S&S to Launch New DiTerlizzi Series

Spiderwick Chronicles author launches new middle-grade project

By John Sellers — Publishers Weekly, 3/4/2010 4:52:00 PM

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers has just announced a new middle-grade series by Tony DiTerlizzi. The Search for WondLa, about a 12-year-old girl—raised underground by a robot—and her search for other humans. The first volume in the series will be published on September 21 with a 300,000-copy first printing. The book will feature two-color artwork throughout and will incorporate “augmented reality” in several places, a first for the publisher. S&S plans to promote the book with a $350,000 marketing campaign.

DiTerlizzi has published several books with S&S, including the Spiderwick Chronicles (with Holly Black), Kenny & the Dragon, and the Adventure of Meno series (with his wife, Angela). “I’m thrilled to mark a decade of making books with Simon & Schuster with the launch of my newest novel,” said DiTerlizzi in a statement. “When I first conceived of The Spiderwick Chronicles, I imagined a story from the past coming forward to the present. In The Search for WondLa I am bringing a story back in time from the future. My vision is to create a 21st century fairy tale.”

Doing a school report titled “Your Favoritist Book Creator of All Time”?

When is your college term paper on “The Most Stupendous Writer-Artist-Guy of the 21st Century?” due?

Perhaps you want to break into the industry of making books for kids…or perhaps you just need to know more about me than my own parents.

Whatever you fancy, there is lots of questions answered in my FAQ section of the site. And they’ve been updated from some of the insightful questions I was asked from various interviews last year. Read on…

Happy Friday everyone!

Angela received a kind note and link from Ranae Atchison, who sculpted some familiar brownies and boggarts out of polymer clay. Check it out:

You can see more pics of these little lovelies, as well as Ranae’s other fabulous work, on her blog. Have a great weekend!

Twelve year-old Emily has sent us some lovely examples of her drawings done in the same mediums which I use. We have a dwarf done in pencils…

…and an ink drawing of a nixie…

…not to mention a mermaid drawing which has been inked and painted in watercolors. WOW!

Nice work, Emily, especially on the sunken ship – why didn’t I think of that? Thanks for sending these along and participating on my blog. Have a great weekend and keep drawing!

Phew!

Much apologies, dear readers, for not being as active as I’d like to be on here. The last few months have been a blur of steady work.

After the “Spiderwick Farewell Tour” in September, I began rewriting the 2nd draft of my novel – which is due to release this September(!) The writing continued on right through the holidays and I had to really buckle down to keep it on track. That said, I am SO EXCITED to share this story with all of you.

The Search for WondLa is about a girl raised by a robot on an alien planet looking for home. For me, it is an exercise in world-building that reflects the work I did early in my career for role-playing games, like Planescape. It will be about 300 pages and will have illustrations throughout. I can’t say much more at this time, as I want to do a proper reveal once the time is right. I can say that it is the first book in a trilogy of novels that will also include an “Art of” book.

I will be promoting it this fall with a national tour. For that, I am working on a detailed presentation of my creative process. I’m thinking of a slide-show where I’d show my work, and the thinking that went into it, throughout the years. In fact, 2010 marks my 10-year anniversary in children’s publishing with the release of my debut picture book, Jimmy Zangwow’s Out-of-this-World Moon Pie Adventure.

10 years. Wow, that went quick.

What do you think of the presentation idea? Is that something you’d like to see?

Happy Holidays Dear Readers of My Blog!

I hope 2009 was a fine year for you, despite its economical ups-and-downs and scary amounts of unemployment. During times like this, I am reminded that support from my fans and friends for my books affords my family a comfortable life allowing me to keep creating. So thank you.

Angela and I have been promoting our silly toddler book series, Adventure of Meno, with a whole slew of what I like to call “Crafty Mom Blogs”. I like these blogs greatly because:

A. My mom was (and still is) a crafty mom.

B. Ang and I both love doing a craft with our daughter, Sophia.

Ang found a wonderful local seamstress to create custom Meno cloud blankets which are being given away at various Crafty Mom Blogs. All you have to do is leave a comment on their post and you could win a blanket of your choice, PLUS a signed copy of Meno books 1 and 2! Below are some of the sites participating, more will be posted soon as these contests will run into January…

Booking Mama

Mom Fuse

Katydid and Kid

Ladybug Soup

She Scribes

Good luck Crafty Readers!

I had a great reminisce with my old Dragon magazine editor, Wolfgang Baur, at Kobold Quarterly. We talked about my start working for TSR’s Dungeons & Dragons, my role on creating the visuals for the Planescape role-playing game…and even a little advice for up-and-coming illustrators. You can listen to the entire podcast here.

…and, because I was feeling nostalgic, Wolf coerced me into doing a sketch of my take of the AD&D Monster Manual 2’s “Quickling”, which they are giving away to one lucky visitor at their site. I haven’t drawn D&D stuff in a loooong time (and I likely won’t be in the foreseeable future), so stop by and win a sketch from yours truly. Good luck!

Angela and I are taking a break in our hectic schedule this weekend to participate in a Florida charity event “The Little Auction That Could” in which all proceeds benefit the Hibiscus Children’s Center, a shelter for neglected and abused children. Located in Stuart, near my hometown of Jupiter, Ang and I both were delighted to be a part of this fund-raiser in which proceeds will go towards building a library for the kids.

And the fund-raiser is brilliant: The organizers reached out to celebrities and authors to inscribe their favorite book which will then be put up for auction. Yours truly signed and doodled in a copy of Winnie-the-Pooh, In the Night Kitchen, The Lorax and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

If that wasn’t enough, I threw in signed copies of The Spider & The Fly and Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide (along with a limited edition print that was given to friends and family last year).

Along with the auction, Ang and I will also be signing at a live auction event (where books signed by president Obama and J.K. Rowling will be offered) tomorrow night (Nov. 20) with Carl Hiaasen at the Lyric Theater in Stuart. Tickets are still available.

I hope to see you there!

Check it out! You can bid on my signed books on eBay!

I know its been a little quiet here on the blog front. That would be because I am locked down in my Florida office, knee-deep in writing the second draft of my next novel, The Search for WondLa, which will be out next fall (For those of you who attended an event during the “Spiderwick Farewell Tour”, you may have received a somewhat cryptic postcard promoting it).

I will certainly be posting a lot more about WondLa in the coming months, but I leak a little bit about it in a new interview with Julie Danielson at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. Please to enjoy!

PS – While I am at it, here are a few other interviews I did while promoting The Wyrm King and Adventure of Meno:

Word for Teens

Dorritos for Dinner

Cover to Cover Kids

North County Times

Today, October 6th, 2009, is a mile-marker my friends. I am hammering down a flag right now. Two flags, actually.

You see, it is the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next in the as-of-yet-published-ever-ongoing art book of DiTerlizzi. Today, in fine bookstores everywhere, is The Spiderwick Chronicles: The Completely Fantastical Edition which I mentioned on the site before. I don’t think I could be more proud of a Spiderwick book (okay, save for Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide) as it contains one heckuva lot of work from both Holly and I.

However, today I am also celebrating the launch of a new series and a new collaboration. A silly collaboration. A risky collaboration.

Risky, because it is a HUGE stylistic departure for me. The art here serves truly to simply be a component of the book as a whole. in the truest sense of a picture book, the art cannot fully tell the story without the accompanying text – which was created and written by my loverly wife, Angela, and yours truly.

I’ve put considerable thought into these seemingly simple books. Why do them? I’ve worked so hard to perfect my drawing skills, develop my writing style, and yet here it seems I’ve gone in another direction entirely.

When Ang and I met artist/genius Mark Ryden this summer at Comic con, I handed him a copy of Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide and a copy of Meno.

TD: “Here ya go Mark, these are for you.”

MR: “Thanks! Who did these?”

AD: “Tony did them. He did the art for both.”

MR: flipping through pages of Spiderwick, then Meno. “Wait. You did BOTH of these.”

AD: “He did.”

TD: “Yup. I’m a bit schizophrenic.”

…now that I think back on it, that’s not the term I should have used. What I should of said was, “Yup. I’m constantly exploring. Evolving. Changing. Both as an artist and as a storyteller.” But I was nervous and giddy – all the things one feels when you are meeting someone you have admired from afar.

Adventure of Meno was born of our love of making people laugh. Ang and I created these stories without a big fancy book deal. We created them simply because we thought they would be fun to do – and they were. In fact, we had had so much fun that we were simply going to self-publish them and give them away to friends and family. But the fine folks at Simon & Schuster thought we should unleash this silliness into the world. So here we are.

If you can get to a local bookstore today, this weekend, or in the coming months, give them a read (it will take a whopping 5 minutes). I hope, if anything, they create a little laughter with an adult and child. And I also hope they entertain. After all, isn’t that what sharing a book with kids all about?

PS – In the spirit of The Little Golden Books, Ang and I got S&S to charge as little as possible while still retaining good production quality. We arrived at $9.99 – much lower than the usual $15-16 of your average picture book.

PPS – Here’s a link to find Adventure of Meno at a local bookshop near you…

…here’s a link at Barnes & Noble…

…and here’s a link to Amazon. Please to enjoy!