Publishers Weekly reports HarperCollins Children’s Books have acquired the rights to three upcoming graphic novels by artist Wendy Xu (“Mooncakes”). The first, a middle grade book called “Tidesong” (due out in 2021), tells the story of a 12-year-old girl who moves into a seaside town with her aunts to study magic, and “realizes that it may be more than she bargained for.”
The second book in the deal, “The Infinity Particle,” will be a young adult graphic novel “about a young woman whose best friend and first love suddenly reappears in her life after being presumed dead for three years.” The book, described as a work of speculative fiction similar to “Ghost in the Shell,” is set to be published in 2022, and will be followed the subsequent year with another, as-yet-untitled middle grade book.
Wendy Xu is a Brooklyn-based illustrator and comics artist, who, with writer Suzanne Walker, created the queer magical webcomic “Mooncakes” (which will receive a print edition from Lion Forge in October). Her work has been featured on several websites, as part of the Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion exhibit permanently housed at the Chinese Historical Society of America, and in “Shattered: The Asian American Comics Anthology.” She also works as an assistant editor curating young adult and children’s books. The six-figure deal, made with HarperCollins Executive Editor Alexandra Cooper, was brokered by the Gallt & Zacker Literary Agency’s Linda Camacho.
