“I’m a 34-year-old man with a house full of puppets,” Jason Segel said to me and a huge group of children’s booksellers at the BEA breakfast this morning, “so it occurred to me that I might feel at home in a room full of people who love children’s books.” Jason made us feel at home, too, with his obvious love of imagination and story — two things we booksellers are pretty much suckers for.
But seeing him speak this morning isn’t the first great memory I have from his work. There’s the time I saw Forgetting Sara Marshall with my best friend right before she moved to New Orleans, and I laughed so much my smile muscles hurt. There’s the time I dragged my sister and my reluctant parents through the rain on Christmas day to see The Muppets movie and it turned out to be so perfectly funny with just the right of sappy nostalgia. And then there’s the time I bought a ticket to Book Expo America and flew to New York just to hear him talk about his new book, Nightmares.
Okay, that last one is a (pretty big) exaggeration. I didn’t come just for him, but hearing Jason (We’re on a first-name basis now that we’ve sat in the same room, right? That’s how it works?) talk about writing and imagination at the BEA Author Breakfast this morning was pretty rad. (I was also caffeinating for the first time today, and drinking the coffee was pretty rad, too.) As Jason said this morning, “I’m aware that hosting a children’s book series raises my adorable level to, like, a thousand.” He was being self-deprecating, but honestly, I couldn’t agree more.
The book, co-written with successful children’s and YA author Kristen Miller, is about a boy who bands together with other neighborhood kids to save his little brother from a world of nightmares — and from his stepmother, who he’s pretty sure is a witch. The book (and planned book series) sounds good, but even more interesting, to me, is Jason’s history with this story. He wrote it years ago as a movie, and it was the first screenplay he ever sold. When the option expired before the movie was made, he bought back the rights and is now developing it into a three-book series. Plus, the stepmom-witch’s picture book — that she uses to lure children into her nightmare world — is also being published as a separate book geared toward younger kids.
I love that this story’s been rescued and reimagined. Our definition of a book is expanding and changing, and that can be scary, but it can also be exciting when authors get creative with it like this. It’s also reassuring that, even though Jason’s a celebrity, he seems to be taking his publishing role seriously and approaching it creatively with the help of an established author. And let’s face it — I love that I can say I had breakfast with Jason Segel this morning, and that’s only kinda sorta a lie.
Carrie Rollwagen is co-owner and book buyer at Church Street Coffee & Books, an independent bookstore in Birmingham, Alabama. She’s spending the week in New York at BEA (Book Expo America).