Publishing Industry Lowdown (May 28-June 1)

It’s that day again–time for Sooz’s YA and MG Publishing Industry Lowdown. The general idea is that I share all the deals I know 0f in the young adult and middle grade publishing world each Friday.

My source for deal news is Publishers Marketplace, which requires a paid subscription. As such I’m only sharing part of the information here–basically, just author names and pitches. If you want to know deal sizes (e.g. advances), editors, publishers, and agents, I highly recommend you sign up for PM–it’s totally worth the cost!

It was a short week thanks to Memorial day, and it’s an even SHORTER week thanks to the upcoming BEA. So there’s not a whole lot to report, but let’s get started anyway, shall we?

Deals

Patrick Matthews’s middle grade DRAGON RUN, in which a 12-year old boy is ranked a zero, the lowest in his society; on the run from zero-hunting Cullers, he learns that he is the centerpiece in a struggle between mortals and dragons, the key to finally freeing mankind of the dragons, and their Cullers, once and for all, for publication in January 2013.

R.R. Russell’s middle grade WONDER LIGHT, in which a preteen girl is sent to live with foster parents on an island haunted by ghost horses where she witnesses the birth of a baby unicorn, in a two-book deal, for publication in Spring 2013.

Daniel Pinkwater’s third installment in the middle grade MRS. NOODLEKUGEL series, further adventures of two children, their magical babysitter and her menagerie.

Mandy Hubbard writing as Amanda Grace’s young adult THE TRUTH ABOUT US, in which a girl enrolls in an accelerated college program and has an affair with her professor — who has no idea she’s only sixteen,in a two-book deal, for publication in 2013. WOOHOO!! GO MANDY!! ♥

Kristal Shaff’s debut THE EMISSARY, in which a seventeen-year-old must defeat an ageless king and his powerful army in order to save their land from a cloud of darkness that threatens to destroy him, and those like him, who possess one of six deadly powers, in a two-book deal, for publication in December 2013.

National Latino Writers Collective founder and debut children’s author Angela Cervantes’s untitled middle grade novel, about a Latina sixth-grader who, while volunteering at an animal shelter, discovers that she has a lot in common with the motley crew of abandoned cats and unwanted dogs there: they want a loving family, and she wants her mother — who was deported to Honduras — back, for publication in 2013.

Jennifer Longo’s debut young adult AT NEED, the darkly comic journey of a fifteen-year-old girl who works in her family’s cemetery and struggles to find a place for death in her life as she fears she is helplessly doomed to be nothing more than some kind of maudlin death-magnet.

Janet Gurtler’s young adult HOW I LOST YOU, about two girls who have been best friends forever coming to terms with a change in their relationship and learning when it’s best to hold on and when it’s best to let go, in a three-book deal, for publication in Spring 2013.

Newbery Honor-winning, National Book Award Finalist Kathi Appelt, and #1 NYT bestselling author Alison McGhee’s untitled middle grade book of alternating chapters starring a fox family and their human counterparts, exploring the question of what happens after death.

Julie Berry’s young adult LUCAS, pitched in the tradition of The Scarlet Letter and Speak, in which the heroine has been silenced by tragedy and is now an outcast in her morally rigid alternate Colonial universe; told entirely in the second person, as if a love letter, to the boy who indirectly started all the troublr, for publication in Fall 2013.

Shyima Hall with Lisa Wysocky’s young adult FROM SLAVE TO CITIZEN, a depiction of modern human trafficking in America; when the author was 8, her poverty-stricken Egyptian parents sold her into slavery for thirty dollars a month; the wealthy Cairo couple who bought her moved to California, taking the girl with them; she describes her grueling hours of daily labor under destitute conditions, denied education, health care and even simple amenities inside the family’s home; rescued at 13 by welfare authorities, she stayed in the US and now works as an advocate and public speaker in hopes of combating human trafficking, for publication in winter 2014.

(Source: Publisher’s Marketplace)

Other Stuff

I revealed a countdown widget for Something Strange & Deadly, and it’s only the beginning of  über special things to come for June. Only 52 days until it releases. Ah, the stomach–it knots!

Crits for Water! CRITS FOR WATER! Have you seen how huge it is this year? Kat’s goal was $10,000 and she already PASSED it. We still have a whole month left of auctions and pledges. Kat, you are amazing. Well, my own critiques will go up on Monday, so be sure to stop by and try to snag them!!

Finally, we have a new member on Pub(lishing) Crawl! She’s an assistant editor from Grosset and Dunlap, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers. So be sure to stop by! Plus, you can enter to win a copy of Shirley Jackson’s The House on Haunted Hill.

You tell me: Do YOU have any big news to share?

♥