Read Chapter 16’s interview with Sherrilyn Kenyon here.
Read moreChildren & YA
Fairy-Tale Frolic
Jennifer Trafton debuts with a charming tale for young readers
January 25, 2011 In The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic, Jennifer Trafton creates a delightful fairy-tale world. This beautifully illustrated novel introduces a land inhabited by very serious Leafeaters; overly hilarious Rumblebumps; a spoiled young king who loves pepper and is saved by the love of a cat; Worvil the Worrier, whose imagination paralyzes him; and especially Persimmony Smudge, an irrepressible and courageous heroine. The inhabitants call their home “The Island at the Center of Everything,” but as it turns out, it’s a sleeping giant who’s really at the center of everything. Trafton will read from and sign copies of The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic at Cover To Cover Bookstore in Arlington on Jan. 27 at 5 p.m.
Read moreStars for Sepetys
Debut YA author Ruta Sepetys is bringing in the starred reviews
January 13, 2011 Debut novelist Ruta Sepetys has pulled off a hat trick with her YA novel, Shades of Gray: starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Kirkus Reviews. A historical novel set in Russia during Stalin’s reign of terror, the book addresses “a topic woefully underdiscussed in English-language children’s fiction,” according to Kirkus.
Read moreThe Truth About the Feechiefolk Freak
Jonathan Rogers’s new YA novel reads like a well-loved folk tale
January 11, 2011 The protagonist in Jonathan Rogers’s latest young-adult novel, The Charlatan’s Boy, is Grady, a twelve-year-old orphan who doesn’t “have any idea who I was or where I come from.” He doesn’t even have a last name. For much of his life, Grady has traveled from village to village alongside “full-bloomed scoundrel” Floyd Wendellson. Together they put on a circus-freak-show performance, with Floyd as the showman ringmaster and Grady “The Wild Man of the Feechiefen Swamp.” Dressed in “muskrat and possum hides,” his face covered in mud, Grady pretends to be one of the Feechiefolk, a mythical group of people who live in the swampy “black waters of the Feechiefen.”
Read moreEpic Achievement
Tracy Barrett’s brilliant reimagining of the Odyssey is a treat for young-adult readers
December 24, 2010 With King of Ithaka, Tracy Barrett, a senior lecturer in Italian at Vanderbilt University, takes her place in a long line of Odyssey-tweakers. Writers as diverse as the Greek tragedians, James Joyce, and the Coen brothers have helped themselves to what Aeschylus called “slices from the banquet of Homer”—and with varying degrees of success. Barrett’s version turns out to be a wonderfully surprising, thoroughly delightful coming-of-age tale, which has been chosen on of School Library Journal‘s Best Books of 2010.
Read moreRocking the Cradle
How Melissa Duke Mooney channeled a passion for rock ‘n’ roll into a bold new children’s book
December 15, 2010 Melissa Duke Mooney loved music, and when she began shopping for an ABC book for her then 4-year-old daughter, Nola, but found nothing that inspired her, she hit on an idea: what if there were an alphabet book based on rock ‘n’ roll artists, with famous acts representing each of the twenty-six letters? Being the woman she was—a do-er, a crafter, an instigator of many fun projects—Mooney decided that, since the book didn’t exist, she’d have to create it herself. The work that resulted, The ABCs of Rock, is an essential addition to the hip kid’s library, as splashy and loud and irrepressible as the artists to whom it pays homage. Tragically, Mooney died before the book was finished. Her husband Neil saw the project through. Today he talks with Chapter 16 about the book and about the passionate, creative woman behind it.
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