Children & YA

April 3, 2012 On February 1, 1968, Echol Cole and Robert Walker were crushed to death when a loose shovel fell into the mechanism of the garbage truck in which they were riding. Eleven days later, nearly one thousand sanitation, sewer, and roadway workers in Memphis began a city-wide strike for safer and more humane working conditions, higher and more consistent wages, and the right to have a voice in their own treatment. Two months after that, Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated on a motel balcony. Marching to the Mountaintop, Ann Bausum’s careful and thorough portrayal of this pivotal period, shows young readers how one event can set in motion forces powerful enough to change a city, a state, a nation—and maybe even the history of the world. Bausum will appear in Memphis at The Booksellers at Laurelwood on April 5 at 6 p.m.

February 9, 2012 Same Sun Here, a new middle-grade novel by Silas House and Neela Vaswani, examines what happens when people find a way to overcome social barriers and make a real connection to another person—no matter how “other” the other may seem. In the process, the authors suggest, they might find that the things which unite them—love for family, dreams for the future, and a belief in the necessity of justice and compassion for all—are greater than the circumstances which separate them.