CHRIS COLUMBUS – The Next J.K. ROWLING?
Helmer Chris Columbus appears to be taking a leaf out of J.K. Rowling‘s book, by penning his own children’s novel – according to EW.com!
The ‘Home Alone‘ moviemaker, who directed the first two Harry Potter big screen adaptations, will release a three-book series published by Harper-Collins.
The middle-grade books, titled House of Secrets, will be co-authored by writer Ned Vizzini. They are expected to hit bookshops and the Internet in 2013!
Columbus‘ books will be set in San Francisco, California and will chronicle the adventures of the Pagett kids who are forced to live in a creepy, rundown old house, built by a troubled fantasy writer, after their father loses his job.
He says:
“I started it as a screenplay, so there were about 50 pages of a screenplay that would become the first seven or eight chapters of the book… Then I put it away and I didn’t think about it, but it was always coming back to me at some point or another.
“Finally, I thought, ‘Maybe this would work as a young adult novel’, for no other reason except I really wanted to see it to its conclusion.
“The thing that Ned and I both wanted (was) to do anything we can do to get kids back into reading and make it really, really fun. I’m not presumptuous enough to say, ‘We’re going to take over the Potter series,’ but I got to see firsthand how that series affected kids and how it got so many hundreds of thousands of kids into reading. You hope for just a section of that in terms of being able to inspire kids to read.”
