Announcing Tu Books First Titles!

Current Theme Song (aka what's playing on my ipod right now): Lux Aeterna by Clint Mansell [Requiem for a Dream soundtrack].



Today is the exciting news I mentioned last week. As you know, I'm a fantasy geek (among just about every other genre out there). But too often, I see the same familiar story against the same familiar backdrop. Now, I'm not saying all fantasies are of the medieval Europe breed with dragons and knights and quests and famous lost sons growing up as farm boys. It is much more diverse than that, as was so well proven by the YA Fantasy Showdown (woot!). But what if the story took place in a pseudo Africa setting and the main character rode a giraffe instead of a horse? Now that just sounds cool. And that is the goal of Tu Books, to bring diverse, multicultural stories to us in the form of Young Adult science fiction and fantasy. I have been watching them eagerly from the beginning and watched as it grew from a fledgling idea into a full-on imprint. And now, they have announced their first two titles!

Stacy Whitman at Lee & Low Books has acquired the first novels for the Tu Books imprint, which launches in fall 2011. The imprint will focus on multicultural MG/YA science fiction and fantasy. For the launch list, Whitman has acquired World rights to a YA paranormal thriller tentatively titled Wolf Mark by Joseph Bruchac, author of Codetalker and Skeleton Man. When Lucas King’s black-ops father is kidnapped and his best friend, Meena, put in danger, Lucas’s only chance to save them is hidden away in an abandoned, monster-guarded mansion. The deal was done by Barbara Kouts of the Barbara S. Kouts Agency.

Whitman has also bought world rights to Galaxy Games by Greg Fishbone, a MG science fiction trilogy about an incoming asteroid that turns out to be an alien spaceship, visiting Earth to recruit a team of kid athletes to compete in the upcoming Galaxy Games Tournament. The first book, tentatively titled Preliminaries, will be published as part of the Tu Books launch list in fall 2011. The three-book deal was completed by Garrett Hicks of Will Entertainment.

There are great stories out there, and I can't wait to see more of them.