A dignified elephant, dressed in a green suit and wearing a yellow crown, walks upright across the page. This image-both absurd and endearing-has become instantly recognizable to several generations of readers throughout the world. The exhibition Drawing Babar returns visitors to the two essential moments of Babar's creation: when Jean de Brunhoff and, years later, his son Laurent, set down their initial thoughts on paper. Their earliest drafts, shown in juxtaposition with their finished watercolors, allow viewers to track the changes, both subtle and substantive, that both men made as they refined their work, bringing together word and image with elegance and exuberance.

In 2004 the Morgan acquired the working drafts and printer-ready watercolors for Histoire de Babar, le petit elephant (1931), the first book by Jean de Brunhoff (1899-1937), and Babar et ce coquin d'Arthur (1946), the first book by Laurent de Brunhoff (b. 1925). Together these two collections-shown virtually in their entirety for the first time-provide an extraordinary record of the working methods of the two men, both painters turned storytellers. From the naming of Babar himself (first called simply "Baby Elephant") to the introduction of the beloved character Queen Celeste-not present in Jean de Brunhoff's first draft-these early sketches and watercolors provide an intimate look at the creation of an enduring fictional world.

You can see the transitions in the video above. I'm especially fond of the sheet of tracing paper that turn O and P into Q and R; of the tension-bridge U, the mirror page that turns a V into a W, and the hypnotic S.

Never heard of her? Well that's probably because you are not 13 and female. But you soon will. Although five million of her sales have been in the US, momentum is growing in Europe and with the release of a film of Twilight, the first book, scheduled for early next year, the books are expected to take off here. British bookshops are planning midnight openings on the day that the fourth book in the series is published in August.

*****

She says that some people are surprised that a Mormon is writing vampire novels, but they generally haven't read her. "When you think about vampire novels, there is a lot of gruesomeness, a lot of sexuality, a lot of darkness, blood obsession. When you read my books it is completely different. Really, the whole vampirism thing is a metaphor for feeling trapped in a certain role. I never got into any trouble from the Latter Day Saints people. My strongest fan base is probably in Utah." How Meyer came to write about vampires, however, is a mystery to her, given that she was very far from steeped in the vampire tradition. She is too "chicken" to read horror and doesn't watch R-rated films because “there are things that you don't need to have in your head. There are R-rated movies that I would like to go and see - I heard The 40-Year-Old Virgin was hysterical. But when you have an unbroken streak, you don't want to mess that up."

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but a magic wand is more powerful than either, or at least according to this year's Forbes' list of the world's richest celebrities. Harry Potter author JK Rowling earned more than any other celebrity, according to the annual Celebrity 100 list, taking home $300m (150 million pounds) last year. There were other strong British performances from Keira Knightley, announced as the world's second best paid female actor, Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe and David Beckham.

• Cover Art: New Socks by Bob Shea
• Illustration: Bow Wow Bugs a Bug by Mark Newgarden and Megan Montague Cash
• Story: Five Little Gefiltes by Dave Horowitz
• Best Weird-Ass Picture Book: Cowboy and Octopus by Jon Scieszka, illustrated by Lane Smith

Stefan Bucher's new book 100 Daily Monsters is the end-product of a 100-day-long experiment in which Bucher posted a daily video of himself squirting a random blob of ink onto paper and then coloring in and around it to make it into a hairy, scary (and animated) monster. The videos are utterly charming and not a little hypnotic, and Bucher's blog has tons of monsters and their stories from fans all over the world.

The first of six books, all centred around a small, vivacious, ginger-haired girl called Ugenia Lavender, is published today by Macmillan. Halliwell is full of ambitions for her young doppelganger, who she describes as summing up "what being young is all about". "She's streetwise, sassy, has a sense of humour but most importantly has a sense of right and wrong," she said. "I believe Ugenia can conquer the world, and I really hope people will love her as much as I do."

*****

The first of six books, all centred around a small, vivacious, ginger-haired girl called Ugenia Lavender, is published today by Macmillan. Halliwell is full of ambitions for her young doppelganger, who she describes as summing up "what being young is all about". "She's streetwise, sassy, has a sense of humour but most importantly has a sense of right and wrong," she said. "I believe Ugenia can conquer the world, and I really hope people will love her as much as I do."

In a dig at fellow celebrity-turned-author Katie "Jordan" Price, whose My Perfect Ponies was recently nominated for a Nibby award, Halliwell has been keen to emphasise that the writing of the books was all her own work. "I know there is a prejudice against celebrity authors, but if you read my stories you'll know they're not ghostwritten - only that I could be bonkers," she confessed to the Hello! Magazine website.

Scholastic announced today that it will create a children's book line from the BBC program Planet Earth. The company holds U.S. and Canadian English and French rights for the Planet Earth children’s books program and will publish and distribute the titles through its trade, school book club and school book fair channels. The books will be printed on 30% post-consumer waste recycled paper.

*****

The program will launch in September with the full-color, 48-page Planet Earth Scrapbook and Planet Earth Reader. The program will continue with three January 2009 publications (a second reader, a board book and scrapbook), followed in April 2009 by a full-color 98-page Guide to the Planet timed to coincide with Earth Day. The program will include paperbacks, board books, phonics books, novelty books and scrapbooks. It will target preschoolers, middle-grade students and teens. High-quality 30% post-consumer waste recycled paper will be used for all titles.

With Cathy's Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233, a genre-bending mystery for young adults by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman that was published in 2006, the authors learned that product placement could be a touchy subject. After their publisher, Running Press, an imprint of Perseus Books Group, revealed that the authors had agreed to have characters wear specific makeup lines made by Cover Girl in exchange for promotional ads for the book on beinggirl.com, a Web site aimed at adolescent girls and run by Procter & Gamble, Cover Girl's parent, the book came in for criticism. Ralph Nader's advocacy group, Commercial Alert, urged book review editors to boycott it, and the novelist Jane Smiley wrote a disapproving op-ed article for The Los Angeles Times; The New York Times wrote a critical editorial as well.

Now the novel - which features a series of clues that are given out in voice mail messages, Web sites, letters and other documents included with or referred to in the book - is set to come out in paperback on Monday, and all the references to Cover Girl’s products have been removed. A drawing in the hardcover edition, for instance, shows Cathy wearing "Cover Girl lipgloss 'Demure,' " and "Waterproof Mascara -- 'Very Black'," but it appears in the paperback version without any makeup noted. And at the end of the hardcover edition, Cathy talks about wearing "a killer coat of Lipslicks in 'Daring'"; in the paperback she just says, "a killer coat of lipstick."

"We did a whole bunch of pretty innovative things with that book," Mr. Stewart said in a telephone interview. But, he said, the main topic of conversation, "instead of being about the other 18," was about the product placement.

Three years ago James Patterson, the creator of the blockbuster best-selling Alex Cross and "Women's Murder Club" series, began "Maximum Ride," a series for young adults about a group of genetically mutated kids who are part human, part bird. The idea, he said, was to get children to love reading - or at least to love reading his kind of books. Two of the books in Mr. Patterson's "Maximum Ride" series.

Of the three installments to date, there are about 4.8 million copies in print, according to the publisher, Little, Brown & Company. Despite the kind of numbers that would make most authors beam, Mr. Patterson - who has an estimated 150 million copies of his books in print worldwide, and whose adult novels typically outsell his young-adult titles by two or three to one -- wants to sell more. A lot more. Now, with a new volume, Maximum Ride: The Final Warning, going on sale next month, Mr. Patterson figures the best way to get young readers may be through their mothers.

"The reality is that women buy most books," he said in a telephone interview. "The reality is that it's easier, and a really good habit, to start to get parents when they walk into a bookstore to say, 'You know, I should buy a book for my kid as well.'"

As a result, Little, Brown has asked booksellers to commit to keeping the new Maximum Ride book - along with The Dangerous Days of Daniel X, the first title in a new young-adult series, due out in July -- at the front of their stores as long as Mr. Patterson's adult titles usually stay there, in the hope of luring more adult buyers.

Stepping into the front room of the flat Rowling said: "This is really the room where I finished Philosopher's Stone, here. This is really where I turned my life around completely. My life really changed in this flat." She explained: "I feel I really became myself here, in that everything was stripped away, I'd made such a mess of things. But that was freeing, so I just thought, Well, I want to write,' and I wrote the book and, What is the worst that can happen? It gets turned down by every publisher in Britain, big deal. It's really back to the wall time here'."

As she walked around her old home she was amazed to find copies of the Harry Potter books in what had been her bedroom, but is now occupied by new residents. "Oh look, Harry Potter books! Now that is really freaky," she said. Reflecting on her massive fame and fortune Rowling was visibly choked to be back at the place where her journey began, and said she couldn't quite believe how far her life had come in the past 10 years.

"For years now I've felt that if it all disappeared, and some days I do feel like is it real?', then this is where I'd come back to, this would be my baseline, I'd be back in Leith. "And if I'd known that 10 years on I'd come back with a film crew and there'd be my published books on someone else's bookcase in this room it's really incredible to me."

Rowling talked about how she wished she could have known her decision to write the Harry Potter books was going to have such a "fairytale resolution" during the toughest times at the beginning. "Because it's such a well-worn part of my story now, it's a big yawn to hear how I wrote it, as though it was all some kind of publicity stunt for a year, but it was my life and it was very hard and I didn't know that there was going to be this fairytale resolution, and coming back here is just full of ghosts."

"I thought it was hilarious," said Daniel Radcliffe, who has played the lead role in all five Harry Potter films. He said actor Michael Gambon, who has played Dumbledore since the third film, had been "really camping it up for the last three weeks ever since he found out"..... Radcliffe told BBC News: "JK Rowling is an incredibly intelligent woman. She can't have thought for a moment that that would go down well in the Bible Belt of America, but she put it brilliantly herself: 'He's my character - I can do what I want with him.' Which I think is fair enough."

*****

Filming on the sixth film in the franchise, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, began in September, with Yates again at the helm. But he said not to expect any changes to the way Dumbledore is portrayed on film. "Michael Gambon hasn't changed his approach. A person's sexuality is just one part of who they are, and so it hasn't really shifted where we're taking him." Producer David Barron confirmed that Dumbledore would remain "the character Michael Gambon has already established". But he added: "Michael's camped it up a bit off-camera, he's just been amused by it."

Emma Watson, who plays Harry's friend Hermione Granger, said: "It never really occurred to me before, but now JK Rowling's said that he's gay it sort of makes sense." She added: "I think what surprised everyone was the amount of media attention it's received. I think it's nice that the story has ended but there are still things that people don't know."

A few years ago, the author discovered her writing had taken a back burner. She was spending too much time editing scripts for movie deals that never seemed to go anywhere. "I finally just said, 'I can't stand it anymore! I want to go back in a little room -- because wherever I am, I work in a little room -- and write something that I know will happen.'" So she wrote. Double Fudge, her first book in four years and the last in the Fudge series, came out in 2002. Dream two -- get back into that little room.

"I never stop writing," she said, looking out at the boats blowing about in the pond on an uncharacteristically cool and windy August day. "If something comes, I just write it and put it away. It gives me a sense of security." One day a story came to her about losing a tooth. She raced to her laptop and started writing. As she did, she realized the characters were the same ones that had starred in her 1984 picture book, The Pain and the Great One. "My daughter was the Great One," she said. She had written the original story on a day long before the book was published, when the rain had trapped her two children, six and eight, inside. "She called him [her brother] The Pain," she said, speaking of her daughter who is now in her 40s, "and said, 'I am the Great One, the older sister.'"

What makes O'Shaughnessy's stories truly distinctive, however, is that the gruesome and the macabre are being served up to a playground audience. If you have children, there is a very strong possibility that, at some point, their noses will be jammed in one of Shan's brain-squishing, maggot-swarming narratives.

"When the books were first published, I expected a backlash," says O'Shaughnessy disarmingly. "I ran all the arguments for the defence through my head in case of hostile interviewers - ready to explain why the books aren't a disgrace, that they had a strong moral underpinning. But in fact, there wasn't any outrage. No one, save the occasional parent or teacher, was up in arms at all. In fact, teachers and librarians have very often championed my books."

But then O'Shaughnessy is aware that his young protaganists - the teenage "Grubbs" Grady and "Darren Shan" - are actually following in a grand literary tradition. As long as there has been gruesome sensationalist fiction, there have been young readers lapping it up.

For Jane Austen's generation, it was Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Matthew Lewis's The Monk. Austen satirised the trappings of Gothic romance in Northanger Abbey. In the age of the Victorian periodical, teenage boys loved lurid Gothic serials such as Varney the Vampyre and The String of Pearls.

"She never knew," Rowling said. "She would have loved this just in the sense any mother wants to know their child is successful. She would have been at every event I did. She would have had so much vicarious pleasure in seeing who I met and what I did. Not telling her, that's a massive regret."

Rowling had conceived the entire plot of Harry Potter while on a train trip in 1990. She began writing immediately, but didn't tell her mother, who died that December at the age of 45 after a 10-year battle with multiple sclerosis.

*****

"Mum dying had a profound influence on the books because I had been writing the Harry Potter series, and in the first draft his parents were disposed of really in quite the cavalier fashion," Rowling told Vieira. "Six months in, my mother died. I really think from that one moment on, death became a central, if not the central, theme of the seven books. How we react to death, how much we fear it. In many ways, all of my characters are defined by their attitude to death."

Even Daniel Radcliffe, the actor who plays Harry Potter, had to ask about his character's fate. "I took him out to dinner, and at one point during dinner, he leant in and he said, 'Look, I've just gotta ask you. Do I die?'" Rowling said.

"I whispered, so no one else could hear, 'You get a death scene,'" she said. "But Dan is very smart. And I'm pretty sure he would have walked away from dinner thinking, 'Yeah, I get a death scene, but what does that mean? She didn't say, 'Yes, you die,' so I hope he's happy."

The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter will open at the Universal Orlando Resort, in Florida, in 2009. Harry Potter author JK Rowling said: "The plans I've seen look incredibly exciting, and I don't think fans of the books or films will be disappointed." Touted as a "theme park within a theme park", it will feature attractions and rides based on Harry Potter locations.

Based inside Orlando's Islands of Adventure theme park, which already houses Marvel Super Heroes and Dr Seuss islands, the Harry Potter theme will be spread over 20-acres.

Oscar-winning production designer Stuart Craig, who has worked on the Harry Potter films, is leading the creative design for the park to ensure it remains faithful to JK Rowling's vision. "Our primary goal is to make sure this experience is an authentic extension of Harry Potter's world as it is portrayed in the books and films," he said Craig.

"Everywhere you go there is huge, ridiculous discounting by the chains," said Graham Marks, children's editor at the British-based trade magazine Publishing News. "They are literally not going to make one penny out of the book. It is stupid -- just throwing money away ... The world has gone mad." Online retailer Amazon.com and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have slashed nearly 50 percent off the book's $34.99 list price, forcing many independent booksellers to follow suit to stay competitive.

Barnes & Noble Inc. and Borders Group Inc., the world's largest booksellers, are selling it at 40 percent off. Such price cuts drive sales, but usually result in minimal profit margin, something Jefferies & Co analyst & Co. analyst Tim Allen said typically happens on every bestseller. "It's so discounted, there's minimal, if any, gain," Allen said. "Retailers try to make up the shortfall by marketing loyalty cards, which they hope will entice shoppers back into their store."

*****

But with widespread discounting biting a gigantic chunk out of any potential profits, many booksellers are not enthused about its release. And for smaller, independent book stores, the discounting makes for a hard calculation. "The bookselling trade has lost millions by having to discount Harry Potter as heavily as they do," said Caroline Horn, children's editor at Bookseller, a British trade magazine. "A lot of independent bookstores won't be selling Potter. They say it would be cheaper to buy it from a supermarket than the publisher."

Scholastic Corp. -- the U.S. publisher of the "Potter" series -- is planning to release a record-breaking 12 million copies of "Deathly Hallows," so retailers expect no problems getting inventory. "We placed our orders for them and they've guaranteed us we'll get them," said Dara La Porte, the children's book manager at Politics and Prose, an independent bookstore in Washington, D.C. "The last couple of Harry Potter titles -- we've gotten them within 24 hours of when it released."

There is so much sex on TV and on billboards today-seemingly more than when Forever first came out-why do you think the book continues to be so controversial?

Because it's a book. Some adults, for whatever reason, have a desperate need to control everything in their children's lives. They can't control what's on television or on a billboard, but many think they can control what their children read. These individuals believe if their kids don't read about it, they won't know about it, and if they don't know about it, they'll never do it. They think they can have a book banned if they don't want their children to read it. They'll go into school waving a book, demanding that it be removed. There are a lot of would-be censors out there. Not only do they want to make the decision for their children but for all children. How much better it would it be if the parents could read the book, too, and then talk about it with their teens.

Mary Pope Osborne will kick off the eleventh anniversary of the program with an appearance on May 22 at the Upper East Side Barnes & Noble in Manhattan at 240 East 86th Street in New York City. Ms. Osborne's "Magic Tree House" series, published by Random House Children's Books, takes children through time and around the world with the adventures of eight-year-old Jack and his sister Annie. The children stumble upon a magic tree house filled with books that transports them back in time to the places the books describe. Ms. Osborne will be joined by performers from the CD of Magic Tree House: the Musical, available exclusively at Barnes & Noble this summer. The musical will have its World Premier on September 15 at the Warner Theater in northwest Connecticut. Actors Paul Wyatt (Jack), Katie Brunetto (Annie), and Donna Bullock (Morgan) will perform the opening number from the show, "How Far Can You See?"

"Mary Pope Osborne is a fantastic author who has enthralled young readers with her imaginative tales," said Josalyn Moran, vice president of children's books for Barnes & Noble, Inc. "Her involvement in our 11th annual summer reading program ensures that not only will it be a great success, but also a great adventure."

"Barnes & Noble and I have long shared a common goal: getting kids excited about reading," remarked Mary Pope Osborne. "I'm thrilled to work with them this summer to launch a new generation of children into a life-long love of books."

Barnes & Noble stores will distribute to educators nationwide Magic Tree House activity kits and journals, each containing four student activities. Children read any eight books of their own choosing, list them, and record their favorite part of each book in their Magic Tree House journal. When they have completed these requirements, they will receive a Barnes & Noble coupon for a free book from a list of bestselling paperback titles. Students can bring their completed journal sheets into any Barnes & Noble store across the country to receive their free book.

Forensic teams associated with the British Transport Police are still investigating the incident. The attack was not the first time the iconic train has been hit by vandals. In September 2003, the company was forced to spend about $6,000 on repainting one carriage after it was painted with graffiti. No timetable has yet been put on getting the train back up and running, a spokeswoman told BBC News.

The train's red color and the distinctive number 5972 on the front of the engine make it instantly recognizable as the Hogwarts Express. In J.K. Rowling's books, the train carries Harry and his fellow wizardry students to and from the Hogwarts school each year. In real life, it carries tourists around the U.K. during the summer months and was used by Warner Brothers in the Harry Potter film adaptations.

A US federal judge in California granted Stephen Slesinger Inc., which claims the rights to Winnie the Pooh, a "summary judgment" that effectively ends Disney's efforts to take back the copyright, said attorney Barry Slotnick. "The court once again has once ruled that Disney's claims against Slesinger are improper," Slotnick said in a statement.

"Now that Disney's misguided claims have been dismissed, we can focus on pursuing Slesinger's claims against Disney for damages, trademark and copyright infringement, breach of contract, and fraudulently underpaying royalties, and seeking in excess of two billion dollars in compensatory and general damages," he said. The heirs of Stephen Slesinger, who bought the US rights from "Pooh" author A.A. Milne in 1930 and began licensing them to Disney in 1961, claim the powerful firm has cheated them out of hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties.

Slesinger's widow agreed to negotiate the rights deal with Disney after his death. A first agreement was reached in 1961 and re-negotiated in 1983. Milne's granddaughter, Claire, has sought to claim back the rights to the honey-guzzling bear with Disney's support.

The ruling, disclosed on the court's Web site today, eliminates a procedural hurdle to Slesinger seeking more than $2 billion in damages from Disney. Disney had tried to terminate Slesinger's rights to characters the media company has marketed for more than four decades. Slesinger acquired the rights from Milne in 1930.

"This is definitely a setback for Disney," said Carole Handler, an intellectual property lawyer with Foley & Lardner in Los Angeles. "They tried to dismantle the license of the party that has been most troublesome to them in court."

The ruling is part of a larger 16-year legal battle between Burbank, California-based Disney and closely held Slesinger that's being fought in state and federal courts and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Last week, Los Angeles-based Slesinger asked the Patent Office to cancel rights to 25 Pooh-related names obtained by Disney since 1996. Disney "was not the owner of the registered marks at the time that these filings were made," Slesinger said in a petition. The company was "at most, only a licensee."

In Inkheart, directed by Iain Softley, Mirren plays Elinor, the reclusive book-loving aunt of Brendan Fraser's Mo, a man with the ability to bring literary characters to life by reading aloud. Andy Serkis and Paul Bettany also star as two characters from a book called Inkheart, who are brought into the world by Mo. The film, based on the best-selling novel by Cornelia Funke, is currently filming at Shepperton Studios in London.

Mirren, who has already won a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild award this year for The Queen, said that working on Inkheart has reminded her of her experience on the 1981 film Excalibur. "I love fantasy movies," she said. "One of the happiest movies of my life was doing Excalibur, which was many years ago and done as Iain was making this, without special [computer] effects. ... Excalibur was done completely with lighting gels and real stuff." Inkheart will be released in 2008.

But Uglies takes place 300 years in the future. Names probably won't be the same as now. So I needed something that's not a current name, but that doesn’t make your brain fritz when you read it. So I chose a regular word in English.

That's right: "tally" as in "count." As in "Hey, Mr. Tally-man, tally me bananas."

Thus, the little spell-checker in your brain doesn't ping every time your eyes scan across those letters. (And the real-world MS Word spell-checker doesn’t draw a squiggly line under it.) "Tally" is capitalized, of course, so you know it's a name, but otherwise "tally" reads as a perfectly normal word.

But not too common. When’s the last time you actually used the verb "tally" in a sentence, like "Let me tally those Scrabble scores for you, Old Chum?" Too common could be very bad, like if you named a main character Ask, or Her, or The. (Actually, "Said" would be the worst. Even writing about the late writer Edward Said can be quite tricky.)

1. Use up all your good ideas. "Collect all the notes you've made on index cards, and put all the good ideas you haven't used yet in the last volume because you can't say you'll put them in the next book. I had a sign over my desk that said 'Now or never.'"

2. Kill off at least one person. "I just think death always makes a nice ending, except maybe to my life. Well, I definitely plan on dying later. I just haven't worked out the details."

*****

5. Have something in mind to do when you are done.

"I am so pleased to have written my first children's book and to have my dear friend Wendell Minor illustrate it. I thought it would be a daunting project, but with six grandchildren and eleven step grandchildren, I've been telling stories to children for a long time," said Mary Higgins Clark.

"We are thrilled to reunite longtime friends Mary Higgins Clark and Wendell Minor in such a special collaboration," said Rubin Pfeffer, Senior Vice President and Publisher of Simon & Schuster Children's. "Through his art, Wendell catches the spirit of Mary's brilliant writing and truly brings Ghost Ship to life for children. It's as if this pairing was always meant to be."

Set in Cape Cod, Ghost Ship is the story of a friendship between two boys, one visiting his grandmother on summer vacation in Cape Cod and another a cabin boy for a sea captain with stories to tell of his adventures on the high seas centuries before. Evoking the mystery and history of the high seas and the rich stories of Cape Cod, this is a book for children and for families to share and to make the world of long ago very near and real.

"Mary Higgins Clark is an amazing storyteller and in Ghost Ship she creates a story rich in character and adventure that will inspire young readers to imagine the stories of their own past," said Paula Wiseman, V.P. and Editorial Director, who will be editing the book.

The Quill Awards pair a populist sensibility with Hollywood-style glitz and have become the first literary prizes to reflect the tastes of the group that matters most in publishing-readers. The Quills, an initiative launched with the support of Reed Business Information, is designed to be an industry qualified "consumers choice" awards program for books, honoring the current titles readers deem most entertaining and enlightening.

The Quills celebrates the best books of the year in nineteen popular categories, ranging from romance to biography to graphic novels. The Quill Awards were established to:

Celebrate excellence in writing and publishing

Recognize and praise the creators of important books and great literature

Interest more consumers in acquiring books and reading

Act as a bellwether for literacy initiatives

James Bond actor Daniel Craig is to take the role of Lord Asriel in the film adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials books. He will star alongside Nicole Kidman as the glamorous, ambitious Mrs Coulter and the unknown English schoolgirl, 12-year-old Dakota Blue Richards, as heroine Lyra Belacqua.

Filming will start in Britain on September 4, and the film is scheduled for release in December next year. The trilogy, budgeted at Ł83m, is to be made by New Line, the company behind The Lord of the Rings films, one of the most successful franchises.

Reporter have confirmed recent rumours that Nicole Kidman has signed on to play sinister Mrs. Coulter in the His Dark Materials trilogy. The Golden Compass is the first film in the series, and production is scheduled to begin in London on September 4th.

The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, states that Kidman and her new husband Keith Urban are moving to England for the duration of the filming. Kidman's casting is reportedly the result of two months of "complex" negotiation with Kidman's agents and New Line Cinema. The requirement to sign on for all three movies in the Dark Materials trilogy was apparently a sticking point. Kidman's character, Mrs. Coulter, is an important villain who appears in all three stories.

The movie's other key role, that of young Lyra, has been given to first-time child actress Dakota Blue Richards, as previously reported. The story of The Golden Compass revolves around her quest to find a friend who has been kidnapped by scientists with a sinister agenda, of which Mrs. Coulter is a part. Aided by her personal animal "demon" — which all people in the Dark Materials universe possess — Lyra travels across Britain and Scandinavia, chasing clues that will lead to a monumental discovery.

Freddie Highmore and Sarah Bolger have been cast as the three Grace children in the fantasy film The Spiderwick Chronicles, which Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies will been shooting Sept. 12 in Montreal, says The Hollywood Reporter.

Written by Holly Black and illustrated by Tony DiTerlizzi, The Spiderwick Chronicles, is about two twin boys and their sister who discover a land filled with fairies and goblins inside their great-uncle's dilapidated house. The project was first optioned for film back in June 2003.

Mark Waters will direct the film from a screenplay by John Sayles based on the best-selling series of children's books by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi. In the movie, the three Grace children move to the ancient Spiderwick mansion, where they discover Brownie, an enchanted creature who introduces them to a world of goblins, fairies and sprites.

Highmore will play the dual role of the troubled Jared and his bookish twin Simon. Bolger will play their sister Mallory.

"The final chapter is hidden away, although it's now changed very slightly," she said in an interview broadcast on Monday on Britain's Channel 4. "One character got a reprieve, but I have to say two die that I didn't intend to die." When asked to be more specific, she added: "No, I'm not going to commit myself, because I don't want the hate mail or anything else."

She did explain that she understood an author's desire to kill off the main character of a successful series. "I've never been tempted to kill him (Harry) off before the end of book seven, because I always planned seven books and that's where I want to go. "I can completely understand, however, the mentality of an author who thinks 'Well, I'm going to kill them off because that means there can be no non-author-written sequels ... so it will end with me, and after I'm dead and gone they won't be able to bring back the character'."

Hatcher joins Dakota Fanning in the voice cast of the adaptation of the Neil Gaiman bestseller. Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) is directing the stop-motion/CG film for Focus Features.

THR reveals that "Hatcher plays both the mother of the title character (voiced by Fanning) and her other mother in a parallel universe." The trade continues, "The young Coraline steps into a world that appears to be a much better version of her own reality, but when her artificial parents attempt to keep her there forever, she must escape the dangerous situation and take a brave journey to get back home."

Gary Oldman will definitely return as Sirius Black in the upcoming fifth installment of the Harry Potter film franchise, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, according to statements made by his manager to two Web sites. Oldman appeared in the third and fourth films, but when filming began on the fifth film without a deal in place for the actor, there was speculation that he would not return. But on March 21, the fan Web site GaryOldman.info quoted Oldman's manager, Doug Urbanski, as saying that the deal had been concluded that morning.

In an interview with fan news site HPANA (The Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator), Urbanski said that he is relieved and happy that the deal is done. "I can't put my mind in the place of the producers, but I would've thought that when they read the book, a call to us would've been very high on their list," Urbanski said. "Obviously, the character of Sirius Black is key."

Urbanski told the site that he was baffled by the months-long silence from Warner Brothers, the studio behind the Harry Potter film franchise. He said that Oldman came very close to taking another job, which is what ultimately forced the studio's hand. "Since they had no option for Gary on this film, he was a free agent. Last week, we told them that Gary had another movie, and it was just a question of doing a deal," he said.

Urbanski added: "It's a wonderful role. ... Gary read the script last night, and he read part of it to me on the phone this morning. The end of the story is: Gary's in it. It's a terrific script, and he's so happy to be back." Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be released in theaters in 2007.

Alan Shalleck, 76, was the writer and director of 104, five-minute episodes of Curious George, which aired on the Disney Channel. The episodes were adapted into 28 books. Shalleck co-wrote a series of books with Margret Rey, who created Curious George along with her husband more than 60 years ago. Shalleck worked at Borders Books & Music on Congress Avenue and Old Boynton West Road, but had not shown up for work in two days.

Shalleck's body was found in his driveway at 4295 King Theodore Drive in Royal Manor Estates, a senior citizen retirement village just east of Military Trail and north of Gateway Boulevard. Police are treating the case as a possible homicide, a spokeswoman said, but have not released a cause of death. Neighbors said they had seen the garbage bag in the driveway Monday morning but thought it was trash. Police responded to an 8:30 a.m. call of maintenance supervisor Burt Venturelli, 62, who was going about his normal routine of taking out bags of trash from residents' front lawns. "I went to drag it this morning and said `this is a body, this isn't garbage,'" Venturelli said. He said the body was naked from the waist up. "I could see blood all over the place." There was a black plastic garbage bag covering his lower half and another his top, Venturelli said. The body was on a rug, he said.

Neighbors described Shalleck, a Westchester County, N.Y., native as a quiet, friendly man who had a lot of company who would come and go. Shalleck gained local recognition as Gramps, the name he used while reading books to children in schools.

British children's book author Geraldine McCaughrean has completed the manuscript for Peter Pan in Scarlet, Oxford University Press and the Great Ormond Street Hospital announced Thursday. The children's hospital commissioned the official sequel in 2004.

The sequel will offer "high adventure, dramatic tensions and all the swashbuckling, danger and derring-do [readers] can handle," said a statement from the hospital. Barrie bequeathed the copyright of his Peter Pan tale to the London hospital on his death in 1937. The copyright agreement expires outside the U.K. in 2007. The royalties for the upcoming book will be split between McCaughrean and the hospital.

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Hospital officials selected McCaughrean after conducting a worldwide search for an author to continue the enchanting tale. Among the stipulations was that the sequel include Barrie's original characters, including Peter, Wendy, Tinkerbell and Captain Hook.

"Neverland was such a marvellous place to spend my year," she said. "I clean forgot Barrie's ghost might be reading the computer screen over my shoulder — forgot to worry whether the necessary people would like what I wrote." McCaughrean is a multiple winner of the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year honour for her reinterpretations of literary classics for young readers.

A representative of Walden Media, the producers of "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe", revealed on the company's message board word that director Andrew Adamson and the four children - Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley and Anna Popplewell - have signed on again for the sequel - "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian".

In "Prince Caspian," troubled times have come to Narnia as it is gripped by civil war. Prince Caspian is forced to blow The Great Horn of Narnia, summoning the help of past heroes, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. Now they must overthrow Caspian's uncle, King Miraz, to restore peace to Narnia. The first film has earned $456.5 million worldwide and is still growing.

A story issued by financial news agency AFX on Sunday, picked up by several other outlets, has left a series of red faces by faithfully reporting a press release from "the independent state of Narnia". The story claimed Narnia had walked out of the World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong because it was fed up with being bullied by the US and Europe. It claimed the major powers were attempting to enforce liberalisation of its clothing sector.

It quoted Narnia spokeswoman Susan Aslan (Aslan is the name of the Christ-like lion featured in the film, and book, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe). Narnia's delegates "were tired of bullying by EU and US delegations and would be returning immediately to their state capital at Cair Parvel," Ms Aslan was reported as saying. "If this brings the Hong Kong talks to the knees we will be delighted," it went on. The story was picked up by top business websites, including Forbes.com. The agencies involved have since removed the reports.

...[A]a reader pointed me to an astonishing website run by a Tennessee piano tuner named Steve Van Natten and his daughter, Mary. Unlike typical anti-Harry Potter fundamentalists, who often haven't even read the books that so infuriate them, the Van Nattens have studied Lewis very, very closely, and their site is loaded with citations and footnotes. They think, among other things, that Lewis was actually a pagan sun god worshipper and occultist, not a Christian, although they suspect that the famous Anglican was also a secret Catholic, which in their view is just as bad as being a pagan....

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Narnia offers "the salvation message of an occult, New Age lion," writes Jeff Zakula of Keepers of the Faith, a business that sells children's books to home-schoolers. "Lewis, like Disney, was a New Ager. He built entire surrealistic worlds for our children to escape into — escape from reality and from real life. These worlds invariably contain creatures of every sort endearing to our children, performing heroic feats and displaying often greater powers than our savior."

My shock at this bizarre anti-C.S. Lewis campaign eventually became a kind of amazed appreciation. The screeds from Robbins and Zakula are actually quite well written — disturbingly so, in fact. And the Van Nattens offer up a strangely compelling American folk art that can't be faked. They also complain, for instance, that Lewis smoked and drank and that he used the word "ass" four times in books written for children.

OK, he was writing about a donkey in these instances, Mary Van Natten admits, and "being British, it probably did not mean the same to him as it does to Americans (as a swear word), but he could have left it out, especially since he only used it four times and did use 'donkey' in other places. However, considering the filthy state of his mind, it is possible that he thought this cute."

Playing on about 6,800 screens across 3,616 locations, Narnia drummed up $65.6 million, exceeding industry expectations in the $50 million range. The opening was the second-biggest ever for December behind The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King's $72.8 million and the third best start for distributor Buena Vista, behind The Incredibles and Finding Nemo.

Saturday exit polls by Buena Vista indicated that families made up 53 percent of Narnia's audience, and that 55 percent of moviegoers were under 25 years old and 52 percent were male. Audiences generally liked the picture, grading it an "A+" in CinemaScore's opening night surveys, which also showed that the "subject matter" was by far the top reason people saw the movie.

"No movie can do this kind of business on this weekend of the year without playing to everyone," said Chuck Viane, Buena Vista's head of distribution. "When you look at the balance of this film, every part of the country is playing at its potential."

Hollywood will continue to follow the literary fantasy trend with Eragon due ne