Welcome to Buzz Worthy News where the stories are awesome and not at all well-written. Need your YA industry news? Never fear, Kate Copeseeley is here to give it to you straight.

In this week’s Buzz Worthy News: Patrick Ness Writes YA Dr. Who Spin-off, Bridget Jones 3 Is Happening, Pharrell and Penguin Do #ReadHAPPY, and Dark Horse Comics faces allegations of Harrassment.

Buzz Worthy News is Cuddlebuggery’s weekly news post bringing you all the best information about the book and blogging world, particularly for the venn diagram of people who overlap between the two. For new releases and cover reveals of all the best Young Adult fiction, check out our Tuesday post: Hot New Titles.

Bridget Jones 3 Is Heading Your Way

And it looks like it’s coming next year, in September—if you’re intrigued or excited by that sort of thing.  I honestly don’t know how they’re going to do this story line, because as you’ll remember they killed off Darcy in that one.  And they’re swearing he’ll be in the movie?

But don’t just take my word for it.

In Bridget Jones’ Baby, which picks up more than 10 years after the second movie On the Edge of Reason, Renée Zellweger’s Bridget is back for another round of quirky adventures.

The movie is loosely based on the third Helen Fielding novel, Mad About the Boy, which has many Bridget/Mark shippers worried, as the book notoriously kills off Mark Darcy in the first chapter and sends the middle-aged Bridget on a quest to figure out dating in the digital age.

Colin Firth is reportedly back for this movie, however, which hopefully means that Bridget Jones’ Baby will take the story in a different direction — or at least resurrect the character, who book fans speculate is not really dead.

I dunno.  I really only liked the first book.  So…

Source

Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles Is Optioned by Lionsgate

Huge fans of the Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss (yeah, my brother is a huge fanboy) are going to thrilled by the news that Lionsgate has snapped up multiple rights to the series.

The deal sets up the simultaneous development of movies, television series and video games with the goal to adapt the many stories across the mediums at the same time.

It also caps off interest and dealmaking that has gone on since mid-July, when Rothfuss met with studios such as Warner Bros., MGM and Lionsgate, among others, at Comic-Con.

Robert Lawrence, whose credits include 1990s classic Clueless as well as the Mark Wahlberg vehicle Rock Star and the drama The Last Castle, will produce. Lawrence was an early chaser of theKingkiller series and stayed on the series even when it was temporarily set up at Fox Television.

So yeah, look forward to seeing a hot ginger on your screen in the future, in some capacity or other.

Source

Patrick Ness Will Write Some Dr. Who Type Stuffs

I’m not a Whovian (or whatever.  What is the fan phrase for that one?), but I’m sure the news is staggeringly wonderful for either Ness fans or Dr. Who fans.

https://twitter.com/Patrick_Ness/status/649705063959666688

This isn’t the first time Patrick Ness has written Doctor Who-inspired stories. In 2013, he wrote a short story for the 50th anniversary celebrations of the show (part of a book called 11 Doctors, 11 Stories (later upgraded to 12 Doctors, 12 Stories when Peter Capaldi’s incarnation of The Doctor hit our screens). Patrick’s story is called Tip Of The Tongue and focusses on the fifth Doctor Who, Peter Davison. You can read an extract of Tip of The Tongue here.

And now let’s hear from Steven Moffat, Doctor Who show runner and executive producer: “No one has documented the dark and exhilarating world of the teenager like Patrick Ness, and now we’re bringing his brilliant story-telling into Doctor Who. This is growing up in modern Britain – but with monsters!”

The show will be called Class, and will hit the BBC in 2016, so I guess Ness better get writing!

Source

Pharrell And Penguin Are Up To Something Good

Pharrell Williams’ song Happy! will become a picture book as of this month and the proceeds will go to benefit children in need thanks to Williams, Penguin, and literacy organization First Book.

On October 6 – the book’s release date – Williams, Penguin Young Readers president Don Weisberg, and president and CEO of First Book Kyle Zimmer will kick off the #ReadHappy campaign during an event at the Brooklyn Public Library that is set to include a reading and book signing by the author.

The nationwide social media effort is designed to encourage people to share—in images or words—how reading makes them happy. Beginning October 6, each post on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or Instagram using the #ReadHAPPY hashtag will trigger a donation from Penguin Young Readers to First Book (up to 50,000 books, a mix comprised of Happy! and other titles). According to Shanta Newlin, executive director of publicity for Penguin Young Readers, “Pharrell and his team challenged us to come up with a marketing campaign unlike any we’ve done before.” From the inception of the project, she notes, “Pharrell has been focused on sharing the joy of reading with young people, and we felt it would be a natural fit to create a #ReadHAPPY campaign in support of First Book, an organization that has children’s literacy at the heart of their mission.”

This sounds amazing and I hope it’s HUGE.

Source

Daniel Handler Donates Some $ To Planned Parenthood

In an effort to gain some street cred after his thoughtless comments about awesome author Jacqueline Woodson during her award ceremony last year, Handler and his wife, Lisa Brown have donated a million bucks to Planned Parenthood.  And you have to admit, in the way of apologies, this is like that giant rock that weighs down your finger.  And it could not have gone to a more worthy lady than Planned Parenthood.

Handler Had this to say on the Twitter:

.@lisabrowndraws & I are giving 1 million dollars to @PPFA. We’ve been very fortunate, and good fortune should be shared with noble causes.

— Daniel Handler (@DanielHandler) September 28, 2015

Author Daniel Handler (more widely known as The Series of Unfortunate Events’ Lemony Snicket) and illustrator/artist Lisa Brown, a married couple, have generously pledged to donate a whopping $1 million to Planned Parenthood, just as it’s being threatened with a loss of funding from the federal government.

Brown told Buzzfeed:

“My husband and I have supported Planned Parenthood for years, for obvious reasons: it’s a great organization that has provided top quality health care for countless women and families in our lives. This year, Planned Parenthood has gone through a series of unfortunate events, and it felt right to make our support more public and more dramatic.”

Sources HERE and HERE

Banned Book Gets New Life With US Publisher

In September, we reported on a book that got banned in New Zealand for reasons and stuff.  Well, the book has now been purchased by Polis books.

Ted Dawe’s Into the River, which earlier this month became the first book in more than two decades to be banned in New Zealand, has been acquired by Jason Pinter at Polis Books.

The award-winning coming-of-age novel, published by Random House New Zealand in 2013, recently became a target of the conservative group Family First. According to CNN, a representative from Family First said the book’s “strong offensive language” and “strong sexual descriptions” drove the organization’s complaint. The group said it also took issue with the fact that book “covers serious things like pedophilia and sexual abuse.”

Targeted at boys 15 and older, the novel follows a Maori boy whose life is upended after he wins a scholarship to an elite prep school in Auckland. Te Arepa Santos’s struggles to fit in, as he deals with issues of assimilation, are at the heart of the novel. This process, Pinter explained, forces the character to “turn his back on the culture and history that helped shape him and his ancestors.”

Polis plans to publish in hardcover and eBook in June 2016.

Source

Dark Horse Comics Faces Allegations Of Harassment

(Trigger Warning for Assault, physical and sexual)

News has been flying all over the internets about Dark Horse comics over the past week, and their former editor in chief, Scott Allie, who allegedly assaulted a comics creator as recently as July of this year during SDCC.

Allie’s behavior there is not a one-time thing. Certainly there are people who make mistakes while drunk and do not deserve to be penalized for a momentary—and singular—lapse in judgment. Allie, however, has allegedly made such a habit of this behavior that there have been jokes about it internally at Dark Horse for years, although no whisper of it traveled much further than that. He was particularly known for two things: out of control behavior while drunk and biting.

That’s why I’m so very impressed by the bravery of comics writer Joe Harris, who has chosen to speak out about what he experienced at the hands of Scott Allie.

During the BOOM! Studios SDCC party at the Hilton on Thursday, July 9th, Allie became extremely intoxicated. A few anonymous sources reported that he licked at least one person and wept openly at someone. The worst of it came when he was face to face with Harris. Harris said:

After the convention let out on Thursday night, July 9^th, I went to dinner in town before returning to the Hilton Bayfront hotel where I was staying for the show. There had been a party in the hotel bar that was pretty well attended by a lot of comics professionals, company folks and other people. Upon walking in, I noticed Scott Allie at the bar and thought to go say hi. I walked up to him and I extended my hand expecting to shake his… when, instead, he reached down and grabbed my crotch. Just went for it and squeezed. I was stunned, I guess? Not what I was expecting, obviously. Not what’s ever happened to me at this or any other convention over many years. So I try to back away a little, still shocked, when he leans in and bites my right ear. Just really floored by what was going on—I’ve never had any interaction with him like this before whatsoever—I froze there for a second, when he says to me, drunkenly, “You’re doing a great job on your books…” before stumbling away.

Um, oh my gosh. There is a LOT more at the source article that I’m not going to quote here.  But here is Dark Horse’s statement:

Dark Horse is committed to ensuring and maintaining a positive, safe, and respectful environment for its employees, creators, and fans and we expect all who represent our company to behave in a professional manner.  Disciplinary actions are handled internally at the company and we do not comment on them publicly.

Sources HERE and HERE

Interesting Links:

Julie Schumacher Becomes First Woman To Win Thurber Prize

Eric Carle Museum Gains $2M in Donations

BookBar to open BookBed (I need to stay here!!!)