"We're excited to add EMI Music's stellar roster of artists' content to our site and make it available to our community," said Chad Hurley, chief executive of YouTube.

Eric Nicoli, chief executive of EMI Group, said the deal would "offer consumers the best possible entertainment experiences" by using "innovative business models that will generate revenues for our business and our creators".

"Through this agreement EMI Music and its artists will be fairly compensated for their work," Mr Nicoli said.

EMI and YouTube have agreed to work together to develop ways in which EMI-owned recordings can be incorporated into user generated content by YouTube users.

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.

Andy Warhol's painting "Green Car Crash," which graphically shows a car accident that includes the car's driver hanging impaled from a nearby street post, sold for $71.72 million Wednesday night to an anonymous buyer. The work was sold at Christie's in New York as part of an auction of postwar and contemporary art that took in a total of nearly $385 million, making it the second-most lucrative art auction ever held, according to the auction house.

"It was one of the most remarkable sales I've ever seen," Christie's honorary chairman Christopher Burge, who also served as auctioneer, told Reuters. "The market wasn't just hungry, it was ravenous." Only four of 78 works on offer failed to sell. Christie's had estimated that the Warhol would sell for $25 million to $35 million.

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Warhol stole the show at Christie's. His 1962 painting of Marilyn Monroe, known as "Lemon Marilyn" for its color, was expected to fetch $18 million but sold for $28 million. A similar work called "Orange Marilyn" sold for $16.5 million in November. The previous auction record for a Warhol work was $17.4 million, which was set when Christie's sold Warhol's iconic image of Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong for $17.4 million.

But the real showstopper was "Green Car Crash," part of a series of Warhol works that drew on photographs of fatal accidents. Silkscreened over a green background, the painting uses a news photograph of a grisly crash in Seattle. It had been in a private collection for decades, the auction house said. Sandy Heller, who advises collectors on purchases, said that while it "is a great piece," it is also "a very tough image" that some might find hard to live with. "It's hard to put an image of impaled figure in a burning car in a home where you have little kids," Heller said.

[Jonathan] Lethem joins a growing list of novelists such as Stephen King and Michael Chabon, who have shifted to work on comic books as the medium gains critical and academic respect and becomes more mainstream. Marvel contacted Lethem after his book "Fortress of Solitude," which had some comic-book reverence, and asked if he was interested in doing work in the medium, said Marvel publisher Dan Buckley. "We wanted to see what he was interested in, and he brought it up immediately," Buckley said. "Bringing this kind of talent to the room is fantastic. He knows how to tell a story, and his perspective is different from traditional comic writers."

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"It was an interesting challenge," Lethem said. "One of the things I concluded very quickly was that it's not a written form. My primary task was to provide amazing things for artists to draw."

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Bestselling writer of "Nineteen Minutes," Jodi Picoult is the current author of the legendary Wonder Woman series at DC. She is only the second woman to ever write the series in its more than 60-year-old history. The biggest challenge for Picoult was tethering the character's lengthy past with contemporary issues and her own writing style. "You don't want to go down in history as the one who ruined Wonder Woman," she said. "She comes with a history, and a very loyal fan base that doesn't want to see you mess around."

Other authors turned their creations into comic-book heroes. Chabon, who wrote about cartoonists in his Pulitzer-prize winning novel "The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay," chose to turn the novel's cartoon "The Escapist" into a real graphic novel for Dark Horse Comics. His editor, Diana Schutz, helped him modify his thinking from chapters and sentences to panels. Schutz, a longtime editor, also works with authors Glen David Gold and Chris Offutt. She said there are tremendous differences in the mediums, and writers often aren't used to thinking about the presentation of a story or the physical representation of their characters. But it can be taught.

"A good writer is a good writer," she said. "It really is just a matter of coming to grips with the different form, the different structure of the medium. Some novelists don't make a successful transition into writing screenplays, that doesn't mean they're not good. It means they can't think pictures very well. And comics are basically still movies."

In the book, published in August, Robbins ("Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities") chronicles the lives of students in a Bethesda, Md., high school as they navigate the SAT and college-application process. The teens are obsessed with success while they contend with illness, physical deterioration, cheating, obsessed parents and emotional breakdowns.

"I read the book while I was at the tail end of the 'Night at the Museum' shoot, and it really spoke to certain experiences I had had as a 16-year-old, virtually killing myself to get into Yale," Levy said. "And I was kind of horrified to admit that I related to these kids. And there is something really unique about the culture right now where you have kids sacrificing the enjoyment of their youth to get to the next level. And the question is, what is the cost of ambition when you are 17 years old?"

The plan is to make a character-driven teen comedy a la John Hughes. Tom McNulty, president of production at 21 Laps, met with writers for nearly a year before hearing the take from Gatewood and Tanaka. "Overachievers" is the latest project set up by 21 Laps, which has been on a tear. "The fact that 21 Laps is able to develop material as broad-ranging as a character-driven comedy like 'Overachievers' or four-quadrant fantastical tentpole 'The Seems' or 'The Devil You Know,' I'm thrilled," Levy said. "I just don't like one kind of movie, and I don't want my company to only develop one kind of movie."

Editor's Note: The clues in this puzzle are a little more playful and involve more wordplay than in a typical crossword. You have been warned. -- WILL SHORTZ

What interests people about your writing career?

People are fascinated that somebody who is a journalist can suddenly start making things up. I was actually interested in fiction writing first. I always wanted to be a novelist, but I got into the business as a copygirl. When I first got into newspapers as a "girl," the idea that I was supposed to ask rude questions and go places I wasn't supposed to go was so fantastic, I stayed and stayed and stayed. I think in a lifetime as a reporter you meet a lot of people and you see a lot of things. It enlarges you. I feel like being a reporter was fantastic preparation for being a novelist.

I get asked about family things most consistently. People who have been reading me for a long time feel they know my children, and people think I've helped them raise theirs, which is a wonderful feeling.

I think women feel a kind of primal connection to me. They feel as though we're friends even though we’ve never met. And when you do meet them, they remember very vividly the things I’ve written or said.