I just visited Joan Bauer’s Web site, which has all kinds of nifty features, including a link to “The Books Of Joan Bauer,” a reading guide by The Goddess of YA Literature, AKA Teri Lesesne. I’m a huge, huge, HUGE Joan Bauer fan. The woman is a genius.

My favorite of her books is Backwater because of the lawyers (Greg raved about it, too), but I also dearly love Hope Was Here, which was one of my successful Newbery predictions (I know it sounds awful, but I adore being right).

Stand Tall is also an affecting and timely title. Teachers and parents should check out the readers’ guides based on the novel (one for children, one for adults) , “How To Talk To Your Children About Tough Times” by Dr. Catherine Hart Weber. They’re designed to facilitate intergenerational communication about tragedy both in the headlines and in the home. (The PDF files took a while to download, but I have dial-up). See also Nancy Keane’s site for an audiobook excerpt.

The latest news is the upcoming sequel to Rules Of The Road, entitled Best Foot Forward.

Cynsational Links

An Interview With Joan Bauer from The ABCs of Writing For Children by Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff (Quill Driver Books, 2003). Note: once had a fabulous dinner with Elizabeth and other bay area authors at The Four Seasons in San Francisco. Yum!

Children’s Picture Book Database from Miami University is a source for finding books on specific subjects (or checking out any books competing with a potential manuscript topic)(not all-inclusive; i.e., Jingle Dancer doesn’t pull up under “Native American”). Note: I found out about this on the Feb. 24 Children’s Writing Update; surf by for more helpful information and tips!

Humor In Young Adult Literature: offers links to numerous related resources, including “Humor, Seriously” by author Joan Bauer from The Alan Review.

Mail this week includes an ARC of A Room On Lorelei Street by Mary E. Pearson (Henry Holt, 2005)(read Mary’s blog), which I’ve been wanting to read for a while, Humor In Young Adult Literature: A Time To Laugh by Walter Hogan (Scarecrow, 2005), and a number of publisher catalogs.