Chapter 16 - Part 10

Give a Mouse a Book, and He’ll Build You a Yurt

Daniel Kirk, creator of Library Mouse, considers the value of children’s literature

By Faye Jones | September 23, 2013

September 23, 2013 Daniel Kirk continues his popular picture-book series with Library Mouse: Home Sweet Home, a story in which Sam and Sarah look for a new place to live while their library home is undergoing renovations. Today Kirk talks with Chapter 16 prior to his Nashville appearance at the Southern Festival of Books October 11-13, 2013. All festival events are free and open to the public.

A Daughter’s Dreams

Novelist Pamela Schoenewaldt explores the difficulties and promises for a young girl and her troubled mother in a new country

By Faye Jones | August 30, 2013

August 30, 2013 Just when the American dream seems within reach for fourteen-year-old Lucia, her mother’s old demons threaten their new life. Knoxvillian Pamela Schoenewaldt will discuss the immigrant experience and her latest novel, Swimming in the Moon, at the Laurel Theater in Knoxville on September 5, 2013, and at the 25th annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13.

Fourth-Graders Save the World

Educator John Hunter talks with Chapter 16 about the World Peace Game

By Faye Jones | July 1, 2013

July 1, 2013 John Hunter is the inventor of the World Peace Game, a classroom activity in which students take on the roles of national leadership in all its complexities and conflicts. Along the way, they learn problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, how to work together, and how to handle a bully. And, yes, maintain world peace. John Hunter will discuss his new book, World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements, at Parnassus Books in Nashville on July 11 at 6:30 p.m.

Road Trip with Grandma

In her new novel, Memphis native Dana Sachs explores the quirks of memory

By Faye Jones | June 24, 2013

June 24, 2013 Anna Rosenthal is a thirty-five-year-old widow who can’t seem to move on with her life. Enter her estranged grandmother, Goldie, who demands that Anna drive her across country to return a set of Japanese prints that have been in her possession since World War II. The resulting journey could take the form of either farce or tragedy, but Dana Sachs makes The Secret of the Nightingale Palace a much more nuanced look at love, loss, and the secrets every life holds.

Secret Pain and Passion

Jennie Fields talks about novelist Edith Wharton’s turbulent life

By Faye Jones | May 29, 2013

May 29, 2013 Edith Wharton’s novels captured the depths and complexities of the human soul, but her readers in the early twentieth century could not have known that Wharton’s own life held its share of emotional drama. In The Age of Desire, Nashville novelist Jennie Fields tells the story of Edith Wharton’s passionate but ultimately doomed love affair with journalist Morton Fullerton. Prior to her reading at Parnassus Books in Nashville at 6:30 p.m. on June 3, Fields answered questions about the novel from Chapter 16.

Renaissance Intrigue

Alana White’s passion for Renaissance Italy results in a fascinating historical mystery

By Faye Jones | January 10, 2013

January 10, 2013 In Alana White’s debut novel, The Sign of the Weeping Virgin, Guid’Antonio Vespucci and his nephew Amerigo return from a two-year diplomatic mission to Paris only to find their native Florence in disarray. A young woman has been kidnapped, supposedly by the infidel Turks, and a painting of the Virgin Mary is weeping in the Vespucci home church. In fifteenth-century Italy, these events are equally disturbing. Many in Florence believe the Virgin is weeping over Lorenzo Medici’s long argument with Pope Sixtus IV. Rebellion and mutiny are in the air.