HC Buys Sanders’s Middle Grade Debut
Phoebe Yeh at HarperCollins Children’s Books acquired North American rights to a debut middle-grade series by Ted Sanders, whose 2012 story collection No Animals We Could Name (Graywolf) won the Bakeless fiction prize. Miriam Altshuler at Miriam Altshuler Literary brokered the four-book sale. The series, the agency said, mixes “science, magic, and metaphysics” and follows a boy who, along with his friends, gains super powers from a magical box. Book one, The Box and the Dragonfly, is scheduled for fall 2014; film rights are being handled by Matthew Snyder at CAA.

Telgemeier Re-Ups at Scholastic
Raina Telgemeier has signed a two-book deal with Scholastic’s Graphix imprint. In the sale, David Saylor and Cassandra Pelham bought world rights from Judy Hansen at Hansen Literary. The first book, Sisters, will be a companion to the author’s 2010 Eisner Award winner, Smile (also published by Graphix). Hansen said Sisters, which is set for 2014, will look at “the inner workings of [Telgemeier’s] family,” focusing on her relationship with her younger sister. The second book in the deal, which is currently untitled, will also be a graphic work.

Dutton Inks Double Debut
Denise Roy at Dutton took North American rights to two novels by M.D. Waters from Jennifer Weltz at Jean V. Naggar Literary. The books, which feature a single heroine, are called Archetype and Prototype; they are both scheduled for 2014, set to be released within six months of each other. The story follows Emma, a freedom fighter who lives in a future world where women are considered commodities. Archetype will be Waters’s debut.

Phillips Talks Fertility at Harlequin
Harlequin Nonfiction has acquired a new book about fertility by the program director of NYU’s Fertility Center, Dr. Jamie Grifo, writing with CNN's Kyra Phillips. Rebecca Hunt took world English rights, at auction, to The Whole Life Fertility Plan from agent Lynn Johnston at Lynn Johnston Literary. Both Grifo and Phillips are mainstays on the media circuit—he regularly appears on the Today Show and GMA, and she has a new show on CNN called Raising America. The book, Johnston said, will seek to empower women to “take charge of their fertility long before they are ready to conceive,” by being aware of new fertility techniques to making “lifestyle choices” about such things as diet and exercise.

S&S Ropes in Grissom
Kathleen Grissom, author of the 2010 bestseller The Kitchen House, has inked a two-book deal with Simon & Schuster. In the sale, Trish Todd bought U.S., Canadian, and open market rights from agent Rebecca Gradinger at Fletcher and Company. The Kitchen House was a sleeper hit for S&S—after an initial printing of 11,500 copies, sales now top half a million—and the first book in this deal will follow one of the characters from that novel. The second book will be about Crow Mary, a Native American woman mythologized after her involvement in the 1873 Cypress Hills Massacre.

Dahl Gets Mysterious for Minotaur
Julia Dahl, an associate producer for CBS’s 48 Hours, sold her first novel to Minotaur’s Kelley Ragland. Ragland pre-empted North American rights, in a two-book deal, from Stephanie Kip Rostan at Levine Greenberg. The currently untitled crime novel, scheduled for summer 2014, follows a young freelance reporter, abandoned as an infant by her Hasidic mother, looking into the murder of a Hasidic woman in Brooklyn.