Dial has three deals to report this week. Nancy Conescu and Andrew Harwell have bought world rights to a debut picture book, Sometimes I Forget You’re a Robot, by ExplodingDog.com artist Sam Brown. The book features an imaginative boy whose dreams of having a robot friend are realized, challenged, and ultimately surpassed. Publication is scheduled for spring 2013. Stephen Barr at Writers House did the two-book deal.
Kathy Dawson at Dial has acquired debut novelist Lindsay Ribar’s The Fourth Wish trilogy. The books feature a high school senior who falls for a boy two years her junior, who also happens to be a genie. Ribar’s day job is assistant to agent Matt Bialer at Sanford J. Greenburger Literary Agency. Brenda Bowen, also of Greenburger, negotiated the deal for world English rights.
And Nancy Conescu at Dial has acquired world English rights to an illustrated middle-grade novel by Elise Primavera, Ms. Rapscott’s Girls, about an eccentric headmistress who transforms the lives of five precocious daughters of very busy parents. The two-book deal was made by Steven Malk at Writers House for publication in summer 2013.
Schuyler Hooke at Random House Books for Young Readers has acquired world rights to the trilogy Out of the Ashes by Jeff Stone, author of the house’s Five Ancestors series, in a six-figure acquisition. The title character in the novel is a descendant of the orphan monks from Five Ancestors who teams up with a Chinese girl to solve a mystery; the first book in the series, Phoenix, is slated for fall 2012. Laura Rennert of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency was the agent.
