PR: Yen Press to publish Clique manga

Lissa Pattillo caught word of this the other day, and it’s now official: Yen Press will be publishing a manga version of the first volume of the YA novel series The Clique. For those who are hearing about this for the first time, the Clique books are gossipy books filled with intrigue and brand names, one of the series that invoked a massive explosion of tut-tutting from Naomi Wolf in the New York Times a couple of years ago.* My daughter describes it thus: “It’s about a girl who moves to Westchester and tries to fit in with the rich snotty girls there.” Sounds like a natural for manga, eh? **cough cough Boys Over Flowers cough cough**

Anyway, read on for the full PR.

YEN PRESS TO PUBLISH MANGA ADAPTATION OF #1 NYT BESTSELLING AUTHOR LISI HARRISON’S THE CLIQUE

NEW YORK, September 17 – Yen Press announced today that it will publish a manga adaptation of the first book in Lisi Harrison’s #1 New York Times bestselling series, THE CLIQUE, published by the Poppy imprint of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. Yen’s visualization will be released in July 2010 as a trade paperback and is illustrated by manga artist Yishan Li.

With nearly 8 million copies sold and a popular feature film from Warner Bros. and Executive Producer Tyra Banks out on DVD, THE CLIQUE (called “Sartre with lip gloss” by Time magazine), is set at Westchester County’s most exclusive girls’ private middle school, and it exactly captures the super-pressured environment in which today’s teenagers compete in every way to be the “best”. Through these endlessly entertaining stories readers live vicariously (and often, hilariously) through the lives of the memorable “Pretty Committee” where the only thing harder than getting in is staying in.

Kurt Hassler, Publishing Director of Yen Press, says “THE CLIQUE has been an absolute phenomenon in the young adult publishing world, and Yen Press is extremely grateful to be able to work on this visual adaptation of Lisi’s story. It’s exciting to be able to work on a project like this that has such amazing potential to introduce a new generation of young female readers to the medium of comics.”
Yen Press’s manga visualization of the story will be the perfect companion for legions of existing fans of THE CLIQUE as well as an ideal introduction to the series for the ever-expanding number of manga enthusiasts, particularly in the area of shojo manga which specifically targets female readers between the ages of 10 and 18.

Artist Yishan Li was born in Tianjin, China but currently resides in Edinburgh, Scotland. One of her best known projects was “The Adventures of CG!”, a monthly manga strip which appeared in the pages of CosmoGirl magazine to which she contributed from August 2007 to April 2008.

While living in New York City, Lisi Harrison created and developed shows for MTV. She now resides in Laguna Beach, CA, where she is at work on her next novel in THE CLIQUE series. Visit her online at www.lisiharrison.com, and for more information on THE CLIQUE, join The Clique at www.jointheclique.com, or www.pickapoppy.com.

*As the mother of two teenagers, I view New York Times articles about the terrible things teens do/are exposed to with a pretty jaundiced eye. Trust me, they have no clue.

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Comments

  1. Like BOF, the only difference? Boys over Flowers had heart via Tsukushu. Here, the main character’s the snotty girl and the poor girl basically is adopted and becomes one of them. Plus, they’re all really cruel, shallow people. A more apt comparison would be Gossip Girl, but younger.

    The only thing I can say for these books is that they don’t take themselves seriously at all, unlike the TV shows at the moment. But will girls who read the books read the manga?

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