By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY
James Patterson, who has broken most bookselling records, is about to try something his publisher believes has never been done before: release two new books on the same day.
Deborah Feingold
Patterson: One for adults, one for kids.
Deborah Feingold
Patterson: One for adults, one for kids.
Patterson's murder thriller, Now You See Her, written with Michael Ledwidge, goes on sale Monday encased in a narrow wrapper that urges: "While you're here, don't forget the kids."
It shows the cover of Patterson's other Monday release: Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life, written with Chris Tebbetts and illustrated by Laura Park, aimed at readers 8-12.
Patterson, who has had 19 titles hit No. 1 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list in the past decade, says he can't remember who suggested the dual release.
"But it's a good way to remind parents that it's part of their job to find books their kids will enjoy," he says. "Books that they'll finish and say, 'Give me another one.' Reading is a kind of muscle you need to use."
Patterson says his son Jack, 13, who has turned into a voracious reader after a slow start, inspired him to write for kids, including sci-fi series Maximum Ride and Daniel X, and to create a website, ReadKiddoRead.com, which Publishers Weekly praised as "clearly not a cynical ploy to sell more of his own books."
Middle School is designed as if it's written and drawn by an artistic/mischievous student out to break every school rule.
Patterson says there's a "connection" to Jeff Kinney's best-selling series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, but his inspiration was Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret, an award-winning 532-page kids' mystery set in Paris, told with 300 pages of drawings, photos and old movie stills. (The Martin Scorsese film releases Nov. 23.)
"That took the ceiling off for how the visual stuff can enhance the text," he says. "That got me going."
Not that there are signs that Patterson, 64, is slowing down.
He has five more novels out this year, three for adults and two for teens, but may end his Maximum Ride series.
More kids' books are coming, he says, including a Middle School sequel and a new series with a girl detective, written with Maxine Paetro.
His growing list of collaborators raises questions about his role. Last month at a sold-out reading in New York's Lincoln Center with Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson and the Olympians), a young girl asked Patterson why he didn't write more books by himself.
He said he has too many ideas to keep up with if he worked alone, adding, "There is nothing that I put my name on that I don't put through several drafts."
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