Just as Divergent is about to hit theaters, the trailer for the adaptation of another first title in a dystopian series, The Maze Runner, appears.

Based on the novel by James Dashner, the movie, directed by Wes Ball, opens on Sept 19.

Entertainment Weekly says the  two-minute trailer offers fans a “treasure trove of clues to dissect.” and gives author Dashner himself the opportunity to do a “deep dive” into it.

The tie-in has been announced (no cover yet)

The Maze Runner
James Dashner
RH/Delacorte On Sale Date: August 5, 2014
Trade paperback;  9780385385206, 038538520X
$9.99 USD / $10.99 CAD

Much speculation has gone in to whether the film adaptation of Divergent, which opens on Friday, will be the next Hunger Games, or will fizzle like The Mortal Instruments.

The trade reviews have just arrived and  they’re not promising.

The Hollywood Reporter — “… director Neil Burger struggles to fuse philosophy, awkward romance and brutal action. Even with star Shailene Woodley delivering the requisite toughness and magnetism, the clunky result is almost unrelentingly grim.”

Thompson on Hollywood — “… feels like a set-up for [the sequels], with an unconscionable amount of exposition and introduction. This is part of Divergent’s major problem: It’s not really a high-concept movie, and is trying to be one, hence its fuzzy impulses and skewed logic.”

The Wrap — the headline says it all — “A Little Hunger Games, a Little Harry Potter, a Lot of Dull.”

Variety — “Even though it stretches to nearly two-and-a-half hours and concludes with an extended gun battle, by the time Divergent ends, it still seems to be in the process of clearing its throat … Fans of the books will turn out for what should be a very profitable opening weekend, but with future installments already on the release calendar, the film’s B.O. tea leaves will surely be read with care.”

As to those tea leaves, Forbes says the message is clear and none of the above matters:

Forbes — “Divergent is, barring fan revolt, critic proof. And thanks to its reasonable budget, it’s almost word-of-mouth proof … The work was done in the marketing department, with Lionsgate securing the hype and mainstream attention that guaranteed that Divergent didn’t suffer the same fate as Beautiful Creatures or The Mortal Instruments … we’ve got the next big young-adult literary adaptation franchise on our hands.”

Speaking with YA author Laurie Halse Anderson, librarian Nancy Pearl asks about the term, “problem novels,” often applied to books about teens dealing with real-life situations. Anderson responds that she thinks of the genre as “Resilience Literature” because the goal of the books is to helps strengthen kids facing difficult situations.

As to the people who try to censor her books because they don’t want kids exposed to such realities, she says,”They need to sit down and have a cup of coffee with me.”

Anderson’s latest book, The Impossible Knife of Memory, (Penguin/Viking; Brilliance Audio; January), is about a teenager trying to deal with her beloved father, a former soldier struggling with PTSD. She tells Nancy how her own experiences influenced the book which is currently on both the NYT and the Indie best seller lists.

The interview is part of the series, Book Lust with Nancy Pearl on Seattle Channel 21.

After more than two years on best seller lists, John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars is coming out in paperback.

You can thank the movie. A tie-in trade paperback is being published in early April, as well as one with a version of the original hardcover art.

Any bets on whether, as with The Great Gatsby, consumers will prefer the original cover over the tie-in?

The movie arrives in theaters on June 6. The two stars, Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort, will first be seen together in the movie adaptation of Divergent, debuting in theaters next Friday.

The Fault in Our Stars (Movie Tie-in)
John Green
Penguin/Speak
April 8, 2014
9780147513731, 0147513731
Trade paperback
$12.99 USD / $14.99 CAD

The Fault in Our Stars
John Green
Penguin/Speak
April 8, 2014
9780142424179, 014242417X
Trade paperback
$12.99 USD / $14.99 CAD

Among the new offerings for young readers are some enchanting picture books as well as new reasons to fall in love with sloths and poetry.

Picture Books

Jasper & Joop (Gossie & Friends series), by Olivier Dunrea; picture book, also a board book edition, (HMH)

When Gossie first appeared on the scene, I wept for joy. Dunrea has a way of paring down language to the essentials and cueing the reader with his now classic avian creatures on a stark white background.

Grown ups will recall Felix and Oscar, the original odd couple, as we get to know the tidy Jasper and not-so-tidy Joop. A delight.

   
Toot and Tickle, by Leslie Patricelli, Candlewick

I adore Leslie Patricelli’s board books. Babies love to look at babies and hers are having a lovely time. Silly age appropriate fun.

The Scraps Book: Notes from a Colorful Life, Lois Ehlert (S&S/Beach Lane Books)

Full disclosure: To me, Lois Ehlert is the unsung hero of picture books. Her careful collages and straightforward language, her sharp eye for design and subtle humor often gets lost among the piles of picture books produced every year. Her range is astounding from the marching, dancing graphic letters of her timeless read aloud classic Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to the pitch perfect poetic language of her informational book about metamorphosis Waiting for Wings, we are used to being astounded by her art. With this new book, count me astounded again.

The Scraps Book holds all the joy of an archival collection (like the one where I work, the Kerlan); being able to look at  manuscript pages and sketches to see how the artist is thinking and creating , but with the major advantage that you don’t have to get on a plane to experience it, it’s all in her book.

Reasons every library must have multiple copies of this book.

1. The hard to fill reference question from the beginning-to-read and beginning-to-write 1st or 2nd grader, “I need an autobiography.“ For this reading level, they are few and far between. Give this book
2. Ehlert lets us in on  her creative process. We witness the scraps and pieces of leaves, berries, and photocopies and watercolor paper arrange on the page to become birds and cats, a leafman and snowman, fish floating and a squirrel leaping. We see the growth of an artist and her process.
3. Intertextual connections. We see how a book, a story, a picture is made and we can go to that book and have many an ah-ha moment.
4. Anyone, adult or child would be inspired by this book to create their own art and tell their own story.

The Geisel Award, please.

Middle Grade

Princess Labelmaker to the Rescue: An Origami Yoda Book, Tom Angleberger (Abrams; Recorded Books)

Obviously, you don’t need me to tell you about this series (in fact, this book just hit the USA Today best seller list), but I can’t pass it by. All the books offer a core truth about life in Middle Quarry Middle School as the Origami Yoda Gang fight the menace of standardized tests.

Sloths

National Geographic Readers: Swing Sloth!, Susan B. Neuman, (National Geographic Children’s Books)

Sparky!, Jenny Offill, illus. by Chris Appelhans, (RH/Schwartz & Wade)

Is it me or are we being buried under sloth books? A quick check gives us 42 children’s books featuring sloths over the last year (you may recall my favorite from last year, Little Book of Sloth by Lucy Cooke, S&S/McElderry Books).

These two contenders arriving this week do not disappoint on the official sloth-o-meter. Cute, sweetly faced sleeping mammal? Check. Sly almost silly humor? Check. Child reader appeal? You have to ask? Did you know that there is an International Sloth Day? Start planning your programming now.

Poetry

Firefly July and Other Very Short Poems by Paul B. Janeczko, illus. by Melissa Sweet (Candlewick)

Just in time for Poetry Month, these are the perfect pocket poems. What, you never heard of Poem in Your Pocket Day? This is the day when people throughout the United States select a poem, carry it with them. Poems from pockets are unfolded throughout the day during events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores. You can also share your poem selection on Twitter by using the hashtag #pocketpoem. Save the date: Thursday, April 24.

From Kirkus: “Choosing from works spanning three centuries, Janeczko artfully arranges 36 elegant poems among the four seasons…Scintillating!”

I agree.

The following video is worth watching just to hear Matt Lauer bark at Jane Fonda, “Let’s talk about sex.”

Fonda’s new book, released yesterday, is the trade paperback, Being a Teen: Everything Teen Girls & Boys Should Know about Relationships, Sex, Love, Health, Identity & More, (Random House).

One simple piece of advice: “If you can’t talk about sex, you shouldn’t be having it.”

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The first official teaser trailer for the movie Paddington arrived via Yahoo yesterday. The actual movie is a ways off — it debuts on December 12.

Colin Firth is the voice of the animated bear. Playing live-action characters, Mrs. and Mrs. Brown, are Hugh Bonneville (known to Americans primarily as Lord Grantham in Downton Abbey), and Sally Hawkins, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Blue Jasmine. Nicole Kidman plays the evil taxidermist, bent on adding the bear to her collection. The producer is David Heyman, who, as the trailer proclaims, was the producer of the Harry Potter series  The company handling the special effects, Framestone, won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects for Gravity.

The Paddington Bear series began in 1958 with A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond. It will be reissued in July by HarperCollins with illustrations by R.W. Alley (Peggy Fortnum illustrated the original books) and the shortened movie title of simply Paddington. The movie tie-in arrives on Nov. 4.

Baby Gap is also featuring tie-ins in the form of a clothing line.

Official Movie Site: Paddington.com

The trailer shows the UK’s Nov 28 release date; the movie opens here on Dec. 12

With the Oscars  coming on Sunday, you’d expect this week’s  issue of Entertainment Weekly to be all about that event.

But that was so last week. The new cover story declares that all eyes are now on Divergent, opening 3/21, to see if it will follow in the footsteps of Hunger Games, or will bite the dust like Beautiful Creatures (and Mortal Instruments and Vampire Academy).

If book sales are any indicator, it will be an enormous hit. All three titles in Veronica Roth’s YA series have been in the top ten on USA Today‘s best-selling books list for weeks. This week they are all in the top five.

The fall brings two more YA dystopian novel adaptations. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, of course, arrives in theaters on Nov. 21 and is pre-ordained hit.

There’s been far less buzz about the second, The Maze Runner, based on the book by James Dashner. Originally scheduled for Valentine’s Day, it was then moved to September 19. Beyond a few set photos, there’s been little to feed fan anticipation. All of this makes one movie site more than a little worried about its future.

The movie adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 detective novel Inherent Vice (Penguin Press) has just been scheduled for Dec. 12 of this year, which Deadline characterizes as “a plum awards-season release date.” Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master), the movie stars Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson and Benecio Del Toro.

Also releasing that day is the live-action childrens adaptation, Paddington, “inspired by” the 1958 series which begins with A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond. It is being reissued in July by HarperCollins with illustrations by R.W. Alley and the shortened movie title of simply Paddington.

Baby Gap is also featuring tie-ins in the form of a clothing line.

Several new projects have the name R.L. Stine attached. MTV has picked up a 10-episode series based on his title for adults, Eye Candy (RH/Ballantine, 2004; cover, above; initial series logo to right, featuring a shot of Brooklyn’s trendy DUMBO neighborhood).

The pilot was directed by Catherine Hardwicke (the first Twilight movie), who is exec. producer of the series. It stars Victoria Justice as a hacker being pursued by a cyber stalker (The Hollywood Reporter, 2/11/14). No news yet on when it will premiere.

A new film adaptation of his Goosebumps series (Scholastic) is gearing up for production, as evidenced by several new casting announcements. The latest addition is Dylan Minnette, to co-star with Jack Black, who was announced back in September. Minette will play Zach Cooper, who moves with his family to a new town where their neighbor is, in a twist, R.L. Stine himself (played by Black). Odeya Rush is set to play Stine’s niece Hannah.

Meanwhile, Scholastic recently relaunched the Goosebumps series, with Goosebumps Most Wanted (Scholastic)  which Stine describes as “a new book series featuring all of my most-wanted villains and most-wanted stories.”

His Fear Street series is also set for relaunch (the result of a Twitter campaign), beginning with Party Games in October from Macmillan/St. Martin’s.

UPDATE: Entertainment Weekly previews the cover of Party Games (at right)

New Zealand is playing the role of the American Midwest for the adaptation of Robert O’Brien’s 1974 YA novel, Z For Zachariah, reports the New Zealand newspaper, The Press.

Starring are Australian Margot Robbie, (The Wolf of Wall Street; much is being made about the 23-year-old  going  brunette for the role, but not about her playing a 16-year-old), Chris Pine (Star Trek; Jack Ryan, Shadow Recruit) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave).

The movie, directed by Craig Zobel, is based on the Newbery Medalist (Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, 1971) final book, published after his death. It features a teenage girl, trying to survive on her own after a nuclear war.

The young star of The Book Thief, Sophie Nelisse is set to play the title role in The Great Gilly Hopkins, based on Katherine Paterson’s middle grade novel.

Also signed for the film are Glenn Close, Kathy Bates, Danny Glover and Octavia Spencer. To be directed by Stephen Herek,  it is scheduled to begin shooting on April 9, according to Variety.

The book was a Newbery Honor winner in 1979, the year after Paterson won the Newbery Medal for Bridge to Terabithia.(also made into a film, which Variety notes, grossed ore than $200 million worldwide). In 1981, she won the Newbery for Jacob I Have Loved.

The junior novel tie-in to the Lego movie landed at #4 on the NYT Middle Grade best seller list last week, so we probably don’t need to remind you that the movie opens tomorrow.

Download our LEGO tie-ins spreadsheet. Also, see Lisa’s list of her favorite LEGO titles here.

Below is the clip that accompanies the NYT review of the movie (try hitting refresh if the video doesn’t load):

Stars Shailene Woodley and Theo James kicked off the marketing campaign for Divergent, which arrives in theaters on March 21, by introducing the movie’s second and final trailer on Jimmy Kimmel Live Monday night. Tie-ins in hardcover and paperback, (HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen), release next week.

Woodley, considered to be “on the verge of genuine stardom,” can also be seen in the recently released trailers for The Fault in Our Stars, coming in June, and for White Bird in a Blizzard, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, as well as in last year’s The Spectacular Now, recently released on DVD.

All four movies are based on books (White Bird in a Blizzard by Laura Kasischke, was published by Hyperion in 1999).

Several years after it was first announced, a TV series based on Neil Gaiman’s award-winning novel, American Gods, (HarperCollins) may be moving forward. Originally set as an HBO series to be produced by Tom Hanks’ Playtone company, the rights have just been picked up by FremantleMedia. On his blog, Gaiman says, “As to where you will be able to see it, who is going to be in it, who will be writing or show-running, none of these things have yet been settled. But it already looks like it’s going to be a smoother run developing it than it had at HBO, so I am very pleased.”

Gaiman also announces that a separate project, based on the American Gods followup, Anansi Boys (HarperCollins), is set to be made into a TV miniseries in the UK for the BBC.

There is also movement on another title in the “long awaited Gaiman adaptations” category. Last month, it was announced that a film version of the Sandman graphic novel series (Vertigo) will be directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt who may also star. In an interview, however, Levitt warns it is still “Very, very early days.”

Last year, it was announced that Ron Howard had signed on to direct The Graveyard Book as had Joe Wright for an adaptation of Gaiman’s adult novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

Howard is currently filming another adaptation, Heart of the Sea, based on Nathaniel Philbrick‘s In The Heart of the Sea, scheduled for release on March 13, 2015. Wright is in pre-productionan on Pan, a original prequel to Peter Pan, with Hugh Jackman starring as Blackbeard, now set for release in July, 2015