Via Publishers Weekly‘s latest children’s book rights report, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) will publish a pair of middle-grade graphic memoirs by Canadian indie pop duo Tegan and Sara, featuring art by Eisner-winning cartoonist Tillie Walden (“On a Sunbeam,” “Clementine”). The books, “Tegan & Sara: Junior High,” and “Tegan & Sara: Crush,” will follow the twins, Tegan and Sara Quin, “growing up and growing apart, coming to terms with their queerness, and falling in love with music over the course of junior high.”
The books join several recent projects from Tegan and Sara revisiting their youth in the ’90s, including their 2019 album Hey, I’m Just Like You (which comprised of songs written back then), and the prose memoir High School; they are also producing a TV series based on the book, featuring Cobie Smulders as their mother, for streaming service Amazon Freevee (formerly IMDb TV.) Both Quins are openly gay like Walden, who explored the subject in her own coming-of-age memoir “Spinning.” The news also coincides with the duo’s announcement for their next single, the distinctly more coarse “F***ing Up What Matters,” releasing Thursday, April 28.
The first installment will be released sometime in Spring 2023, and you can check out artwork in the meantime on Walden’s Instagram. In further news from PW this week, writer Ivy Noelle Weir and artist Melanie Kim are collaborating on a modern, Korean American version of A Little Princess at Little, Brown, due for release in Winter 2026; and writer Jeremy Lambert and artist Alexa Sharpe are collaborating on the middle-grade horror trilogy “The Night Mother” at Oni Press. You can read about all of this week’s (mostly prose) children’s book publishing deals here.
