I’ve promised a wrap up of the ALA Midwinter events, and I’m going to make up three separate posts about them. First up is my recap of one of the most exciting events I got to attend: the Simon and Schuster Publisher’s Preview lunch on Saturday.

I got to dine with Abby, Drea, and Sarah, as well as this YA author you may have heard of by the name of Lisa McMann. As soon as we got there, Lisa introduced herself and was eager to hear that we would be tweeting part of the event. She asked us to take a photo and mention how great her hair looked. So, not only did we tweet it, but here’s the proof, too. You’ll learn a heck of a lot more about what a hoot she is in a later post, since I had the chance to eat dinner with her that night.

On to the meat and potatoes: the books. Simon and Schuster’s school and library marketing folks were incredibly kind and so eager to load us up with some of their favorite titles for the spring and summer 2011 season. For your enjoyment, here’s a small selection of the ones that stuck out to me. Although the luncheon covered picture books through YA, obviously most of my interest was in the YA titles.

First off, Lisa’s titles. Cryer’s Cross comes out in February, but I was lucky enough to score two signed, finished copies of this book. One will be put into my library for a summer reading prize, and the second I plan on devouring myself (it may be because it’s signed TO me – more later). Lisa talked about how she’s been reading the early reviews of the title and addressed some of the things she’s seen pop up. As Jen alluded to in her review, main character Kendall has OCD — Lisa brought this point up to tell us why she chose to use that as a trademark of Kendall. Her 14-year-old daughter has OCD, and she discussed how she found it fascinating the notion of fixating on routines. In Cryer’s Cross, the disappearance of classmates doesn’t jive with Kendall’s routine and incorporating OCD gave her a flaw that many teens will relate to.

Lisa talked too about how Cryer’s Cross was not the original book she planned on writing. After finishing the Wake trilogy, she was asked by her editor what else she had, so she pitched three of the finished stories she had. None were “right,” and when asked if she had any other ideas, Lisa said she’d had a dream about a desk that was haunted. Her editor wanted that story, despite it not being written yet.

So what’s next for Lisa? It’s one that sounds absolutely awesome to me — it’s a middle grade dystopian trilogy. Borne out of the fact that more and more schools are cutting their arts education because of lack of funding (and the belief that arts education isn’t as important as more “scholarly” pursuits), this series will have children chosen as scholars and given futures and children chosen as artists and . . . well, let’s just say that they don’t have quite the future their scholarly counterparts will. I believe this was a Fall 2011 or early Spring 2012 intended launch.

Time to dig into the rest of the titles. They’re organized by imprint, rather than date.

Simon Pulse

First up are a couple of titles already out: Dia Reeves’s Slice of Cherry and Eileen Cook’s The Education of Hailey Kendrick. The first looks part mystery and part horror, while the second is a modernization of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

Coming in June 2011 is Elana Johnson’s debut, Possession. This dystopian novel features a distinct sarcastic voice and plays on the idea of power and control. And the cover is, without question, knock out.

Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma (June 2011) was described by the editor as one of the in-house favorites of the season. This is a love story but it’s not an ordinary love story: it focuses on a brother and sister forced to take care of their younger siblings due to a wayward, drunken mother. You got it — this is a book about incest and forbidden love and is guaranteed to be a tear jerker.

Clean by Amy Reed (August 2011): Another hard, edgy title. Although this wasn’t talked too much at the lunch, I can say as much as it’s about a group of teens in recovery from alcohol/drug abuse and is supposed to have some of the flavorings of The Breakfast Club. I have a bit of a fixation with that whole concept so this is near the top of my list of books I’m looking forward to this year.

Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers

Wither by Lauren DeStefano (March 2011): This one’s already garnered early buzz around the blogosphere, but what I did not know about this book was that it was written in a mere 25 days. Did you read that? 25 days! For those not familiar with the title, it’s a dystopian title about men and women dying young and therefore having limited and restricted lifestyles to maintain the human species. It’s more along the literary lines, and it’s also a debut. I don’t get caught up on age when it comes to writers, but the editors were excited to share DeStefano is only 25.

We’ll Always Have Summer by Jenny Han (April 2011): This is the last book in the Summer series. I confirmed with the publicists there will not be advanced copies of this one available. They’re very excited about the conclusion to this book and say it’s going to rattle fans of the series. I am really looking forward to it.

Okay, before I get into the next one, let me say that I remember this author talking about this vaguely at the Anderson’s conference and not taking notes. However, when they talked about it at the luncheon, I was ready to knock people over to get it. Okay. I totally knocked people down. But they didn’t have copies yet.

This Dark Endeavor: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein by Kenneth Oppel (August 2011) is the first in a new series. Get this: it’s a prequel to Frankenstein. Did you read that? A prequel to Frankenstein. This has never been done before, according to S&S, so it’s really exciting, and we’ve been told it is, by far, Oppel’s best work.

Antheum

The Lost Crown is Sarah Miller’s newest title, coming out in June. This is a story set in Romonov Russia during World War 1, a time period and setting that I haven’t seen much in YA lit. It’s a well-researched book and a story of sisters.

Paula Wiseman Books

Small Acts of Amazing Courage is Gloria Whelan’s newest book, set in 1919 in India. Rosalind lives there with her parents, who are British, and when they believe she’s getting herself into trouble with the Indian government, they send her to live in England with her aunts. If you know anything about Indian history, this is a particularly powerful era. Publishes in April.

Carolyn Meyer wanted to write a sexy book for her next title, but instead, she’s taken a bit of a different turn in writing Cleopatra Confesses. This is due out in June and is about the life of the young Cleopatra — there is romance but it’s not sexy. The cover looks pretty cool, too.

Margaret McElderry Books

Although they don’t interest me as much as they do other people, the new Cassandra Clare title — book four in the Mortal Instruments series — will be out in April 2011 and it features two people on the cover (I guess the others in the series only had one … this garnered oohs from the crowd). The second book in Holly Black’s The Curseworkers series, Red Glove, comes out April 2011, as well.

The book I think I may be most excited for and the one that has the coolest story about it is Moira Young’s Blood Red Road (June 2011). It was pitched as The Hunger Games meets Mad Max and the female lead is supposedly ten times more bad ass than Katniss. Sold. But wait! They received the manuscript for this book ONE MONTH AGO. This hasn’t been a year long production like most books are. This book was sent to them a mere 30 days ago and it will be published in June — the manuscript was that tight. Oh, that wasn’t enough to sell you? This is also a book that doesn’t have punctuation. There are periods at the end of sentences but no other punctuation to indicate things like dialog. It’s pretty trippy. I was told to read this one on the plane ride home because it was that engrossing (ahem, I would have if I didn’t end up falling asleep). Easily, this is probably the one that was most “sold” to me and one I am extremely eager to dive into. The story of its coming together is too good. Did I mention this is also a debut author?

. . . and believe it or not, that’s just a small sampling of the titles that will be out by Simon and Schuster in the next few months. OH! And lunch! We were treated to a variety of salads (mine was a spinach salad), sandwiches (I took a turkey on honey wheat bread) and mini desserts (my pick was the strawberry cheesecake). It was delicious and enough energy to make the trek back to the convention center to pick up more forthcoming titles. I’ll highlight some of the other publisher’s titles in upcoming posts, too, no worries!

Thanks to the fabulous people at Simon and Schuster for arranging this and inviting me to attend.