Skinny Dip with Kara LaReau
Skinny Dip
We’re pleased to connect you with author (and editor) Kara LaReau, whose two book series, The Infamous Ratsos and The Unintentional Adventures of the Bland Sisters, are tickling readers’ funnybones and stirring their sense of adventure. She was an editor for ten years, editing some of our most-loved books such as Because of Winn-Dixie and [...]
That Time I Drove the Karma Bus
Writing Road Trip
All freshmen at my college had to wear beanies at the start of school. Besides the obvious fashion quandary, the problem was that students from the town’s rival college gloried in stealing beanies. And I knew if any of my upper classmates caught me sans beanie, they had the power to make me stand on [...]
Anna and Johanna
Reading Ahead
Anna and Johanna: a Children’s Book Inspired by Vermeer Geraldine Elschner illustrated by Florence Koenig Prestel Publishing, 2018 published in French in 2016 ISBN 978-3-7913-7345-4 Delft. Delft blue. The book begins with blue and yellow. 1666. Two friends born on the same day. This day, their birthday. They are each making gifts for the other. [...]
Swimming in a Sea of Ideas
Nonfictionary
Where do successful nonfiction writers get their ideas? So many places! The topics a nonfiction writer can write about are limitless. Sure, some ideas have been written about before, but nonfiction writers take that as a challenge. They ask what unusual angle they might take or if there is a different (or better) format in [...]
Skinny Dip with C.M. Surrisi
Skinny Dip
Have you read the Quinnie Boyd middle-grade mysteries? The Maypop Kidnapping, Vampires on the Run, and A Side of Sabotage? I discovered them this spring and I stayed up several nights to read them. The author of those books, C.M. Surrisi, is just as interesting as you’d think the writer who dreamed up Quinnie, her [...]
Skinny Dip with Phuoc Thi Minh Tran
Skinny Dip
We are pleased to Skinny Dip with Phuoc Thi Minh Tran this week. As a librarian, author, storyteller, and mother, she adds her perspective to the richly textured quilt of books for children. What’s the weirdest place you’ve ever read a book? In the hospital, I read my newly released book My First Book of [...]