July 8: In Brief

A Summer of Unrequired Reading

Disney’s unREQUIRED READING summer author tour, in which multiple authors visited bookstores across the U.S., wrapped up late last month. Seen here at Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville, Ill., are all seven participating writers: (l. to r.) Kristen Tracy (A Field Guide for Heartbreakers), Stacey Kade (The Ghost & the Goth), Daniel Waters (Passing Strange), Emily Franklin and Brendan Halpin (The Half-Life of Planets), Elizabeth Rudnick (Tweet Heart), and Brent Crawford (Carter’s Big Break). The authors also visited bookstores in Tennessee, California, Florida, Missouri, Georgia, Kansas, New York City, and Washington, D.C., including an appearance at ALA.

Egmont USA took advantage of the June 30 release of the film version of Stephenie Meyer’s Eclipse to draw some attention to one of its own paranormal titles, The Dark Divine, a debut novel by Bree Despain (Dec. 2009), about a pastor’s daughter who begins a potentially dangerous romance while uncovering secrets about her family. Fans (like those seen here) at midnight premieres of Eclipse in New York City, Atlanta, and Los Angeles received Dark Divine nail polish as well as a bookmark touting Egmont’s “Sizzling Summer Reads,” which included The Dark Divine, Raised by Wolves by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, and Siren by Tricia Rayburn. And at the Salt Lake City premiere, Despain participated in a premiere party which including a screening of the trailer for her novel during the midnight showing.

At what could only be described as a “sellout” event, Hue-Man Bookstore in New York City recently hosted a launch party for author Ebony Joy Wilkins’s debut novel, Sellout, just out from Scholastic Press. In the novel, teenage NaTasha spends time working at a teen crisis experience in the Bronx, which couldn’t be more different from her sheltered life in New Jersey and which forces her to rethink her life, her friends, and her own issues related to her race. Here, Wilkins (center) poses with attendees at the event.