Dan Brown's international bestseller The Da Vinci Code will soon be available in a child-friendly way. The international bestseller featuring globe-trotting symbologist Robert Langdon, originally published by Doubleday in 2003, is being adapted for young adults with the new edition to release from Random House U.S. September 13 and by Penguin Random House UK on September 8.
World English rights to The Da Vinci Code (Young Adult Adaptation) were jointly acquired by Barbara Marcus at Random House Children's Books and Francesca Dow at Penguin Random House UK from agent Heide Lange at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. The forthcoming title will be released in hardcover and e-book in the U.S. by Delacorte Press, and in the same editions in the U.K. by Penguin Random House Children’s UK.
The Da Vinci Code (Young Adult Adaptation) will feature a new cover design and be abridged in length from the original. It will nonetheless, the publisher said, "maintain Brown’s original plot."
A YA edition of the novel is a project that Brown has wanted to do for sometime. Brown, whose parents were teachers and who believes he himself would have been an educator had he not become an author, said his goal with the YA edition is to inspire younger readers about the joys of history. "It is my sincere hope that this adaptation of The Da Vinci Code sparks in young adults the same thrill of discovery that I feel while exploring hidden history and the mysteries of the world we live in.” The changes planned for the new edition will be aimed at making The Da Vinci Code more appropriate for readers in their early teens.
The U.S. edition of The Da Vinci Code (Young Adult Adaptation), which will be released alongside an audio edition from Listening Library, will hit shelves shortly before the October 28 release of the movie adaptation of the fourth book in Brown's series featuring Robert Langdon, Inferno.
According to PRH, The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 82 million copies worldwide, to date.
