Big Buy for Kids' Fantasy
by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 4/14/2003
The big buy at the recent Bologna Book Fair was the purchase—reportedly for half a million dollars—of a new children's fantasy series from Britain, made by Liza Baker of Hyperion Books for Children. It was of North American rights to the comic trilogy The Illmore Chronicles by first-time author David Lee Stone. Baker read the manuscript overnight at the fair, rounded up support from colleagues, including Disney's Lisa Holton, and made her preemptive offer the next day to Sophie Hicks at London's Ed Victor agency. Hyperion will probably publish the first volume next spring; Hodder will publish in the U.K. this summer.
