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Q & A with Mark Teague
Mark Teague is the illustrator of the bestselling How Do Dinosaurs… series by Jane Yolen, as well as the author/illustrator of the Dear Mrs. LaRue picture books. In 2009, Teague tackles farm life in a new picture book, another Dinosaur book, and a new (for him) format.
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Q & A with Margarita Engle
Margarita Engle’s The Surrender Tree marked the second time the Cuban-American poet won the Pura Belpré Award. Her novel tells of the brutality of slavery and war, and the compassion people share despite it. The Surrender Tree was also awarded a 2009 Newbery Honor, the first time the award had ever gone to a Latina author.
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Tasmanian Devil: Richard Flanagan
Richard Flanagan gets attention for his politics and his recent credit as the screenwriter for the Nicole Kidman movie Australia, but the Tasmanian native, whose Wanting is coming out from Atlantic Monthly Press, doesn't crave the limelight. He's much more comfortable speaking about his writing, with a humbleness that almost seems affected until you spend some time with him.
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Twittergirls: Laurie Halse Anderson on Tour
Despite the serious subject matter of her newest novel—teenage anorexia—Wintergirls (Viking, Mar.), there was plenty of fun during National Book Award finalist Laurie Halse Anderson’s recent two-week U.S. book tour, which wrapped up this past weekend. During the tour, Anderson provided her fans with updates from the road via her Twitter stream.
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Q & A with Francisco X. Stork
Francisco X. Stork’s novel, Marcelo in the Real World (Scholastic/ Levine) is about a young man with Asperger’s syndrome who experiences “the real world” for the first time while working one summer at his father’s law firm. So far it has garnered five starred reviews, and foreign rights have been sold in nine languages.
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Q & A with Brent Runyon
Author Brent Runyon talked to Children’s Bookshelf about his transition from autobiographer to novelist, and his new coming-of-age story, Surface Tension (Knopf).
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Q & A with Cassandra Clare
Cassandra Clare is the author of City of Bones, City of Ashes, and most recently, City of Glass (McElderry), the final installment in her Mortal Instruments trilogy. Clare spoke with Bookshelf about playing character favorites, making promises to fans, the ups and downs of saying goodbye to a big story, and working on a new series.
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Q & A with Lisa Yee
Author Lisa Yee, a “mostly cured workaholic,” talked to Children’s Bookshelf about Absolutely Maybe, her first novel for young adults.
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Q & A with K.L. Going
Children's Bookshelf spoke with K.L. Going about her new novel, King of the Screwups (Harcourt).
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James Patterson Launches ReadKiddoRead
Between 2005 and 2007, author James Patterson gave away more than $600,000 to promote literacy through his annual PageTurner Awards. But when he noticed that his own elementary school-age son had become a reluctant reader, he decided that there had to be another way to get children excited about reading. So he launched a Web site, called ReadKiddoRead.com.
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Children's Bookshelf Speaks with Jacqueline Woodson
In Peace, Locomotion, Jacqueline Woodson returns to the story of Lonnie, aka Locomotion, a Brooklyn boy separated from his sister, Lili, after the death of their parents. Woodson talks about what it was like to return to Lonnie’s story, how her writing process has changed during her career—and why she will never write a novel through letters again.
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Q & A with Javaka Steptoe
Javaka Steptoe won the 1998 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for his first book, and has illustrated eight others, Bookshelf spoke with Javaka about Amiri and Odette: A Love Story (Scholastic), a collaboration with Walter Dean Myers on a contemporary adaptation of Swan Lake.
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Fall 2008 Flying Starts: Marie Rutkoski
A lifelong bookworm, Marie Rutkoski always wanted to write a book of her own, but discouraged by her attempts at fiction, she focused on academic success instead. Then in 2006, just as she was finishing her Ph.D. in English from Harvard, studying Renaissance children with reported special powers such as the ability to breathe fire, she got the idea for The Cabinet of Wonders (FSG).
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Fall 2008 Flying Starts: Donna Freitas
As a professor of religion at Boston University, Donna Freitas (pronounced FRAY-tis) does a lot of writing—essays, articles, nonfiction—but what she most likes to read are children's books. She uses The Giver, Skellig and Tuck Everlasting as “core texts” in her undergraduate classes because they get her students thinking and talking about life's Big Questions.
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Fall 2008 Flying Starts: Kristin Cashore
The author of Graceling (Harcourt) is nothing like her heroine, Katsa, whose mixed eye color (one is blue and the other green) signifies in her particular world that she is “graced,” born with a unique skill. Katsa's grace is for killing.
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Q & A with Mo Willems
Bookshelf spoke with Mo Willems about his new picture book, Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed (Disney-Hyperion, Jan.).
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Q& A with Tony Abbott
Since 1994, Connecticut author Tony Abbott has published more than 70 books for young readers. These include standalone hardcover novels Kringle, Firegirl and The Postcard, as well as a handful of paperback series, among them The Secrets of Droon, which has sold more than 10 million copies. His new paperback series with Scholastic, The Haunting of Derek Stone, debuts with City of the Dead.
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The 'Clues' Keep On Coming
Scholastic’s multimedia The 39 Clues series continued to grow this week, with the second book, One False Note by Gordon Korman, going on sale in the U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The first book was The Maze of Bones by Rick Riordan. One million copies of that title are now in print worldwide, along with an additional 500,000 trading card packs. One False Note landed with a 500,000-copy first printing.
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Q & A with Ann Brashares
In 2001’s The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Ann Brashares introduced four best friends with whom young readers soon made fast friends: that first novel and its three sequels together have sold more than eight million copies. Brashares returns to these characters’ hometown in 3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows. Delacorte will launch the novel with a 500,000-copy first printing and a six-city author tour.
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Q & A with Anita Silvey
Bookshelf spoke with Anita Silvey about her new book, I’ll Pass for Your Comrade (Clarion).
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