Auggie gets a face in the just released first full trailer for the film adaptation of R.J. Palacio’s Wonder (RH/Knopf Young Readers, 2012; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Directed by Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower), the film stars Jacob Tremblay (Room) as Auggie, a young boy with a facial deformity who enters a new school. Julia Roberts plays his mom, Owen Wilson, his dad, and Daveed Diggs (Hamilton), his classroom teacher.

The novel has spent 92 weeks on the NYT Children’s Middle Grade Hardcover list, where it is currently #2.

A tie-in comes out November 7, 2017, Wonder Movie Tie-In Edition by R. J. Palacio (PRH/Knopf Books for Young Readers). The cover is not yet finalized.

The film premieres November 17.

ABC News chief national correspondent and Nightline co-anchor Byron Pitts just published a book about teens who overcome horrible circumstances ranging from bullying to abuse, addiction, and getting caught up in wars, Be the One: Six True Stories of Teens Overcoming Hardship with Hope (S&S; S&S Books for Young Readers; OverDrive Sample).

It is soaring on Amazon thanks to segments on The View and other shows, moving from #52,295 to #54.

Pitts knows the ground he covers. He tells The View he was raised by a very young single mother, did not learn to read until he was 13, and struggled with stuttering well into college. He says the teens he met were all dealt a bad hand. They opened a new world to him, illustrating the African proverb, “When you pray, move your feet.”

Booklist says the book “reads like an engrossing news program…Uplifting in its message and captivating in its content.”

The controversy surrounding the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, which some say “glamorizes” teen suicide, has brought new attention to the YA novel it is based on, one that has been challenged since it was published ten years ago.

Last night, Nightline showed another side of the story, reporting on a group of Michigan high school students who used the show as the inspiration to talk publicly about the events that made each of consider suicide, creating a video for their fellow students titled “13 Reasons Why Not.”

The result has been a dramatic change in the school’s culture, one that was deeply needed, says one of the participants in the project. As the book’s author Jay Asher has said, it is much more dangerous to try to shut down the conversation than to bring it into the open.

The heavily promoted adaptation of Nicola Yoon’s debut YA novel  Everything, Everything opens on May 19. The book debuted at #1 on the NYT  Young Adult best seller list and stayed on it for over a year. The release of the trailer in February brought the book back to the list, again at #1

About a teen girl confined to her house because of severe allergies, the novel earned a glowing NYT review (“gorgeous and lyrical”) and an A- review from Entertainment Weekly (a “complex,” “fresh, moving debut”).

The film stars Amandla Stenberg (who played Rue in The Hunger Games) and Nick Robinson (Zach in Jurassic World). Stella Meghie (Jean of the Joneses) directs.

Tie-in:  Everything, Everything Movie Tie-in Edition, (in hardcover: PRH/Delacorte Press; April 18, 2017; ISBN 9781524769802; 18.99; Listening Library; also in paperback: PRH/Ember; April 4, 2017; ISBN 9781524769604; $10.99).

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul premieres on May 19. It is based on the 9th title in the popular kids series written by Jeff Kinney.

The three previous films in the series have been commercial, although not critical successes. The new film, featuring a fresh cast including Alicia Silverstone, Tom Everett Scott, Charlie Wright, and Jason Drucker, follows a family road trip.

Tie-in: Diary of a Wimpy Kid # 9: Long Haul: The Long Haul by Jeff Kinney (Abrams; OverDrive Sample).

Also opening May 19th is Wakefield, an adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s short story of the same name. Starring Bryan Cranston and Jennifer Garner, it tells the story of a man who “vanishes” but really only hides in his garage spying on the lives of his family and neighbors.

Both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter posted reviews in 2016 when the film was making the festival circuit. While praising Cranston’s performance, Variety says the ending is “a cop-out.” The Hollywood Reporter agrees that Cranston “is the whole show” and calls the film “decreasingly convincing.”

It opens in limited release . There is no tie-in. The short story was published in The New Yorker in 2008.

Airing on May 21st is A Bundle of Trouble, a Hallmark adaptation of Charlaine Harris’s Aurora Teagarden series featuring a crime-solving librarian.

There are nine books in the series. This newest adaptation is based on the sixth, titled A Fool And His Honey (PRH/Berkley; OverDrive Sample). This is also the 6th Hallmark adaptation, following A Bone To Pick, Real Murders, Three Bedrooms One Corpse, The Julius House, and Dead Over Heels.

The show stars Candace Cameron Bure (Full House) as the librarian sleuth. There is no tie-in, although the book is still available. See the Hallmark site for a preview (unfortunately we cannot embed the clip).

As we posted in the May 15th Titles to Know, HBO is adapting The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust by Diana B. Henriques (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Griffin; Tantor Media; OverDrive Sample).

It premieres May 20 and stars Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer. Barry Levinson directs.

See our earlier post for more details.

Both the movie poster, left, and a clip have been released for Todd Haynes’s Wonderstruck, based on Brian Selznick’s 2011 illustrated novel. The movie will debut at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18 and in US theaters in limited release on October 20, with the promise of a wide release sometime in mid-November.

The book, set in 1927 and 1977, features two deaf children, Ben and Rose, each within their own time line, each secretly longing for different lives. As the story unfolds, the tales of both children weave back and forth before finally coming together.

The film co-stars Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams. Oakes Fegley (Pete’s Dragon) plays Ben and newcomer Millicent Simmonds, who is deaf, plays Rose.

Selznick wrote the adapted screenplay. Below he describes how he wrote the novel:

Expect some creative film making to match the creativity of the novel. Movie Pilot writes “Rose’s half of the movie will be shot as a silent film! This will allow the movie to stay faithful to the novel, capture the world through the eyes of Rose, and recreate the aesthetic of the silent film era.”

Wonderstruck is the sixth film that Roadside has distributed with Amazon Studios. The two companies biggest success so far is Manchester by the Sea, which won two Oscars and was the biggest box office success to date for both companies.

The fight to keep theaters viable in an age of streaming services and high definition TV has led the Cannes Festival, like many film events, including the Oscars, to limit eligibility to movies  that are released to theaters before hitting small screens.

Things are becoming more complex now that streaming services have also gotten in to producing their own movies. Overturning their rule against streaming services sast year, Cannes accepted five of Amazon Studios films as entries into the competition, because Amazon execs “promised that, unlike Netflix, all of their films will go out in theaters, holding to the traditional 90-day theatrical window,” writes the Hollywood Reporter, adding that it makes business sense for Amazon,

“Unlike Netflix, which operates its streaming service in virtually every country in the world … Amazon’s Prime Video service is not available in France, in Italy, in Canada, Spain, Australia, Russia or Brazil. A global day-and-date rollout, the cornerstone of Netflix’ release strategy, still is impossible for Amazon.”

The last look viewers will have before the expected summer blockbuster Wonder Woman has just been released. The film arrives in theaters on June 2nd.

The trailer aired during the MTV Movie & TV Awards and has received media scrutiny. Offering a shot by shot analysis, Screen Rant says the trailer “reveals why a hero like Diana is needed now more than ever. Not just in the DCEU [DC Extended Universe], but the superhero genre as a whole.”

Two leveled readers have already published: Wonder Woman: I Am an Amazon Warrior, Steve Korte, Lee Ferguson (HC; OverDrive Sample) and Wonder Woman: Meet the Heroes, Steve Korte, Lee Ferguson, Jeremy Roberts (HC; OverDrive Sample).

More tie-ins are on the way including Wonder Woman: The Official Movie Novelization by Nancy Holder (PRH/Titan Books) and Wonder Woman: The Junior Novel by Steve Korte (HC/HarperFestival).

After the film premieres, DC begins a new series called DC Icons, written by best-selling YA authors.

It kicks off in August with Leigh Bardugo’s Wonder Woman: Warbringer (PRH/RH Books for Young Readers; Listening Library). Following that, Marie Lu takes on Batman (January 2018), Matt de la Pena tackles Superman (May 2018), and Sarah J. Maas stalks Catwoman (September 2018).

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the comics artist Andie Tong, known for his work on various DC series, sent Bardugo a sketch of Wonder Woman “sitting atop a pile of defeated criminals, rewarding herself with another chapter of Bardugo’s Six of Crows novel.”

Co-authors James Patterson and his son Jack, sat down with CBS This Morning to discuss their first book together, released last week, Penguins of America, (Hachette/ Little, Brown).

Described as a “childrens book that illustrates the humorous connection between Penguins and humans,” the authors say the inspiration came from Jack’s obsession as a kid with seeing the world as if it were populated by penguins. Asked who the audience is, Patterson replies it will appeal to anyone “from 2 to 102. Kids are going to like it. They won’t get some of them, but they will get a lot of them. That’s the way kids are, they’re used to not getting everything, but they will love the illustrations.”

Asked about the novel he is currently working on with his latest collaborator, Bill Clinton, James Patterson says they are about “halfway through it.” Asked whether they will work on more books together, Patterson replies with a somewhat hopeful “Maybe.”

Read our chat with Pablo, below.

Join us for the next live chat on May 26, 5 to 6 p.m., ET with Tamara Bundy, to discuss Walking with Miss Millie, to be published by Nancy Paulsen Books  in July.

To join the program, sign up here

The next drama by Shonda Rhimes, to premiere at the end of May on ABC, is something of a departure for the hitmaker behind Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy. Set in the world of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, after the two doomed lovers have died, Still Star Crossed is based on the novel Still Star-Crossed by Melinda Taub (PRH/Delacorte, 2013 – currently listed as OP). Kirkus gave the YA novel a starred review, calling it “A perfect blend of the intimate and the epic, the story both honors its origin and works in its own right … [a] spectacular sequel.”

The date is delayed from its expected midseason launch reports Deadline Hollywood.

No tie-in has been announced.

Todd Haynes’s adaptation of Brian Selznick’s middle grade novel Wonderstruck (Scholastic, 2011) has been selected to enter the competition at the Cannes Film Festival to be held May 17-28.

Haynes, whose films to date have been for adults, won the Queer Palm at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, for Carol based on Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt. This is Haynes’s first film based on a children’s book.

Starring Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams and Okes Fergley Wonderstruck is produced by Amazon studios. A section of the novel is set in 1927 and features a deaf child, Rose, to be played by newcomer Millicent Simmonds, a 13-year-old deaf actress. Haynes has chosen to film her section as a silent movie, using what Deadline calls “an unprecedented number of deaf actors in roles that would normally go to hearing actors.”

This will be the second Selznick book adapted by a celebrated director, after Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning Hugo, based on The Invention Of Hugo Cabret.

Wonderstruck spent 25 weeks on the NYT Children’s Middle Grade Hardcover best seller list, won the 2012 Schneider Family Book Award and was named an ALA Notable Children’s Book.

No news yet on a release date or a tie-in.

Proving what is old can be new again, Bill Nye is in the middle of a double debut, decades after he first caught the public eye.

His chapter book, Jack and the Geniuses: At the Bottom of the World by Bill Nye and Gregory Mone, illustrated by Nicholas Iluzada (Abrams; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample), a mix of science, adventure, and mystery, debuts on the NYT Children’s Middle Grade Hardcover list at #6. It is doing very well considering every title ranking above Nye’s has been on the list for 10 weeks or more.

Next week brings the debut of his new Netflix’s show, Bill Nye Saves the World, on April 21. Wired says it will span “13 episodes that seek to debunk anti-scientific claims and myths in topics ranging from sex to alternative medicine to, yes, climate change.” The NYT says it is a “it’s a talk show, not a children’s program,” but Nye tells the paper to expect to be entertained. “The comedy bits,” he says “are brilliant!”

According to Netflix, “Each episode will tackle a topic from a scientific point of view, dispelling myths, and refuting antiscientific claims that may be espoused by politicians, religious leaders or titans of industry.”

On the horizon, Nye has a book for adults coming out this summer, Everything All at Once: How to Unleash Your Inner Nerd, Tap into Radical Curiosity and Solve Any Problem (Macmillan/Rodale; Recorded Books), a mix of memoir, history, science, and problem solving using rational, methodical, fact-based approaches.

Boss Baby continued to rule the box office over the weekend, happily beating out another movie aimed at kids, the formulaic Smurfs: Lost Village. On TV, the adaptation of Jay Asher’s best-selling 2007 YA novel 13 Reasons Why is a hit for Netflix and is stirring up controversy about whether there should be a second season.

Two adaptations come to screens this week.

Having received much advance attention for its star studded cast, The Lost City of Z finally hits theaters in a limited run at the end of this week, expanding to more theaters next week. Based on David Gann’s nonfiction account of Percy Fawcett’s search for a fabled lost city, it stars Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller, and Tom Holland.

Already released in the UK, The Telegraph says it is “Transporting and profound … an instant classic.” Business Insider says it is “the best movie of 2017 so far” and director James Gray’s “magnum opus.” The Wrap says it “blends knock-out visual beauty, tender feminism, overall personal inter-connectedness, and something else, too, something yearning and just out of reach … [it] feels like a clear artistic advance for Gray, who proves himself here as one of our finest and most distinctive living filmmakers.”

Reviewing it after its NY Film Festival debut, Variety called it “Apocalypse Now meets Masterpiece Theater … a finely crafted, elegantly shot, sharply sincere movie that is more absorbing than powerful.”

The book received raves. The NYT critic Michiko Kakutani wrote it is at “once a biography, a detective story and a wonderfully vivid piece of travel writing that combines Bruce Chatwinesque powers of observation with a Waugh-like sense of the absurd … it reads with all the pace and excitement of a movie thriller and all the verisimilitude and detail of firsthand reportage.”

It topped most of the year’s best books lists the year it was published. Grann is now back in the news for a new book, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (PRH/Doubleday; RH Large Type; RH Audio/BOT).

Tie-in: The Lost City of Z (Movie Tie-In): A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, David Grann (PRH/Vintage; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample).

On cable The White Princess begins on April 16, about the long-running War of the Roses.

It’s the sequel to The White Queen, which aired on Starz in 2013, based on the first four books in Philippa Gregory’s The Cousins’ War series and earned both Golden Globe and Emmy nominations.

The new series adapts Gregory’s fifth title in the historical saga and relates the story of Princess Elizabeth of York, forced to marry into the house of her enemy. Gregory outlines the chronology of the novels on her website.

It stars Jodie Comer as Princess Elizabeth, Essie Davis as Elizabeth Woodville, Joanne Whalley as the Duchesss of Burgundy, Michelle Fairley as Margaret Beaufort, Jacob Collins-Levy as Henry VII, and Suki Waterhouse as Cecily of York.

One of the few reviews out thus far says “if it’s melodrama you want, The White Princess delivers – serving up a steamy soup of bitchy, backstabbing, corseted women plotting each other’s doom.”

Vanity Fair offers an interview with the stars.

Tie-in: The White Princess, Philippa Gregory (S&S/Touchstone; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample; also in mass market).

The first full-length trailer was released yesterday for the upcoming Netflix series, Anne, an adaptation of L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables.

Emmy-winning writer Moira Walley-Beckett (Breaking Bad) is the showrunner and newcomer Amybeth McNulty plays the title role. R.H. Thomson (Chloe) and Geraldine James (Sherlock Holmes) play Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. The eight-episode version starts streaming on May 12.

Although it’s set at the turn of the century, Netflix says the series will speak to today’s kids, as it deals with “timeless and topical issues including themes of identity, feminism, bullying and prejudice.”

This is expected to be the first of several seasons. Walley-Beckett tells CBC that “the series producers have a five-year plan that would take Anne right through her high school years.”

That red-haired girl has had a recent spurt of popularity. A series of film adaptations of her story have also been completed, starring Martin Sheen as Matthew, Sara Botsford as Marilla, and Ella Ballentine as Anne. The first of those films debuted on Thanksgiving on PBS. At that time, Sheen told Entertainment Weekly that he hoped PBS would pick up the two sequels. The second has been released in Canada an the third is scheduled, but no US release has yet been announced.

There are no direct tie-ins but the public domain title is available from several publishers.

The first trailer for a new animated adaptation of Leaf Munro‘s 1936 classic The Story of Ferdinand made its “exclusive” debut on the Today Show this morning. It opens on December 15. CORRECTION: As Donna points out in the comments, we transposed the author’s first and last names.

A tie-in has not been announced.

The original is still available in both hardcover and paperback (Penguin Young Readers/Puffin).

A Board Book edition is coming in August.