Rodale Runs with Keflezighi
Meb Keflezighi, a 2004 U.S. Olympic Silver Medalist, sold his memoir, Meb for Mortals, to Mark Weinstein at Rodale. D.J. Snell at Legacy Management represented Keflezighi, working with Hawi Management, selling world rights. Keflezighi, who, in addition to medaling at the Athens games also won two marathons (Boston in 2014 and New York City in 2009), will be writing the book with Runner’s World editor Scott Douglas; in the book he will talk about his training methods so that, as Rodale put it, he can “empower and enable everyday runners” to achieve their own goals.
New Jandy Nelson to Dial
Jandy Nelson, author of the popular YA novel The Sky Is Everywhere, sold her third book, Fall Boys & Dizzy in Paradise, to Jessica Garrison at Dial Books for Young Readers. Garrison bought North American rights from Holly McGhee at Pippin Properties, and the novel is tentatively slated for fall 2017. In Fall Boys, Nelson follows a trio of siblings—two boys and a girl—whose father disappeared years earlier under mysterious circumstances. The story takes off when, the publisher explained, “an enigmatic girl shows up and turns their lives into tumult.” Nelson, who has a B.A. from Cornell and an M.F.A. in writing for children from Brown, won a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults award for The Sky Is Everywhere. Her forthcoming YA effort, I’ll Give You the Sun (Dial, Sept.), was optioned for film last week by Denise Di Novi and Alison Greenspan (who are behind the upcoming adaptation of Gayle Forman’s If I Stay). The Sky Is Everywhere has also been optioned for film, with Selena Gomez currently attached to star.
Dunavan Gets Foody at Norton
Norton’s John Glusman nabbed North American rights to Claire Panosian Dunavan’s Eat, Drink, and Be Wary: The Sense and Science of Savvy Eating. The author, an M.D. and former president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, touches on everything from parasites to food-borne threats in revealing the unseen dangers lurking in our diets. The book, set for July 2016, was sold by Gail Ross at the Ross Yoon Agency.
Candlewick Inks Newbery Winner in Triplet
Poet and Newbery Medalist Nancy Willard signed a world rights, three-book deal with Candlewick’s Liz Bicknell. The deal, for three picture books, was brokered by Jean Naggar and Jennifer Weltz at the Jean V. Naggar Agency. The agency said the first book, The Three Mouths of Little Tom Drum, about a boy who steals a piece of pie and “gets more than he wishes for,” will be illustrated by Kevin Hawkes. The second book, Gum, will be illustrated by Jeff Newman and follows a boy angling to get the prize out of a gumball machine. The final title, Burroughs and the Birds, is about naturalist John Burroughs, who took his young son to Jamaica in 1902. Tom Drum is set for June 2015; Gum for spring 2017; and Burroughs is not yet scheduled.
Ryan Hyde Re-Ups with Amazon
Catherine Ryan Hyde (Pay It Forward) has signed a new two-book deal with Terry Goodman at Amazon Publishing’s Lake Union Press imprint. The first book in the deal, Worthy, is set for summer 2015. Agent Laura Rennert, at Andrea Brown Literary, represented Hyde. Worthy follows a middle-aged woman who has a life-altering experience with the young man who finds her dog. When the two are stranded together at a diner for 36 hours during a major storm, Rennert said, they “come to see that they too deserve the chance to try for more than the lives fate has handed them so far.”
