The “world premiere first look” at the trailer for Disney’s next major animated movie, Moana was featured on Good Morning America yesterday.

The story features Moana, a Polynesian teenaged girl, voiced by Hawaiian native and movie newcomer Auli’i Cravalho, who sets sail in the South Pacific to find Maui, a shape shifting demi-god, voiced by Dwayne Johnson, to enlist his help to save her community.

The score features songs co-created by Lin-Manuel Miranda who tweeted the trailer’s premiere.

As The Hollywood Reporter wrote recently, the studio is the now the one “to beat when it comes to nonwhite leads,” citing this movie as well as the diverse casting for A Wrinkle in Time and the upcoming African chess drama Queen of Katwe, starring Lupita Nyong’o and David Oyelowo, opening in September.

There are many tie-ins, most set to publish on Oct. 4, such as Moana: The Deluxe Junior Novelization (Disney Moana), RH Disney (PRH/RH/Disney).

For a full list see our catalog of tie-ins.

Storm Reid, described by Entertainment Weekly as an “up-and-coming actress.” will star in Ava DuVernay’s film adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time as the young protagonist, Meg Murry. Reid’s previous roles were in 12 Years a Slave, an American Girl movie Lea to the Rescue, and Sleight.

Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling will star as Mrs. Which, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Who in the Disney adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s beloved novel, filling the roles of the helpful celestial beings.

As Entertainment Weekly notes, this will make “DuVernay the first woman of color to direct a live-action movie with a budget of more than $100 million.” The Hollywood Reporter writes that “DuVernay is hoping to break ground with the movie, making a big tentpole with a cast that is multicultural” and that the producers are looking for a non-white actor to play Meg’s friend, Calvin O’Keefe.

It appears the movie will bring new readers to the book. Based on just the casting news, it jumped nearly 100 places on Amzaon’s sales rankings, from #356 to #263.

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Graphic novelist Raina Telgemeier was featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition yesterday, causing her new book Ghosts (Scholastic/GRAPHIX) to jump to #8 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

She tells interviewer Barrie Handyman that she hopes the book will serve as a way to talk to children about a difficult subject, death.

The book will be published tomorrow.

A new throne may be coming to television.

Hulu has ordered a pilot for a potential TV series based on Sarah J. Maas’ best-selling YA books, Throne of Glass, to be titled after the fourth book in the series, Queen of Shdows. The series is being developed by the Mark Gordon Company, which also produced Ray Donovan  for Showtime and ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy.

The fifth title in the planned six-book series was just published, Empire of Storms (Macmillan/Bloomsbury USA Childrens).

It may be a race to see which Maas series gets adapted first. Rights were acquired last November to the author’s second series,  A Court of Thorns and Roses (Macmillan/Bloomsbury USA Childrens, May 2014).

The second title in that series, A Court of Mist and Fury was released in May of this year and landed at #1 on the NYT Young Adult Best Seller list. It is currently at #7 after 18 weeks.

Among the many memorials to mark the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11, is a new wave of novels aimed at readers  who were either too young to remember the events, or were born since they took place.

In a feature on the trend, the NYT reports “the first major wave of children’s literature that explicitly deals with the terrorist attacks” is now forthcoming. “The stories range from tame middle-grade novels for 8- to 12-year-olds, which center on the tragedy but keep the horror mostly at a distance, to young-adult novels with unflinching descriptions of the mayhem and bloodshed that unfolded as the towers burned and fell.”

It has taken so long to see a concentrated group of titles, writes the the NYT‘s publishing reporter, Alexandra Alter, because editors and publishers have been too jittery to publish books set during that era, fearing the material would be overly traumatic for readers or seem exploitative.

Authors, worried that teens have no clear idea of what actually happened and that they themselves were becoming too removed from the events to write about them with truth and power, pushed back against those concerns, reports the NYT, quoting one author as saying of the 10 editors who rejected her novel for fear it was too raw and painful that “they’re not the audience for the book, and the teens that are going to be reading this book are not going to have that visceral reaction.”

The story highlights a number of titles:

All We Have Left, Wendy Mills (Macmillan/Bloomsbury USA Childrens; OverDrive Sample).

Love Is the Higher Law, David Levithan (PRH/Knopf Books for Young Readers; OverDrive Sample). An early outlier from 2009.

Somewhere Among, Annie Donwerth-Chikamatsu, illustrated by Sonia Chaghatzbanian (S&S/Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books; OverDrive Sample).

Towers Falling, Jewell Parker Rhodes (Hachette/Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story, Nora Raleigh Baskin (S&S/Atheneum Books for Young Readers; OverDrive Sample).

The Memory of Things, Gae Polisner (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Griffin; OverDrive Sample).

The Christian Science Monitor has a similar story, offering annotations of some of the titles.

Children’s author and illustrator Anna Dewdney died at 50 of  brain cancer on Sept. 3. She is known for her Llama Llama picture books, starting with Llama Llama Red Pajama. The series runs to nearly 20 titles and has sold more than 10 million copies, reports PW.

Librarians may also know Dewdney as a frequent speaker in schools and libraries and as an ardent supporter of children’s literacy. In 2013 she wrote in The Wall Street Journal:

“When we read with a child, we are doing so much more than teaching him to read or instilling in her a love of language … We are doing something that I believe is just as powerful, and it is something that we are losing as a culture: by reading with a child, we are teaching that child to be human. When we open a book, and share our voice and imagination with a child, that child learns to see the world through someone else’s eyes.”

She was so committed to reading that she requested that, in lieu of a funeral,  people read to a child.

Two posthumous projects are in the works. PW reports that Dewdney had completed a picture book for Penguin titled, Little Excavator. It is scheduled for release in early June 2017 from Viking.

Netflix is also planning an animated Llama Llama series to air in 2017. Deadline Hollywood reports that Jennifer Garner is on board to voice Mama Llama. Netflix says that “The series is led by an all-star team of creators including Oscar-winning director Rob Minkoff (The Lion King), director Saul Blinkoff (Doc McStuffins) [and] … legendary art director Ruben Aquino (Frozen, The Lion King, Aladdin, Mulan).”

Below is video of Dewdney at one of the places she loved, a book festival.

Originally scheduled for release on October 21, the film adaptation of the childrens fantasy, A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, has been moved to a later release. It’s now scheduled for a limited release (10 cities, 20 theaters) on December 23  which still qualifies it for Oscar nominations, but just barely,  followed by a wide release January 6 (1,500 theaters).

Deadline notes that the earlier date was “a complete nightmare in regards to competition, and the pic’s new date gives it ample time to breathe and spur word-of-mouth during the year-end holidays and into 2017.”

The film will  premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10.

The third, most recent trailer was released in July.

Candlewick is releasing two tie-ins, including a hardcover “Special Collector’s Edition” that, in addition to the original illustrated YA novel, includes new essays by Ness, who worked on the screenplay, previously unpublished early sketches by illustrator Jim Kay and interviews with the director, cast, and crew.

A Monster Calls: Special Collectors’ Edition (Movie Tie-in): Inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowd, Patrick Ness, Jim Kay, (Candlewick, October 4, 2016)

A Monster Calls: A Novel (Movie Tie-in): Inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowd, Patrick Ness, Jim Kay (Candlewick, August 2, 2016, Trade Paperback)

Netflix, which has been busy setting up collaborations with Disney and providing The Little Prince a home, is now turning to Canada for a childhood classic, Anne of Green Gables.

The New York magazine reports that Netflix has picked up the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s production of Anne, created by writer Moira Walley-Beckett (Breaking Bad), producer Miranda de Pencier (Beginners), and director Niki Caro (Whale Rider).

The show will begin with a two-hour premiere to be followed by eight episodes, all airing sometime in 2017. The Netflix press release says it will range further than Lucy Maud Montgomery went, “ANNE will also chart new territory. 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.”

Todd Haynes’s adaptation of Brian Selznick’s middle grade novel  Wonderstruck (Scholastic, 2011) is moving closer to the screen with filming recently concluded, reports Movie Pilot.

Starring Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, Okes Fergley (Pete’s Dragon), the film also features newcomer Millicent Simmonds, a 13-year-old deaf actress in the role of Rose, who is also deaf.

Selznick is known for his brilliant imagery and creative storytelling and it seems Haynes will bring an equally inventive approach to the story, electing to film sections as a silent movie, matching not only the era in which part of the novel is set, but also the deaf Rose’s silent world. Deadline notes that “this section of the narrative will see an unprecedented number of deaf actors in roles that would normally go to hearing actors.”

The film, produced by Amazon studios,  is expected for release sometime next year.

As we noted previously, this will be Selznick’s second book adapted by a celebrated director, after Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning Hugo, based on The Invention Of Hugo Cabret.

Just last month, on the launch day for the play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,  J.K. Rowling told the press that the story was now complete, saying, Potter “goes on a very big journey during these two plays and then, yeah, I think we’re done.”

In what seems like a reversal, she announced yesterday that she is returning to the wizarding world with a series of spin-off ebooks featuring characters from Hogwarts.

As The Guardian reports, starting on September 6, the tales will appear as short e-only editions, “Called Pottermore Presents, the series is a collection of Rowling’s writing for Pottermore.com, as well as new stories about characters including Potter’s potions master Horace Slughorn, Hogwarts headteacher Professor Minerva McGonagall and Ministry of Magic bureaucrat Dolores Umbridge.”

Pottermore calls them “a series of bite-sized eBooks that dig deep into the Harry Potter stories, with titbits taken from Pottermore’s archives and original writing from J.K. Rowling. The series offers Harry Potter fans added insights into the stories, settings and characters and were all lovingly curated by Pottermore.”

Variety reports they will cost three dollars and provides a brief summary of each title, including the news that the third title will feature “new information on McGonagall’s role in the second wizarding war.”

Pottermore further teases, “for those who want to quench their thirst for more knowledge about the wizarding world, such as why the Black family bestow such odd names to their children, how a witch or wizard becomes a portrait, or what J.K. Rowling really thinks about Professor Umbridge, step right this way to find out.”

The titles are available for pre-order on Amazon, Kobo, and iTunes but are not yet showing in library vendor systems.

Below is the bibliographic data from Kobo:

Short Stories from Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship and Dangerous Hobbies, J.K. Rowling (Pottermore, September 2016; ISBN 9781781106280)

Short Stories from Hogwarts of Power, Politics and Pesky Poltergeists, J.K. Rowling (Pottermore, September 2016; ISBN 9781781106297)

Hogwarts: An Incomplete and Unreliable Guide, J.K. Rowling (Pottermore, September 2016; ISBN 9781781106273)

A trailer has been released for the movie adaptation of Katherine Paterson’s middle grade novel, The Great Gilly Hopkins.

The star of The Book Thief, Sophie Nelisse plays the title role, along with Glenn Close, Kathy Bates and Octavia Spencer. It is scheduled for release on October 7th.

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 more than $200 million worldwide). In 1981, she won the Newbery again for Jacob I Have Loved.

A new edition (second right, above) was released in hardcover and  paperback in January, featuring a burst that reads “Read it Before You See It,”

For the month of August Slate is focusing attention on children’s books in their new “pop-up” blog, Nightlight! which aims to “explore the art—and the business—of literature for kids,” in daily posts illustrated by Tina Kügler (Snail and Worm).

The first post is a review of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, calling it an “adequate” “delivery device for extremely informed Potter fan fiction,” and continuing, “If Cursed Child is … the first play an entire generation of children will read, theater might be in for a rough couple of decades.”

Laura Miller, Slate‘s books and culture columnist, writes about formidable NYPL childrens librarian Anne Carroll Moore. While her story is well known among childrens librarians and childrens lit fans, Miller introduces her to a wider audience, saying “Beatrix Potter considered her a close friend; she could summon William Butler Yeats to appear at her library events … she was reputed to be able to make or break a book, much as the New York Times’ theater critic was said to determine the fate of a new play.”

Moore believed most books  for kids were inadequate.  We can only imagine Moore’s reaction to the books discussed in another post titled, “My Kids Read Only Subliterary Branded Commodities. Yours Probably Do, Too!”, which refers to movie and TV tie-ins for kids as “subliterary commodities, book-like objects … the juvenile equivalent of pornography … it’s hard not to take offense at the contempt with which the publishers treat their readership.”

The post “We Don’t Only Need More Diverse Books. We Need More Diverse Books Like The Snowy Day” notes that children need to “learn the pleasure of reading a story in the relaxed, quiet moments before bed, reading not to learn but to feel safe, feel loved, laugh, wonder. That’s a fundamental privilege of childhood and should not be reserved for only one set of children.”

The Slate Audiobook Club is generally a rather highbrow, New Yorker version of a book club.  Not so  in their latest, as the conversation about the boy who lived, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine),  quickly becomes closer to a version of a Big Bang Theory geek-out about the best Superman movie.

Slate contributors Katy Waldman, Dan Kois, and L.V. Anderson each have issues with the play script, Kois most of all, who cannot bring himself in the end to actually recommend the play in print form to new readers (see his review here). Anderson mourns the loss of motivations, emotions, and personality missing from the play’s scant information (it is almost entirely dialogue) but does, in the end, suggest it to readers. Waldman, far less invested in the story than her panelists, liked it and thinks it is great fun.

Their conversation centers around what the play does well (introduce interesting new characters and provide rewarding tidbits about those readers already know and adore) and very poorly (it lacks, they say, world building, internal logic, and is far too beholden to fan fiction).

While not as useful as previous discussions for book group leaders, the conversation provides insight into the widely varying reviews and fan reactions.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine) has already landed on top of the USA Today best-seller list. Because of the list’s timing. it just one day of sales. Those midnight release parties must have been pretty effective.

But not all is rosy in the wizarding world. Even as the script-book debuted, Rowling announced that Harry Potter is now over, saying “I think we’re done … This is the next generation, you know. So, I’m thrilled to see it realised so beautifully but, no, Harry is done now.”

The script-book is also getting some push back after its initial glowing reviews. The NYT reports, “While many readers were ecstatic about the chance to have more material on Harry and his friends, others have faulted Ms. Rowling for licensing out her story and characters. Some fans have lashed out online, saying they feel they were duped and misled by the prominence of Ms. Rowling’s name on the cover.”

The Independent reports fans are having trouble with the format (despite being told in advance it was a script and not a novel and not by Rowling herself) and are vocal about their disappointment. The paper quotes some very unhappy Amazon readers, one who calls it “poorly planned fan fiction” and another who wrote “Rowling, you owe your fans a BOOK! I like to rename this Harry Potter and the great scam.”