Multiple deals for Berbay
Berbay Publishing has announced multiple rights deals over the past few months. The children’s publisher has sold North American and UK rights to Colours and two further board books by Tokyo-based illustrator Chihiro Takeuchi to Candlewick Press; sold simplified Chinese rights to John Canty’s picture-book series ‘Heads and Tails’ (Heads and Tails, Heads and Tails Insects and Heads and Tails Underwater) to Dook; and simplified Chinese rights to Tohby Riddle’s picture book Nobody Owns the Moon to Love Reading Books.
Berbay has also acquired world rights to a three-book middle-grade fiction series by bestselling children’s author Louise Park. Grace’s Castle, the first book in the series, is a time-slip adventure involving a girl who journeys back in time to meet some of the great children’s book authors of the past 150 years.
Allen & Unwin has acquired ANZ rights to two new YA-adult crossover fantasy novels by Garth Nix, with US and UK rights also selling in a two-book deal. Angel Mage, set in an alternative 17th-century Europe, follows an ageless young woman with angelic powers who is bent on reuniting with her lover; and The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, set in 1983 London, sees a young art student drawn into the arcane business of the booksellers whose secret agenda is to ensure that mythic entities and dormant legends do not intrude into the modern world.
Ambelin and Ezekiel Kwaymullina’s award-winning YA novel Catching Teller Crow (Allen & Unwin) has been sold to Penguin Children’s Books in the UK and Knopf in the US, respectively. Catching Teller Crow, which will be published in the US as The Things She’s Seen, follows a young Indigenous woman who dies in a car accident but communicates with her detective father to help solve a murder in a small town.
Alex Adsett Literary Agency has sold rights in multiple territories to graphic designer Robert Hendersen’s forthcoming picture book I See, I See, which encourages readers to turn the book to reveal new ways of seeing the pictures. Alex Adsett sold world rights (excluding North American) to Allen & Unwin and sub-agent Allison Hellegers sold North American rights to Chronicle.
Yellow Brick Books has sold Chinese and Korean rights to the picture book Oliver’s Grumbles (Yvonne Mes, illus by Giuseppe Poli) to Beijing Xiron Books and Froebel Media, respectively. It is the emerging children’s publisher’s first overseas rights deal.
North American rights to Jacqueline Harvey’s middle-grade spy-adventure series ‘Kensy and Max’ (Penguin Random House Australia) have been sold to Kane Miller Publishers; and UK and Commonwealth (ex ANZ) rights to Jaclyn Moriarty’s middle-grade fantasy novel The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone (Allen & Unwin) have been sold to the new Oxford-based children’s publisher Guppy Books.
Book-to-screen
A six-part teen drama series based on Isobelle Carmody’s YA novel The Gathering (Puffin) has received funding from Screen Australia. The novel follows a group of disillusioned teens who have been chosen to battle a centuries-old evil in their small town.
For the latest Australian rights sales and acquisitions news, click here.
Category: Think Junior rights sales
