Netflix has renewed its hit animated show Trollhunters for a second 13-episode season.

Entertainment Weekly says it is “a bingeable creation” that is “shaping up to be its most-watched children’s series ever.”

The show is based on the novel of the same name, written by Guillermo del Toro and Daniel Kraus, illustrated by Sean Murray (Hachette/Disney-Hyperion; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample).

The series is described by EW as following the adventures of “a teenager-turned-warrior called upon by an underground civilization of trolls to defend their way of life from both humans and evil trolls alike.”

It stars the late Anton Yelchin, who played Chekov in the new Star Trek movies, before his death. Del Toro, who is serving as the show runner, filled in some of Yeltsin’s parts with previously recorded tracks and has more audio in the wings. The cast also includes Kelsey Grammer (Frasier, Transformers: Age of Extinction), Ron Perlman (Hellboy), and Steven Yeun (The Walking Dead).

Season one premiered in December and earned a 93% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. To accompany it, the paperback edition of the book was released, with a sticker identifying it as, “the book that inspired Dreamworks TrollHunters.”

The book itself also got strong reviews. School Library Journal says “Featuring plenty of edge-of-your-seat action, this offering … won’t disappoint … More gruesome than scary, this title will be a hit with teens and adults who love action-packed, dark fantasy adventures.”

The first promo for the Netflix adaptation of the childrens classic Anne of Green Gables, was released at a press event yesterday reports Entertainment Weekly. It begins with images of other redheaded stars from the streaming service, including Stranger Things‘ Barb and Orange Is the New Black‘s Red.

Perhaps that’s an effort to signal that this Anne, despite her 1908 setting, is relevant to today. Netflix says the production, created with the CBC, will explore topics beyond Lucy Maud Montgomery’s novel, “Anne and the rest of the characters will experience adventures reflecting timeless issues including themes of identity, sexism, bullying, prejudice, and trusting one’s self.”

Showrunner Moira Walley-Beckett (Breaking Bad) tells CBC News, “I feel that this Anne is entirely different … We’re off-book. We’re the essence of the book … and we’re telling a new story … This is a very grounded, real version of the story. Life in Prince Edward Island in the late 1800s was a hard, gritty, scrappy life. It was messy, it was covered in red mud … It’s not doilies and teacups, it’s life.”

Praising the relatively unknown 14-year-old star, Irish-Canadian actress Amybeth McNulty, Walley-Beckett says she is “riveting on screen, She’s translucent. You can see every thought and every emotion.”

The eight-episode first season debuts on May 12. No tie-in has been announced, but the book is in print in multiple editions from various publishers.

Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson has announced the first cast members for his next adaptation, based on Philip Reeve’s dystopian book series that begins with Mortal Engines (Scholastic; OverDrive Sample). Robert Sheehan (Fortitude) is set to star writes Variety  with Ronan Raftery (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, The Terror) in a supporting role. It is scheduled to open on Dec. 14, 2018.

Mortal Engines was published in 2003 and became an ALA Notable Children’s Book, an SLJ‘s best book as well as a YALSA Best Book for Young Adults.

The series features cities on caterpillar tracks that move about in search of other cities to attack in a quest for a dwindling amount of resources caused by a devastating global war. Two orphans finds themselves lost in this wasteland and are hunted by a cyborg.

In their starred review, PW wrote “Like the moving cities it depicts, Reeve’s debut novel is a staggering feat of engineering, a brilliant construction that offers new wonders at every turn.”

Book enthusiast Reese Witherspoon, behind several successful adult book adaptations, including Gone Girl, Wild, and the upcoming HBO series Big Little Lies, has turned her sights to a middle-grade novel. Her production team has acquired the rights to the National Book Award finalist The Thing About Jellyfish, (Hachette/Little, Brown Books for Young Readers).

Another actress/producer Gina Rodriguez is developing the Pura Belpré Award winner, Yaqui Delgado Wants To Kick Your Ass  by Meg Medina, (Candlewick, 2016) as a TV series. Deadline reports that the project has just been acquired by the streaming service Hulu.

Ever alert to trends, the publishing powerhouse of James Patterson has announced the release of a YA dystopian novel on May 22, Crazy House (Hachette/Jimmy Patterson; Hachette Audio).

Announcing the book, Patterson tells Entertainment Weekly, “I promise you that [it] is even more exciting, scarier, and of course, crazier—in the best way—than anything I’ve written.”

EW has an excerpt and offers this lead-in:

“Brainy Cass and wild Becca are twin sisters living in a world controlled by The United, an all-powerful government that commands a ‘separate but equal’ society. Suddenly, Becca is thrown into prison, forced to fight her fellow inmates for survival. Cass is determined to save her sister, but she is in danger herself: the captors took the wrong twin, and when they find out they’ll be coming for her.”

The novel was written with Gabrielle Charbonnet, who has co-written other novels with Patterson,  Sundays at Tiffany’s and Witch & Wizard.

Originally the novel was titled Dragonflies, which still shows on the cover art in Edelweiss.

A new hybrid live-action/animated film based on the Newbery Medal-winning Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert C. O’Brien, illustrated by Zena Bernstein (S&S/Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1971) is in development by MGM.

Variety reports it will be titled The Rats Of Nimh, led by first time director James Madigan who has won Emmys for special effects and worked on such films as Iron Man 2 and The Da Vinci Code.

The “hope is to create a franchise” using O’Brien’s two sequels, O’Brien wrote two sequels. reports Deadline.

MGM produced a previous adaptation, the 1982 animated film The Secret of NIMH. CinemaBlend says this new project is part of MGM’s “recent business strategy of rebooting their most classic franchises.” 

No word yet on stars or a premiere date.

Netflix’s new series 13 Reasons Why will premiere on March 31. Singer/actress Selena Gomez, an executive producer for the show, posted a clip on Instagram Thursday, which quickly took off. It is now the #1 trending video on YouTube:

Paste says the clip “gives off Gone Girl vibes.”

The series is based on Jay Asher’s 2007 YA novel TH1RTEEN R3ASONS WHY, (Penguin/RazorBill; Listening Library; OverDrive Sample), about a high school student who commits suicide and leaves behind several tapes, telling classmates how each contributed to her decision. The novel is a YALSA Best Books of 2008, and was a NYT best seller in hardcover for over two years.

It stars a relatively unknown cast, including Katherine Langford, Christian Navarro. and Michael Sadler. Oscar Winner Tom McCarthy (Spotlight) directs. Tony and Pulitzer Prize Winner Brian Yorkey (Next to Normal) wrote the script.

A tie-in comes out in March:

13 Reasons Why, Jay Asher
Razorbill (Penguin Publishing Group)
On Sale Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN 9780451478290, 0451478290
Trade Paperback | 336 pages 
$10.99 USD, $14.99 CAD

In a phenomenal piece of timing, the day after Congressman John Lewis gave a rousing speech to marchers in Atlanta, saying in an understatement, “I know something about marching,” he won four major ALA awards for his graphic novel series on that very subject, March, Book 3 (IDW/Top Shelf). It also happens that the awards were announced in Atlanta, very close to where he gave that speech, during ALA’s Midwinter Meeting. The book, the third and final in his graphic novel series, won the the Printz, the Sibert, the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction and the Coretta Scott King Author Awards.

The Caldecott Medal went to Javaka Steptoe’s book about artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, Radiant Child (Little, Brown), also winner of the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award and the Newbery to the epic fantasy, The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill (Workman/Algonquin Young Readers).

Download our spreadsheet of the award-winning titles, with full ordering information, ALA Youth Media Awards, 2017.

Medalists below, as they are announced.

UPDATE: Download our spreadsheet of the award-winning titles, with full ordering information, ALA Youth Media Awards, 2017

Link to the press release for the full list of Medalists and Honorees. 

Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award: Radiant Child, Javaka Steptoe, (Little, Brown)

Coretta Scott King Author Award: March: Book 3, John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, (IDW/Top Shelf)

Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award: The Sun Is Also a Star, Nicole Yoon, (PRH/Delacorte)

Margaret Edwards Award: Sarah Dessen

Odyssey Award: Anna and the Swallow Man, narrated by Allan Corduner, (PRH/Listening Library)

Morris Award: The Serpent King, Jeff Zentner, (PRH/Crown Books for Young Readers)

Excellence In Non-Fiction For Youth: March: Book 3, John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, (IDW/Top Shelf)

Michael L. Printz Award: March: Book 3, John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, (IDW/Top Shelf)

Pura Belpre (Illustrator) Award: Lowriders to the Center of the Earth, illus. by Raul Gonzalez, written by Cathy Camper (Chronicle Books)

Pura Belpré (Author) Award: Juana & Lucas, written and illustrated by Juana Medina, (Candlewick)

Arbuthnot Lecture: Naomi Shihab Nye

Batcheldor Award: Cry Heart But Never Break, written by Glenn Ringtved, illus. by Charlotte Pardi, Translated from the Danish by Robert Moulthrop, (Enchanted Lion)

Sibert Award: March: Book 3, John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, (IDW/Top Shelf)

Carnegie Medal: Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music, produced by Ryan Swear

Laura Ingalls Wilder Award: Nikki Grimes

Geisel Award: We Are Growing: A Mo Willems’ Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! Book, written and illustrated by Laurie Keller, (Disney/Hyperion)

Caldecott Medal: Radiant Child, Javaka Steptoe, (Little, Brown)

Newbery Medal: The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Kelly Barnhill, (Workman/Algonquin Young Readers)

Read our chat with Julie, below.

Join us for our next live chat on Feb. 22 with Ruth Behar, author of Lucky Broken Girl, to be published by Penguin Young Readers/ Nancy Paulsen Books on April 11.

To join the program, sign up here.

The sequel to the 2015 Goosebumps movie, based on the bestselling book series by R.L. Stine, now has a premiere date: January 26, 2018.

According to ComingSoon, fans should expect a smooth transition to the second film as most of the major players are returning including director Rob Letterman (Shark Tale, Monsters vs. Aliens) and screenwriter Darren Lemke (Turbo). Although star Jack Black is expected to return as star, he hasn’t yet signed on.

The first film did well enough in theaters to justify a sequel, and did even better on home video. Sony wasn’t waiting for box office confirmation, however, having planned a series from the start, as sites such as Movieweb and Screen Rant report, with pre-production underway even before the first film opened nationwide.

We posted a story on the possible bump for the books with the first film, pointing out tie-in editions and the reissue of Classic Goosebumps (with the line “Now a Major Motion Picture” on the covers).

Also look out for Goosebumps: Most Wanted, another series reissuing the most “notorious, creepiest, ghouliest Goosebumps characters.” The most recent is Lizard of Oz (Goosebumps: Most Wanted #10) by R.L. Stine (Scholastic, Sept. 2016; OverDrive Sample).

Expect the same attention to tie-ins and re-releases once the second film gets further along.

As a reminder, here is the trailer from the first film:

One of the biggest names in Fantasy is going to the movies.

Brandon Sanderson’s YA series, The Reckoners, has just been bought by 20th Century Fox in what Deadline Hollywood calls “a hotly contested” deal. Both Steelheart and Firefight, the first two books in the series, will be adapted.

Deadline describes the series:

“a burst in the sky gave ordinary people extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling them Epics, but with incredible gifts came the desire to rule. In what was once Chicago, an … Epic named Steelheart installed himself as emperor. Nobody fights back but the Reckoners, a shadowy group of ordinary humans who spend their lives studying Epics, finding their weaknesses, and then assassinating them.”

Steelheart came out in 2013 (PRH/Delacorte Press; RH Audio; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample)

Firefight followed in 2015 (PRH/Delacorte Press; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample)

Calamity, the final book in the trilogy, came out in 2016 (PRH/Delacorte Press; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample). The trade paperback of Calamity hits shelves on 2/28/17 (PRH/Ember).

Also in the works, from MGM, is Sanderson’s Snapshot, a SF detective thriller novella about a society, says Deadline, that:

“can create a snapshot of a specific day in time. The experiences people have, the paths they follow — all of them are real again for one day in the snapshot. All for the purposes of investigation by the court. The cop uses it as a way to find where a criminal dumped a weapon or what really happened in a domestic dispute. It’s drudgery, until the day the cop investigates the memory of a call that was never logged, and he makes a horrifying discovery.”

According to Sanderson’s website, the print book comes out in February in an expensive leather-bound edition, but also as a simultaneous ebook and, later in 2017, in a regular hardcover edition.

Rick Riordan’s fantasy/adventure mixed with Greek mythology kids title, The Lightning Thief  is heading to New York, in an off-Broadway musical adaptation titled The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical.

Playbill reports that it is a new version of  “the show, which has been touring the country, [and] now features an updated score, expanded script, a larger cast, and a live band.”

Chris McCarrell will star. He debuted in Les Miserables and has acted in Pippin, Sweeney Todd, Next to Normal, and Summer of ’42 says the site. He is also in Netflix’s The OA.

The adaptation is written by Joe Tracz (Netflix’s Series of Unfortunate Events) and Rob Rokicki (Strange Tails).

McCarrell told The Washington Post that the production is:

“… really going to push the envelope of (the) magic of theater. The world is so epic and it is so grand and it doesn’t seem like you could portray that onstage, but that’s really where the magic of theater comes in … This story has so much gunpowder in it. If we hit it right, I think it could make some explosions happen.”

Below McCarrell sings one of the songs from the show:

Riordan’s series has already been adapted into two successful films, although the author has publicly stated he is not a fan of either of them. He seems fully behind the musical, however, posting about it on his website.

Look away. It is here. The Netflix adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket (HarperCollins, 1999 – 2006), begins streaming today.

Reviews are generally glowing. Entertainment Weekly gives it an A-, writing it is “an entertaining screwball fable for these topsy-turvy, post-truth times … Harris, absolutely marvelous as Olaf, [is] having a blast, and we share in his delight.”

The L.A. Times reviewer says “I have no complaints, and only praise.”

To promote the show, star Neil Patrick Harris has made the TV rounds, including the Today show and The Late Late Show with James Corden:

All sorts of media are on board, NPR even offers recipes inspired by the novels, perfect for a watch party.

Daniel Handler, currently in the news for the upcoming Netflix adaptation of  A Series of Unfortunate Events, is also getting attention for his new book, to be released this summer, All the Dirty Parts (Bloomsbury USA; ISBN 9781632868046; Aug. 29, 2017).

Featured in a “first look” by Entertainment Weekly, the main character, Cole, is described as “a sex-obsessed high school student,” who knows a bit about his favorite topic. As Handler tells EW, Cole is not the “familiar stock character — the inadequate, fumbling, inexperienced young man, often a subject of derision or humor. Meanwhile, of course, many young men are having a fantastic and fascinating time in non-virginity, and that’s where I saw an opportunity for a story that’s universally recognizable but rarely talked about, or at least not honestly.”

Handler says he wrote the book after being “asked to give a talk on encouraging reading and teenage boys, who often fall off the literary bandwagon,” Looking back towards the books he loved at that age, he realized they had one thing in common, “they had a lot of sex.” Asked whether he worries about his Lemony Snicket fans finding this book, he replies, “It’s funny, isn’t it, that we worry about young people reading about sex, instead of, say, people shooting each other with laser beams. This anxiety is precisely what led to the novel.”

There will be one impediment to their finding All the Dirty Parts, however. The publisher classifies it as adult fiction. As a result, it not included on  EW ‘s  list of the “35 most anticipated YA novels of 2017,” but on the adult list, “The 23 Most Anticipated Books of 2017.”