My husband, author Greg Leitich Smith, and I had the honor of speaking yesterday at Star-Lit: A Children’s Literary Festival benefitting the Dallas Bethlehem Center at the Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas.
Other featured authors and/or illustrators were: Newbery winner Christopher Paul Curtis; illustrator Tracy Dockray (originally from Lubbock,
The PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship of $5,000 is offered annually to a North American author of children’s or young-adult fiction. Eligible candidates are writers in financial need, who have published at least two books, and no more than five, during the past ten years, which have been warmly received by literary critics, but which have not generated sufficient income to support the author.
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Close Encounters of a Third-World Kind by Jennifer J. Stewart (Holiday House, 2004). From the catalog copy: “‘Think of it as an adventure,’ twelve-year-old Annie Ferris’s father tells her when he announces that the family will be spending the next two months in Nepal on a medical mission. But what sort of adventure is it if you have to leave behind your friends,
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Looking over the Best Books for Young Adults (BBYA) nominee list, I thought it might be a good time to review those books on the list that have been recommended (see title links) and/or whose authors were interviewed (see author links) on cynsations:
Prom by Laurie Halse Anderson (Viking, 2005);
Whales on Stilts by M.T.
Millicent Min, Girl Genius by Lisa Yee (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic, 2003). From the catalog copy: “Millicent Min is having a bad summer. It isn’t easy being a genius. But when she finally puts her mind to it, she realizes just what it will take to make her first friend.” Winner of the winner of the Sid Fleischman Award for Humor from SCBWI.
The 2006-2007 Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List has been announced by the Texas Library Association. I’d like to send out a particular congratulations to:
my fellow Vermont College faculty member Carolyn Coman, for The Big House, illustrated by Rob Shepperson (Front Street, 2004);
upcoming visiting Vermont College faculty member Deborah Wiles,
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Oliver’s Must-Do List by Susan Taylor Brown, illustrated by Mary Sullivan (Boyds Mills, 2005). From the flap copy: “All Oliver wants is for his mother to play with him. But when his mother checks her must-do list, she discovers there are too many things to do and no time for play. When her must-do list keeps filling up,
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Fly On The Wall by E. Lockhart (Delacorte, 2006). From the catalog copy: “At the Manhattan School for Art and Music, where everyone is “different” and everyone is “special,” Gretchen Yee feels ordinary. She’s the kind of girl who sits alone at lunch, drawing pictures of Spider-Man, so she won’t have to talk to anyone;
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The Boyfriend List (15 guys, 11 shrink appointments, 4 ceramic frogs and me, ruby oliver) by E. Lockhart (Delacorte, 2005)(Listening Library, 2005). Everybody’s dumped Ruby–her boyfriend, her best friend, and all of the rest of her friends. She’s a leper at Tate Prep and the subject of unflattering scribbles on the bathroom wall. After a few panic attacks,
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The Texas State Reading Association has announced the winners of the Golden Spur award in the children’s literature (K-3). Phoebe Clappsaddle and the Tumbleweed Gang by Melanie Chrismer of Houston (Pelican, 2004) won in the children’s literature (K-3) division, and Crown Me! by Kathryn Lay of Arlington (Holiday House, 2004) won in the intermediate division.