Kate Hannigan is the first time author of Cupcake Cousins, illustrated by Brooke Boynton Hughes (Hyperion, 2014). From the promotional copy:
Baking a fluffy pink cupcake is awesome, but wearing a dress that looks like one? No, thank you!
Cousins Willow and Delia can’t wait to spend a week vacationing together with their families.
Continue Reading New Voice: Kate Hannigan on Cupcake Cousins »
Liam and Greta
Greta Cencetti is a children’s book illustrator whose work has been published in Italian, English, German and Chinese. Her artwork has been exhibited Germany, the U.K. and China.
Most recently, her series of illustrations
Migrant Children featuring children during depression era U.S.A. were exhibited at the GALATA Museum in Genoa,
Compiled by Cynthia Leitich Smith
Obituary: Kate Duke by Shannon Maughan from Publishers Weekly. Peek: “Children’s author and illustrator Kate Duke, known for her playful concept books starring an affable cast of guinea pigs, died unexpectedly at her home in New Haven, Ct., on Sunday, April 20.”
Writer and Artist Kate Duke Dies at 57 by Mahnaz Dar from School Library Journal.
Compiled by Cynthia Leitich Smith
Congratulations to debut YA Author Catherine Linka on the release of A Girl Called Fearless (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2014)! From the promotional copy:
Avie Reveare has the normal life of a privileged teen growing up in L.A., at least as normal as any girl’s life is these days.
By Kami Kinard
My world is peopled with middle graders – my daughter, her friends, and the students I see when I volunteer or do school visits. Additionally, most of the fictional characters I’ve come to know and love are middle graders.
I met a lot of them in the books I read,
Continue Reading Guest Post & Giveaway: Kami Kinard on Middle Graders Make Great Characters »
I’ve heard authors say they didn’t feel like they wrote their story—more like they were a conduit to some greater force writing through them.
It sounded like a bunch of hooey until it happened to me.
They say you write what you read. Well, I grew up reading fantasy.
Megan Jean Sovern is the first-time author of The Meaning of Maggie (Chronicle, 2014). From the promotional copy:
Eleven-year-old Maggie Mayfield can’t stop thinking about Oreos and this is just one of her many conundrums.
She also has two older sisters with bods that don’t stop and she has to wait to campaign for president for almost an entire quarter century.
Continue Reading New Voice: Megan Jean Sovern on The Meaning of Maggie »
For the past year plus, I’ve been crafting two different teen romance novels with thirteen different endings for each one.
I say crafting and not just writing because a huge part of the creation of these books involved coming up with the structure of the story—where the book would fork so that the reader could make a decision guiding the plot this way or that,
Austin Comic Con 2011
Compiled by Cynthia Leitich Smith
May the Fourth Be With You: It’s Star Wars Day by Bill Chappell from NPR. Peek: “Darth Vader walks the Earth today. And by that, we mean he’s walking all over the place — fans of the sci-fi franchise are celebrating Star Wars Day,
Watch the Dorothy Must Die book trailer!
Compiled by Cynthia Leitich Smith
What’s Old Is New: Recent YA Books with Allusions to Classic Lit by Emily Moore from School Library Journal. Peek: “Dorothy gets her comeuppance. Young book addicts share their love for Harper Lee’s classic. And Robert Louis Stevensons’s thrilling novel is reimagined as a gothic romance.”
