Big children's books were everywhere at the BEA this year. We walked the floor to find out which titles might be the hottest come fall.

Adult Authors Turning to YA

As the teen market has heated up, more and more bestselling authors from the adult side are getting in on the action (some successfully, like Carl Hiaasen, some less so: Michael Chabon). This fall will have at least two prominent efforts.

High Fidelity author Nick Hornby lends his voice to 16-year-old Sam, a skater and a Tony Hawk fan, who grows up quickly when his girlfriend gets pregnant. Putnam is printing 300,000 copies of Slam, due out in October.

Bestselling Native American author Sherman Alexie says he's been asked for years to write for teens, and he drew on his own adolescence for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Little, Brown, Nov., 100,000 copies).

Many Happy Returns

The year's most anticipated sequel arrives (in case you haven't heard) on July 21. But Stephenie Meyer fans are perhaps just as eagerly looking forward to Eclipse, due out on August 7. Little, Brown has a million copies in print for her first two vampire novels, Twilight and New Moon, and is printing 700,000 copies of Eclipse.

Readers have had to wait seven years to find out whatever happened to Stargirl, star of Jerry Spinelli's 2000 novel; Love, Stargirl should answer those questions (Knopf, 250,000 copies, Aug).

And Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson's Peter and the Secret of Rundoon (Disney Editions, 250,000 copies, Nov.) arrives on the heels of an announcement that Disney Theatrical Productions is developing the first book in the series, Peter and the Starcatchers, for the stage.

Picture Book Sequels

Picture book sales have been flat for years, but booksellers report the category is bouncing back, especially for followups to previous hits. Mo Willems reprises his Caldecott Honor-winning tale of a girl and her beloved stuffed bunny in Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity (Hyperion, Sept., 250,000 copies).

Ian Falconer's irrepressible heroine lends a hand at the holidays with Olivia Helps with Christmas (Atheneum, Oct. 2 laydown, 500,000 copies).

And indie bookseller fave Skippyjon Jones returns this fall for the fourth book in the series by Judy Schachner, Skippyjon Jones and the Big Bones (Dutton, Oct., 60,000 copies).

High-Profile Celebrity Projects

Yes, Freckleface Strawberry may be another celebrity picture book, but as bookseller Peter Glassman told actress Julianne Moore at BEA, “I'd like this even if it didn't have your name on it!” That's music to Bloomsbury's ears, which is printing 100,000 copies.

Is Jenna Bush going to be the one Bush family member who leaves Washington more popular than on arrival? HarperCollins certainly thinks so: it's printing 500,000 copies of Bush's Ana's Story, a nonfiction account of a Panamanian teenager living with AIDS (Oct. 2 laydown).

Pop-Ups with Power

Pop-ups are huge these days, and one of the biggest this season—with built-in crossover appeal—is Orchard's Star Wars: A Pop-up Guide to the Galaxy? “I thought it looked fabulous,” said Ellen Davis of Dragonwings in Waupaca, Wis. It's due out in October, with 350,000 copies, from pop-up wizard Matthew Reinhart.

Robert Sabuda, the other half of the bestselling Reinhart/Sabuda team, has his own pop-up for fall, for fans of the $737 million (worldwide) grossing movie: The Chronicles of Narnia Pop-up (HarperCollins, 500,000 copies, Nov.).

Till Death Do Us Part

YA author Chris Crutcher's Deadline (Sept., 50,000 copies) features an irresistible tagline: “What if you only had one year... to live and you knew it?”

David Fickling, who edited The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, has crashed a debut novel onto the fall schedule for his Random House imprint, Before I Die by Jenny Downham, about a teenage girl with incurable cancer. It pubs in September, with a 100,000-copy first printing.