British author Philip Kerr, who has published a dozen thrillers with various publishers in the last decade (including the Berlin Noir trilogy, Esau and Grid) is the latest adult author to turn his hand to children's books, and has signed a seven-figure deal with Scholastic on both sides of the Atlantic for a planned three-book series called Children of the Lamp. Agent Caradoc King at A.P. Watt in London made both deals, selling British rights to Richard Scrivener at Scholastic U.K. before Jean Feiwel on this side preempted for world English without even seeing a manuscript. Kerr, who will write for kids as P.B. Kerr, tells of 12-year-old twins of a New York couple whose uncle is a genie and turns them into djinns, able to make people's wishes come true; first up, next fall, is The Akhnaten Adventure. Meanwhile, the same series was signed for a movie, also sight unseen, by Lorrie MacDonald and Walter Parkes at DreamWorks, via Bob Bookman