Back to the Indie Corner series I’m delighted to present Claire Datnow as this month’s Indie Corner author. Claire was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, which ignited her love for the natural world and diverse cultures. Claire taught creative writing to gifted and talented students in the Birmingham, […]
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Back to the Indie Corner series February’s Indie Corner looks at the amazing Ryan Mizzen and his children’s fiction Hedgey-A and the Honey Bees! Mary: Tell us about yourself–your life so far and how you got started in writing. What else have you written or published? Ryan: My childhood was […]
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Strange Birds: A Field Guide to Ruffling Feathers, Celia C. Perez Middle Grade Fiction Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen In Sabal Palms, Florida, many girls join the Floras, a service organization begun in the early 1900s by some of the founders of the city. Even though her grandmother was a proud […]
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Young Adult Fiction Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen During junior year of high school, Liberty expects her focus to be on doing well in school and getting ready for college. Then her mom gets convicted of ecoterrorism and sent to jail, and Liberty finds herself moving to a rural mining town […]
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Middle Grade Fiction Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen Shuffled off to his aunt and uncle’s house in San Francisco while his mom takes a work assignment in China, everything looks bleak for 12-year-old Julian Carter-Li. No one besides his cousin and his best friend seem to care much about what happens […]
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Young Adult Fiction Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen The summer after senior year of high school should be full of magic, but for Julia Ducharme, it’s full of worry. Julia’s younger brother Caleb is still convalescing from a serious illness, her former summer fling has a new girlfriend and to top […]
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Not a Drop to Drink by Mindy McGinnis Young Adult Fiction Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen From the very first line, Mindy McGinnis sucks the reader into an apocalyptic world in which water–and its scarcity–determines every move made by sixteen-year-old Lynn and her mother Lauren, two women surviving in what’s left […]
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For May’s Turning the Tide spotlight, I was thrilled to ask Clete Barrett Smith about his work with Dave Matthews (yes, that Dave Matthews) on their new children’s book If We Were Giants. Just published a couple months ago, this book is aimed toward a middle-grade audience, but all ages […]
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Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen Middle grade fiction When Willa’s dad takes her on a whale-watching trip to see the migrating humpbacks, an unexpected thing happens: A whale talks to her. The whale, called Meg, seems as surprised as Willa that the two can understand each other, but they form a […]
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Yes, it’s the Dave Matthews we all love. For his debut novel, Dave Matthews found inspiration close to home.He was recording music in New Orleans years ago when he started imaging the story of “If We Were Giants.” His twin daughters were 6. While they played in the trees, the […]
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Reviewed by Kimberly Christensen Young Adult Fiction Content Warning: This book includes descriptions of death, depression, attempted suicide, animal poaching, animal cruelty, forced migration, human trafficking, war, genocide, child soldiers, and rape. Following the death of her boyfriend, high school senior Valentine falls into a severe depression and nearly overdoses […]
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In Paul Greci’s The Wild Lands, Travis and his sister are trapped in a daily race to survive–and there is no second place. Natural disasters and a breakdown of civilization have cut off Alaska from the world and destroyed its landscape. Now, as food runs out and the few who […]
Read More Selected as one of our January features for Turning the Tide: The Youngest Generation, Strange Birds: a field guide to ruffling feathers is Florida-based juvenile fiction. Abstract: After Ofelia, Aster, Cat, and Lane fail to persuade a local girls club to change an outdated tradition, they form an alternative group […]
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Endangered by Eliot Schrefer Young adult fiction Fourteen-year-old Congolese American Sophie is set to spend the summer in the Congo with her mother, who runs a sanctuary for bonobos. Sophie arrives with mixed feelings. Although she spent her young childhood in the Congo, she now lives in the United States […]
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Click here to return to the series This month we look at Sita Brahmachari’s novel Where the River Runs Gold (Waterstones, July 2019), which takes place in an everyland, according to the author. But she told me that Meteore mountain–meaning between earth and sky–was inspired by Meteora in Greece and […]
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