"Wimpy Kid" creator Jeff Kinney launches new content on Poptropica.com, where he serves as creative director.

The Wimpy Kid series has become a media blockbuster, spawning five bestselling books, a Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie released in 2010 and a second movie Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2: Rodrick Rules scheduled to hit theaters on March 25. Yet, through all this success, Wimpy Kid creator Jeff Kinney has maintained a low-key life. He even kept his day job. Though, Kinney isn’t exactly stuck in cubicle-ville, his day job is pretty cool. He currently works as the executive producer and creative director for Poptropica.com, a high-traffic website geared toward pre-teens, where they can learn, play games and explore virtual islands. On March 14, Kinney will introduce Wimpy Kid content to the site with the launch of a new Wimpy Wonderland island. “It’s the other great love of my life,” the author tells AP. “It’s very difficult to walk away from an audience of 10 million kids a month. To know that you can make a positive impact on what they’re learning and what they’re experiencing online is sort of addictive.” Read more…

Even before the debut of The Tiger’s Wife, Téa Obreht’s freshman novel, the young author was getting literary accolades. Last year, at just 24 years of age, Obreht was named as one of The New Yorker‘s 20 under 40. At the tender age of 23, The Atlantic included her short story The Laugh in their Fiction Issue. This media buzz built up very high expectations for Obreht to deliver a stunning first novel, and judging by most early critical reviews, the young writer has succeeded. The Tiger’s Wife, which will be released on March 8, takes place in an unspecified war-torn Eastern European country, where young doctor Natalia Stefanovi learns of her beloved grandfather’s death. Natalia delves into the circumstances of her grandfather’s passing and reflects on his many mythical stories, including one about a tiger escaping the zoo in 1941 and the deaf-mute that develops a friendship with the beast. By and large, critics have been charmed by Obreht’s rising talent. Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly calls the Belgrade-born author a “Balkan Scheherazade” and describes her literary voice as “so enchanting that the mesmerized reader wants her never to stop.” Read more…

Today marks the 107th birthday of Dr. Seuss, the beloved author of numerous touchstones of children’s literature such as Green Eggs and Ham, Hop on Pop and Horton Hears a Who!. Born Theodor Seuss Geisel in 1904, the writer and illustrator passed away in 1991, but the birthday of this scion of children’s books continues to be celebrated with Read Across America Day, a program created by National Education Association (NEA) in 1998. Throughout the nation, children, educators, librarians and people from all walks of life, will participate in reading activities to get kids excited about books. According to the NEA’s website: “Motivating children to read is an important factor in student achievement and creating lifelong successful readers. Research has shown that children who are motivated and spend more time reading do better in school.” Read more…

Comedian and musician “Weird Al” Yankovic has been entertaining audiences for almost 30 years with his musical parodies, amassing dozens of gold and platinum albums and winning three Grammy awards. Earlier this month, the performer explored a new creative outlet with the release of his first children’s book When I Grow Up, which debuted at #4 on the New York Times Bestsellers list. Written by Yankovic, who dropped the “Weird” moniker for the book cover, and illustrated by Wes Hargis, the picture book follows the musings of 8-year-old Billy after his teacher asks him what he wants to be when he grows up. Billy considers some very unique careers, such as a lathe operator for X-14 rocket parts, a world famous Twinkie cooking French chef, and a gorilla masseuse. The story is told with Yankovic’s trademark offbeat humor, but it does have a heartfelt message at it’s core. “You don’t need to be defined by your job,” Yankovic explains in a interview with NPR. “You can really kind of follow your muse.” Read more…

By Eleanor Brown
Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam | 336pgs
Release Date: January 20, 2011

Summary:
Sisterly love comes to the fore in Eleanor Brown’s debut novel The Weird Sisters. When their mother is diagnosed with breast cancer, three sisters unite at their childhood home to help care for her. The girls, all named after Shakespearean characters by their father, a Bard scholar, each bring their own personal baggage back to their mid-western homestead. The oldest sister, Rose (named after Rosalind in As You Like It) has remained in their small town of Barnwell, pursuing a career as college math professor. But, the comfortable, structured life she has carefully built becomes threatened when her fiancé is offered a job in England. Middle sister Bean (named after Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew) is escaping a disastrous life in New York, where she was recently fired from her job and accused of embezzlement. Baby sister Cordy (named after Cordelia in King Lear) has been living a free-spirited vagabond life, until she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, without any real idea of where to settle down or how to raise a family. Dealing with their ailing mother, their eccentric father who communicates primarily in Shakespearean verse, and their own inner turmoil brings the sisters closer together and cements not just love, but a genuine liking and respect for one another. Read more…

At the invitation of The New York Review of Books Blog to discuss the Coen brothers’ latest incarnation of True Grit, authors Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana read the original novel by Charles Portis and viewed Henry Hathaway’s 1969 film featuring John Wayne, along with screening the latest movie starring Jeff Bridges. After reviewing all the material, McMurtry and Ossana agreed that the main theme of True Grit in all its incarnations, is loyalty. Set in 1880′s Arkansas, Rooster Cogburn, a curmudgeonly bounty hunter, is pestered by 14-year-old Mattie Ross into helping her avenge her father’s death. As they venture into dangerous Indian Territory on their search for the killer, Tom Chaney, they find an ally in La Boeuf, a Texas Ranger. This story shows that loyalty “doesn’t prevent disagreement, or out-and-out fights, but it is often the coat love wears—a tattered and ragged coat, as in this fine movie—but maybe, just maybe, the best thing we have.” Read more…

The recently released picture book Pretty Penny Sets Up Shop (Random House Books for Young Readers, 40pgs) helps teach young children the basics of money management with a straight forward, and entertaining, approach. The book’s author and illustrator, Devon Kinch, struggled to put her financial house in order before beginning graduate work in graphic design at the School of Visual Arts. The experience of rehabilitating her finances and eliminating debt inspired the idea for the Pretty Penny series, which became the subject of her graduate thesis. Six-year-old Penny is a little girl with very big ideas. “My childhood heroines were Punky Brewster, Pippi Longstocking and Annie. All three were smart, edgy, and fearlessly independent young girls,” writes Kinch in an article for The Children’s Book Review. “I wanted Penny to embody the spirit of my childhood idols, but be very much a modern girl of today…She is a true mini-entrepreneur: passionate and resourceful.” Read more…

Eva Gabrielsson, author Stieg Larsson’s long time partner, is confident that she can complete the fourth installment of the Millennium series. “I am able to finish it … Steig and I often wrote together,” she tells AFP. Though she qualified this statement by explaining the Larsson family must first grant her the intellectual rights to the series before she will begin work. Larsson had written more than 200 pages of the fourth book before his heart attack in 2004, and Gabrielsson is in possession of this manuscript, though all rights to the series are currently owned by his father and brother. She refused to reveal any plot details of the book, except to admit that “Lisbeth little by little frees herself from her ghosts and her enemies.”

Millions of fans are thrilled at the prospect of a new Millennium book, and are anxious to set their eyes on Larsson’s last words about Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. Though if this new installment is written and fails to meet audience expectations, it could become a disappointing chapter in an already checkered legacy. Would it be better to leave well enough alone and let the first three books stand on their own? Read more…

Cover art for the first volume of "Saint Young Men" manga series, published by Kodansha.

Ever wondered what a young Buddha and Jesus would do if they left their celestial realms to take a stealth vacation in modern day Tokyo? This is the premise for Saint Young Men (Seinto Oniisan), a manga series that is hugely popular in Japan. Written and Illustrated by Hikaru Nakamura, the series follows the lives of best friends, Buddha and Jesus, as they live together in Tachikawa, a western suburb of Tokyo. The roomies do many of the things that average twenty-something guys do, like blogging, playing video games and going to amusement parks, all while attempting to keep their true heavenly identities a secret. Though the besties try to blend in with modern Japanese society, their unique appearances sometimes attract attention. Teenage school girls often remark on Jesus’ Johnny Depp-like good looks, and Buddha’s unique bun-style hairdo is a subject of teasing with the neighborhood boys. Their divine nature unavoidably shows through at times, as when Buddha grows incandescent with heavenly excitement and Jesus inadvertently changes the local public bath water into wine. Read more…

By Dean Koontz
Bantam | 464pgs
Release Date: December 28, 2010

Summary:
Bestselling thriller writer Dean Koontz conjures up a modern day ghost story with his new novel What the Night Knows. Alton Turner Blackwood, the villain from Koontz’s short story Darkness Under the Sun, wreaks havoc on a small town, killing several families. His murderous rampage is finally brought to an end on the night he attacks a fourth family, when he is killed by a 14-year-old boy, the only one to survive Blackwood’s savagery. Many years later and miles away from his childhood trauma, the boy, John Calvino, is now a man with his own family, when evil strikes again. Working as homicide detective, Calvino begins investigating a series of murders that bear a sickening similarity to the tragedy of his childhood. The unsettling and inexplicable events surrounding these new crimes cause Calvino to intensely fear for his own family’s safety and believe that he must fight a killer whose power extends beyond the grave. Read more…