Big Money for Kids' Mouse Book

A self-published children's novel that has been racking up strong sales at independent bookstores across the country since publication last summer (Bookselling, July 9) made it to the very big time when Putnam and Puffin won a heated auction August 9 with a reported $1.8-million bid for Michael Hoeye's Time Stops for No Mouse and two other titles, hardcover and paperback. The underbidders were Random, Simon & Schuster and Harcourt. The deal was made by Nancy Paulsen, head of the Putnam Books for Young Readers group, with agents Marilyn Marlow and Elizabeth Harding at Curtis Brown. Hoeye is a teacher, photographer and copywriter in Oregon, who plugged his book, published by his own Terfle Books, untiringly at schools, libraries, bookstores and even the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association regional last fall (Time Stops for No Mouse was also a three-time Book Sense 76 pick). A second book about Hoeye's hero, mouse Hermux Tantamoq, called The Sands of Time, has already shipped under the Terfle imprint, and Putnam will bring out Time Stops in hardcover next spring and Sands next fall, in addition to a third untitled tale still to come. According to Penguin Putnam's Douglas Whiteman, "We are committed to making this series a huge success for Penguin worldwide."