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!

Good News from the Online Author Visits Team!

Here’s a peek at what our members have been up to this month:

OAV authors Erik Brooks, Dori Hillestad Butler, Dana Sullivan, Laurie Thompson, Trudi Trueit and Suzanne Williams recently joined their Northwest colleagues in Seattle for the Inside Story. Educators, booksellers and book lovers of all ages packed the auditorium above Mockingbird Books to hear our authors talk about what inspired their new books. The event is sponsored by the Western Washington Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators. The highlight of the evening was the presentation of SCBWI’s Crystal Kite Award to OAV’s own Laurie Thompson for her inspiring book, Be A Changemaker. The Crystal Kite is an award voted on by peers, recognizing outstanding books from 15 SCBWI regional divisions around the world. Congratulations, Laurie!

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OAV authors Martha Brockenbrough and Janet Lee Carey joined YA authors and hundreds of YA librarians at the YALSA Symposium in Portland, Oregon. Highlights included the Book Blitz–a terrific confluence of energized YA librarians and YA authors coming together at a single Saturday evening book signing. Martha and Janet signed stacks of The Game of Love and Death and In the Time of Dragon Moon for library shelves and lucky teen winners in libraries across the U.S. Generous publishers (Scholastic for Martha B. and Kathy Dawson Books/Penguin Random House for Janet C.) donated books for the YALSA Blitz. Here’s Martha with Mindy Mathis, a Napa library. A good time was had by all!

                                                                       
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Martha Brockenbrough‘s Game of Love and Death continues to collect awards. It was one of Amazon’s YA Books of the Year and also made Publisher’s Week’s Best of the Year list for YA.
                                                                       
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The sixth book in Dori Hillestad Butler‘s Haunted Library series, The Ghost at the Fire Station, launched on November 3 and to celebrate her publisher sent her on tour! She visited schools and bookstores in Fort Collins, Chicago and Miami. The highlight of the tour was reconnecting in person with her 6th and 7th grade English teacher, Mr. Hartshorn. When Dori was in 6th grade, she wrote a novel for
Mr. Hartshorn for extra credit. She believes she is an author today in part because of his response to that novel.

Dori’s first Haunted Library book also won the Silver Falchion award for “Best Children’s Chapter Book” at Killer Nashville, a place for thriller, suspense and mystery writers and literature lovers.

If you’re in the Seattle area, visit Dori and the 26 other local authors who are participating in the Seattle 7 Writers Holiday Fest at the Phinney Neighborhood Center on Saturday, November 21 from 3:00 until 5:00.

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November is Picture Book Idea Month and Joan Holub helped kick off PiBoIdMo 2015 with three ways she comes up with ideas. And she’s giving away a wooden castle to celebrate idea #2, which inspired her new picture book, The Knights Before Christmas. Read to the end of her post on ideas for a chance to enter!

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In addition to the Crystal Kite award, Laurie Ann Thompson has a couple of other new awards to smile about. Emmanuel’s Dream won a Eureka Nonfiction Honor Award from the California Reading Association and Be a Changemaker received a Gold Medal from the Moonbeam Award.

She also recently returned from the AASL annual conference in Columbus, Ohio, where she met many inspiring teacher librarians, signed books, and moderated a panel on “Changemakers in Society: Books that Motivate Kids to Solve Problems and Make the World a Better Place,” featuring fellow nonfiction authors Shana Corey, Loree Griffin Burns, Melissa Steward and Don Tate.

And she released this new book trailer for My Dog Is the Best.

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Trudi Trueit is excited to again be in the author line-up for Sno-Isle Regional Library’s AUTHOR NEXT DOOR series. Come meet her, along with seven other Northwest authors, at this relaxed panel format on Saturday, December 5 at the Mountlake Terrace Library from 2:00 to 3:30pm. Don’t miss this fun event! Probing questions will be answered at deep secrets reveals (writing secrets, that is!). Books will be available for purchase following the event.

Trudi had a great time recently skyping with 3rd to 5th grade students at Old Town Elementary School in Maine all the way from her home in Seattle! The students asked some insightful questions, including one she’d never had before: how does writing affect your social life? The answer? Writing is a solitary career, but she gets out as much as she can!
                                                                      
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Cover Reveal!!! Suzanne Williams reports that she and Joan Holub are thrilled that two more books will be added to their Grimmtastic Girls series in 2016. Book 7: Snowflake Freezes Up releases on April 26. “Snowflake isn’t sure which fairy tale character she is. But with her magical powers causing lots of trouble, she’s definitely on thin ice! So just in case she might be a villain, Snowflake is chilly to her classmates. Can she keep her cool until she knows her whole story or will her social life at Grimm Academy be permanently frozen? 

Good News from the Online Author Visits Team!

Here’s a peek at what our members are up to this month:

Martha Brockenbrough’s Game of Love and Death is a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. It was also an ALA Booklist pick for Top Ten Romance for Youth, and is a finalist on the YALSA Best Books for Young Adults list. If you’re in the Seattle area, she’ll be speaking with Nancy Pearl and Steve Scher this Sunday at Town Hall about grammar.

                       

                                                                        

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Dori Hillestad Butler has online author visits scheduled with schools in Kansas, New Hampshire, Minnesota and Iowa this month. She will also be participating in the Humboldt County Children’s Author Festival in Eureka, CA from October 15-17, and she’s looking forward to promoting her new Haunted Library #6: The Ghost at the Fire Station in early November. She’ll be traveling to schools and bookstores near Denver, Chicago, Miami and around the Seattle area.

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Joan Ho-Ho-Holub “launched” her new picture book, The Knights Before Christmas at Quail Ridge Books with cake and catapults! Publisher’s Weekly called her book’s premise “great”: On Christmas Eve, three young knights guard the king’s castle against a red-and-white invader–Santa Claus!

And more jolly reviews just in for The Knights Before Christmas:
“This rousing, ridiculous Medieval “Night Before Christmas” parody jingles with castle and holiday wordplay. Cheeky digital illustrations brim with good cheer.” – Horn Book

“An excellent interplay between the amusing illustrations and the polished text, with lots of clever jokes for readers to discover in the art. These knights know how to keep the castle safe and readers entertained.” –Kirkus Reviews

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Dana Sullivan is hard at work on final art for Digger and Daisy Plant a Garden, the sixth in the Digger and Daisy early reader series, written by Judy Young. He reports that this book has not improved his attitude toward kale, but the unusually hot summer in Seattle did produce some delicious cherry tomatoes in his own garden.

He’s also teaching graphic novel workshops for the King County Library System. They are for all ages and FREE to library patrons. If you’ve always wanted to create your own graphic novel or comic book in two hours, check out the details and schedule here.

This coming weekend Dana will travel to Beaumont, Texas to speak at a literacy conference at Lamar University. His talk focuses on his path to diversity and inclusion, but Digger and Ozzie are really more excited about Beaumont being the reputed home of hte world’s largest fire hydrant. We’ll give you a full report upon their return.

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Praise for Trudi Trueit’s new middle grade novel, The Sister Solution (Aladdin M!X):”An insightful, engaging tale that celebrates the relationship that sisters share.” –Kirkus Reviews

Tween bloggers 5GirlsBookReviews “recommends this book for anyone that has sisters.” To learn more about The Sister Solution (for ages 9 and up) and download the reader’s guide, head to Trudi’s website: www.truditrueit.com.

If you live in the Seattle area, you’re invited to THE SISTER SOLUTION Book Release Party tomorrow night, Friday, Oct. 16th, from 7 – 8 pm at University Books in Mill Creek, WA! There will be an author chat/signing, food, a trivia contest w/prizes, a student writing display, and more!

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Laurie Ann Thompson has just wrapped up a slew of in-person events for all three of her books, especially Be a Changemaker.

She is soon heading off to Austin to read Emmanuel’s Dream at the Texas Book Festival, where she gets to meet illustrator Sean Qualls for the first time ever!

And, she was tickled to see this new review of My Dog Is the Best pop on Goodreads:

“I just hugged this book. It may be because this dog looks like my dog. But the text is cute and the dog is cute and the little boy is cute. I love it. Hug Hug Hug”  —Laela

Around the Web with OAV Authors: August 2015

Another month, another fun sampling of clickable insights into our authors’ goings-on!

Deb talks creativity during a school visit.

Here’s a terrific piece by Deb Lund on helping students (and everyone) claim their creativity.

In “Two Are Better Than One,” Dori Hillestad Butler interviews Suzanne Williams and Joan Holub about their successful writing partnership. (That’s three OAVers in one click!)

Lisa L. Owens discusses what makes her feel alive in “Hark! How the Bells” at Dia Calhoun’s blog.

The Irish Times praises Martha Brockenbrough’s masterful storytelling in her YA novel The Game of Love and Death.

TTPM reviews Dana Sullivan’s adorable Kay Kay’s Alphabet Safari on their YouTube channel. (Spoiler alert: They loved it.)

Lucky teachers and librarians will want to snag this handy downloadable curriculum guide at Patrick Jennings’s website.

Clare Hodgson Meeker blogs about her rewarding experience leading an in-school field trip on teamwork.

Kids participating in Clare’s in-school teamwork field trip make soccer balls out of newspaper and plastic bags.

Around the Web with OAV Authors: June 2015

Our author members pop up online so often that we decided to start doing regular links roundups so readers of this blog can learn more about us. To that end, each month I’ll do a bit of OAV-specific surfing to pick out a few tidbits to share.

Some gems I found this time:

Clare Hodgson Meeker blogged about a Grade 3 writing workshop she taught as a Seattle Arts & Lectures Writer-in-Residence at Whittier Elementary School.

Clare poses with third-grade students who’ve completed her writing workshop.

Have you seen Trudi Trueit’s super-fun FAQs on her author site? Take a peek!

This month, Janet Lee Carey’s Library Lions Roar blog features a teacher librarian doing fantastic work at Hopewell Elementary School in Bettendorf, Iowa.

Amazon.com made a list of the “Best Nonfiction Kids’ Books of 2015 So Far,” and Emmanuel’s Dream by Laurie Ann Thompson is on it!

Did you know that you can print your own stickers to accompany the Goddess Girls series by Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams? Yes, you can!

Check out Dia Calhoun’s recent blog about creating a special place that serves as a personal invitation to mystery.

This Is Teen has put together a handy book club guide for The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough.

In case you missed the link on our Facebook page, here you can see details about the Skype visit Patrick Jennings did with a classroom in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Skyping from Washington State, Patrick visits with students in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Martha Brockenbrough, Author of the Month: A Favorite Kid Question = Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

Kids love to know where stories come from, and they often ask authors where we get our ideas in visits.

I love this question. For one thing, ideas can come from anywhere, and it’s a lot of fun to show kids how stories can spring from their everyday lives. What’s more, it’s also fun to show kids how they can deliberately seek out stories using inspiration from art, music, pictures, and more.

My soon-to-be-published book, The Game of Love and Death, is one that came from both my own experience and from external inspiration. I was at one point stuck on a different book, and a friend sent me a vintage photo and told me to write a story about the people in it. I was amazed at what came out, and really came to like using the technique, which is one that can be adopted for classrooms. It works equally well for nonfiction and fiction, and also shows how research can be leveraged in storytelling.

The Game of Love and Death is set in 1937, a year when a government agency took a lot of photos of houses and businesses as part of an economic stimulus project. It was a lucky thing, and there are many, many ways to find images to serve any kind of writing project.

Here are a few pictures I looked at as I worked, trying to get a sense for the clothing and lighting and facial expressions and other details that revealed a bit about the time. They can also be mined for possible characters (although I had mine and didn’t need the help there).