Good News from the Online Author Visits Team!

Martha Brockenbrough will have a biography of Alexander Hamilton for young adults coming out next fall. Meanwhile, The Game of Love and Death made the International Literary Association’s Young Adult Choices 2016 list.

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New on the drawing table for illustrator Erik Brooks? His first board book project with Sasquatch Books! Stay tuned for additional news in future posts, but here is a cover sketch and some sample color for IF I WERE A WHALE by Shelley Gill:

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Dori Hillestad Butler skyped with classrooms in Texas, Maine and Hawaii this month and shared some behind-the-scenes stories about  Haunted Library #7: The Ghost in the Tree House (Grosset & Dunlap), which was published this Spring. She also learned that Japanese, Portuguese and Czech language rights have been sold to the first three books in the series and that book club rights to book 2 were sold to Scholastic.

Dori was excited to hear that the Washington Library Media Association has created a new transitional chapter book award (the Otter Award) and her Haunted Library #1 is on that first list. Washington kids will vote on their favorite chapter book starting in 2017.

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Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams are happy to announce that film/TV animation rights to their Goddess Girls series have been optioned to Universal Home Entertainment.

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Clare Hodgson Meeker‘s Rhino Rescue! just got a great review from Booklist (May 1, 2016). Here are a few excerpts:

“Featuring three stories of dramatic, inspiring rescues and rife with color photos, this National Geographic Kids Chapter series entry offers and engaging, accessibly written addition to animal-rescue-themed books….”

“…Word pronunciations, including locations, are helpfully embedded within the main text, and factoid-rich sidebars add helpful bonus information…”

“…Throughout, the featured animals provide a personalized account of the challenges facing endangered animal species while highlighting their human rescuers. The back matter includes information on rescue organizations.”

 

It was also chosen as A Junior Library Guild Spring 2016 Selection.

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At the end of April, Lisa L. Owens had the great pleasure of Skyping with Grade 5 students from Konawaena Elementary in Hawaii. At the students’ request, she discussed the making of her graphic novelizations of the classic tales Black Beauty and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, then answered the kids’ insightful questions about the writing life. In early May, she donned her editor’s persona to give an in-depth talk for the Northwest Independent Editors Guild on her extensive experience doing developmental editing in the children’s market. And, just last week, she learned that her forthcoming elementary-level biographies about explorers Hernán Cortés and Robert de la Salle have a publication date. Look for them from Lerner in Fall 2017.

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Laurie Ann Thompson is thrilled to share that Emmanuel’s Dream is a Notable Book in the Children’s Africana Book Awards!

It has also appeared on several more state lists, including being a Star North Nominee in the Minnesota Youth Reading Awards, a nominee for the 2016-2017 Black-Eyed Susan Book Award by the Maryland Association of School Librarians, a nominee for the the 2017 Children’s Literature Association of Utah (CLAU) Beehive Award, and a Transitional Non-Fiction Honor Book in the 2015 Maryland Blue Crab Young Reader Awards.

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Trudi Trueit is currently writing a pair of nonfiction books for the Detecting Disasters series: Detecting Avalanches and Detecting Volcanoes (ages 8 – 10). A former TV weather forecaster, she’s written a number of books about weather watching, storm chasing, and the water cycle for classroom and library use across North America. The disaster books will be published in the summer of 2017. In the meantime, look for her new nonfiction children’s titles later this summer, Mother’s Day Crafts and Birthday Crafts (both from The Child’s World). Trudi worked in a craft store through high school and college and loves all things crafty! For more of her nonfiction titles, visit her website at www.truditrueit.com

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Suzanne Williams had a great time speaking to K-5 students at Eastgate Elementary’s 27th annual Young Author’s Day in Bellevue on May 20th. She also signed 162 books!

Lisa L. Owens, Author of the Month: On Sharing My Writing Life with Young Readers

Love my office!

Kids always ask what it’s like to be a writer, so I focus one of my favorite talks on exploring that. The presentation works well for both in-person and Skype visits, and I can easily adjust the length and content for different ages and/or any curricular objectives a host school might request.

I start by giving students a peek at my office so they can picture where I work — then I briefly walk them through what they’re seeing to help reinforce the message that the writing I do to produce the books they read is my job. A fun job, for sure, but it does require dedication, hard work, and the mastery of certain skills and tools.

Yes, that’s me. Age 4.

Next, I take them back in time (way back!) to what I consider the beginning of my writing life. Some of the milestone activities I discuss as I track that life to the present include:

• being read to, which ignited a deep emotional attachment to books 
• learning to read, which expanded my world; helped me understand myself and cultivate empathy for others; exposed me to storytelling techniques; and developed my sense of language patterns
• frequenting the library, where the possibilities for what to read next were endless 
• learning to write, which freed me to experiment with words and all the ways one might try to arrange them
• beginning a personal writing practice (I kept diaries for more than 30 years, starting as a pre-tweener; these days I write daily Morning Pages instead, as that practice better supports the writing I do “on the job”) 
• studying the craft of writing in school and, to be frank, doing so forevermore
• scoring my first publication credit, which led me to different jobs in the publishing industry before I wrote my first children’s book . . . which in turn led to my now having written upwards of 90 titles (and counting)

Only in hindsight did I recognize just how early those stepping stones on my path to becoming a writer started appearing in front of me. Is that destiny in action? I can’t answer that, but at this stage of my life, I can confidently say that writing is one of my body’s basic needs. I’d still do it even if I knew I’d never publish another thing. I’d have to.

Because writing is so much a part of me, I truly enjoy showing young people how I was able to turn something I love into a career. And I especially like helping them see the variety of ways writing, whether they do it seriously or just for fun, can enhance their lives now and in the future, no matter what paths they choose to follow.

For the privilege of doing all that, I am thankful indeed.

A few of my books, clockwise from the upper left: an early chapter book set during the Chicago World’s Fair; a graphic novelization of Anna Sewell’s classic tale; an in-depth study of the Great Chicago Fire for MG/YA; and one of the titles from my nonfiction picture book series on the solar system