Penguin Young Readers to Publish Parody of ‘The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep’
New York, NY — Penguin Young Readers, a division of Penguin Random House, announced today that they will publish The Rabbit Who Wants to Go to Harvard by Diana Holquist and illustrated by Christopher Eliopoulos on February 9, 2016. This clever and hilarious parody spoofs the bestselling sleep-aid picture book The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep, while also satirizing overly controlling parents. The deal was brokered by Alec Shane and Jodi Reamer of Writer’s House and Lauri Hornik, President and Publisher of Dial Books for Young Readers, who will edit. Penguin has World rights. The book will have a first printing of 100,000.
“We couldn’t resist Diana Holquist’s laugh-out-loud-funny satire of helicopter parents, made all the spoofier by Christopher Eliopoulos’s drawings,” says Lauri Hornik. “It’s Go the F**K to Sleep meets How to Raise an Adult – tremendously witty and timely, and just plain fun.”
“I wish that I had The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep when I had toddlers,” says author Diana Holquist. “But since I’ve got teens, I wondered what else Rabbit’s powerful, psychological techniques could achieve. Could they, for instance, help get my kids into Harvard? As soon as the thought entered my mind, I knew that I had to find out.”
Diana Holquist is the author of the parenting memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Daughter as well as several romance novels, including those published as Sophie Gunn. A graduate of Columbia University and former advertising copywriter, she lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with her husband, two teenagers, and three cats.
Christopher Eliopoulos began his illustration career as a letterer for Marvel, and has worked on thousands of comics. He is also the illustrator of the New York Times bestselling Ordinary People Change the World series by Brad Meltzer. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and their identical twin sons.
Penguin Random House (http://global.penguinrandomhouse.com/) is the world’s most global trade book publisher. It was formed on July 1, 2013, upon the completion of an agreement between Bertelsmann and Pearson to merge their respective trade publishing companies, Random House and Penguin, with the parent companies owning 53% and 47%, respectively. Penguin Random House comprises the adult and children’s fiction and nonfiction print and digital trade book publishing businesses of Penguin and Random House in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa, and Penguin’s trade publishing activity in Asia and Brazil; DK worldwide; and Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial’s Spanish-language companies in Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, and Chile. Penguin Random House employs more than 10,000 people globally across almost 250 editorially and creatively independent imprints and publishing houses that collectively publish more than 15,000 new titles annually. Its publishing lists include more than 70 Nobel Prize laureates and hundreds of the world’s most widely read authors.
