Syfy has announced that they are developing Seanan McGuire’s novella series ‘Wayward Children’ to be adapted into an ongoing series. The books are set in a magical boarding school. Now, obviously, that sounds like a couple of somethings that have already been done, including Syfy’s own top-rated series ‘The Magicians’. Not to mention a certain phenomenon about a boy magician that started as a best-selling novel series before becoming a massive film franchise. There’s also one of Syfy’s newer series, ‘Deadly Class’, about a boarding school, but minus the magic.
But ‘Wayward Children’ is somewhat different. In McGuire’s books, the students are taken from various fantasy worlds, where they are either heroes or monsters and are adjusting to being regular teenagers. While many of them yearn to return to their homeworlds, when some of them start turning up dead, they must band together to find the killer, if they want to stand any chance of returning to their magical realms.
Joe Tracz is adapting the books to a series. Tracz previously served as story editor of another YA book series-to-TV show, Netflix’s ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’. He also contributed to the screenplay for the fantasy animated movie ‘Epic’, and penned the off-broadway musical ‘Be More Chill’.
There are four novellas in McGuire’s ‘Wayward Children’ series; ‘Every Heart a Doorway’ (2016), ‘Down Among the Sticks and Bones’ (2017), ‘Beneath the Sugar Sky’ (2018), and ‘In an Absent Dream’ (2019). The series won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 2016 and 2017 and the ’17 Locus Award. It also won the American Library Association’s Alex Award in ’17 and ’18, making her the only author to win in two consecutive years, and only the second author two win twice period, after Neil Gaiman.
McGuire has penned over 40 novels, novellas and short stories in just ten years and has also written ‘Spider-Gwen’ and ‘X-Men’ comics for Marvel.
This series is in the earliest stages of development, so check back for more information.
Are you a fan of the ‘Wayward Children’ books?
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
