At Simon & Schuster Children’s, Audrey Gibbons has been promoted to senior publicist.
Recipients were announced for the second round of $1.75 million in grants that James Patterson is providing to school libraries across the country, working in partnerships with Scholastic Reading Club, which matches the grants with points for classroom materials purchases. 452 schools are receiving funds from the latest grants. Patterson says in the announcement: “We’ve just come out of the most divisive presidential election in history—and among all the issues that captivated voters, education wasn’t one of them. It was hardly discussed. Nearly half of the American population reads at or below a basic level, and we need to address that problem to foster an informed future electorate. I’ve made it my mission to underscore the vital role reading plays in children’s lives, and the need to sustain school libraries is at the heart of that mission.”
Alex Wheatle won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for Crongton Knights, the second in his planned inner-city YA trilogy.
Forthcoming
Bruce Springsteen has narrated an 18-hour audiobook version of his memoir Born to Run, which Simon & Schuster will release on December 6. The audio features “musical transitions” recorded by Springsteen, as well as “excerpts from the original studio recordings of Living Proof, Long Time Comin’ and Born to Run.” S&S Audio president & publisher Christopher Lynch says in the announcement, “To now hear Bruce tell his own intimate story with the same charisma and force that he brings to his performances is simply magic.”
The previously-announced next installment in the late Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series written by David Lagercrantz has been officially reannounced, still on track for publication in 2017, due in September. The title will be announced later (and a second book by Lagercrantz is under contract, originally expected for publication in 2019). This will be first installment for originating Swedish publisher Norstedts under their new owner Storytel, which bought the publisher this summer.