Author and Brad Meltzer’s Decoded TV series host Brad Meltzer signed a deal with Penguin’s Dial Books for Young Readers imprint.

Meltzer will write a biographical picture book series called Ordinary People Change the World. Each book in this series will profile an American hero. The first two installments in the series, I Am Amelia Earhart and I Am Abraham Lincoln, will be released in winter 2014.

Cartoonist Chris Eliopoulos will illustrate. Writers House literary agent Jodi Reamer and Kneerim, Williams & Bloom literary agent Jill Kneerin negotiated the deal with publisher Lauri Hornik.

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Hachette Book Group (HBG) has joined with NetGalley to organize the distribution of HBG information and products. Through this deal, select reviewers, press, and booksellers will be given access to digital press kits and digital galleys.

Several enhancements will be included with the galleys such as video, audio, tour schedules, author Q&As and photos. The galleys will be readable on Kindle, Nook, Sony eReader, Kobo or a desktop.

Here’s more from the release: “The Hachette Book Group titles in NetGalley will expand in the coming months, but you can browse current Hachette Book Group galleys right now, from these imprints: Center Street (enriching & life-affirming fiction & non-fiction) FaithWords (inspirational, faith-building fiction & non-fiction) Grand Central Publishing (mainstream fiction & non-fiction) Little, Brown and Company (mainstream fiction & non-fiction) Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (fiction & non-fiction for children & young adults) Mulholland Books (mystery & suspense) Orbit (science fiction & fantasy).”

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While GalleyCat was buried under news about agency models, eBooks, and Amazon, the rest of the publishing world played April Fools’ Day gags. Here are a few of our favorites. Add links to your favorites in the comments section.

Blogger Edward Champion spotted a piece of literary news: “With both literary journals facing financial difficulties in a tough economy, incoming Paris Review editor Lorin Stein announced this morning that his quarterly would be merging with Granta to form a new publication called The Grantaris Review.”

Techland had mashup news: “Quirk Books, publisher of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, has announced another foray into the field of classic literature-classic horror mashups. The victim? Modernist titan James Joyce. In September Quirk will release A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Manticore.

And Publisher’s Weekly collected some real-life response from bestselling authors urging thriller writer Brad Meltzer stop writing.

For generations, soldiers have read books while stationed overseas. Now one author has built a literary supply chain connecting these soldiers directly with publishers and authors.

Today’s guest on the Morning Media Menu was Paul Malmont, novelist and founder of Operation Warrior Library. After finishing his first novel, Malmont (pictured, via James M. Graham) discovered that men and women serving overseas loved to read, often pooling their own money to buy books. During the show, Malmont explained how he used literary connections (and mediabistro.com’s GalleyCat) to send 2,000 books to soldiers.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview: “Last week we got a call from the Colonel’s wife, and she told us that audiobooks were really what was needed right now. When somebody gets injured on the battlefield, they get shipped right to a medical center and then evacuated right that day to a big hospital in Germany. They can’t bring anything with them…There’s nothing for them to do, once they are in the hospital while they are rehabilitating.” Keep reading for a list of all the participating authors…

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Earlier this week, the International Thriller Writers (ITW) announced that Jeffery Deaver has won the Best Thriller of the Year Award for his novel, “The Bodies Left Behind.”

“Child 44″ by Tom Rob Smith won best first novel, and Alexandra Sokoloff won best short story for “The Edge of Seventeen.” In addition, David Morrell won the ThrillerMaster award and Brad Meltzer took the Silver Bullet Award.

Here’s more about the international group: “Until ITW, thriller authors had never organized. By nature, we tend to be loners, happy with our work and our families and a few close friends. But at the same time, because we’re a relatively small community in the vast world about which we write, we also yearn occasionally for collegiality.” (Via Booklist)

A few weeks ago, Brad Meltzer put out a video promoting The Book of Lies, in which the family life of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel plays a significant role. As part of his research, Meltzer went to Cleveland to poke around the neighborhoods where Siegel and his partner, Joe Shuster, grew up, and found the Siegel family home in serious disrepair.

In this video, Meltzer calls attention to the situation, and highlights the efforts of The Siegel and Shuster Society to raise funds to restore the house and get it designated as a landmark. Chip Kidd has designed T-shirts (first time that’s happened, I think) and several comic book artists have donated original artwork for auction.

It seems a bit weird to have a video full of people saying “I am Superman,” and not one of them adding, “And I can do anything!” Ah well.

It’s not too surprising that Brad Meltzer was able to rope Joss Whedon, Damon Lindelof, and Brian K. Vaughn into appearing in the “book trailer” for his new novel, The Book of Lies, raising unsettling questions about Cain and Abel and the shooting death of the father of Superman’s co-creator. (Yeah, I know; it makes a little more sense when you watch the film.) After all, Meltzer knows all those guys through the comic book world—I’m pretty sure I’ve even seen him doing panel discussions with some of them.

But Christopher Hitchens? A.J. Jacobs?

It turns out that Meltzer and Hitchens are both represented by Kneerim & Williams. And Jacobs? I couldn’t piece together the connection through Google, so I shot Jacobs an email and asked him. He called back and said they’ve known each other for years—introduced early in their respective careers by their then-mutual editor, Rob Weisbach. After I confessed that the trailer had compelled me to pull my galley of The Book of Lies from a stack of other BookExpo giveaways, Jacobs confessed that he doesn’t usually read thrillers, but he started this one to “get a taste” before shooting his scenes… “and I’ll admit it: He got me hooked!”

(Update: Meltzer discusses the trailer’s conception with Entertainment Weekly‘s Ken Tucker: “I had seen so many book trailers which were exactly like every other book commercial you see: scary-voice-guy tells you what it says on the back of the book jacket.” Man, I wish. A lot of times, you don’t even get scary-voice guy, just a bunch of title cards…)