Anne Hoppe will be moving from HarperCollins Children’s Books to Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children’s Book Group.

Hoppe spent 18 years at HarperCollins. She will begin in her new role as senior executive editor starting January 23, 2013.

Some of the authors on her list include When I Grow Up author “Weird Al” Yankovic, Discworld series author Sir Terry Pratchett, Carnival of Souls author Melissa Marr and Animorphs series author Katherine Applegate. In a past interview, Yankovic talked about how he and Hoppe came together for his debut picture book project.

The Colbert Report host Stephen Colbert interviewed Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak this week. Follow these links to watch part one and part two of the interview.

According to Shelf Awareness, Colbert “turned [to Sendak] for advice on becoming a celebrity children’s author, pitched his sequel idea for Where the Wild Things Are 2: Still Wildin’ (featuring action star Vin Diesel) and generally let the wild rumpus begin.”

During the interview, some of the “rumpus” that emerged included Sendak’s opinion on the current state of children’s literature; he finds it “abysmal” and thinks that “most books for children are very bad.”

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In celebration of both April Fool’s Day and National Poetry Month, we bring you an interview with Grammy Award-winning parody musician Weird Al Yankovic (pictured, via Seth Olenick).

As we reported, Yankovic’s children’s book (When I Grow Up) recently climbed The New York Times‘ bestseller list. Here are highlights from the interview…

Q: How did you land your book deal?
A: I was approached a few years ago by Anne Hoppe, an editor at HarperCollins. She was a fan of my songwriting, and thought that the wordplay and sensibility displayed in my lyrics suggested that I might be adept at writing children’s books. I readily agreed, having felt the same thing for quite some time.

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