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:
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.
November 30, 2011 Published in twenty-nine countries to rave reviews around the world, Between Shades of Gray, the bestselling debut novel by Ruta Sepetys, is a writer’s wildest dream come true. Now the Nashville author has signed a six-figure book deal and become the first American to win the prestigious Prix RTL-Lire, a French prize for the best novel for young people published in the last year. Fresh from the gala at the Petit Palais in Paris, Sepetys answered questions from Chapter 16 about her literary influences, the connections she’s forged with the descendants of Baltic refugees or deportees, and the much-discussed “darkness” of literature pitched to an adolescent audience.
October 18, 2011 Author Patricia McKissack and illustrators Leo and Diane Dillon have created a children’s picture book about slavery that is neither maudlin nor depressing. Instead it is brave, heart-rending, visually breathtaking, truly magical, and filled with a deep wisdom that will resonate with anyone who has wrestled with pain and grief. Never Forgotten is an exquisitely hopeful, healing gift.
September 22, 2011 Liz Garrigan’s Dear John letter to Amazon in today’s edition of Chapter 16 is an unvarnished call for book lovers to put their money where their mouths are and support their local bookstores instead of buying books online. Garrigan argues that Amazon’s refusal to collect the state and local sales taxes that other bricks-and-mortar stores collect–taxes that support local schools, police and fire departments, and other civic necessities–amounts to a “powerful incentive for customers to let their fingers do the clicking.”
September 12, 2011 Tracy Barrett has a way with classical myth. Her last young-adult novel, the brilliant King of Ithaka, is an astonishingly original and surefooted reworking of Homer’s Odyssey, in which she somehow discovered new paths on what must be the Western canon’s most heavily trodden ground. Her newest book, Dark of the Moon, takes another famous Greek legend—the story of Theseus and the Minotaur—and makes it fresh and fascinating, even as it honors the foundations of the original tale.
