​Some books attach to my being in ways that are difficult to shake; and that’s if I wanted to let it go. Blood Brother by Rich Wallace and Sandra Neil Wallace is one of those books. (It is hot off the press and you should make sure that your school library has ordered a copy.) The events depicted took place when I was only ten years old; nevertheless, these events have and continue to shape my life. Some people suggest that the civil rights movement has run its course; that we should get over it; that we are doing better; or that those who claim mistreatment are lazy.  As an English educator, I have heard variations of these statements too many times from seemingly earnest preservice and in-service teachers. 

We must start where we are. I started in small ways in middle school and in much bigger ways in high school. In the eighth grade I moved back to Las Vegas and I attended an integrated school—go Hyde Park Panthers. Later at Western High School—go Warriors. I shared student council duties with Alvin Smith.  It was the 1972-73 school year and the first year that our school had a black student body officer and a black cheerleader. As the only two males on the student council, Alvin and I formed an alliance to form some measure of influence again the five female officers. It was an important growth experience for me and I have written about it in a chapter included in Unhooking from Whiteness.
​
The students we teach must start where they are. Many of my preservice teachers in Louisiana, while they lived in the south, they lived fairly segregated lives. Their parents sent them to private schools or white flight schools that while integrated, did not represent the racial balance of the larger area. Many students wanted to work in predominantly black schools but often met their student teaching placement assignment with a good measure of trepidation. We talked, they read, they often worked with experienced teachers who were confronting racial issues, and they made progress as they engaged with students who where different.

Can YA literature help?
​ 
The struggle for civil rights is real and ongoing. Black Lives Matter do matter. If you don’t buy their argument, I don’t have enough time to persuade you in this post. It is widely discussed from a variety of positions throughout the web. Be open-minded; imagine that any position or privilege you might hold is capable of being scrutinized and re-positioned. Reading, for me, has always been a powerful vicarious experience. Books matter and reading matters in the lives of our students. If you teach students at any level and haven’t done a short book talk in awhile; please do it the next time you meet your students. Consider: Brown Girl Dreaming, How it Went Down, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Monster,  The Watson’s Go to Birmingham 1963, Copper Sun, The Skin I’m In, Crossover, We Were Here, Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, American Born Chinese, Inside Out and Back Again, and Everything, Everything. In addition, you should ignore nonfiction and Blood Brother should be at the top of the list.

If you have been following Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday, you know I have recently featured quite a bit of Non-fiction.  In this case, I hope you consider reading and book talking Blood Brother. It is just recently released and deserves the same amount of attention that has been lavished on works of nonfiction. I am specifically thinking about the recent work of M. T. Anderson (discussed here) and Steve Sheinkin (discussed here). Blood Brother: Jonathan Daniels and His Sacrifice for Civil Rights tells the story of the civil rights activist Jonathan Daniels. I wish I could say I knew this name before being introduced to the book; but I didn’t. I knew some of the events before and leading up to his death, but not the name. It disturbs me that I didn’t. There have been too many personal sacrifices that go unnamed and we should name them. Rich and Sandra do a remarkable job reminding us about the name and deeds of Jonathan Daniels. Their attention to detail and the use primary sources including photo, interviews and a variety of sources is a model of excellent research. As I read this wonderful book, I kept stopping to look up connected information and pondering why I just didn’t know more. Texts like the graphic novel series, March and films like, Selma remind those of us who lived through the time period about the early beginnings of the civil rights movement and can serve as an introduction for those encountering the events for the first time. Should the education we provide just glaze over the surface? I don’t think so. Rich and Sandra offer a closer look. In addition, their social media pages provide a great deal more information to accompany the book's release.

Before you go. I have to say that Rich and Sandra are incredible people. Authors, Academics, teachers, and librarians in the YA community are genuinely friendly people, but Rich and Sandra are a couple who have been so welcoming and generous that it is hard to believe. As I work to include more direct connections to authors, I have been sending interview questions. Below, you can click on the answers to the questions from both of them. They are great and both have other books (There should be another post in the future.) that will enrich your classroom libraries. ​

I love meeting teachers who are using YA literature in their classrooms. This week's guest contributor is Katie Sluiter. She teaches middle school in Wyoming, Michigan. Katie is wonderful. Her classroom is an inspiration and a model for others who want to surround their students with books. A colleague, Gretchen Rumoht-Voskuil, introduced us when I was looking for participants in another study. Katie has been a great addition to that project. I look forward to chatting with her in person at the NCTE conference this November. I am sure you will enjoy Katie's discussion of her transition from high school to middle school.

Teaching middle school is a YA Lit lover’s dream.  When I made the transition from high school to middle school three years ago, I traded The Great Gastby and The Scarlet Letter  for a curriculum of exclusively YA Literature: Hero by S.L Rottman, The Giver by Lois Lowry, and a stack of historical YA fiction for literature circles. All middle school students were also required to read at least one independent reading book per quarter.

My move to the middle school had impeccable timing. During my final year at the high school, I discovered Penny Kittle and her ideas for Reading Workshops. The seed of an idea had been planted: how could I provide my students with choice rather than dictate everything they read? When the idea first hit me, I thought I would be dealing with a curriculum for high school seniors. As the fates would have it, as I began to amass books for a classroom library, I was re-assigned to the middle school--eighth grade English--the perfect environment for growing readers.

I teach in a Title 1 district which means there isn’t exactly a surplus of funds for things like stocking teachers’ classroom libraries. If I wanted to grow my collection of books, I had to take matters into my own hands.

First I shared my dream of a classroom library on my blog and social media channels. Someone suggested making a wishlist on Amazon, so that is where I started. What I learned about people is that they want to help kids read; they want to give the gift of the written word. Boxes started arriving to my house daily. Most were Amazon boxes, but some people shipped me all their gently used books because they loved the idea of a new generation of readers getting their hands on them. My sorry excuse of a 104-title library quickly grew to over three hundred.

A close friend and colleague strongly urged me to apply for Penny Kittle’s Book Love Foundation Grant. Ten applicants received 500 books for their classroom library, and while I was not one of those ten, I was a runner-up. I received $500 to purchase books for my already started library. Since then I have hit up thrift stores, garage sales, bookstore sales, and hustled to get some donorschoose.org projects for books funded.

If you walk in my classroom today, you will see a large 800+ title library along the back wall. Those books have been very thoughtfully and intentionally chosen. Books range in topic and difficulty level, but all of them are there because they are high interest for teen readers. I want students to find books they truly want to read since each is expected to read four books during the school year. While it’s not the ten-book goal that Donalyn Miller set for her middle schoolers, four is a far cry from the zero many of my students have read in their life. Some of my students stick to the required four, but many read far above and beyond.

Additionally, we read three YA books together as a class each school year. These are pre-chosen for me and required of all the 8th grade English teachers’ curricula, but I try to make it a positive experience for my students; I use books as read alouds. Studies show that students need not only to have time to read on their own, but also to hear what good reading sounds like. I also use these books as a way to model and teach reading, thinking, and response strategies that students can use with their own independently chosen books.

My favorite thing about teaching middle school is that every day I am surrounded by books and reading. My students silently read books of their choice, I read aloud our required texts, and we talk and write about books. In the fourteen years that I have been teaching, I have never seen such an enthusiasm for reading as I do here in middle school. While I still have students who are self-proclaimed non-readers, they are few and far between. The majority of my students are eager and excited to read and talk about their books. I believe centering our junior high curriculum around YA literature has gone a long way to making this happen.

Katie Sluiter currently teaches at Wyoming Junior High School in Wyoming, Michigan. She has taught middle school, high school, and community college English and Composition classes and has her Masters Degree in Teaching English from Western Michigan University. She advocates for best practices in the ELA classroom as a contributing writer to The Educator's Room. She has presented at multiple MCTE conferences and will be on two panels at the upcoming NCTE conference in Atlanta. Her blog, Sluiter Nation, chronicles her life as a mother and teacher. She lives in Zeeland, Michigan with her family. You can contact her at katiesluiter@gmail.com. 

​This week’s guest contributor is Dr. Binford. Dr. Binford and I have been working together for several years on cross-curriculum uses of young adult literature. He is Social Studies educator at Mississippi State University. He has also contributed to the blog once before when he discussed the cross-curriculum uses of Mississippi Trail, 1955. You can find his previous posting here. This week he discusses Out of the Dust, a book that has found a great deal of success in the Young Adult community. Dr. Binford’s post is a great companion to a previous post by Mary Warner.  

Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse, is a highly acclaimed historical novel told in sparse free form verse.  The story, narrated by Billie Joe—a thirteen-year-old “redheaded, freckle-faced, narrow-hipped girl with a . . . hunger for playing fierce piano” (3), is an intimate recounting of her family’s experiences during the Dirty Thirties (editorial interruption: this was a new term for me. As a result, I did a quick search and found three books that might be worth reviewing. See the gallery below), specifically the years 1934 and 1935.  The story is conveyed through Billie Joe’s diary entries, which are not unlike the characters and the setting—visceral and rawboned.  

The literary value of this novel has been widely recognized through its Newbery Medal and, among other ways, by a survey of ALAN members, who selected it as one of the best young adult novels of the 1990s.  Additionally, this story’s context can also address Common Core State Standards, such as “Reading Standards for Literacy in History/Social Studies” (Grades 6-8 Students):  “Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos, or maps) with other information in print and digital texts."

The most convenient and compelling connections between English Language Arts (ELA) and the social studies are to be found in the novel’s setting.  From a literary standpoint, setting has been described as having three major components:  social environment, place, and time, which parallel the social studies disciplines of sociology, geography, and history.  How can the ELA teacher draw from geography, for example, or, better yet, connect with the geography teacher, in order to enrich their students’ understanding of the setting, an integral part of this story?
​
The first step is to unearth the geographical references embedded in this novel.  The story is set in the Oklahoma Panhandle.  In pre-settlement days, this 35-mile wide and 210-mile long swath in the Southern Plains was known as “No Man’s Land,” suggestive of both its political and geographic isolation.  Belatedly, at the dawn of the twentieth century--and only after all the other desirable tracts of land had been chosen, settlers finally laid claim to half sections of this grassland on the western edge of Oklahoma.  The state’s name, itself, is an ironic combination of two Choctaw words--okla meaning “people” and humma meaning “red”—suggestive of a people perpetually dislocated by waves of settlement.  

If you can imagine Oklahoma being shaped roughly like a clinched fist with the index finger extended, Cimarron County, the location of Billie Joe’s family farm, is at the very tip of that finger.  The county is bordered by New Mexico to the west, Texas to the south, Colorado to the north, and, nearby, Kansas to the northeast.  Not surprisingly, the story includes over a dozen actual place locations across this multi-state region (see Out of the Dust:  Social Studies Connections Table in the file below).

The second step is to understand the weather phenomenon, which casts a looming presence in the story (see also Social Studies Connection Table).  Figuring most prominently, dust storms were common on the Great Plains during this period, but the U.S. government identified Cimarron County as “the geographic heart of the dust-lashed land” (Egan, 153).  The “dusters” or “black blizzards,” as the storms were often called, provide several revealing and poignant moments in the novel.  One such instance is Billie Joe’s perilous journey home in the midst of a duster, which metaphorically represents her search for an emotional connection with her father:

Brown earth rained down
from sky.
I could not catch my breath
the way the dust pressed on my chest
and wouldn’t stop.
The dirt blew down so thick
it scratched my eyes
and stung my tender skin,
it plugged my nose and filled inside my mouth. (143-144)

In 1934, there were 56 dusters including 14 in April, one of which lasted for twelve hours.  Most of the storms that year were of the severest variety with visibility less than one quarter of a mile. 

In spite of concerted efforts, the dust particles that filled the air with each black blizzard also soon inhabited every nook and cranny including peoples’ lungs.  These particles were extremely fine (63 microns) roughly one fourth the size of the period at the end of this sentence.  As Timothy Egan has described it in The Worst Hard Times:

​"The windows of houses were covered with wet sheets and blankets, the doors taped, the walls cracks stuffed with rags and newspapers.  Men avoided shaking hands with each other because the electricity was so great it could knock a person down (153)."

Even with Vaseline on their noses and respiratory masks on their faces, the citizens of Cimarron County and the rest of the Dust Bowl (i.e., parts of Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma) “inhaled grit”.  As the dust builds up in the lungs, it tears the air sacs and weakens the body’s resistance.  Symptoms included coughing jags, body aches, shortness of breath, and nausea.  Similar, but more rapid than prolonged exposure to coal dust, some of those suffering from “dust pneumonia,” particularly children, infants, and the elderly, did not survive (Egan, 153 & 173).
​

What is less evident in the novel is the human and environmental interaction that propagated these storms.  For the first three decades of the twentieth century, 5.2 million acres of the Great Plains went under plow.  The “Great Plow-up,” as it has become known, occurred as wheat prices spiked due to bread shortages during and in the aftermath of the Great War.  At its peak, wheat farming on the Great Plains became an object of speculative investment.  Eventually, wheat surpluses resulted and prices plummeted from $2.00 to 40¢ a bushel.  When the Stock Market crashed in October of 1929, wheat prices dropped even further and many farms were abandoned or foreclosed upon leaving the soil exposed (reminiscent of Billie Joe’s vulnerability with the passing of her mother) no longer protected by the native grasslands.  Concurrently, years of abundant rain in the late 1920s were immediately followed by an extended drought in the early Thirties.  Over tillage, lack of soil management, severe drought conditions, and high winds led to the catastrophic erosion that produced the Dust Bowl.

How might an ELA teacher (or a geography teacher working in a complementary role) maximize the learning of Out of the Dust by teaching both the novel’s geography and its setting? 
Let me offer a few suggestions.  Just as student begin reading Out of the Dust, you might introduce the broader geographical context using the Visual Discovery strategy to increase student interest in the book.  Visual Discovery, a five-step strategy outlined by the Teachers’ Curriculum Institute, is both flexible and impactful. 

Step One:  Use powerful images (with layers of meaning) to teach key concepts, such as the one below (www.pbs.org/kenburns/dustbowl/) of three children leaving their home, with lunch and books in hand, for school.  In addition, the Library of Congress offers a plethora of images from the Dust Bowl (www.loc.gov/photos/?q=dust%20bowl) including images from Cimarron County, Oklahoma.  





Step Two:  project the selected photograph on a large screen arranging the desks in parliamentary seating, so students are facing each other—in order to facilitate discussion—with a wide aisle in the center leading to the image. 

Step Three:  ask carefully sequenced and spiraling questions that lead to discovery:

Gathering Evidence:  What do you see in this image?  Identify key details from this photograph (e.g. three children, their clothing and attire, items they are carrying, the building they are standing next to, the lack of vegetation and the dusty haze in the background).
Interpreting the Evidence:  Where was this photograph taken?  When was this photograph taken?  What is their relationship?  Where are these children going? (For each question, have students provide at least two pieces of evidence to support their interpretation)
Making Hypotheses:  Why are these children wearing scarves and goggles on their way to school?  (Have students provide at least two pieces of evidence to support their hypotheses.)

I love the excitement and activity surrounding the National Book Award. It makes me feel great when I have read some of the books off of the longlist. I feel validated when I know a majority of the authors. It is even more exciting when I am introduced to new names that I haven't encountered. My reading list is more focused between now and October 13th when the five finalist will be announced. I know that a good friend and colleague Sharon Kane shares my enthusiasm. She and I have been working on a project surrounding the National Book Award for some time. More details to come soon, but if you want a hint, you can check out her earlier blog post here. In another month, I will join an intense group of people who refocus on the finalist for a month. The big announcement will be held Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016 as I am traveling to Atlanta for the NCTE annual conference and the ALAN Workshop. One of the current nominees, Jason Reynolds will be at the Workshop. Others have been in the past, Kwame Alexander, Kate DiCamillo, Meg Medina, and Nicola Yoon. I have probably missed some who have attended in the past; it isn't an intentional slight, just a gap in my aging memory, but hope to see the others in future years. We are truly in a golden age of young adult literature. We see greater diversity among authors, topics, genre, and range, and this list demonstrates that trend. I hope you join me as I dive into these books. 

Kwame Alexander, “Booked”
There are many teachers and students who are aware of Kwame now who didn't know anything about him before his novel, Crossover won the 2015 Newbery Medal. I am forever in debt to Bryan Ripley Crandall for his recommendation that I get to know more about this wonderful author before he hit the big time. I did, I was thrilled, and, as a result, Kwame was invited to be a keynote speaker at the YA conference I held in June 2015 at LSU. Booked is a wonderful book. Your students will love it.

​Kate DiCamillo, “Raymie Nightingale”
I have been following Kate DiCamillo's works for a long time. I think I first discovered Kate's books long before I became a professor focusing on YA literature. It was when one of my daughters was reading Because of Winn-Dixie. I am quite sure that those of us who teach YA have a favorite DiCamillo novel: The Tiger Rising, Flora and Ulysses, or maybe The Tale of Desperaux. It doesn't matter, DiCamillo is a lovely writer. One of my regrets from last spring is that she was in Las Vegas doing a public reading, and I had a meeting that I just couldn't avoid. Dang. I hope there is a next time.

John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell, “March: Book Three”
I have been watching this series unfold. Given the turmoil currently surrounding the conversations and actions of equity and race throughout the country and the world, it seems timely and important to remember past sacrifices. This long list was announced the morning after I spend much of the night finishing another brilliant book, Blood Brother, by Rich and Sandra Neil Wallace, their book would make a great companion to this series. We need to keep reading and talking about these events, least we forget, least we forget.

Grace Lin, “When the Sea Turned to Silver”
Grace Lin is an author who has not been on my radar. This is one of the great reasons I love the announcement of the long list. It gives me an opportunity to widen my gaze and include authors that have slipped by unnoticed in my limited sphere. Happily, I find that she has several more novels (Year of the Dog, The Year of the Rat, Dumpling Days, and Where the Mountain Meets the Moon) that need my attention. It is wonderful to find more books that are both windows and mirrors.

Anna-Marie McLemore, “When the Moon Was Ours”
Here is another author who is new for me. I opened her website and was captured right away with the phrase: "Most of what I write could be called magical realism." Okay, Anna-Marie, you have me. I love YA that channels Allende, Marquez Cortazar, Morrison, and Faulkner, among other authors. Her novels, The Weight of Feathers and When the Moon was Ours are on my reading list.

Meg Medina, “Burn Baby Burn”
Now, back to a novelist that I read and admire a great deal. I owe her a great debt. Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick your Ass is one of the finest books I have read over the last couple of years. I was one of the early readers of Burn Baby Burn and excited to find that she can do great books back to back. In addition, she has several children's books as well. She is a wonderful person and is concerned about her readers and the larger community of Latino/a writers. I absolutely love that she strives to have her books released in Spanish as well. Read her books as fast as you can get your hands on them.

Sara Pennypacker and Jon Klassen (Illustrator), “Pax”
Sara is an author whose books (primarily the Clementine series) are on my radar, but I tend to be a young adult advocate who drifts to the upper end of YA fiction. I gravitate to books that might be considered inheritors of The Cather in the Rye or realistic novels with issue that are often challenging for teachers to tackle in the classroom. It is important to remember that beauty and truth can be direct and simple. Thanks, Sara and Jon, we need books that remind us that Keats is right; "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Jason Reynolds, “Ghost”
I am one the people in the world who listens carefully when Jacqueline Woodson says something; especially If I ask her a direct question and she answers it.  In early 2014, when I was arranging for her to attend a conference, we lamented the passing of Walter Dean Myers and discussed YA literature. The question I asked was: Who is the emerging African America male writer of YA fiction that I should know and should be writing about? Her answer, without hesitation, Jason Reynolds. I have been reading his books since that conversation and have written about Jason's work in several blog posts. Find the first one here.  If you don't believe me, please listen to the sage wisdom of Jaqueline Woodson and start reading his books.

​Caren Stelson, “Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor’s Story”
I love how frequently nonfiction appears on the longlist and the final five of this award. I do not know this author, but I am anxious to add to the list of books I love, Blood Brother, Bomb, Most Dangerous, and Symphony for the City of the Dead. I am glad that I have been adding more and more nonfiction to my resource YA bank. Again a story that reminds us that our actions have consequences; least we forget.

Nicola Yoon, “The Sun Is Also a Star”
I met Nicola Yoon, briefly at the ALAN workshop. She won't remember; hundreds of people wanted her attention as a result of the introduction to her book Everything, Everything. For me, her novel was one of the great revelations of the workshop. It is so exciting to see that her sophomore effort is reaping such great rewards. I look forward to marking this one off the list.

Last October 3.7 million people visited Las Vegas. A few of them were authors who attended the Vegas Valley Book Festival (VVBF). This year October promises to bring in even more visitors. The weather promises to be fantastic, the economy is on the rise, the final Presidential Debate will at UNLV, and the VVBF will host a variety of authors. The festival hosts authors in many genres and at many interests levels including children's and young adult literature. If you are going to be in Las Vegas on Saturday, October 15, 2016, you should really put a few hours at the VVBF on your list of must attend events. (If any news group covering the Presidential Debate on October 19, 2016, needs a local color news story, why wouldn't you investigate this event? Contact me and I will be your host.) This week, using blurbs from the VVBF webpage, I will briefly introduce the 9 YA authors: Amy Rose Capetta, Chris Crutcher, Nathan Hale, Amy Ignatow, Cori McCarthy, Kory Merrit, Mary Penney, Eliot Schrefer and Adam Silvera. Some of these authors I know quite well and several a new to me. I look forward to a five week crash course of reading to ready for there visit. Are you sure you don't what to visit Las Vegas? 

Amy Rose Capetta is the author of a YA sci-fi duet published by HMH. Her first book, Entangled, is a punk rock space opera about Cade, a guitarist who finds out she’s connected on the subatomic level with a boy who’s galaxies away and in terrible danger. The second book, Unmade, follows Cade and her crew into a showdown with the Unmakers, who are hunting the last traces of the human race as Cade desperately seeks a place they can call home. Amy Rose’s third YA novel, coming out from Candlewick in 2017, is Kiss/Kill, a mystery set in the high-stakes New York theater world, where 18-year-old Zara Evans wins her dream role and the love of a brilliant young female lighting designer, only to find their happiness tested by a series of mysterious deaths in the theater. Amy Rose holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, as well as a theater degree from UC Santa Cruz. In addition to writing novels, she edits them and works with writers to develop their ideas through Yellow Bird Editors. She is also the co-founder of Rainbow Boxes, a charitable initiative which raised money to send a box of LGBTQIA YA books to a shelter or library in every state in the U.S. Amy Rose lives in Michigan. Her loves are baking, photography, science, and Shakespeare. If you’re trying to find her, just look for the girl with the shaved head and the camera. For more information you can find her author Facebook page here.

Chris Crutcher For the past 30 year, author Chris Crutcher has specialized in realistic fiction inspired by his previous work as an educator and as a child and family therapist, specializing in abuse and neglect. Each of his 12 novels, two short story collections and his autobiography touch on the power of triumph and tragedy as we come of age.

“I think the value of books like mine,” he said, “is their ability to bring dark subjects into the open where they are not so dark, where they can be talked about and considered by teens and adults alike.”

Because they don’t shy away from the gritty realities of life, Crutcher’s novels are often challenged or banned across the nation – an action he battles unapologetically. His support for the First Amendment has garnered a number of national awards including the NCTE’s Intellectual Freedom Award and an honor from the National Coalition Against Censorship. The ALA also awarded him the Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award.

Crutcher makes his home in Spokane, Washington where he continues to work as the Spokane Child Protection Team leader, as he has for more than three decades. He enjoys his family, swimming and speaking at schools and festivals around the world. For more about his work, visit www.chriscrutcher.com. If Chris Crutcher is new to you and you need a place to start, my personal favorite is Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes.

Nathan Hale is the #1 New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of the Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales series, which includes One Dead Spy; Donner Dinner Party; Treaties, Trenches, Mud and Blood; Big Bad Ironclad!; and The Underground Abductor, one of which earned a place on the Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List. He also illustrated the graphic novel Rapunzel’s Revenge, which was a TODAY show “Al’s Book Club for Kids” selection, an ALA-ALSC Notable Children’s Book, and a YALSA Great Graphic Novel for Teens, as well as the recipient of three starred reviews. Nathan lives in Provo, Utah. Nathan's books are a lot of fun and reluctant readers will find a welcome friend as they are reintroduced to reading, graphic novels, and American history.
www.hazardoustales.com

Amy Ignatow is the author/illustrator of the acclaimed series The Popularity Papers. Amy’s latest series, THE MiGHTY ODDS is the first installment in a new series about a diverse crew of middle school kids who develop very limited superhero powers after a strange accident and manage to become unlikely friends on the adventure of a lifetime.
She is a graduate of Moore College of Art and Design and lives in Philadelphia with her husband and their children. Amy represents a new find for me and I am anxious to explore her books.

Cori McCarthy studied screenwriting and poetry before earning an MFA in Writing For Children & Young Adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of four YA novels. Kirkus called her debut science fiction novel, The Color of Rain (Running Press, 2013), “…an elegantly written and emotionally cathartic page-turner.” Her second novel, Breaking Sky (Sourcebooks, 2015), earned starred reviews from School Library Journal and Bulletin For the Center of Children’s Books and is in development to become a movie at Sony Pictures. Her third novel, You Were Here (Sourcebooks, 2016), is a mixed format contemporary story told through prose, word art poetry, and graphic novel chapters. You Were Here earned starred reviews from Bulletin For the Center of Children’s Books and Voices of Young Adult. Her fourth novel, Now A Major Motion Picture is forthcoming from Sourcebooks Fire in 2017. The story is about a girl who gets caught up in the film adaptation of her grandmother’s famed high fantasy trilogy. Cori is the cofounder of Rainbow Boxes, a charitable initiative that raised over $15,000 last year to send LGBTQIA fiction to community libraries and support shelters. From a military family, Cori lived a little bit of everywhere before she landed in the Midwest. In her spare time, she edits books for Yellow Bird Editors, plays guitar, writes poetry, and wrangles her four-year-old son Maverick.
Reading the information about Cori in this blurb and on her webpage, made me wonderful where I have been for the last few years. Here novels fit right in to the group of books and other I tend to gravitate towards. I can’t wait to dive right in.

Kory Merritt is another one of those individual who just amazing me. How does someone manage to teach and publish at the same time?  This author, illustrator, and teacher is indeed a lucky find. Kory Merritt started cartooning and illustrating while attending SUNY Brockport. He is the winner of a John Locher Memorial Award for Cartooning for his weekly comic strip Brockport Chronicled; the creator of the online comic, Lost Side of Suburbia; and co-creator of Poptropica comics and illustrator of the New York Times bestselling Poptropica graphic novel series. His first book is The Dreadful Fate of Jonathan York. Merritt teaches art for K–6 in Hammondsport, New York.

Mary Penny thinks eleven-year-olds ought to be given special medals for surviving one of the toughest years of childhood. She feels certain she ate her body weight in peanut M&M’s that year just to cope. She says that when she was eleven-and-a-half, she began shape-shifting from a reasonable-looking child to an awkward creature with arms, legs, ears, and teeth all pointing in different directions. She wants you all to know that awkward stage passes eventually and very cool things happen next. Just hang on!She is a US Army veteran and has recently retired from a career at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Mary lives in Santa Barbara with her four-legged children who love to sleep, play practical jokes, and throw up hairballs. Mary loves to swim (badly), practice yoga (stiffly), and walk (into lots of things). Despite all that, she is deeply grateful for all her Irish good luck, and especially for being able to write novels for kids. 

Clearly, Mary gets it. Any one who is willing to acknowledge and write about the awkwardness of early adolescents deserves our attention. http://marypenney.com/ELEVEN_AND_HOLDING.html

Eliot Schrefer is the author of Threatened, a 2014 National Book Award finalist in Young People’s Literature, and Endangered (2012), also a National Book Award Finalist. He is also the author of The Deadly Sister, The School for Dangerous Girls, Glamorous Disasters, and The New Kid. Schrefer is a contributor to The Huffington Post and has been profiled in Newsweek and New York magazine among other publications. He lives in New York City. Visit him online at http://www.eliotschrefer.com/ and on Twitter @EliotSchrefer.

About this new book, RESCUED
Two-time National Book Award finalist Eliot Schrefer captivates readers with Rescued, the first of his Great Ape books to be set in the United States. In Rescued, John’s father travels extensively for work, often far from their suburban home. After one such trip, he brings John an exotic pet: an adorable baby orangutan. John and the playful ape (named Raja) quickly become inseparable. But as Raja ages, he gets stronger, less cuddly, and the family relegates him to a backyard shed. When John’s parents separate, his father sells the ape to a shady roadside zoo owner. John won’t let his pal live in horrible captivity and plans to smuggle the orangutan back to Indonesia. But can John rescue Raja or will their journey lead them both into even more danger?

Adam Silvera was born and raised in the Bronx. He has worked in the publishing industry as a children’s bookseller, marketing assistant at a literary development company, and book reviewer of children’s and young adult novels. His debut novel, More Happy Than Not, received multiple starred reviews and is a New York Times bestseller, and Adam was selected as a Publishers Weekly Flying Start. He writes full-time in New York City and is tall for no reason.