Children & YA | Chapter 16

Shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, Celebrated by an Entire Homeland

By Margaret Renkl

March 30, 2012

March 30, 2012 Between Shades of Gray, the bestselling debut young-adult novel by Nashvillian Ruta Sepetys, has already won the Golden Kite Award (an honor by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and the Prix RTL-Lire (a French prize for the best novel for young people). It was also a finalist for the American Library Association’s William C. Morris Award. Now Shades of Gray has been shortlisted for a prestigious Carnegie Medal, and Sepetys has been honored with Lithuania’s Patriot Award.

Sepetys's Golden Kite

By Serenity Gerbman

March 9, 2012

March 9, 2012 Nashvillian Ruta Sepetys has won the Golden Kite Award for Fiction from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Ilustrators (SCBWI), another prestigious honor for her acclaimed debut young-adult novel Between Shades of Gray. Sepetys will be given the award, along with a $2,500 cash prize, at the organization’s annual meeting in August.

What a Poem Leaves Out

By Pablo Tanguay

February 15, 2012

February 15, 2012 Marvin Bell has written twenty-three books of poems and taught for more than forty years at The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, but he is hardly slowing down. In 2011 alone, he published a new book of poems (Vertigo: The Living Dead Man Poems), a children’s book (A Primer about the Flag), and a collaboration with the photographer Nathan Lyons (Whiteout). He also frequently performs his poems with musicians, including jazz bassist Glen Moore and his own son, the Tennessee-based singer/songwriter Nathan Bell. Marvin Bell will read from his work on February 20 at 4:30 p.m. in the Tom Jackson Building on the campus of Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. The event is free and open to the public.

Our Own True Selves

By Tina LoTufo

February 9, 2012

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.

"A Refreshingly Honest Story"

By Margaret Renkl

January 5, 2012

January 5, 2012 Former Harrogate poet and novelist Silas House tends to be published by small literary presses without a huge budget for marketing, but his books always seem to find their way into the national spotlight anyway. Consider what Publisher’s Weekly has to say–in a starred review, no less–about Same Sun Here, the new middle-grade novel by House and his coauthor, Neela Vaswani:

“Heartbreaking, Searing, and Lyrically Written”

By Fernanda Moore

December 13, 2011

December 13, 2011 “I felt a weighty responsibility to get this story right—for history, for my heritage, and for these survivors—especially the survivors,” Ruta Sepetys told Publisher’s Weekly before her debut novel was released. “Because this chapter of history remained secret, no one had ever celebrated their bravery or consoled their regrets.” As a raft of awards and stellar notices has since attested, Sepetys’s message has come through loud and clear. Chapter 16 looks back on a year of raves for Between Shades of Gray.

“Beirut Radical takes up [the story of] Imad Nuwayhid as a global microhistory — a window into the global sixties, the war, and its aftermath. Baun argues that Imad’s beliefs and actions, crystalized during two tumultuous decades of the Cold War, signal a young generation of what he terms “practical radicals.” … More than anything perhaps, Beirut Radical is a meditation on the intimate, the personal, the ethics, and the micro-level of history.”

~ the publisher