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Deborah Wiles Reads from Revolution  at 2014 National Book Award Finalists

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Deborah Wiles Reads from Revolution  at 2014 National Book Award Finalists

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Deborah Wiles reads from Revolution at 2014 NBA Finalists Reading

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DEBORAH WILES Revolution: The Sixties Trilogy, Book Two Scholastic Press ISBN: 978-0545106078 Was held on Tuesday, November 18 at 7:00 P.M. THE NEW SCHOOL, The Auditorium at 66 West 12th Street, New York City More information at nationalbook.org

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Greenwood, Mississippi, home of Sunny Fairchild, age 12, in book two of the Sixties Trilogy. Here are some of the landmarks in book two, as well as some of the details of Sunny's day-to-day life in 1964. I'm slowly adding my photos of Greenwood as well.

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Reviews and Press for Revolution-Deborah Wiles Pinterest Board

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Reviews and Press for Revolution-Deborah Wiles Pinterest Board

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It was a good year for REVOLUTION! Five starred reviews, best-of-year lists, and a 2014 National Book Award Finalist. Thanks to readers everywhere for taking the book into their hearts and sharing it with others as well.

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Naomi Shihab Nye Talks with Roger at The Horn Book (Turtle of Oman)

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Naomi Shihab Nye Talks with Roger at The Horn Book (Turtle of Oman)

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Talks with Roger is a sponsored supplement to our free monthly e-newsletter, Notes from the Horn Book. To receive Notes, sign up here.

Sponsored by

Born of Naomi Shihab Nye's childhood fascination with Oman and a visit there five years ago, The Turtle of Oman is that rare thing in current children's book publishing: a deliberately low-key story in which the climax is - well, read below. After Naomi and I swapped sympathies for how old we were now after our many years of acquaintance, we settled in for a good talk about her new novel. Roger Sutton: How do you keep your enthusiasm?
Naomi Shihab Nye: I think it's hanging out with kids all these years. I was visiting a school last week, and they were so incredible. Just being with them for the whole day and listening to their questions and looking at their writing and going into their art classes and seeing the pots and photographs they were making, I thought, "It's okay to get old if you can still hang out with young people and feel that great energy. Because we still have it. It just gets sort of muted."
RS: What do you think that does to your writing? Or for it?
NSN: We hear a lot of voices every day, but for me the most touching and tender voices continue to be those of kids. They're the most direct, the most unadorned. It calls forth your own kid voice. It keeps it alive. It nourishes it. I agree with people who say you never lose that kid spirit in yourself no matter what age you are.
RS: Oh, hell, I never had it.
NSN: I think you have it right now.
RS: Making up for lost time. The Turtle of Oman is a story about a boy who's moving. Was moving a big thing for you as a child?
NSN: It was, but I really did not think of the boy, Aref, as me, ever, when writing the book. Its source was my childhood fascination with the country of Oman. I saw a National Geographic story about it when I was around eight. At the time it was a closed country; no one could visit. I talked to my father. Did he know about it? Had he ever been there? He, too, was interested, so it was a topic we talked about together. And also, as I told kids in Oman when I did go there, my first name, juggled, becomes "Omani."
RS: Huh.
NSN: As a child, I was always juggling words and names. So a fascination with a place. And then when my father died seven years ago, I remember thinking that I was not only going to miss him so incredibly much, but I was really going to miss the relationship he had with our son. They had a very precious bond. My father could walk in and my son would light up, and they would just take off. I wanted to honor that bond between a boy and his grandfather.
RS: It really made me wish I had known my grandfather.
NSN: That's touching, Roger. A couple of adults have written to me that this book carried them back to their own relationship with a grandparent. So those were the two impulses. Not moving. Moving just kind of came on. When I was in Oman it was staggering to learn how common it was for Omani kids to do what Aref does in this book. I talked to a bunch of them. They said, "Oh, yeah, I lived in England for two years while my parents got their graduate degrees. I lived in the U.S. for three years. I lived in Australia for two years." It was interesting because they'd all gone away and come back. Education is highly valued, and they don't have - or they didn't have, five years ago when I was there - graduate degrees. You had to leave the country to get one. But Oman has a very fine style of life, a very good economic stratosphere, so people want to go back after their schooling. And it's a very gracious, hospitable place.
RS: It does seem very gracious and hospitable from your book. When I look at the details in the story, I think, "This is such an alien landscape to what I know." But they're so comfortable in it, the boy and his grandfather.
NSN: I've sent a few friends to Oman, people who are on their way to India. They've all had fascinating reports afterwards.
RS: Oh, I'd love to go. Even before your book, I knew it from childhood stamp collecting.
NSN: So did I! The Tourism Bureau of Oman has a new slogan: "Beauty has an address. Oman." It really is a beautiful place in a striking and rather odd way, because of the mountains being tones of brown, and the city being pale colors. White, butter yellow, beige buildings; and they're all low, because the sultan does not like skyscrapers. And then the sea is so intensely turquoise. So you have these three stripes of color, and then sunrise and sunset above that - it's gorgeous.
RS: Let's just bag this talk and go.
NSN: Yes, let's. And we'll stay at the Chedi Hotel. Look that up.
RS: You did a really good job of letting us know these kid-focused details about that landscape, but in a way that wasn't touristy. It felt like it was coming from the inside.
NSN: That's nice. Thank you for saying that.
RS: Do you know how revolutionary this book is?
NSN: No. What do you mean?
RS: Here we have a book about a kid who's going to move. And by the end of the book he hasn't even moved yet. It's so quiet.
NSN: I was speaking about The Turtle of Oman to some kids at the school library a beloved friend runs, and I said to them at the very end, "You realize who the turtle is?" They all just stared at me. And then afterwards my friend said, "Aref's the turtle! I didn't realize that." I said, "Yes, he's the turtle."

I really long for the slow time of childhood. I think most of us who live in this era do. I wanted Aref to live in slow time, for the book to feel as if it was almost in slow-motion. Like, oh my God, we're back to the suitcase and there's still only two things in it? I wanted it to be weird that way. The head of the Academy of American Poets said, "Poetry is slow art." To me that poetry of daily life that we yearn for is the slow artfulness of movement. I keep this little German quote on my desk: Weniger, aber besser. "Less, but better." Less stuff, less clutter, less things in a day, but better relationships with those things. I wanted there to be some sense of that with Aref and Sidi.
RS: How do you think we can convince our publishers and librarians that there is room for this kind of slow book? Everything now is super high-concept.
NSN: Yeah, there's all this melodrama and vampire stuff. There's a lonesomeness that human beings exhibit sometimes: I have all this stuff, I have everything at my fingertips, I'm going in all these different directions at once, and I'm lost. Whereas children have a willingness to pause and turn something over and over in their minds. I worry about what happens when you bombard children with too much stuff all the time, too many activities, too many events, too many things. I remember my kid, when he was young - he's now a professor - coming home from school one day when he was in about fifth grade, and I asked him about a certain friend of his. I said, "Do you want to have so-and-so come over after school tomorrow?" And he looked at me, and he said, "Oh, Mom. He's ruined." And I said, "What do you mean, he's ruined?" And he said, "He's just scheduled all the time. He has no free time anymore." I think of that sometimes when I'm feeling frustrated or frazzled, when I haven't spent enough time with something to make it feel meaningful. That's something that teachers, librarians, parents know kids need.
RS: The climax of the story is that they catch a fish and throw it back.
NSN: The little things that happen are really little. The threads are delicate, but they're also strong. I did thirteen drafts, Roger. In the first draft, the baby pillow that Sidi throws into Aref's suitcase was the star of the book. In my second draft, Aref's house and Sidi's house were the stars. Virginia, my editor, told me, "I don't want a book about a relationship between two houses. They're not even on the same street." So I had to bring people into the book.
RS: Oh, God forbid, Naomi.
NSN: In talking to kids at schools I've visited, they all seem to have had experiences similar to Aref's, even in the second and third grade. They've moved, their friends have moved, their grandparents have moved, they've changed schools. I often do events with refugee resettlement communities. In some cases I ask people to bring a poem from their country, or just a few lines from a story, or to tell us a story and then translate it. So I hope that readers would feel somewhat at home with Aref, somebody who is being challenged to face this whole new culture and who wonders: where do I find my gravity in it?
RS: That gives you a narrative line throughout. He is dealing with anxiety. It's not just a pleasant little wander with Grandpa. There's this fear of what the new place will be like, and as a reader you want that to be resolved.
NSN: Right. And the metaphor of going away and coming back, which so many creatures do in their lives. There's this essential tug of home gravity. Aref is going to come back, but it's still scary to think about being gone.
RS: Right.
NSN: My favorite line in the book is when Aref asks Sidi: "What if they make fun of my hat?" The hats of Oman are so distinctive, and so beautiful. And Sidi says, "Then you can let them try it on." Become me, and then you won't make fun of me.
RS: When you're writing a novel, do you ever have to say to yourself, "Wait, I'm being too much of a poet"?
NSN: Probably when I overwrite a passage and make it too descriptive. But my poems have always been fairly plain, I would say, and always had a narrative thread in them. My poems enjoy conversation, and they try to incorporate it. But I did end up cutting back a lot of description and then trying to build up conversations or scenes with a little more velocity or energy rather than some kind of dreamy metaphor.
RS: I read poetry so differently from the way I read prose. I read a poem through quickly, then look more closely, then go back, and then look at the thing at the end and the thing at the beginning. It's a much more singular moment than the chronology that you involve yourself in when you're reading a piece of fiction.
NSN: Right. I wanted there to be little chunks in every chapter that feel poem-like somehow, that carry your mind in that same way, deeply, into a focus, into a moment, and then kind of drift around and blur. But I try to keep it also moving a little bit, even if it's slow-moving.
RS: Have you seen any slow TV? It's my new passion.
NSN: I have never even heard of it. What is it?
RS: It's from Norway. There are these shows - there's one I really love. It's a train. It's nine hours long. They just mounted a camera on the front of the train.
NSN: Oh my God. This is amazing.
RS: I'll send you a link. Your book kept reminding me of Little House in the Big Woods.
NSN: Oh, that's interesting.
RS: Again, very small dramas, just "here's what it's like to live in my little house in the big woods." And the anxieties of oh, Pa's gone, is he coming back? That tends to be the climax of a lot of the chapters. It has so much respect for those small moments that do make up a kid's life. So many books now are trying to distract kids from those moments.
NSN: That's right. And I think they're distracted enough, and there's enough that will distract them. Sometimes kids will say to me, "What is the one thing that made you a poet as a child growing up?" And I would say it was an apprehension that there was so much around us that we could easily overlook, it would just slip by. I felt really haunted by that as a child. And by the way, Roger, did you know I grew up in Ferguson, Missouri?
RS: No, I didn't know that.
NSN: I was born in inner-city St. Louis, and when I was almost three my parents moved out to Ferguson, because it was a suburb, with more trees and little parks, and a quieter pace. So all of this news and all of these images from Ferguson are very haunting to me, because in the time of childhood where I grew up, the whole town of Ferguson belonged to kids. We rode our bikes everywhere. We were really curious about what this black-white line was. It was very, very invisible, but very well known to adults, and we didn't understand it at all. Anyway, that's just a digression. But it has made me think a lot about slow time and that need as a child to be in spots that feel as if they will outlast you, outlive you, be there in some physical way.
RS: I like the way that the end of the book makes us wonder what it's going to be like for Aref in Michigan. You can carry this story forward in your head because you get to know this boy really well and hope that things will work out. It's almost as if you can write your own sequel.
NSN: A couple of people have bugged me already about writing a sequel, in first-person, of Aref in Michigan, but I thought, "Wouldn't that undercut all the possibilities for him?" I don't know if I would want to do that. People are still bugging me to write a sequel to Habibi.
RS: Get busy, girl. It's been a while.
NSN: I don't want to write a sequel. I want you to write a sequel. You figure it out.
RS: I'm really into standalone books these days. There are too many sequels.
NSN: I am too. I'm really into everyone else's capacity to imagine what happens next. I like standalone books. There's something intact about them. And I think poems try to trust us in that way too. It's why poems don't like explanation. What happens next? Where does it go? Poems have that subtlety of ending in air, hinting, suggesting, but now you take it and you go with it.
RS: And those are the poems you keep going back to. When you find the one that creates that story inside yourself, that won't let you alone, that's the poem that speaks to you.
NSN: It keeps living.

More on Naomi Shihab Nye from The Horn Book

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Talks with Roger is a sponsored supplement to our free monthly e-newsletter, Notes from the Horn Book. To receive Notes, sign up here. Sponsored by Born of Naomi Shihab Nye's childhood fascination with Oman and a visit there five years ago, The Turtle of Oman is that rare thing in current children's book publishing: a deliberately low-key story in which the climax is - well, read below.

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Tracy Holczer on The Secret Hum of a Daisy

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Tracy Holczer on The Secret Hum of a Daisy

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Tracy Holczer - The Secret Hum of a Daisy

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This is "Tracy Holczer - The Secret Hum of a Daisy" by on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

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Otis and the Scarecrow on Loren Long's Website

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Otis and the Scarecrow on Loren Long's Website

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Trailer for the 2014 children's book written by Loren Long.

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Loren Long Reads from Otis and the Scarecrow

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Loren Long Reads from Otis and the Scarecrow

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Loren Long reads from 'Otis and the Scarecrow'

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Cincinnati artist/author Loren Long is on a national tour for his latest "Otis" book and will stop at Blue Manatee in Oakley Sept. 20.

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The Most Magnificent Thing Book Hack by Ashley Spires

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The Most Magnificent Thing Book Hack by Ashley Spires

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The Most Magnificent Thing Book Hack with Ashley Spires

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Watch author-illustrator and maker Ashley Spires hack The Most Magnificent Thing!

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A little girl. A canine assistant. A magnificent thing. Ashley Spires's new book, The Most Magnificent Thing, will inspire you to create.

www.KidsCanPress.com
Facebook.com/KidsCanBooks
Twitter.com/KidsCanPress

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THE MEANING OF MAGGIE by Megan Jean Sovern

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About The Meaning of Maggie-Megan Jean Sovern's Website

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About The Meaning of Maggie-Megan Jean Sovern's Website

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Raúl Colón: The Boy Who Loved to Draw--An Interview with SLJ

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Raúl Colón: The Boy Who Loved to Draw--An Interview with SLJ

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By Jennifer M. Brown on

Listen to Raúl Colón reveal the story behind Draw!, courtesy of TeachingBooks.net.
As a child with chronic asthma, Raúl Colón, the artist known for his luminous watercolor and color pencil artwork, sometimes spent as long as eight weeks confined to his bed. "We didn't have an X-box, so I drew," he jokes. His latest book, Draw! (S&S, October, 2014; PreS-Gr 5), unfolds entirely through pictures, as a housebound boy and reader of tales of a faraway continent takes viewers on a journey of the imagination to the Serengeti plains of Africa. There he encounters an accommodating elephant, a belligerent rhinoceros, and some playful primates. Colón discusses his inspiration for the book and some of his artistic choices.
You've mentioned that you begin your books with text and pictures. How did you arrive at a wordless story for Draw!?
I created a mock-up for the book that included text. But I couldn't quite finish it, so I showed it to my editor, Paula Wiseman. She asked, "What do you think about telling the story just in pictures?" So that's what I did. I added some illustrations, a few sketches, and reworked it.

Would you say that this book is somewhat autobiographical?
I had chronic asthma as a kid and spent so many beautiful spring days at home, in bed, for weeks at a time. When I had energy, I'd draw.

Your story reminds me of the Robert Louis Stevenson poem "The Land of Counterpane," from A Child's Garden of Verses ("When I was sick and lay abed...").
I know of another artist, who had asthma, and he did the same thing. Confined, we made art.

In the book, your palette changes when the child drawing in bed imagines himself on safari.
Yes.I thought about The Wizard of Oz [the black-and-white and the color sequences] and chose a muted palette for this boy's life at home and then moved to full color when his imagination transports him to a different world. Although muted, I wanted the pictures to be colorful enough so children didn't think that those scenes were unreal. But I still needed to transition to Africa. Did the boy go by boat? By plane? I wanted to show that he transported himself to Africa so readers see the pictures come out of his head....

Your signature style appears to be layers of color revealed through a scratch technique. How do you build those rich layers and manage to have them show through?
Usually I use colored pencil over watercolor wash. In this case, with the African images, I bought Pantone color papers, and I went straight onto the paper with Prismacolor pencils. The paper has a nice grain to it. If you're going to use color pencils, it's good to use a grain paper.

I found the etching instrument by accident-something [a former] boss purchased when I worked at a TV station in Fort Lauderdale, FL. It's like a giant flat coin with prongs sticking out. First I sketch onto the paper. The boy's pants may look brown, but there are actually layers of greens, purples, and blues, which make the colors appear much more vivid. (I learned this from the Impressionists, who put colors next to each other to enhance images.) After I know where everything goes, I start etching with this instrument-wherever I think I need movement or volume.

Some of the animals are moving and others are very still, which provides readers with a sense of pacing.
I wanted to include more animals, but was limited by the picture book's 32-page format. Also, I wanted sweeping illustrations. So I choose the animals that I thought would best fill the page and were the most interesting to look at: zebras, I wanted stripes in there; a gorilla, he's lots of fun; a lion, of course; giraffes moving fast, for the visual joke-the child's trying to sketch them as fast as he can. At the story's climax, the boy finds himself in danger, with a rhino charging him. And the final joke: a baboon drawing the boy.

Tell us about the sequence of four images of the rhinoceros charging the boy, each one showing the animal getting closer and closer.
The idea taken from comics, to show the passage of time. We're fascinated with the illustrations and snapshots and paintings we see in museums, because the artists are freezing time. We can look at them over and over again.... We see things moving all the time, but seeing something frozen where we can study it-is fascinating. With the rhino, I wanted to show movement. How large, or how close he gets-the viewer has to figure that one out.
This article was featured in our free Curriculum Connections enewsletter.
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Let's talk about the closing scene, when the boy gets out of bed and shares his artwork with his peers.
In my experience visiting schools, that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm showing the work that I do to other people. The reason artists draw and musicians play, is that we want to communicate, to share what comes through us with other people.
Listen to Raúl Colón reveal the story behind Draw!, courtesy of TeachingBooks.net.

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By Jennifer M. Brown on Listen to Raúl Colón reveal the story behind Draw! , courtesy of TeachingBooks.net. As a child with chronic asthma, Raúl Colón, the artist known for his luminous watercolor and color pencil artwork, sometimes spent as long as eight weeks confined to his bed.

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Extended Book Trailer for The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

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Extended Book Trailer for The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

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Extended Book Trailer for The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

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5 Myths About The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

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5 Myths About The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

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American Library Association Youth Media Awards Press Conference

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2015 ALA Midwinter Meeting - Cece Bell on "El Deafo"

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Cece Bell draws SISTERS and Raina Telgemeier draws EL DEAFO

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Cece Bell draws SISTERS and Raina Telgemeier draws EL DEAFO

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Cece Bell draws SISTERS and Raina Telgemeier draws EL DEAFO

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An explosion of awesome! During a panel moderated by Tom Angleberger at ALAAC14, Cece Bell and Raina Telgemeier discussed their graphic novels EL DEAFO and SISTERS. They also drew pictures--of each other's work!

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Kwame Alexander's Basketball Poetry-An ESPN Interview

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Kwame Alexander's Basketball Poetry-An ESPN Interview

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The Farmer and the Clown-A Review from The Horn Book

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The Farmer and the Clown-A Review from The Horn Book

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Things are beginning to heat up. Mock Caldecotts are being decided; best-of-year lists continue to be released; over at Fuse #8, Betsy Bird has made her final predictions.

It's time to talk about a book that's been one of my favorites all fall: Marla Frazee's The Farmer and the Clown.

I find it difficult not to gush over this book. It is so simple and yet so profound: the classic "stranger comes to town" story brilliantly re-imagined and re-visioned. It works for me on both an intellectual and emotional level, so much so that I can start out discussing the composition of a particular page, say, and end up talking instead about the definition of family; love and loss. The search for belonging. What happens when we reveal our true selves to others. You know, the whole human condition.

So to prevent me going off the deep end, I'll stick to bullet points and simply highlight some of the strengths of the book; some of the things that make it worthy of Caldecott consideration. I hope you will help me fill in the gaps in the comments.

THE EXPRESSIVENESS of the characters, through body language and facial expressions. To quote the Horn Book "Fanfare" citation: "Rarely has posture been used so well in a picture book, here used to wordlessly portray the kindness of strangers who are thrown (literally!) together by happenstance but then changed forever."

THE TENSION. The story itself has built-in tension - how are these seemingly opposite characters going to get along? will the farmer be able to comfort the child? will this be the child's new home, or will the circus train come back? - so does the visual storytelling. As a reader/viewer I am pulled in two directions. I want both to linger over each spread to catch every nuance AND to turn the page to see what happens next. The picture book storytelling is perfectly balanced here.

THE LANDSCAPE. This has got to be one of the sparest landscapes ever depicted in a picture book. The horizon stretches unendingly beneath vast skies. There is no vegetation aside from the one tree on the one knoll. There aren't even any haystacks to break up the emptiness (though there seems to be plenty of hay to make them with). The color palette is equally austere: brown, sere, desert-like. Does the empty landscape echo and make manifest the heart of the farmer? Or does it serve to keep the viewer's focus on the characters, their interactions and emotions? I would say both.

THE ENDING. It is just open-ended enough. You close the book satisfied but also with a little room to fill in details yourself. It's not the mind-blowing, drop-the-reader-off-a-cliff ending of Sam and Dave Dig a Hole. But the questions asked by the ending can be answered by a the story you've just finished reading. It's a very organic, very satisfying kind of open-endedness. The answers are all in the spot illustration on the last page: in the farmer's posture (relaxed, upright, hands in pocket - he's contemplative, but not unhappy), in the hat he's wearing, the hat HE chose to swap with the little clown; and of course in the presence of the circus monkey, the same size and shape and dressed the same way as the departed little clown.

THE MULTILAYEREDNESS of the wordless narrative. One of the most brilliant parts of the book is the very first page where Frazee uses a clean white background rather than that mottled sere brown - the page just after the little clown has been jettisoned from the train. Read it one way (with makeup in place): a little clown seeks to entertain an audience. He does a little dive move, he doffs his cap, he takes a bow. All part of a performance. BUT. Read it another way (if one could see through the makeup to the scared baby/toddler beneath): he points desperately to where he came from; he mimics how he fell from the train, he bends over in despair; he runs to the farmer to plead for help. I'm not sure I know of another picture book that accomplishes this layered interpretation.

THE VISUAL LINKS BETWEEN THE CHARACTERS. There are many. Even when they look like complete opposites - tall skinny old farmer all dressed in black; short round young child all dressed in red - there is a relationship between them. Note the reverse symmetry of the small clown and the tall farmer: the clown's tall pointy hat is the farmer's long pointy beard, in reverse; the clowns horizontal ruffle around his neck is the farmer's flat hat on his head. Then when the truth comes out and the little clown's true self is revealed, the link becomes closer and nearer: we see their equally bald heads, and the farmer's red long johns match the child's red clown suit. And at the very very end, the link between them is cemented when the farmer swaps their hats, placing his black hat on the toddler's head and donning the tall red cone hat himself.

THE STORY'S DEPTH. This would have been just a sweet little story of friendship and love/loss/love...but the addition of the painted-on smile of the little clown asks SUCH deeper questions and adds so many deeper layers. And so by the end of the book, this reader, anyway, is entirely emotionally invested. Look at that oversized arm on the final double-page spread (the long horizontal arm balanced compositionally by the long horizontal train, by the way). Is the farmer's arm waving goodbye? or reaching out, trying to hold on? There's a phenomenal amount of feeling in that disembodied arm. I am not sure many other artists could invest so much emotion in an ARM.

I've heard that The Farmer and the Clown doesn't work for two- and three-year-olds. Well, no. Is it supposed to? Do people think that because the clown is a very young child, the book also must be for very young children? The age of the baby/toddler clown does not determine the audience for this book. It's for reader-viewers who are interested in determining and decoding the situation, reading the postures, the facial expressions, watching the specific yet universal story unfold.

And no, it's not all that funny. Again, is it supposed to be? I am not sure that all Marla Frazee books have to be laughfests. The book does have small moments of humor (the juggling eggs sequence, for instance), but it's the kind of humor that might evoke a smile rather than a guffaw. I think readers are too involved in the pathos of the situation, the drama, the tension, to want or need to do a lot of giggling. But since the Caldecott committee is charged with looking only at the books of 2014, a comparison to Frazee's earlier work should not apply.

Can the Caldecott committee ignore their expectations of what a Marla Frazee picture book should be? Will they see the genius of this book?

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Things are beginning to heat up. Mock Caldecotts are being decided; best-of-year lists continue to be released; over at Fuse #8, Betsy Bird has made her final predictions. It's time to talk about a book that's been one of my favorites all fall: Marla Frazee's The Farmer and the Clown.

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The Farmer and the Clown-Marla Frazee's Website

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The Farmer and the Clown-Marla Frazee's Website

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Official website of children's book author and illustrator Marla Frazee.

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Rain Reign by Ann M. Martin-A New York Times Book Review

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Rain Reign by Ann M. Martin-A New York Times Book Review

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The damp, shaking animal, whom Rose names Rain, blossoms under her loving care, becoming the face-licking soul mate to a child who has not a single friend. She's lonely but unable to connect with peers - a tough, underrecognized truth for many kids on the autism spectrum.

The deftness with which Martin renders Rose's life is admirable - from the special-needs aide who sits by her side in class and pulls her into the hall for timeouts, to the classmates who manage only glancing, often comical interactions with the math whiz who blurts out rules (when others break them) and recites prime numbers to restore her balance.

And yet the book isn't actually about autism, or even any coming-of-age theme. It's about love and fealty, fear, hope, the release from burdens, and what kids - all kids - need but often don't get.

As in all the best fiction, Martin's plot throws the reader into confusion right beside the characters. Just try this one out: As the father turns frighteningly angry and Rose holds on to her only companion, Rain, for dear life, the child discovers that many dogs carry a microchip in case they run off without their collar. Does our 11-year-old rule-follower try to return the dog and give up her only joy; or does she hold tight to this furry somebody dropped in her lap by a world that has denied her almost everything?

Read and find out, but don't take this book anywhere you wouldn't want to have a sudden burst of tears. Or, for that matter, a wash of warm recognition that we all - the poor and neurologically challenged, too - can find a way to the sunlight.

RAIN REIGN

By Ann M. Martin

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The damp, shaking animal, whom Rose names Rain, blossoms under her loving care, becoming the face-licking soul mate to a child who has not a single friend. She's lonely but unable to connect with peers - a tough, underrecognized truth for many kids on the autism spectrum.

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CHICAGO - The American Library Association (ALA) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2015 Schneider Family Book Awards, which honor an author or illustrator for the artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences. The award was announced today during the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting in Chicago, Jan. 30 - February 3.

Recipients are selected in three categories: birth through grade school (ages 0-8), middle school (ages 9-13) and teens (ages 14-18). Winners will receive $5,000 and a framed plaque, which will be presented in San Francisco during the ALA Annual Conference in June.

"A BOY AND A JAGUAR," written by Alan Rabinowitz, illustrated by Catia Chien and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, won the award for young children.

As a young boy, Alan Rabinowitz felt alienated due to his uncontrollable stutter. Relief comes when speaking to animals: he vows to be their voice and keep them from harm. Making good on that promise, Rabinowitz advocates on behalf of the jaguars of Belize.

"Rabinowitz eloquently describes his journey from believing that his stuttering made him broken to finding his own voice to speak for animals who cannot speak for themselves." said Schneider Family Book Award Chair Alyson Beecher.

"RAIN REIGN," written by Ann M. Martin and published by A FEIWEL AND FRIENDS BOOK, An Imprint of Macmillan, won the award for best middle school title.

Rose's (Rows) life is regulated by rules, her love for her dog Rain (Rein, Reign), prime numbers, and homonyms, in almost equal measure. When a superstorm causes a tumult to Rose's life and that of her community, she is faced with needing to make a courageous choice.

"Martin creates an authentic portrayal of a young girl on the autism spectrum. In getting to know this resilient character, readers' misconceptions about this disability will be altered," said Beecher.

The teen award winner is "Girls Like Us" written by Gail Giles and published by Candlewick Press.

After completing their high school's special education program, Biddy and Quincy are placed as roommates - to Biddy's delight and Quincy's horror. Through unflinching dual points of view, these young women discover that they have much to gain and learn about life from each other including a sense of family.

"In this surprisingly gripping novel, readers gain insight into the challenges of young adults with intellectual disabilities. Through an unlikely friendship, two young women gain empowerment, independence and family," said Beecher.

Members of the 2015 Schneider Family Book Award committee are: Chair Alyson Beecher, Pasadena (Calif.) Unified School District; Nancy L. Baumann, retired school librarian and author, Columbia, Mo.; Betsy Fraser, Calgary Public Library, Alberta, Canada; Jill Garcia, National Library Service For The Blind & Physically Handicapped, Beltsville, Md.; Judy T. Nelson, Pierce County Library System, Tacoma, Wash.; Joanna Tamplin, Hawks Rise Elementary, Tallahassee, Fla.; and Caroline Ward, The Ferguson Library, Stamford, Conn.

The American Library Association is the oldest and largest library association in the world with more than 55,000 members. Its mission is to provide leadership for the development, promotion and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.

For more information on the Schneider Family Book Award and other ALA Youth Media Awards, please visit www.ilovelibraries.org/yma.

Contact:

Macey Morales
Media Relations Manager
312-280-4393
mmorales@ala.org

Heather Cho
Media Relations Specialist
312-280-4020
hcho@ala.org

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2015 Schneider Family Book Awards recipients named

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CHICAGO - The American Library Association (ALA) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2015 Schneider Family Book Awards, which honor an author or illustrator for the artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences. The award was announced today during the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting in Chicago, Jan.

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Absolutely Almost on Lisa Graff's Website

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Absolutely Almost on Lisa Graff's Website

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Author Cece Bell talks About Her New Book "El Deafo"

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Author Cece Bell talks About Her New Book "El Deafo"

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Author Cece Bell Talks About Her New Book, 'El Deafo'

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Why Everyone Should Read This Graphic Memoir-The Washington Post

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Why Everyone Should Read This Graphic Memoir-The Washington Post