>Last Friday Daryl Mark (of the Cambridge P.L.) and I went over to MIT to look over the new location that anticipatory enthusiasm for the evening seemed to demand. So, we're still on for the program with Susan Cooper and Gregory Maguire, we're still talking about the writing and reading...
Parrotfishby Ellen WittlingerHigh School Simon 294 pp.7/07 978-1-4169-1622-2 $16.99 g“What I am is a person who’s capable of loving other people. That’s all that matters.” This is the unwavering thrust of Wittlinger’s groundbreaking latest, narrated by Grady (born Angela), a transgendered teenage boy who is determined...
>The reporters are calling again, looking for a new Harry Potter story. I wish I could be more helpful, but there really is no news. When they ask what the "next Harry Potter" will be, I point out that there was no last Harry Potter, depriving us off the crucial...
We've posted further information about Lloyd Alexander here. And below, fervent Alexander fan and my best friend Elizabeth Law offers some of her own thoughts:Lloyd Alexander is one of my favorite writers of all time, as well as one of my most influential. As a child and young adult, I...
>And I'm a modest and shy ocelot who loves long walks in the rain. Have you picked your daemon yet?...
The Invention of Hugo Cabretby Brian Selznick; illus. by the authorIntermediate Scholastic 534 pp.3/07 ISBN 978-0-439-81378-5 $22.99Here’s a dilemma for the Newbery committee...and the Caldecott: what do you do with an illustrated novel in which neither text nor pictures can tell the story alone? Not to mention the drama to...
>For those of you who enjoyed the profile of Gregory Maguire in the NYT yesterday, please put November 14 on your calendar, when I'll be conducting a public interview with Gregory AND Susan Cooper, about writing, fantasy, and the state of the world, in Cambridge, MA, location to be determined....
Speakby Laurie Halse AndersonMiddle School, High School Farrar 198 pp. g10/99 ISBN 0-374-37152-0 $16.00Speaking out at the “wrong” time — calling 911 from a teen drinking party — has made Melinda a social outcast; now she barely speaks at all. A conversation with her...
The Thiefby Megan Whalen TurnerMiddle School, High School Greenwillow/Morrow 196 pp.10/96 0-688-14627-9 $15.99A tantalizing, suspenseful, exceptionally clever novel is set in a Mediterranean-like country called Sounis in a time when the old gods have just been supplanted. (So vivid are the geography and the details of daily life that the...