13-year-old Jake Marcionette has inked a two-book deal with Penguin Young Readers Group’s Grosset & Dunlap imprint.
The imprint will publish his debut middle grade series, Just Jake, in February. The second book will follow a year later. Writers House agent Dan Lazar negotiated the deal with publisher Francesco Sedita.
The young writer published The Dude Kid on Amazon back in 2010. We also discovered a sample of Marcionette’s work at Big IQ Kids.
Sedita explained why he acquired the book, in the release:
I was blown away when I learned that Jake Marcionette was only 12 years old when he wrote Just Jake. This book reminded me of what it felt like to worry about finding the right classrooms, take impossible pop quizzes, and figure out the rules of popularity . . . and made me laugh the whole way through.
13-year-old Marcionette added:
School can be scary and challenging in so many ways, but it can also be really funny. Whether in school, at home, or on the lacrosse field, I try to find the “funny” in my daily experiences. This book began as a collection of doodles and sketches of my classmates, and it has developed into a truly AWESOME book.