There will always be books, if only because Hollywood would die without them as sources for scripts. As The Hunger Games takes aim this weekend at movie audiences, agents and producers who are doing lunch in Lalaland should know that paranormal romances and dystopic futures are so yesterday. Meanwhile, Toni Morrison fans have something to write “Home” about.
Billing itself as “the rights place for chidlren’s content,” the Bologna Children’s Book Fair saw a brisk rights business this week, according to Publishers Weekly features editor Andrew Albanese. “One notable trend is shift from paranormal romances and dystopias to thrillers. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, for example reported heavy interest in a YA thriller—Allen Zadoff’s Boy Nobody,” he tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally.
In her review of reviews, Rose Fox takes note of Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison’s Home, about an African-American veteran of the Korean War who goes searching for his missing sister. PW’s reviewer, quoting Morrison’s own prose, says the book is “So beautiful. So brutal.”
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Every Friday, CCC’s “Beyond the Book” speaks with the editors and reporters of “Publishers Weekly” for an early look at the news that publishers, editors, authors, agents and librarians will be talking about when they return to work on Monday.