Nancy Stewart Books

A Joyful New Holiday Picture Book--The First Reindeer by Susan Barker

2018-11-02T15:59:00.003-04:00

It's getting to be that time of year again! Lights, jingling bells, gifts wrapped in enticing paper, grins, smiles, snow (real and imagined,) light hearts--and reindeer!

Enter Susan Barker, author of The First Reindeer. A scientist by profession, Susan has stepped out of her normal guise of environmental issues and all things scientific for young people and has created one of the most delightful holiday books around. Reindeer was published by Guardian Angel Publishing earlier this year. Whimsically illustrated by KC Snider, this book is a jewel to light up your holidays.

And as a precursor, it is always good to become acquainted with the author. Please meet Susan Barker!

NS How did you arrive at such an inventive idea for this book?

SB During my first SCBWI workshop, an editor from Scholastic said they were always in need of Christmas books. Knowing that kids love animals, I focused on that angle. Eventually, I came up with the idea of telling the ‘true’ story of how Santa got his reindeer.

NS Which character was the most fun to write? Tell us why.

Creating Santa was a lot of fun. I wanted readers to know Santa doesn’t act alone. It takes Mrs. Claus, elves, a faithful sled dog, and others to make Christmas happen. After rescuing a baby reindeer with a bad bump on his leg, Santa and Mrs. Claus for nurse Prancer (named for how he hops around favoring the sore leg) back to health. In appreciation, Prancer’s family saves Christmas by pulling Santa’s big new sleigh. I was pretty proud of dreaming up the Prancer name and leg connection and actually giggled about it. Not bad for a retired science teacher!

NS Do you plan on writing a sequel or perhaps a series around the book?

SB I’ve made notes for another Christmas story for older children. It focuses on the doing the right thing, even when a personal sacrifice is involved. Of course, things work out very well at the end.

NS You are a naturalist and an educator as well. What drew you to write such a whimsical children’s book?

SB I love seeing how excited kids get during the Christmas season. It takes me takes me back to the holiday magic of my own childhood. I looked forward to waking up Christmas morning, but also to a huge dinner with many aunts, uncles and cousins. Some of my most cherished memories are of those family gatherings. Also, and I can laugh about it now, I thought writing a children’s book would be easy. How wrong I was, as you and other authors know!

NS I know you have just completed a middle grade novel based on your family’s extended journey to resettle in the early days of this country. Tell us a bit about it.

SB I joined SCBWI ten years ago with the goal of writing nonfiction. When my critique group said publishers didn’t want nonfiction, I was shocked. From my years as an in-service trainer, I knew elementary teachers were begging for science books kids could read during free time. My group suggested that I write historical fiction and ‘throw’ in some science.Long story short, I selected 1816’s little-known ‘Year without Summer’ as a topic. It was also known as the ‘Starvation or Famine Year’ because killing frosts destroyed crops across New England. Ice floated in Pennsylvania ponds in July. July! These events helped trigger America’s first western migration and my family was part of it.

Their experience of travelling by wagon from Vermont to Ohio, where they built a keel-boat and continued to the Illinois Territory, served as the framework for Journey West. As for science? The unusually cold weather is linked to the explosion of Mt. Tambora, the most massive volcanic eruption in recorded history. Also, my main character is a bit of an innovator and an eyewitness to the industrial revolution. That allowed me add a realistic STEM thread to the story. By the time I finished, I had fallen in love with showing how history and science are so closely interwoven.

NS What is next on the drawing board for you?

A friend from my Southern Illinois Book Ends group, Louann Brown, and I just finished Hidden in Plain Sight: Illinois Petroglyphs and Pictographs for Kids. I am also planning a major re-write of my Earth Secrets manuscript. It features seven ideas, based on science laws, that enable the average YA reader to understand and prevent environment problems and avoid expensive clean-ups. The principles also undermine misinformation from the anti-climate change campaign.

Seeing The First Reindeer published is a true joy. Credit for it goes to many others, including you, Nancy, for critiquing it and for helping me grow as a writer. Thank you for the opportunity to share my experiences with your readers.

The First Reindeer may be purchased at Guardian Angel Publishing, Barnes & Nobel, and at PayLoadz.

Beulah Land-A Young Adult Novel by Nancy Stewart

2018-09-27T15:20:00.002-04:00

Violette Sinclair was always in my heart. She emerged almost fully-formed after the untimely death of my cousin Jill, who faced many obstacles as a lesbian teen. In weaving the narratives of these two powerful women’s lives together, I found they had a comparable tale to tell; one of torment, betrayal, and redemption.

I am speaking of my debut Young Adult novel, Beulah Land, published by Interlude Press, November 17, 2017. As the first year of publication nears, I'd like to revisit not only the book but the reasons why I wrote it.

Violette (Vi,) Sinclair, a seventeen-year-old young woman, calls the Missouri Ozarks home. It is where her family has lived for two-hundred years. But Vi wonders how long she will stay alive in her own hometown.

With help from her only friend, Junior, Vi unravels a mystery that puts her in conflict with a vicious tormentor, a dog fight syndicate, and her own mother. Vi's experience galvanizes her strength as she struggles to survive in a place where a person can wake up dead simply because of who she is.

It is my hope that readers find this book not only entertaining but uplifting, and hopeful. Violette is not a victim. She is victorious. But the journey from potential victim to victorious woman is harrowing and rife with many dangers.

The manuscript won First Place at the State of Florida Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators in 2015. The book, in pre-publishing, won two Five Star Awards (Foreword Reviews and NetGalley.)

Diversity: The Magic Word in Young Adult Novels

2018-02-28T09:43:00.002-05:00

“When I was growing up, I never saw a book cover or read a book about someone who looked like me.”

Renee Watson

This heartrending quote came from a good friend and colleague of mine several years ago. She is an African-American woman, an educator and published author. My friend now writes Young Adult novels that include healthy doses of diverse characters, and she feels fulfilled by doing so.

The tragedy, of course, is that it took so long coming. And the question is, why? One of the more obvious answers lies in the publishing houses. Publishers, in large part, have traditionally been white themselves. There was a widespread belief that diverse books would not be marketable, thus the profits would suffer. Finally, though, as with the impact of television in the 1950’s, the Internet came into its own. At about the same time, a third-wave feminist movement occurred, and a growing appreciation for the need of diverse young adult literature took root. Happily, today, with organizations such as We Need Diverse Books and Diversity in YA, the concept and use of diverse characters is much more fully etched in the writing landscape.

Nancy Stewart

Diverse novels such as The Skin I’m In by Sharon G. Flake and The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon, legitimize diversity. These books give the characters flesh and blood, and heart, and humanity, not to mention a voice from which the reader can learn and grow. And if the reader is diverse him/herself, that person can be much the richer for having read the book.

If ever there were a time for Young Adult books featuring diverse characters, it is now. The rising culture of nationalism, brought on in large part by shifting populations worldwide, is allowing and validating groups of hatemongers in the United States and across the globe. Literature in general, and Young Adult literature in particular, has the power to combat such dangerous philosophies.

The future appears brighter in the world of Young Adult Literature. Publishing houses are much more open to giving diverse authors and their books the chance to be read. Librarians are buying the books needed by and for diverse populations. And teachers are recommending and reading these books to their classes. Diversity is truly the magic word in Young Adult novels.

Better Literacy? An Age-Old Question

2018-01-29T09:50:00.000-05:00

As parents and educators, we ask ourselves the question throughout our adult lives. And if we had literacy problems as kids, we were highly aware of the problem but probably couldn’t put a name to it.

When I was a new teacher of young children, my emphasis was on the how-to part of the reading process. It was more prescriptive driven than holistic. By that I mean, my aim was to make sure my students could technically read, and I taught them the way I was schooled to do it. And mercifully, most of them achieved.

But as I grew older and became a parent, a paradigm shift occurred within me. Teaching reading is not only a technical thing. What I was neglecting was the heart of the matter. Literacy is about love. Love of the printed word. Wonder at what happens when one opens a book. Anticipation at what lies ahead. How can we achieve that magic today?

Modeling the love of reading to our young ones is the most powerful emotional literacy tool we have. It’s good to have a group of age appropriate books readily available. Try to locate them in a place of importance, by a sofa in the family room, in the bedroom or the kitchen. That pivotal placement will rub off on the kids!

When I taught pre-service teachers in university, I emphasized the practice of reading the room. Do the same for your young ones. Label their belongings, not just in their rooms but all over the house. Alphabet magnets are wonderful, particularly at their reaching level. Make your home one of written words. The safety children (should) find there, coupled with the richness of words wherever they look will do wonders for making reading a skill, a skill that exudes warmth and coziness. No room for failure in such an environment.

Let’s not forget the tools for writing and drawing. Manipulating crayons, pencils and waterproof markers is crucial in learning to hold the tool properly. Those squiggles soon turn into primitive letters which lead to the magic of words. Their imaginations and creativity will take over, leading the way to literacy.

Nancy Stewart reading to class during Author Time

Be a teller of stories. Nothing fascinates a child more than hearing their adult loved one talk about a time when s/he was not there. Or a world the story teller is spinning. Or an animal that talks. Or…whatever. Listening is part of literacy, and listening to a person they love and respect is the cherry on top!

These are but a few suggestions for turning your child’s fertile mind into a blooming garden. It’s so easy, so nurturing, so crucial. If we can put more importance on the love of all things literacy as we do on video games, and television, our children will be the winners. And we will have been the ones to take them to such achievements. That, of course, is the best gift we as caregivers and teachers can give to any youngster. It will change their lives forever.

Belleville Native’s Debut YA Novel was Sparked by Cousin’s Death

2018-01-05T10:14:00.001-05:00

My Young adult novel, Beulah Land was published by Interlude Press November 2017. I am publishing the review from my hometown newspaper, the Belleville News Democrat (Belleville, IL.) I am grateful to Caitlin Lally, for the lovely review:

A new, young adult fiction book set in the Missouri Ozarks just hit store shelves, and award-winning author Nancy Rosenthal Stewart, a Belleville native, said she drew inspiration from her environment and her own life situations.

“All of us as human beings are just an amalgam of experiences — that’s all we are. Experiences really define who we are, I think, and who we become,” Stewart said.

For Stewart, growing up alongside her cousin and visiting Lake Taneycomo every summer were the experiences that sparked her first novel “Beulah Land,” which was released in November. The book revolves around the life of 17-year-old girl Violette Sinclair, whose family has lived in the Ozarks for 200 years.

“Most summers, my family and I would spend a week or so in the Ozarks, and I just grew to love it. It’s just a wonderful — a bit rugged — place, but beautiful to visit,” Stewart said. “It really made a bigger impression on me than I thought it did at the time.”

Stewart said Violette’s character was influenced by the life of her late cousin, Jill. “My cousin was gay, and she had a very hard time growing up because ... part of the family simply did not accept her.”

Stewart said she began writing the story after her cousin died three years ago. “At her celebration of life party, the novel ‘Beulah Land’ came to me basically fully formed, it was like a Rubik’s Cube — ch, ch, ch, ch, ch — and there it was.”

According to Stewart, the main character needed to be placed in a difficult environment, and for Violette, that would be the rural Ozarks. “Authors always put their protagonist — hero or heroine — in the hardest place possible (to) give them so many things to overcome. So the Ozarks for a girl who is gay, that’s where she had to go.”

However, both the author and editor said Violette’s sexuality is not the main focus of the story.

“Though Violette Sinclair is definitely facing adversity due to her orientation … that’s not the point of what she’s trying to solve in this book,” Annie Harper, executive editor of Interlude Press, said. “What she’s trying to do is solve a mystery to save her family.”

“Vi, at the end of the day, is a wonderful, courageous human being, who just happens to be gay — it’s just one little facet of her life. The rest of her life is so much more,” Stewart said.

A publisher of LGBTQ fiction, Interlude Press has a young adult offshoot called Duet Books, through which “Beulah Land” was produced. Harper said it was important to publish the novel because of what the main character represents.

“She doesn’t just survive — she triumphs,” Harper said. “We don’t have enough stories about girls and women driving the story, driving the action, solving the problem, you know, without necessarily relying on someone else to do it for them.”

Stewart said she caught the attention of publishers after “Beulah Land” won an award in 2015 for being the top book in the state of Florida, where she currently resides. “Believe me, no one was more surprised than I was,” Stewart said.

While some may avoid the young adult section of the bookstore for one reason or another, Stewart said this narrative is not just for teen readers.

“The most important people to read it, I think, would be young people who are just learning about themselves; young people who are conflicted, perhaps, about their sexuality, but having said that, I would really like for their parents to read it, too,” Stewart said. “I really think it is a book for all people because it doesn’t just only deal with a gay girl — it deals with truth, and it deals with honesty, and it deals with valor.”

About the author

Just as Violette’s family roots run deep, so do Stewart’s. She said her family has lived in the Belleville area for nearly 100 years.

“I’m so fortunate to have grown up in the Midwest, with Midwestern values. I think that Belleville was a great place to grow up,” Stewart said. “I know that smaller communities sometimes get a bad rap, but I don’t feel that way. Belleville will always have a very warm spot in my heart.”

An alumna of Washington University in St. Louis, Stewart went into education and found herself at McKendree Universityteaching children’s and young adult literature when she began to consider writing as a career.

“During those years, I began to toy with the idea of writing, and over about a four- or five-year period it just became clear to me that I wanted to write.”

Stewart has published five children’s books in addition to “Beulah Land.”

Retail price for “Beulah Land” is $15.99. This and other books by Stewart can be purchased on Amazon, at www.nancystewartbooks.com or at Barnes & Noble.

Process-The Crux of Reading Young Adult Novels

2017-12-19T13:49:00.000-05:00

The process of reading Young Adult books usually begins around the age of fourteen, when the Middle Grade phase of reading books for pleasure and/or in the curriculum wanes. Young Adult novels sparkle and shine for the older, more mature reader. Let the magic begin!

Young Adult novels can be found in many guises. From fantasy to dystopia to romance to historical fiction to…the sky, as someone said, is the limit. And perhaps even that is not the limit anymore with all the space opera options swirling around the reader.

A teenager, of course, should be the protagonist and preferably the antagonist as well. Adults are certainly welcome within the pages but should only be supporting characters and happily can be villains (as many adults seem to be villains within a teen’s real life.)

The most important part of a Young Adult novel is this: The teenager/s should act like teens! And this is where the process becomes important, because growing up is just that. For the impressionable teen to mature, for new concepts and values to light up his/her brain, the truth must shine through. Of course, that truth can be dark, hurtful, even sinister. But truth must be there, on the page, in the very sinew and soul of the book. If it isn’t, the work will be a sham. It will be false and clearly a danger to the reader, who by virtue of his/her youth, is beyond vulnerable to what s/he reads.

My debut Young Adult novel, Beulah Land, tells the story of a seventeen-year-old girl who lives in the Missouri Ozarks. Part of the book deals with dark, hurtful, and sinister events. The protagonist, Violette Sinclair, is smart, and strong-minded, and gay. She and her best friend, Junior McKenna, navigate treacherous territory in the form of a dog fight ring, a corrupt sheriff, and Vi’s mother, who harbors dark and sinister secrets.

A coming-of-age story, it is my great hope that Beulah Land will not only sparkle and shine for the reader but will give insight, courage, and above all, integrity to all who read the book. And, of course, viva to the process. Once more, let the magic begin!

Beulah Land: Young Adult Novel by Nancy Stewart

2017-10-13T13:48:00.001-04:00

How does a seventeen-year-old gay girl survive life in the Missouri Ozarks, where every day can be a threat to her existence? My debut Young Adult novel, Beulah Land, tells that very story.

Violette Sinclair, a smart, ambitious young woman, wants to be a veterinarian like her boss, Claire Campbell. She plans to leave raw and threatening Bucktown, Missouri as soon as possible and never come back.

Her only friend is Junior McKenna, the local high school football star. Together, they begin a saga that leads them through their rural world of family feuds, dog-fighting, and the very real threat of Vi's being murdered. This is a place where someone who doesn't fit in could wake up dead.

Vi and Junior decide to do whatever it takes to rid Bucktown of Dale Woodbine. The tale takes the two on a journey of self-awareness, and personal growth, and ultimately, of redemption.

This book, in a real way, took me on a journey as well. It began after the death of a much-loved cousin who died too soon from a rare cancer. Although the book is fiction, there are threads of a family story woven throughout the pages.

My cousin was a lesbian and as such, was made to feel unworthy by some people in general and a few family members in particular, including her mother. At Jill's Celebration of Life party, the novel came to me almost fully formed. I began writing it the minute I returned home.

The book, in many ways, was cathartic to write. It led me down a winding path of childhood, through warrens of memories that I had not visited in many years. In doing so, I was able to see the past that had eluded me, and writing it brought it into sharp focus.

My wish from my heart to yours is that you enjoy the book and, if you pick up a piece of wisdom here and there, so much the better. Happy reading!

How “The Snowy Day” Became an Evergreen Illustration on Diversity

2017-09-25T13:37:00.001-04:00

Ezra Jack Keats’s The Snowy Day was published in 1962. As a book with an African-American protagonist, publishers had considered stories like his part of a niche market. Peter, the small Brooklyn boy who was the hero of Keats’s tale, defied those expectations, and the book went on to become a bestseller nationwide.

In 1963, Keats was awarded the Caldecott Medal for the year’s “most distinguished” American children’s book. Even now, 55 years later, The Snowy Day continues to resonate. In September of this year, the U.S. Postal Service announced that Peter—sporting his signature bright-red snowsuit—will appear on the next round of Forever Stamps.

Long before he found his way onto a stamp, however, Peter was a boy who was featured in a series of snapshots in a 1940 issue of Life magazine. Keats, then in his mid-twenties, was so struck by the sweet face of the unnamed, African-American child that he cut out the photo essay and held onto it. The magazine clipping stayed with him during jobs as a background illustrator for Captain Marvel comics and, later, designing camouflage patterns while in the Army.

Keats moved from Paris to his native New York in 1949, where he established a career as a commercial illustrator for the likes of Reader’s Digest and the New York Times Book Review. And then, almost two decades after he’d first seen the photographs in Life, he dug up the clipping when he was invited to write and illustrate his own children’s book. He set about building a world around that little boy, and used collage for the very first time.

The result was a near-universal tale of a young child’s day spent wandering through his neighborhood, freshly blanketed in snow. Peter crunches through the powder, leaving trails of footprints. He flops onto the ground to make snow angels. And, as he’s heading home, he stores a snowball in his pocket to save for later (only to find hours after that, mysteriously, it has vanished).

Although the Jewish-American, Keats was no stranger to discrimination—born Jacob Ezra Katz, some say he changed his name to avoid rampant anti-Semitism—he was white. In an essay in the Saturday Review, one writer criticized Peter’s mother for her resemblance to the stereotypical “mammy” figure.

But according to Deborah Pope, the executive director of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, Keats had never intended for the book to be an explicit political statement. “None of the manuscripts I’d been illustrating featured any black kids—except for token blacks in the background,” Keats wrote in an unpublished autobiography. “My book would have him there simply because he should have been there all along.”

Despite the criticism, many were enchanted by the story—including Langston Hughes, who sent Keats a fan letter soon after the book was published. Another note, Pope said, came from a teacher who explained that the African-American children in her class were using brown crayons to draw themselves for the first time. “Before that, they used pink crayons,” Pope said. “But Ezra’s book helped them to see themselves.”

Peter continued to appear in Keats’s later books. Readers have watched him grow up: learn to whistle, welcome a baby sister to the family, even navigate a budding relationship with a girl. And Keats’s inspiration—the boy from Life magazine—remained with the author throughout his life.
“To this very day I still have him,” he wrote, “and look at that wonderful kid whom I had discovered over forty years ago.”

The Syrian Refugee Crisis through Authors' Eyes

2017-08-19T12:03:00.000-04:00

The Syrian Crisis is a human disaster of epic proportions. And, of course, the effect on children is beyond egregious. It has caused some authors to take on the subject for young readers. Their stories, for he most part, are fiction and highlight the conflict for middle and high school students.

Some of the books address the Islamic State and the ongoing wars between the Shias and Sunnis. The protagonist feature young Muslim refugees and their plight in coping with a war-torn environment.

I have chosen two books to highlight:

Refugee, Alan Gratz’s middle-grade novel focuses on a 12-year-old boy named Mahmoud Bishara. He and his family flee the violence in Aleppo after his family’s home is destroyed. They have to contend with smugglers and militants as his family charts a treacherous course through Turkey and across the Mediterranean to Europe. His younger brother, Waleed — based on Omran Daqneesh, the Syrian boy whose shell-shocked photo was seen around the world after the bombing — is too traumatized to even cry.

Suzanne Del Rizzo’s picture book My Beautiful Birds is based on an article she read about a Syrian boy living in Jordan in the Zaatari refugee camp. He tamed wild birds. In her book, Sami is a boy who trains pigeons and must leave his birds behind when his family evacuates from their home in Syria and walks to a refugee camp in Jordan. There, he finds solace in caring for wild birds.

Carrie Gelson, an elementary school teacher in Vancouver, read My Beautiful Birds to her class. One student in particular, Nour Alahmad Almahmoud, a 12-year-old Syrian girl whose family came to Canada from a refugee camp in Jordan in late 2015. When the book was read to her, she became overwhelmed and ran outside in tears. In a Skye interview, she said:

I cried because it’s like this book makes me remember everything. I felt like this family in the book is my family.

We, as fellow citizens of this small planet, must care for one another, be respectful of others' differences as well as similarities, and remember that we are on this journey together. Only then can we achieve peace in this world.

New Maurice Sendak Children's Book Discovered

2017-07-27T07:27:00.001-04:00

What a lovely surprise for fans of Maurice Sendak!

Lynn Caponera, president of the Maurice Sendak Foundation, was going through the late artist’s files last year “to see what could be discarded,” she said. “I was asking myself, do we really need all these?” when she found a typewritten manuscript titled Presto and Zesto in Limboland, co-authored by Sendak and his frequent collaborator, Arthur Yorinks.

Caponera, who managed Sendak’s household for decades, didn’t remember the two friends working on a text with that title, so she scanned the manuscript and e-mailed it to Michael di Capua, Sendak’s longtime editor and publisher. Of the newly discovered book, he said:

I read it in disbelief. What a miracle to find this buried treasure in the archives. To think something as good as this has been lying around there gathering dust.

Sendak, considered by many to be the most influential picture book creator of the 20th century, will have another publication in the 21st, five years after his death. PW has the exclusive news that Michael di Capua Books/HarperCollins plans to publish Presto and Zesto in Limboland in fall 2018.

This will be the third book collaboration for Yorinks and Sendak, following The Miami Giant (1995) and Mommy? (2006), which were both also edited by di Capua. In addition to their publishing collaborations, the longtime friends also co-founded the Night Kitchen Theater. The title of the new book references an inside joke between them.

New book Coming from "Goodnight Moon" author, Margaret Wise Brown

2017-07-08T15:08:00.000-04:00

In October, 2017, there will be Good Day, Good Night, a previously unpublished book by Margaret Wise Brown.

It consists of two fragments written in 1950 and put away after Brown’s sudden death two years later, then combined by an editor a few years ago. HarperCollins Children’s Books will publish it with original art by the author-illustrator, Loren Long.

Good Day, Good Night is not a sequel to Goodnight Moon, which did not sell well during Brown’s lifetime, finding its extraordinary success only years later.

While Goodnight Moon takes place inside a house on a single evening, the new story follows its young-bunny protagonist as he wakes up, goes outside and greets numerous things, then heads back home and bids it all good night.

Good Day, Good Night began in a 1950 letter from Brown to one of her editors that Amy Gary, who wrote a biography of Brown, came across several years ago at the Westerly library. In it, Brown describes plans for a book in which, Ms. Gary said, “the child goes to sleep with the same things they wake up with.” Reading the letter, she continued, enabled her to see the connection between what had seemed to be two separate manuscripts — one about waking and one about going to sleep — in the trunk.

Margaret Wise Brown

Putting the two parts together required her to do some editing, Ms. Gary said, while keeping in mind Brown’s possible intentions and “trying to remain as true as we could to what she wanted it to be.” As for the title, “I worked with Margaret’s notes and the manuscript to develop” it, she said.

What will you think of the new book, Dear Reader? Will it live up to Goodnight Moon? Only time and the reader will judge that. A few moons from now will more than tell the story!

Dear Reader, Love, Author Blog Post

2017-06-05T16:08:00.000-04:00

I have posted my letter to the Dear Reader, Love, Author Blog. Hope you enjoy it!

Dear Reader,

Have you ever walked along a beach somewhere on this glorious planet and found instant inspiration, an epiphany of sorts? Well, that is exactly what happened to me one glorious December day seven years ago on Clearwater Beach, Florida. Right out of the blue, as it were. Here’s what happened: Strolling along on wet sand, I came across the outline of a heart. But what was written inside stopped mine. Only one word. Bella. It became completely clear that I write a book about a beach girl called Bella. And from that bolt of insight, Bella was born.

As sometimes happens, an almost simultaneous incident occurred; this time a terrible one: The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010. The entire world was inundated with wrenching photos of once blue water slicked over by deadly oil, birds drenched and weighted down with the deadly stuff, and BP executives spewing invectives about how it was not their fault. And something snapped in me. I sat down and wrote One Pelican at a Time: A Story of the Gulf Oil Spill. Not only was Bella the protagonist. Her best friend Britt joined her in the effort. And that book began the Bella and Britt beach series.

My newest offering, Mystery at Manatee Key, is the fourth in the series and features Britt front and center. It is she alone who must rescue Bella and the ranger from a ring of manatee smugglers. By now, the series reader is familiar with the ranger, who is warm-hearted and loves all things beachy. Dwayne Smarr is the bad guy and Britt’s nemesis throughout much of the book. He is so bad that he’s fun to love to hate. With kids, black and white rules, and Dwayne has no shades of gray!

Throughout the series, I have tried to infuse a love of and respect for nature and Mother Earth, the only home we humans have at this point in our galaxy. Without being preachy, it is my hope that in reading the books, children will find a fun story, interesting facts, and a love of learning interwoven throughout the pages. If all that occurs, I’ve been a successful author and have done my intended job.

Celebrate Children's Book Week May 1-7

2017-04-27T18:30:00.000-04:00

Children’s Book Week began in 1913. Franklin K. Matthiews, the librarian of the Boy Scouts of America, began touring the country to promote higher standards in children’s books. He proposed creating a Children’s Book Week, which would be supported by all interested groups: publishers, booksellers, and librarians.

Mathiews enlisted two important allies: Frederic G. Melcher, editor of Publishers Weekly who believed that “a great nation is a reading nation,” and Anne Carroll Moore, the Superintendent of Children’s Works at the New York Public Library and a major figure in the library world. With the help of Melcher and Moore, in 1916, the American Booksellers Association and the American Library Association sponsored a Good Book Week with the Boy Scouts of America.

In 1944, the newly-established Children’s Book Council assumed responsibility for administering Children’s Book Week. In 2008, Children’s Book Week moved from November to May. At that time, the administration of Children’s Book Week, including planning official events and creating original materials, was transferred to Every Child a Reader, CBC’s charitable arm.

This year, the 98th celebration of Children’s Book Week, will feature an increased number of events, reformatted Children’s Choice Book Awards, an enhanced online presence, and additional promotional materials available to participating bookstores, schools, and libraries.

Celebrate this special week by reading a new or favorite book to your young readers. When this is done, everybody wins!

Roald Dahl's "Billy and the Minpins" to Have New Illustrations

2017-03-06T14:17:00.002-05:00

Re-titled to reflect Roald Dahl’s original name for the book, Billy and the Minpins (1991) is the first time Quentin Blake has illustrated a new Roald Dahl hero in nearly 20 years. This new title celebrates Billy as the quintessential Roald Dahl child hero.

Billy and the Minpins is the story of heroic Billy who saves the Minpins, tiny tree-dwelling people whose children are the size of matchsticks, from the fearsome Gruncher.

It explores themes seen in many of Roald Dahl’s other much-loved children’s novels including; small people living in a big world; the glory of flight; confronting demons; and, most importantly, the child hero. In Billy and the Minpins, readers will experience again the magical collaboration between Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake through a brand-new interpretation of Roald’s parting gift.

The Minpins was originally illustrated by Patrick Benson. This edition is still in print today and will sit alongside the new black-and-white edition, Billy and the Minpins.

Quentin Blake said:

I was delighted to be asked to illustrate Roald’s Billy and the Minpins; it feels like the cornerstone in our long collaboration together. As Roald's parting gift, Patrick Benson's illustrations in the original edition were perfectly suited to the lyrical feel of The Minpins. I have always greatly admired Patrick's artwork and am so pleased both books will sit alongside each other, reaching fans of all ages. This new edition has nearly fifty pages of black-and-white drawings, which means I can enjoy myself tremendously going into all the details of Billy’s exploits and adventures with the Minpins in the mysterious forest!

So, for all you Roald Dahl fans out there, look for this new-illustrated book. Have fun!

A Mark Twain Bedtime Story to be Published Soon

2017-02-10T16:14:00.000-05:00

A bedtime story Mark Twain told his daughters in 1879 — never published before — will be released this fall as a children’s book.

The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine is an 11-chapter, 152-page illustrated storybook “for all ages” with a first printing of 250,000 copies. The “unfinished” story is being completed by author Philip Stead and illustrator Erin Stead and will be published Sept. 26 by Doubleday Books for Young Readers, the publisher announced Friday.

The basis for the book is 16 pages of handwritten notes Twain made after he told his young daughters a fairy tale one night while the family was staying in Paris.

The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine, according to the publisher, “follows a young boy who eats the flower sprouted by a magical seed and gains the ability to talk to animals. From there, the boy and his new animal friends go off on a wild adventure to rescue a kidnapped prince.”

The fragmented tale by the author of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was discovered in 2011 by visiting scholar John Bird at the Mark Twain Papers & Project at the University of California, Berkley.

Philip and Erin Stead, who are married, won the 2011 Caldecott Medal for their children's book A Sick Day for Amos McGee.

They have framed the Prince tale as “told to me by my friend, Mr. Mark Twain,” and include occasional interruptions by an imagined meeting over tea between Philip and Twain, according to a news release.

A New Children's Book About Transgenderism Will Be Taught in U.K. Primary Schools

2017-01-04T17:29:00.000-05:00

A taxpayer-funded book about transgenderism is about to be introduced in schools in the United Kingdom to children as young as seven, provoking significant controversy. The book — Can I Tell You About Gender Diversity? — focuses on a 12-year-old who is transitioning from a girl to a boy through drugs. Critics contend the book not only will confuse its young audiences but advocates medical interventions that are harmful.

The book begins:

My name is Kit and I’m 12 years old. I live in a house with my mum and dad, and our dog, Pickle. When I was born, the doctors told my mum and dad that they had a baby girl, and so for the first few years of my life that’s how my parents raised me. This is called being assigned female at birth. I wasn’t ever very happy that way.

Kit begins to use puberty-blocking drugs to undergo a sex change in the book and “stop my body developing in ways that make me unhappy.”

According to the book’s publisher, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, the book’s intent is to “explain medical transitioning for children aged seven and above.”

The book’s author, CJ Atkinson, told The Guardian that Kit’s transition includes wearing boys’ clothes, using male pronouns, and changing the birth certificate to read Christopher instead of Kit.

This is a brave book that is helping change minds and hearts about transgender children. It is my hope that you will support this book and its message.

Young Adult Novel, Beulah Land Coming from Interlude Press, Fall of 2017

2016-12-13T06:54:00.000-05:00

Please forgive me for posting some news dear to my heart! My Young Adult LGBTQ novel Beulah Land is to be published by Duet Books, an imprint of Interlude Press in the autumn of 2017. I am so delighted to be associated with this august and award-winning publishing house. I know it is a fitting place for my book to have found a home.

Annie Harper, one of the founders of Interlude Press, said she has for years recognized the need for fiction that the teen LGBTQ audience can relate to, yet emphasized the universal appeal of Duet titles. “Like all young adults, characters in YA books are discovering who they are and trying to find the courage to show themselves to the world."

Duet’s name is a play on Interlude Press’s musical connotation and, Harper explained, “also implies a little bit of innocence, as well as the love story theme. But that said,” she added, “we are putting out love stories that have an additional dimension to them. We are focusing on stories where romance serves as a catalyst for characters to discover who they are and show their authentic selves.

Beulah Land, according to the publishing house is the story of:

A courageous teenager fights for social justice, survival, and self-defining truth in the forbidding Missouri Ozarks

It is my hope the book will speak not only to teens but to all people who seek to find truth in their lives and about the world.

Fun and Enlightening Picture Book: Preaching to the Chickens

2016-11-22T11:12:00.001-05:00

Congressman John Lewis, famed civil rights worker, used to preach to his 60 farmyard chickens. He felt this was a good way to sharpen his speaking skills. He loved his chickens, knew each by name, and protected them from those who wanted to trade for them, rescued them when they fell into the well, and even once brought a nearly drowned chick back to life.

Bringing a message of peace when the chickens fought over food, John earned the nickname “Preacher” from his siblings. Illustrator Lewis’ signature watercolors paint a lively picture of John Lewis’ life growing up on a farm with a close and hardworking Christian family. The beautifully illustrated chickens and the love John shows them will warm readers' hearts.

Given the seriousness of what Lewis faced on the march from Selma to Montgomery and the gravity of the issues he has dealt with throughout his career, this joy-inducing back story reveals an entertaining facet to the congressman’s life that young readers will appreciate.

Have a look at this marvelous book for kids. You and they won't regret it!

How Diverse is Children's Literature? Have a Look at this Infographic

2016-10-12T15:00:00.001-04:00

This is such an important topic that I decided to post the following article in its entirety:

You hear about it so often these days that you just might wonder: How diverse is children's literature, really? The numbers have been improving slowly, but they remain far from true representation. Now, a new, shareable infographic has the numbers you need to talk about diversity in kidlit, and — admittedly — the outlook is pretty grim.

Adek Berry (AFP Getty Images)

Since 1985, the University of Wisconsin - Madison's Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) has compiled data on diversity in children's book publishing. For the first few years, the CCBC concerned itself only with those books that were written or illustrated by black authors. In 1994, researchers "began also keeping track of the numbers of books by Asian/Pacific and Asian/Pacific American, First/Native Nation and Latino book creators," as well as those books written about people of color by authors of any race.

Several years ago, children's book illustrator Tina Kügler created a widely circulated infographic, "Diversity in Children's Books 2012," which used then-current data from the CCBC. At the time, 93 percent of children's books were about white or non-human characters*.

Although the numbers have changed in the years since Kügler first published her illustration, it has remained in use. In response to St. Catherine University professor Sarah Park Dahlen's request for information on an updated version, a chain reaction led to illustrator David Huyck's involvement. Huyck created a new infographic on diversity in children's literature, and released it under a Creative Commons license.

The good news is that children's literature is roughly twice as diverse now as it was in 2012. The number of white and non-human characters is down to 85.8 percent. Representation for black characters has more than doubled, while Latinx, Asian, and Pacific Islander characters are also showing huge gains over their 2012 numbers. Unfortunately, the numbers are still low across the board, and Native American and First Nations characters continue to make up less than 1 percent of children's book characters. Books about people of color only barely outpace those about animals, trucks, and other non-human characters.

No wonder Marley Dias got tired of reading about white boys and dogs.
We need diverse books, so that children grow up seeing themselves reflected in the stories they read. White children have no problem locating books about people who look like them, but children of color do not have that luxury. Although 37 percent of people in the U.S. are not white, only 10 percent of children's books published since 1994 "contain[ed] multicultural content," according to Lee & Low Books.

Although children's book publishing appears to be slowly growing more diverse, it remains to be seen whether the trend toward inclusive content will continue in this matter. Gains in representation can be lost just as quickly as they were made, as this year's Man Booker Prize shortlist shows.
So buy diverse books. Talk to your local librarian about creating a more inclusive selection. Pursue the stories of people from marginalized communities, and support the storytellers. Do your part, and we can make sure every kid has a representative bookshelf.

*The exact percentage of books about non-human characters is not accounted for on Kügler's infographic, but it is a distinct category on David Huyck's image.
Image: David Huyck/Dropbox

From the Grave: Spooktacular New Middle Grade Novel by Cynthia Reeg

2016-09-09T02:57:00.001-04:00

Frankenstein Frightface Gordon is not your typical sixth-grade monster. In fact, in Uggerland, where goblins and myriad other scary beings thrive, Frank is a monster of a different color. Blue, actually, not the sickly green shade coveted by his kind.

Frankly, Frank is a monster who likes order, not chaos, clean and tidy clothes, not fashion conjured up to frighten folks to death, and worst of all, being kind, not bullying other monsters. Oh, my. This will never do!

The problem is, of course, Frank does not fit into the Uggerland mold; he just isn't "one of us." When a law is passed to get rid of misfits such as Frank, he must do something about it. But what? Seems as if he has to prove his monster mettle, and he does.

Cynthia Reeg

The language and puns peppered throughout the book will tickle any middle grader's heart. Gems such as: Monster Up, Snotfargle, Picklepuss, to name just a few, set the tone of a book sure to please kids of this age.

From the Grave is a funny and fresh approach to a monster story. Cynthia Reeg has created a lovable young monster who is kind, considerate, and really does not like bullies. Great growing up lessons for kids with no preaching can be found within the pages of this well-written and timely.

Ms. Reeg lives in St. Louis, MO and is a former librarian. She doesn't remember a time when writing was not important to her, and it shows!

Five spookily designed T-shirts in child sizes!

Simply preorder FROM THE GRAVE and send a digital receipt copy/photo to: publicity@jollyfishpress.com

The links for placing your order:

Jolly Fish Press

www.jollyfishpress.com

Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Grave-Monster-Die-Cynthia-Reeg/dp/1631630946/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464812082&sr=1-1&keywords=cynthia+reeg

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/from-the-grave-cynthia-reeg/1123528610?ean=9781631630941

Books A Million

http://www.booksamillion.com/search?id=6715996410984&query=from+the+grave+by+cynthia+reeg&where=Books

Indiebound

http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781631630941

Indie Store Finder

Powell’s

http://www.powells.com/book/from-the-grave-9781631630941

The GiveAway ends September 23

How Do Children of Color Feel About Prejudice? Books that help Explain!

2016-08-19T09:35:00.002-04:00

How can white kids comprehend what children of color go through every day in a divided society? Having that all important conversation of racism with people not you is difficult but important. One of the answers, of course, can be found in the pages of kids' books. Below are a few that just might break a barrier or two, leading to better understanding all around.

Patricia Polacco's Pink and Say is a timeless story based around the Civil War that details a story of a black family who put their life in danger to care for a young white boy who was wounded. Great for taking a small look into racism, Polacco's book will help your children see just how dangerous it was to be caring as a person of color.

The Jacket by Andrew Clements tells a story that many children of color have experienced with being accused of something negative based off of their skin color. Delivering a walk into a well-needed learning opportunity, The Jacket is a great book for showing children the ugly truth about prejudice.

Under the Same Sky tells a perfect story of white privilege and entitlement when 14-year-old Joe Pedersen is forced to work on his father's farm with the hired Mexican laborers. An important story on racism and truth, Cynthia DeFelice's look into how those that are different than us is well needed within today's youth.

Jacqueline Woodson's The Other Side is a story of a friendship not held by the restraints of color and displays a very realistic lesson on how racism is taught to the youth. A brown girl named Clover and a white girl named Anna are divided by their town's segregation fence. They sit together on top of the fence and become friends.

There are so many fine examples of books similar to these that will enlighten all kids of middle years. Have a look for yourself. Better yet, take that callow-aged kid with you, and grow together!

One Kid’s Book for Every 830 Children in DC Neighborhood of Anacostia

2016-07-15T15:53:00.001-04:00

For children, the high-poverty D.C. neighborhood of Anacostia is a book desert. According to a new study from NYU researchers on the availability of children’s books in low-income neighborhoods in several U.S. cities, only one age-appropriate book is available for every 830 children there. Anacostia isn’t alone.

(John Spaulding/AP Images for JetBlue’s Soar with Reading Program)

In neighborhoods lacking book stores — which many low-income neighborhoods, increasingly segregated, do — access is limited. A 2001 study found that in middle-income neighborhoods, 13 books were available to purchase for every child, while in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, only one book was available for every 300 children.

The recent NYU study, published in the journal Urban Education, compares the availability of children’s books in one high-poverty neighborhood and one “borderline” neighborhood in six U.S. cities. In D.C., Detroit and Los Angeles, they surveyed one neighborhood with a poverty rate of 40 percent or above and another with a poverty rate between 18 and 40 percent. Researchers went street to street in each neighborhood, counting the number and types of print resources available for purchase, from books to magazines to newspapers. In total, they counted 82,389 resources in 75 stores. In three of the six neighborhoods, they found no bookstores at all. Dollar stores were the most common place to buy children’s books.

In each city, researchers found that the borderline communities had on average 16 times more books per child than the high-poverty neighborhoods in the same city. D.C. had the largest divide: In Anacostia, 830 children would need to share a book, while only two would share in Capitol Hill. In Detroit, 42 children in Hamtramck would need to share a book; eleven would in the borderline University District.

“Children’s books are hard to come by in high-poverty neighborhoods. These ‘book deserts’ may seriously constrain young children’s opportunities to come to school ready to learn,” said Susan B. Neuman, professor of childhood and literacy education at NYU Steinhardt and the study’s lead author. “Without resources, school readiness skills accumulated throughout the year are likely to drop precipitously during the summer. This ‘summer slide’ is a serious issue for children in poor and borderline communities, and having limited access to books may have serious consequences.”

JetBlue funded the NYU study. The NYC-headquartered airline has funneled $1.75 million in book donations to kids in many U.S. cities through its “Soar with Reading” initiative. Last year, the program introduced (free) book vending machines to Anacostia and dispensed 27,000 books. The vending project started its second year at the beginning of July.

An Abandoned Walmart No More!

2016-06-29T09:38:00.002-04:00

Just an abandoned Walmart, right? Not anymore. Because of some civic forethought, it is now a bright and airy library in McAllen Texas.

City officials decided that they weren’t going to let a perfectly good abandoned Walmart location go to waste. Rather than let nearly 2.5 football fields of space rot and decay, they decided to transform it into something useful and amazing.

It has now become the largest single-floor public library in the United States of America at 124,500 square feet.

Visit this beautiful library and you’ll get to partake of a full computer lab, 16 public meeting spaces, 14 study rooms, and two genealogy research computer stations.

Cicero once said, “If you have a library and a garden, you have everything you need.” Hence, it can be said that the town of McAllen, Texas has everything it needs.

According to the library directors, new user registration increased by an impressive 23 percent.
What was once a warehouse filled with numerous items humanity never really needed in the first place, now it is filled with a purpose far greater.

Non-Fiction and Ethics

2016-06-17T17:04:00.000-04:00

Perhaps you would like to write a non-fiction book? You are in plentiful company. Each year nearly 300,000 books are published in the US. About four out of five are non-fiction!

While there are lots of non-fiction books out there to keep yours company, there are some potential pitfalls associated with the genre. Let’s discuss that.

We all know non-fiction is just that—something that must be truthful, not concocted from our imaginations as with fiction. Not only, however, does it have to be the truth, we as authors have to do due diligence to make it that way. Simply put, we must hold ourselves to the highest standard to ensure the content of our work is true and accurate to the best of our ability. Yes, it’s exactly what lawyers are expected to do, and is, in fact, a legal term.

So how do we achieve this high-minded standard and not get sued for all our efforts, which is the end game of this post. Here are a few guideposts:

1. If you’re not sure of your source/s be sure to investigate their credentials, making certain they are qualified and are who they say they are.

2. Obtain confirmation from unrelated sources to support what your primary sources provided. (More research on your part but necessary and well worth the effort.)

3. Whenever possible, try to get confirmation from secondary sources what you learned from your primary sources.

4. When depending on your memory or personal experiences, secure independent corroboration. *Crucial in narrative non-fiction.

5. If something does not seem correct, even though the source is trustworthy, satisfy whatever doubts you have about the veracity of the material. Trust your instincts.

6. Try to avoid relying upon only one eyewitness account or what only one person remembers. Two or more can make all the difference!

Let me end by saying I usually don’t give lists of how to do things. These six tips, though, can save a non-fiction writer many headaches with a lawsuit on the side! Again, I cannot stress enough the due diligence factor in tackling non-fiction, particularly with topics as medicine, history or biography. Due diligence is first among equals for a strong, successful and well-executed work of non-fiction!

‘Frog and Toad’ Stories Ahead of their Times

2016-06-04T13:32:00.002-04:00

Arnold Lobel, author and illustrator of the Frog and Toad series, was born in 1933 and raised in Schenectady, New York. Having begun his career doing work for advertising agencies, he started illustrating for Harper & Row in 1961, and the following year published his book “A Zoo for Mr. Muster,” about a man who becomes a zookeeper so that he can spend every day with his animal friends.

During his career, he worked on dozens of children’s books, both as a writer and as an illustrator, and also, in some instances, in collaboration with his wife, Anita Kempler, whom he met while studying art and theatre as an undergraduate, at Pratt Institute.

In his Frog and Toad books, published between 1970 and 1979, the pair visit each other at home and explore their natural surroundings together, occasionally seeing other animals, like a snail who is the mailman, or birds who enjoy cookies that Frog and Toad throw out when they can’t stop eating them. Many of these stories still make me laugh, like the one in which Toad wakes up and makes a list of things to do. “Wake up,” he writes, then immediately crosses it out. “I have done that,” he says.

Courtesy the Arnold Lobel Estate

As a child, Lobel's daughter, Adrianne didn’t think there was anything particularly special about her father reading her the stories he’d written.

It was just ‘Papa’s written another story—he’s going to read it to me now.'

She recalled a time when she and her younger brother Adam were fighting in the back of a car on a road trip. “My father had been very quiet for a long time, and I guess he couldn’t stand listening to us anymore, and he said, ‘Do you want to hear a story?’ So we settled down, and he recited from beginning to end in verse a story he had just written in his head.”

When Adrienne was asked why she thought the books have such staying power, she said:

“It was the only thing he wrote that involved a relationship. I’ve watched children grow up, and that whole drama that’s kind of the precursor to the hell of romance later in life—who is best friends with whom and who likes who when, and this person doesn’t like me now—it’s very painful, and I think that children really like to hear that this is not abnormal, that Frog and Toad go through these dramas every day.”

Adrianne suspects that there’s another dimension to Frog and Toad's sustained popularity. Frog and Toad are “of the same sex, and they love each other. It was quite ahead of its time in that respect.” In 1974, four years after the first book in the series was published, Lobel came out to his family as gay. “I think ‘Frog and Toad’ really was the beginning of him coming out,” Adrianne said
.
Lobel never publicly discussed a connection between the series and his sexuality, but he did comment on the ways in which personal material made its way into his stories. In a 1977 interview with the children’s-book journal The Lion and the Unicorn, he said:

You know, if an adult has an unhappy love affair, he writes about it. He exorcises it out of himself, perhaps, by writing a novel about it. Well, if I have an unhappy love affair, I have to somehow use all that pain and suffering but turn it into a work for children.

Lobel, who died in 1987, was an early victim of the AIDS crisis. “He was only fifty-four,” Adrianne said. “Think of all the stories we missed.”