PW Rocks My Inbox on a Sunday Afternoon…

A few interesting news links from Publishers Weekly arrived today via the SCBWI e-newsletter. Firstly, an interesting article profiles 3 new YA authors with recent debut novels, including Elizabeth Zindel, the daughter of Paul Zindel–she is following in his footsteps with her first novel, Girl of the Moment, and is already working on a second.

Also, some news about the ever-expanding graphic novel market, which is good news for aspiring graphic novelists (I’m not sure I’d quite put myself in that category–maybe I’d call myself a potential aspiring graphic novelist, depending on the project in question!). Anyway, Lerner’s Graphic Universe line of educational comics is expanding into the trade publishing market, publishing their educational titles as trade paperbacks and expanding into interesting-sounding areas such as “Twisted Journeys, 112-page, full-color comics works of fiction in historical settings that allow the reader to ‘control the action’ by picking among multiple outcomes for each story.” Graphic Universe’s Hercules and King Arthur were both Cybils graphic novel nominees.

Simon & Schuster is also adding graphic novels throughout its children’s imprints, with a book called Chiggers from Cybils nominee Hope Larson as one of the debut titles in the program. I’ll be very interested to see how the comics medium develops as it becomes more mainstream with publishers. I’m happy, but I also hope that something intangible isn’t lost in the process…I guess that’s sort of a remnant of the “art for art’s sake” philosophy that I’ve retained from my fine art training, and though I don’t really have an issue with the idea of “selling out,” I do worry about commercialization. Hopefully it’ll just be a positive thing, with an increase in attention and funding resulting in growth in the industry.