Upcoming Books Thread (one only right now)

[Dante]

We have a release date and synopsis for The Dark (Snicket's upcoming picture book with Jon Klassen), courtesy of Amazon.com:
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Laszlo is afraid of the dark.
The dark lives in the same house as Laszlo. Mostly, though, the dark stays in the basement and doesn't come into Lazslo's room. But one night, it does.
This is the story of how Laszlo stops being afraid of the dark.
With emotional insight and poetic economy, two award-winning talents team up to conquer a universal childhood fear.
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Lemony Snicket has been accused of leaving his readers in the dark. He is the author of Who Could That Be at This Hour?, the first book in a new series, All the Wrong Questions; the thirteen volumes in A Series of Unfortunate Events; 13 Words; and several other alarming books. He was last seen in a dimly lit area. You can visit him at www.LemonySnicketLibrary.com.
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Jon Klassen was born in Winnipeg, where the dark arrives early for much of the year. He is the multi-award-winning creator of several bestselling picture books, including I Want My Hat Back and This Is Not My Hat. He grew up in Niagara Falls and now lives in Los Angeles. Visit Jon online at www.burstofbeaden.com.
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It's listed as forty pages long, published by Little, Brown & Co., and dated for April 2nd, 2013.

[B.]

Well, interesting to read that they're promoting All the Wrong Questions and the website. Isn't 40 pages somewhat long for a picture book?

[Hermes]

I don't think so. There doesn't have to be much text on each page. (Can anyone tell us how many pages 13 Words has?)

[Dante]

A little less than that (assuming "pages" in fact includes both sides of a page).

[Christmas Chief]

It's set to be published about halfway between the First and Second Questions, so that's nice. I also enjoyed the synopsis, which I thought for a picture book was almost comically sophisticated: "With emotional insight and poetic economy ..."

[Dante]

I think that bit of the synopsis may not be aimed at the same audience as the rest. That's the bit telling adults why you should buy this book for your children.

[Dante]

Also, on September 3rd, it appears that Egmont is once again rereleasing the entirety of ASoUE in paperback... this time with their original covers rather than their paperback styles.

2010:


2001/2012:


...What the heck was the point of the 2010 paperback redesign, then? Did the original covers carry just that great a cultural currency that even a barely-modified version was frowned upon by buyers?

[MisterM]

I'm gald they're using the hardback covers, as i prefer them, but i have to agree, it seems a bit piontless.

[Christmas Chief]

I'm not sure the hardback covers work so well in a paperback medium - do they just copy the colors of the spine where the spine would be? Perhaps it's an attempt to make the 2010 version more "exclusive" for when they release it again in the next five to ten years.

[B.]

I've seen large print editions that are paperback in local libraries, and they look just like the British hardbacks, except in paperback format.

[Christmas Chief]

Yes, I've seen those. In fact I believe I have pictures (it was a big library, and I had a camera). So the new paperbacks will look something like this, only with regular-size font on the interior?

[B.]

Yes- those were the ones! Although the illustrations are mangled rather horribly in some places.

[Dante]

Incidentally, I had a chance in the bookstore today to check out Egmont's most recent paperback editions of ASoUE. They did a series with redesigned covers a few years ago, but this year's run replicate the look of the original editions of the series, just on paperback instead of paper-over-board. (The BBooks Factfiles should give you an idea of what I mean.) On the inside front cover they had pictures of the covers of all the books, and on the inside back they had an advertisement for WCTBATH. They'd tweaked TGG's back cover and title page a bit - previously it had a kind of whirlpool motif in the place of these little art circles that all the Egmont editions had and which the HarperCollins eidtions didn't, but for the new TGG they'd ditched the whirlpool and cut a picture of Sunny from the cover instead. Also, on all the Ex Librises I looked at, they'd just pasted the TBB Ex Libris rather than the versions with the Baudelaires or Olaf in disguise. Also also, the quality of the illustrations was apparently as good as the originals, except for the illustrations that they missed from the original edition of The End, which were rather black and grainy.

[B.]

Did the illustrations from The End include the ones missing from the very back in the original Egmont hardback?

[Dante]

Like I said, those were in, and those were the very ones which were dark and grainy. The rest were fine.