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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
Stephen King Retells Hansel and Gretel
Stephen King has not only spun a retelling of gruesome Brothers Grimm fairytale in a picture book featuring illustrations by none other than the late, great Maurice Sendak; he’s also narrating the audio edition. A little background: Sendak created the illustrations as set and costume designs for his 1998 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel opera, and King reimagined the fairytale to loosely fit the designs. On taking a look at Sendak’s picture of the candy house, King said, “I thought, This is what the house really looks like, a devil sick with sin, and it only shows that face when the kids turn their backs.” Classic King! The picture book and audio edition of King’s Hansel and Gretel are out this September, and you can listen to an audio clip here.
A Very Cool Person Will Direct a Very Cool Book
If you haven’t watched Past Lives, you really should. The romantic drama stars Greta Lee who carries this singular, powerful restraint in her delivery, which you can also witness in a performance where she plays herself in my favorite episode of The Studio (also a must-watch), “The Oner.” So I leaped on the news that Lee is taking her unique perspective to the director’s chair for the adaptation of Monika Kim’s psychological horror novel, The Eyes are the Best Part. This book and its gory cover were everywhere last year. It was published in June of 2024 so the turnaround on production of this adaptation has been speedy! Lee is also writing the script, and I can’t wait to see what she does with this feminist serial killer story.
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Some Sad News
I want to take a moment to shine some light on one of the people who did the work of making publishing better behind the scenes. Children’s book publisher Katie Cunningham died from complications of ovarian cancer over the holiday weekend. I’m a big fan of Candlewick Press and all they’ve done to make children’s books more inclusive, and Cunningham, who went from assistant to SVP over the span of two decades with the publisher, was by all accounts deeply invested in that mission. She worked with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on his NAACP Image Award-winning children’s book What Color Is My World: The Lost History of African-American Inventors, Jessica Love on her Stonewall Book Award-winner Julián Is a Mermaid (one of my kids’ favorites), and Charles R. Smith Jr. on the Sports Royalty series among so many other books that help more children see themselves on the page. Learn more about her life, her work, and where you can send donations in her memory here.
Here’s The Next Oprah’s Book Club Pick
“I appreciated the prescience of this story,” Oprah said about the pick during her announcement. “It’s where we are right now in our appreciation and dilemmas surrounding artificial intelligence, centered on an American family we can relate to. I was riveted until the very last shocking sentence!”
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