Twenty years ago, amid the swirl of controversy surrounding the publication of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie was inspired to write the children’s book Haroun and the Sea of Stories for his 11-year-old son Zafar. The modern fable follows Haroun, the son of a a great storyteller, on his quest into the World of Magic to find a way to restore his father’s creative talents. When Rushdie’s younger son, Milan, read the book years later, he requested a book of his own from his father. This request coincided with the author’s plan to revisit Haroun’s world. “It had always been in my mind to try to do a second one, and this kind of prompted me to do it,” Rushdie explains to The Boston Globe. The new book Luka and the Fire of Life, finished just in time for Milan’s 12th birthday, is a sequel to Haroun, but the story features a new hero and stands on its own. “I wanted to create a new, imaginative world and a new reason for going there,” states the writer. Read more…

©2010 Warner Bros.

Last weekend’s ticket sales have proclaimed The Boy Who Lived to be king of the box office with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I raking in $125.1 million in the U.S. This is the biggest opening for the franchise and the sixth largest opening for any film. Ever. President of domestic distribution for Warner Bros., Dan Fellman attributes a large part of the franchise’s success to young adults (age 18-34) “and their aging process.” “When we first started Harry Potter and cast 10-year-old Daniel Radcliffe in the title role, parents drove their 10-year-olds to see the movies. Today, those same kids are now driving themselves to the midnight shows,” he tells The Wall Street Journal. When the first film was released, only about 10% of the audience was in the 18-34 year old demographic. But, with the 7th (and penultimate) installment, 25% of the audience is now in that age group. Read more…

Mark Twain has still got it. One hundred years after his death, the author has achieved a spot on the bestsellers list with the recently released Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1 (University of California Press, 760pgs), the first in a series of three volumes. At the age of 74, just four short years before he passed away, Twain used his oratory and storytelling skills to dictate the majority of the 500,000-word autobiography to his personal secretary Isabel Van Kleek Lyon and several stenographers. According to an article in USA TODAY, “Twain ordered that the full, unexpurgated text, marked by rants against Wall Street and U.S. foreign policy, not be published until 100 years after his death.” Read more…

Daniel Radcliffe poses for ALA's series of Harry Potter Celebrity READ posters.

In honor of the Harry Potter books and the contributions author J.K. Rowling has made in encouraging literacy and inspiring young readers, the stars of the film franchise recently posed for the American Library Association’s Celebrity READ posters. Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson and Alan Rickman are featured in a series of four posters holding books of their own choosing. Radcliffe, the film embodiment of the boy wizard, spoke with American Libraries about the book he selected and how working in the Harry Potter films has turned him into a book lover. The young actor posed with The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. “I’ve been obsessed with the novel ever since I read it about a year ago. I’ve always been a huge fan of Magical Realism. It’s an inspiring genre in which writers can just let their imaginations go wild and wonderful…I’ve read it twice now, and I just received an English first edition (Collins and Harvill, 1967) with a beautiful cover as a birthday present. That’s the one that appears on the READ poster.” Read more…

"Dust Devil" is the follow up picture book to the Caldecott winner "Swamp Angel."

In a post for The Children’s Book Review, Lori Calabrese addresses the diminishing role that picture books play in the lives of young children and lists a number of reasons why picture books are still important. In the past year sales of picture books have dropped, and while part of the dip can be blamed on the economy, a shift in parental behavior is also part of the cause. Today, many parents are pushing their young children to forgo the picture books for the more text-heavy chapter books in order to excellerate their reading skills and become academically competitive. But by doing this, parents are ignoring the key role picture books play in their child’s development. Among the main reasons why these charming and colorful books still matter, is the quality of their content. Chapter books may seem deceptively advanced, but “their vocabulary and sentence structure can be considered simplistic when compared with older level picture books. Many picture books are written at a higher reading level, use amazingly complex vocabularies and offer interesting plots.” Read more…

Amy Sedaris, sister to humorist David Sedaris, brings her own brand of comedy to the crafting world with her new book Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People (Grand Central Publishing, 304pgs). This tome, along with her previous title, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, establishes Sedaris as a sort of lifestyle maven for the warped home-maker. “Crafting, or ‘making things,’ has always been a delightful pastime of mine because it requires putting common elements together in order to achieve a lovely something that nobody needs,” she states in the book. The crafting guide blends a mixture corniness and odd practicality with a dash of the truly strange to create unique projects such as a doll wig doorknob and a miniature cardboard ghetto for a dying mouse. The projects are divided into nutty sections like “Knowing Your Knack for Knickknacks”, “Sausages” and “The Joy of Poverty”, and are peppered with photographs of Sedaris as various characters that tie in with the crafts. Read more…

Author Jeffery Deaver, best known for his hugely popular Lincoln Rhyme series, has stepped into Ian Fleming’s shoes and is currently at work writing the next James Bond novel. On the surface, the mild-mannered writer may seem an unusual choice to take the helm of one of the book world’s most testosterone-fueled franchises, but the Fleming family has immense faith in his abilities. “He has a great understanding and appreciation of Fleming’s original creation. We feel sure that he will produce an exciting page-turning 21st-century Bond mission — and a Bond for the present day,” says Kate Grimond, Fleming’s niece, in an interview with USA TODAY. The novel, code named “Project X”, marks a departure from the previous books, and is the first to take place in modern times. This post-9/11 reboot will also feature a younger Bond. Read more…

In a blog post for Newcity Lit college professor Monica Westin discusses the recent popularity of zombie books and questions the value of literary mash-ups like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Pride and Prejudice: Dawn of the Dreadfuls. The fact that many of these books have been bestsellers proves that they are obviously entertaining, but does this zombie trend have meaning beyond that? The proliferation of zombie tales of late could be owed in part to the novelty of experiencing characters that are primarily depicted in films or video games in print. Westin attributes most of the modern mythology and code of zombie behavior to George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead film franchise. Through the years, Romero and other fellow horror directors, have used the undead to symbolize cultural fears that range from the spread of communism to globalized viral epidemics. However, Westin argues that when zombies are introduced into a classic piece of literature, “the meaning of the original book often gets lost or marginalized with the addition of a monster plotline.” Read more…

©2010 Home Box Office, Inc.

Boardwalk Empire, the HBO series set on the Atlantic City boardwalk during the 1920′s, garnered rave reviews from its first airing and boasts some of Hollywood’s top talent. Along with the contributions of director Martin Scorsese, writer Terence Winter and actor Steve Buscemi, the valuable skills of a local librarian were called upon to help authenticate the details of Prohibition-era Atlantic City. Heather Halpin Perez, an archivist for the historical Alfred M. Heston Collection at the Atlantic City Free Public Library, was contacted by the show’s lead researcher. “I was one of the historical consultants who was working at providing details about some of the sets and costumes,” she tells American Libraries. The series, which centers around Nucky Thompson, a fictionalized version of real-life crime boss Enoch “Nucky” Johnson, combines fiction with historical fact, and draws on the library’s archives to accurately re-create set pieces such as newspapers and boardwalk attractions. Read more…

Benedict Cumberbatch (left) and Martin Freeman (right) play Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in modern day interpretation "Sherlock".

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s archetypal detective Sherlock Holmes has been portrayed countless time on the small and big screen, most notably by Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett. But the new television series with a minimalist title, Sherlock, trades in the lace curtains of Victorian drawing rooms for the gritty streets of modern day London and puts a 21st Century spin on the beloved character. “It seemed to somehow make it a bit less reverent and a bit more fun,” show co-creator Steven Moffat tells NPR. “Much as we love Sherlock Holmes, we love Victoriana. Many of the adaptations become about the period as opposed to about the story.” The BBC show, which has been building quite a buzz in Britain, will begin airing in the U.S. on PBS’s Masterpiece on Sunday, October 24. Read more…