9-year-old newspaper reporter signs deal to write series of sleuthing books for children

Hilde Lysiak

A nine-year old reporter in rural Selinsgrove, Pa., on whom we have previously reported, could soon add "children's novelist" to her resume, Sean Stroh reports for Editor & Publisher. Hilde Lysiak signed a four-book deal with Scholastic to write a fictionalized series of her own adventures, "Hilde Cracks the Case."

The series will star Hilde and her older sister Izzy as they solve cases based on real news stories that appeared in Hilde's monthly newspaper, The Orange Street News, in the Susquehanna River valley. Every book will end with a news article.

The books will be co-written by her father Matt, a former New York Daily News reporter, and will focus on teaching "younger readers the basic tenets of journalism as part of Scholastic’s illustrated early chapter book line 'Branches,'" Stroh writes. The first book is scheduled to be released in the fall of 2017.

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The newspaper has more than 700 paid subscribers, and its website has more than 700,000 views, Stroh writes. Hilde told him, “I just want to keep working on my paper and have it get bigger. I want to be known not as a good young journalist but as a good journalist who happens to be young. I’m working hard to improve and keep getting better. I love reporting the news so I hope I can keep doing that, especially crime.”