

Comics Briefly

Del Rey Hosts New York Anime Fest Party, ‘Action Philosophers’ Collected, Jaime Hernandez Book Signing in L.A., Spiegelman, Mouly Sign in New York City; Ben Katchor In Concert; and This Week @ Good Comics for Kids

Costumes and Comics at Dragon Con

Dragon Con, North America's largest fan-run pop culture convention, was held in downtown Atlanta over the Labor Day weekend. Now in its twenty-second year, Dragon Con is remarkable not merely for its size—the annual show generally attracts more than 30,000 fans—but for its remarkable variety.

Fiction Reviews: 9/7/2009

Reviewed this week, new fiction from Madison Smartt Bell, Danielle Steel, Robert Stone and Allan Guthrie. Plus, Bridie Clark remixes "My Fair Lady," Peter Ackroyd retells "The Canterbury Tales," Rumpole returns for a holiday outing, and Jill Mansell maintains her one-woman British chick lit invasion.

Children's Book Reviews: 9/7/2009

This week's reviews include picture book collaborations betweeen Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, Mem Fox and Leo and Diane Dillon, and Ted and Betsy Lewin; new fiction from Nick Bruel, Avi, Frances Hardinge, Katherine Paterson and Walter Dean Myers; and cookbooks and other food-related titles for gourmands of any age.

Panel Mania: Beast

In Beast, the first solo graphic novel by Marian Churchland, Colette, a struggling young sculptor, is commissioned by the mysterious man to carve his portrait in marble. Over the course of the job, Colette discovers it is more sinister than it seemed. Beast, published by Image Comics, will be in stores on September 23rd.

Comics Briefly

Breaking Down Disney's Acquisition of Marvel

Can a mouse and a spider make lots of money together? We'll soon find out. The entertainment world was rocked Monday morning by the news that Disney plans to buy Marvel Entertainment for a cool $4 billion. Even the Kingpin would say that's a lot of dough.

Candlewick’s ‘Vermonia’—Multifaceted, Mythic Manga

Like the characters in its own story, Vermonia has a distinguished and almost mythic beginning. The manga series is the brainchild of a renowned editor and a manga professor and has a multifaceted existence in print and online. The series is being published in the U.S. by Candlewick Press (the initial printing is 25,000 copies); in the U.K. by Walker, and in Italy by Mondadori.

Why I Wrote 'Stitches'

As part of our on-going series, Why I Write, PW invited the award-winning illustrator David Small to comment on the incident that sparked the writing of Stitches, his graphic account of a harrowing childhood, which will be published by W. W. Norton in September.

Life in Comics: Competing with the Old Guard

In last month's column I parenthetically mentioned graphic novel publishing imprints that are a part of large traditional publishing companies. Several prominent publishers have established themselves with strong graphic novel showings in recent years.

Hackers are People Too: Ed Piskor's 'Wizzywig'

In an unusual creative effort that mixes fictional techniques with serious nonfiction research, cartoonist Ed Piskor has self-published the first two volumes of Wizzywig, a planned four-volume graphic novel that folds the history of the hacker community into a single fictional character named Kevin Phenicle in order to document the history and technological and social development of hacker and online culture.

Panel Mania: Ball Peen Hammer

In the dark, post apocalyptic world of Ball Peen Hammer in which plague has infected the city, Welton, infected himself, has locked himself in a basement to stay safe. In this preview, Welton opens the door of his refuge. Ball Peen Hammer is written by Adam Rapp, with art by George O’Conner, and will be released by First Second on September 29th.