Children’s book news from the Publishers Weekly magazine.

Scholastic Acquires Environmental Series
Scholastic today announced that it has licensed world English rights to publish and distribute Eaglemont Press’s Adventures of Riley series by Amanda Lumry and Laura Hurwitz. Eaglemont, a small publisher located in Bellevue, Wash., was founded in 1997 to produce books focusing on conservation and the preservation of wildlife, habitats and cultures.

The books, illustrated with photos by Lumry and illustrations by Sarah McIntyre, are aimed at readers ages six to nine, and introduce environmental issues by combining fictional storylines with facts about animals and nature. Beginning in June, Scholastic will release new editions of the nine existing books in the series, which was launched in 2003, as well as three new titles. The books will appear first as jacketed hardcovers, with paperbacks to follow, and will be distributed through Scholastic’s trade, book club and school book fair markets.
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Medusa Jones Ross Collins. Scholastic/Levine, $16.99 (144p) ISBN 978-0-439-90100-0

In the same family as this season’s Pandora Gets Jealous but for a younger audience, this witty romp through Greek mythology pictures Medusa in childhood, persecuted by the popular crowd—Theseus, Perseus and “gorgeous but pessimistic” Cassandra. The self-styled Champions torment “freaks” like Medusa, who has snakes instead of hair, and her friends Chiron the centaur and the bullish Minotaur, whose dad got carried away adding on to the house, which is now so complicated that Mino can go for days without finding his parents. Medusa has the family ability to turn her enemies into stone, but her sensible parents won’t let her: “You have to work out other ways of dealing with people who get on your nerves,” they counsel in characteristically contemporary language. In his first novel, Collins (Alvie Eats Soup) extends the joke with plenty of brio. Medusa doesn’t like to read, because “her headsnakes had a habit of turning the pages back when one of them had missed an important plot point”; Medea appears as a nasty teacher; and the three-headed dog, Cerberus, plays a vital role as Medusa’s pet—but readers don’t need to know the myths to enjoy the rousing plot. Imaginatively laid out pages that incorporate energetic b&w illustrations of varying size welcome readers. Ages 9-12. (Jan.)
Reviews from the January 28 issue of Publishers Weekly.