It is time for another YA Wednesday. If you would like to help teachers in Southern Louisiana replace classroom libraries let me know at steven.bickmore@unlv.edu.
If you have an idea for a blog post, I would love to have you contribute. Just send me an email.
If you have an idea for a blog post, I would love to have you contribute. Just send me an email.
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.
“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
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
If you would like to help teachers in Southern Louisiana replace classroom libraries let me know at steven.bickmore@unlv.edu.
If you have an idea for a blog post, I would love to have you contribute. Just send me an email.
If you have an idea for a blog post, I would love to have you contribute. Just send me an email.
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