bride of the tornado cover dare to know cover order of oddfish cover

The Order of Oddfish

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Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge!

July 13, 2011

It’s the German translation of The Order of Odd-Fish! It will be called Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge and it will be available October 11, 2011. It looks like Random House Germany used Paul Hornschemeier’s paperback cover with the background color tweaked. Details on Random House’s website here.

It’s exciting for me—my first work in translation! I’ve studied Spanish and French, and I used to get by pretty well in Japanese, but I am embarrassed to say that I have zero ability in German. It will be a strange experience to have written a book that I cannot read.

In fact, I put the title through Google translate and found that “Sonderlinge” means “nerd.” So in Germany, my book is The Order of Odd Nerds. Fair enough!

Speaking of book covers:

As a birthday gift, my protegee Freya made a special limited edition of Odd-Fish. This is her cover for it. I love the multicolored apologies whizzing out of the Apology Gun, the flaming double-sided lances, and how the fish is vomiting out the title! Along the bottom are Jo, Aunt Lily, Colonel Korsakov, Ian, Nora, and the Belgian Prankster. This is possibly my favorite Odd-Fish thing Freya has done, next to her Lily Larouche rap.

Yesterday I shot a new 90-Second Newbery film for Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! with Freya and her friends at CAST, her school theater group (including the very funny Erin McCammond-Watts). Freya and Erin were in the first 90-Second Newbery film of A Wrinkle in Time (Freya played Meg Murry and Erin played Mrs. Whatsit). Look for it soon!

While we’re on the topic of different versions of Odd-Fish, here’s another exciting project that I hope comes to fruition. High school student Toby Soundara got in touch with me about creating a graphic novel adaptation of Odd-Fish. I said this would be a great idea, and that I would post the chapters on my blog as he completed them. I don’t know when the first chapter is coming, but here are some of his concept drawings, of Colonel Korsakov and Sefino:

These are marvelous, and make me excited for Toby’s graphic novel adaptation! Go to it, Toby! I can’t wait to see the first chapter.