One of the big children’s projects that has bubbled up at the German book fest is a series called Ferals that was acquired jointly in the U.S. and U.K. last week (by HarperCollins Children’s Books, which took world English rights), and has already been optioned for film (by Fox 2000). Ferals is also netting impressive foreign sales.
There is no author attached to the middle-grade project, which Chris Snowden at U.K. packager Working Partners sold. The London-based agency Rights People is handling foreign sales, and Charles Netleton, managing director there, said the author name on the series has not yet been decided but, as with many Working Partners projects, a pseudonym will be attached.
Speaking to those aforementioned foreign sales, Netleton said the pace of deals is striking, with multiple agreements closed, and others in the works, all within a week of submission. (So far, the series has been pre-empted in Germany and France; sold in the Netherlands and Israel; auctions are underway in Brazil and Spain; and offers are in from Italy, Norway, Hungary and Romania.)
The first book in the series, Crow Talker, is set for a global release in February 2015; it follows a boy named Caw who was raised by crows from the age of five. At 13, Caw is about to come into possession of his power as a Feral, a group which has the supernatural ability to connect and communicate with animals. Caw is also about to learn that not all Ferals want to use their power for good.
Rachel Denwoord at HarperCollins Children’s in the U.K. and Erica Sussman at HarperTeen in the U.S. were the acquring editors.
