Libraries in need of extra copies of the book, as opposed to the screenplay, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, are in luck.

After being out of print for years, it is being re-released with a new forward and jacket. It will also contain updated “content that reflects the exciting developments in J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World” according to a Scholastic press release.

The book will be published simultaneously in print and as a Pottermore eBook edition.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Hogwarts Library Book)
Newt Scamander, J.K. Rowling
Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic)
On Sale Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN 9781338132311, 1338132318
Hardcover | 128 pages |$12.99 USD

Already looking forward to the film adaptation of her debut novel, Everything, Everything, YA author Nicola Yoon is two for two as her second novel, The Sun Is Also a Star (PRH/Delacorte Press; Listening Library; OverDrive Sample), is also headed to the silver screen, reports Deadline Hollywood.

Warner Bros and MGM have teamed up to make the 2016 novel about a teen girl who falls in love as her family faces deportation.

A critical as well as commercial hit, it was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award and is on many best book lists, including those compiled by Entertainment Weekly, Horn Book, the LA Times, and the NYT.

Everything, Everything is set to release on May 19, 2017. On her web site, Yoon has been tracking the progress.

Read the chat, below.

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The nominees for the 2017 Golden Globes include a number of TV shows and films with book connections. As the LA Times puts it in their rundown, so many that “if you’re more at home in a library or a bookstore than a movie theater, you’re likely to find some reading material to curl up with while the rest of your family is gathered around the television set.”

Most of the nominees are already well known, as we have noted:

• Arrival
• Elle
• Fences
• Game of Thrones
• Hidden Figures
• Lion
• Mozart in the Jungle
• The Night Manager
• Nocturnal Animals
• Outlander
• The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story

One is much less familiar, My Life as a Zucchini, an animated film from Switzerland based on Autobiographie D’une Courgette (J’Ai Lu Editions, 2003; no English translation), a YA novel by the French journalist Gilles Paris.

Selected as the Swiss entry for Best Foreign Language Film for this year’s Oscars, it just won the European Film Awards category for best European animated feature (here is its official entry page).

The story is about a young boy who becomes an orphan following the death of his alcoholic mother. Taken to an orphanage by a police officer who befriends him, the boy must learn to cope with his new life and surroundings as he interacts with other traumatized children.

Variety says “Leave it to a French-language stop-motion film to cut closer to the reality of the orphan experience than Annie, Matilda or any number of like-minded live-action melodramas … the cartoon is never afraid to be cute, but more importantly, it’s committed to being real.”

The Hollywood Reporter calls it “lovingly told and gorgeously rendered” and says “Though not as dark as the book that inspired it, nor as directly critical of the French welfare state [it is] not exactly a tale for all ages. That said, savvy distributors who know how to market high-end animated films to older audiences should get some decent mileage out of this Courgette.”

Variety reports that North American distribution rights have been sold, but so far, no release date has been announced.

Reflecting their major investment in the upcoming adaptation of
A Series of Unfortunate Events by Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, (HarperCollins, 1999 – 2006), Netflix is ramping up their promotional efforts. The third and probably not the final trailer was released last week.

The series begins streaming on January 13.

Expect to see more series from Netflix, which has is cutting back on movies in favor of original programming. As the company’s chief content officer noted at a recent conference, only one third of their customers watch movies.

No tie-ins have been announced.

Greeting the news that Sherman Alexie is adapting his beloved, best-selling, and National Book Award winning novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, for the big screen (Hachette/Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; OverDrive Sample), The Seattle Review of Books notes, “This is a big damn deal for a book that has demonstrated remarkable longevity with young readers.”

The Hollywood Reporter writes that Hugh Jackman, “will play a supporting role in the film as well as serve in some producing capacity.”

Temple Hill, who helped bring another YA favorite, The Fault in Our Stars, to theaters will produce along with the Donners’ Company (Deadpool), says THR.

Alexie made the announcement via Twitter:

https://twitter.com/Sherman_Alexie/status/804750296203169792

There is no word on when the film will debut, but 2017 marks the 10th anniversary of the novel. Hachette is marking the occasion with an anniversary edition to be published with a new cover and bonus material on Oct. 3, 2017, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (10th Anniversary Edition), (Hachette/Little, Brown Books for Young Readers).

The chat has now ended. The transcript is below.

Join us for the next live chat on Dec. 14, 5 to 6 p.m., ET with Jack Cheng, to discuss his upcoming book, See You in the Cosmos.

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.

This must be a record. No new film adaptations open this coming weekend.

In its second week in theaters, the Harry Potter prequel/spinoff, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them ranked number 2 at the box office over the Thanksgiving holiday, behind Disney’s Moana. See our earlier post, for more information about the latter, including tie-ins.

The force behind The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film adaptations is bringing another UK import to the big screen, the SF series by Philip Reeve known as Predator Cities. The first book is Mortal Engines (Scholastic; OverDrive Sample) and as of now, that will be the name of the new Peter Jackson film (note, in the US the series is called the Hungry City Chronicles).

The first novel, published in 2003, opens the dystopian series in which cities on caterpillar tracks move about in search of other cities to attack in a quest for a dwindling amount of resources caused by a devastating global war. It features a 15-year-old orphan named Tom Natsworthy who is flung off the moving city of London along with Hester Shaw, another orphan. The pair finds themselves lost in the wasteland of the ruined landscape hunted by a cyborg.

It was a ALA Notable Children’s Book and made SLJ‘s best books list and YALSA Best Books for Young Adult list. 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.”

Variety reports that Jackson and Fran Walsh “co-wrote the screenplay with their LOTR and Hobbit collaborator, Philippa Boyens, who serves as co-producer.”

The film is set to open on Dec. 14, 2018. According to Variety, “That week of December has brought good fortune to Jackson: All six Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies staked out the same pre-Christmas week date.”

School Library Journal has posted their editors’ selections of the best Picture Books, Chapter Books, Middle Grade and YA books of the year in an online slide show.

The list includes 66 titles.

Coincidentally (the editors SWEAR it’s a coincidence), SLJ published its first best books list 66 years ago.

UPDATE: The release date has been shifted to May 19,2017

The film adaptation of Nicola Yoon’s debut novel now has a premiere date, August 18, 2017, reports Deadline Hollywood.

Everything, Everything (PRH/Delacorte; Listening Library; OverDrive Sample) received high praise and found many readers when it hit shelves last year and debuted at No. 1 on the NYT YA best-seller list. It earned a glowing NYT review (“gorgeous and lyrical”) and an A- review from Entertainment Weekly (a “complex,” “fresh, moving debut”).

The Hollywood Reporter writes that “rising actors” Amandla Stenberg (The Hunger Games) and Nick Robinson (Jurassic World) will star in the adaptation.

Stella Meghie (Jean of the Joneses) directs while J. Mills Goodloe (Age of Adaline) writes the script.

Sternberg was one of  Time magazine’s Most Influential Teens 2016, described as:

“one of her generation’s leading social activists, especially regarding race, representation and gender identity. As a result, she’s earned some high-profile admirers. Among them: Gloria Steinem, who sat for a one-on-one interview with Stenberg for Teen Vogue, and Beyoncé …

She is also set to star in another YA novel adaptation, Alexandra Bracken’s Darkest Minds trilogy.

Yoon’s second novel, The Sun Is Also a Star, was a finalist this year for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

The adaptation of Lauren Oliver’s debut YA novel, Before I Fall, (HarperCollins, 2010) is scheduled for released on March 3, 2017. The first trailer has just been released.

Directed by Ry Russo-Young (Nobody Walks), the film stars Zoey Deutch (Vampire Academy), Halston Sage (Goosebumps), Logan Miller (Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse) and Jennifer Beals (Flashdance, The L Word).

About a girl who dies in a car crash, but then gets to relive the last day of her life seven times, the book was a best seller.

A tie-in will be published in February.

Just two weeks after Netflix released a trailer for the series adaptation of Lemony Snicket’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events, they’ve unleashed a new, more extensive trailer.

The full 8-episode series debuts on Netflix on Friday, January 13, 2017.

Our chat has now ended. You can read the transcript below.

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If you enjoyed Setting Free the Kites, nominate it for LibraryReads (deadline: Dec. 20)

The newest big screen spin-off of Chris Van Allsburg’s Caldecott-winning Jumanji (HMH, 1981) is getting a December 22, 2017 release date, delayed six months from the original date,  timed to position the film for family holiday viewing. Originally the film had been scheduled for the summer of 2017.

As we wrote earlier, the initial reports about the film stated that the 2017 edition would be a remake of the beloved Robin Williams version. As the news broke it was greeted with a wave of negative reaction. E! Online wrote “not only is the Jumanji remake unnecessary and kind of insulting, but it’s in danger of tarnishing the onscreen legacy of one of the great comedians of our time.”

Since then, star Dwayne Johnson (who plays the character Dr. Bravestone) has cleared up matters on his Instagram account (and reported by Yahoo!), writing the film will not be a remake but rather a continuation of the story:

“This new movie will NOT be a remake or reboot of the original. It will be a CONTINUATION of the awesome JUMANJI adventure 20 years later. As a producer on this movie and someone who loves the original, you have my word we’ll honor the legend of ‘Alan Parrish’ and properly introduce a whole new generation to the fun and crazy JUMANJI universe that so many of us loved and grew up on”

Digital Spy says Bravestone is “an explorer and one of the avatars” within the game. In addition to Johnson, the film also stars Jack Black, Karen Gillan, and Kevin Hart.

Variety reports the shuffle in release date also impacts the adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, now moved from Feb. 2017 to the summer slot of Jumanji.