Although the book has been out for a while, Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass is getting some publicity again, thanks to the upcoming film based on the book (yes, it was a book first). While we were shopping for some books over at Barnes and Noble’s online store, we noticed the company has posted a video of a recent in-store event, where Pullman talked about how he started writing the book and the filming of the film in England.

You can watch the video here.

Girls aren’t daring enough until they learn how to play with jacks and skip rope, or at least that’s what we gathered from watching this morning’s Today Show. Andrea Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz, authors of The Daring Book for Girls (a companion to The Daring Book for Boys), talk with Meredith Vieira about what a daring girl is, and apparently it involves a lot of retro activities their moms used to play. “A daring girl wakes up every morning, and says, ‘this is an opportunity for fun and adventure,’” says the authors “She is brave…and she sticks up for herself, or sticks up for others.” (Did these three miss the boat on Girl Power, or what?) But the clip also talks about how girls no longer know how to play as children. Instead they are immersed in a world of cell phones and computers, and “need to learn not to grow up so quickly.” Since it’s Halloween, the authors explain how to tell a ghost story.

Somebody please introduce these people to a T-Mobile Sidekick. Watch the clip here, and listen to the authors on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate Show below.

When it comes to Japan’s contribution to modern arts, there’s nothing more Japanese than manga. What most Americans see as comic books, manga is more of an art form. In this month’s Wired, Daniel H. Pink reports that manga sales in the United States have tripled in the last four years, and it has also become popular in Europe. (Still don’t see why manga is popular? Just turn on your TV to any network showing cartoons, and chances are it’ll be an anime program that was spawn from manga, like Naruto and Dragon Ball). But despite the growing popularity on our shores, the magazine also finds that manga readership is falling in Japan. The article explores the complexity of the genre, and where it’s headed.

Check out the article here, which includes additional online features, like a quick guide to manga.

I really have no idea how you could not know this by now, but just in case, the seventh and final Harry Potter novel is being released worldwide on July 21. The series is by far the most popular in the history of publishing, so successful in fact that its author, J.K. Rowling, is now worth an estimated 1.1 billion pounds, significantly more than the net worth of the Queen of England. It seems as though literally everyone has at some point picked up a Harry Potter book, seen one of the five movies, or dressed up as Dumbledore and appeared in public. Now, on the eve of the grand series finale, literally everyone is trying to make sense of it all.

Scholastic editor Arther A. Levine spoke with NPR recently about how he first discovered the Harry Potter phenomenon, and how it has ballooned into more than he could ever imagine. Listen to the full interview here. Under that same link, you will also find an interview Rowling did with NPR in 1998, before the books struck it big, in which she discussed the origins of the idea.

On The Diane Rehm Show yesterday, an author, a movie critic, and the headmistress of a Harry Potter fan site gathered to trace the ten year history of Harry in all its various forms, and to offer predictions for the final book, ominously titled Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Listen to that interview here.

And finally, Today has devoted an entire section of its website to the books. It boasts various interviews with Rowling herself, the stars of the movies, and pillars of the publishing industry, who are making gleeful predictions of how well The Deathly Hallows will sell. Find out more than you ever wanted to know here.