Children & YA | Chapter 16

The Book Lady of Sevier County

By Susannah Felts

November 18, 2010

November 18, 2010 Dolly Parton is almost universally adored, not just for her songs but for her sunny, shiny, sweeter-than-sweet-tea persona, her gusto, and her wit. It’s virtually impossible to name another member of Music City royalty who can claim a following of such diversity. But even Parton’s biggest fans may be unaware of her less flashy role as “The Book Lady.” To children, she’s a nearly magical figure who leaves books in the mailboxes of boys and girls everywhere. In more realistic terms, she’s the founder of the Imagination Library, a rapidly growing program which sends free books to kids. She recently spoke with Chapter 16 about the program and about the childhood that inspired it.

End Times at the Circus

By Lacey Galbraith

November 9, 2010

November 9, 2010 Hope McDaniels, the star of Kristin O’Donnell Tubb’s latest middle-grade novel, is a thirteen-year-old magician’s assistant. Hope has crawled inside a box to be sawed in half, stood still while knives were thrown her way, and levitated in front of an awed audience. Selling Hope takes place in 1910, during “the world’s first case of mass hysteria,” when the Earth was due to pass through the tail of Halley’s Comet. Tubb will launch the book at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Brentwood on November 13 at 2 p.m.

Making It in Music City

By Lacey Galbraith

June 30, 2010

June 30, 2010 It’s graduation day, and there’s little that Retta Lee Jones will miss about Starling High School. Nineteen years old and raised in small-town Starling, Tennessee—about two and a half hours outside Nashville—she’s desperate to “get on with my real life”—the life she’s been “staring out the window and daydreaming about all through high school.” The heroine of Suzanne Supplee’s new novel, Somebody Everybody Listens To, Retta has plans—big ones: Retta Lee Jones wants to make it in country music.

Putting the Fan in Fantasy

By Susannah Felts

June 25, 2010

June 25, 2010 After Franklin, Tennessee, graphic novelist Scott Christian Sava accomplished his childhood dream of illustrating an issue of the Spider-Man comic, he set his sights on creating an epic fantasy narrative of his own. The result, The Dreamland Chronicles, is now one of the most popular web comics in existence, read daily by more than ten million readers worldwide. And that’s not even counting the audience for his books.

Across the Age Barrier

By Maria Browning

June 1, 2010

June 1, 2010 Youth Speaks Nashville gives teens the opportunity to learn and express themselves through spoken-word poetry. Some of its talented young poets will add their voices to Nashville Now: 2010 Spoken Word Census, a portrait of the city in poetry, prose, and song. The three-day series of events will take place at the Darkhorse Theater at 7:30 p.m. on June 3, 4, and 5.

Catcher in the National Spotlight

By Susannah Felts

May 31, 2010

May 31, 2010 It began as just another school essay, with a due date for a grade. The assignment: to choose a book that speaks to you—any book you wish—and write a letter to its author, explaining how the story sheds new light on your own life experiences. Siori Koerner’s letter to J.D. Salinger ultimately won its author, an eighth grader from Murfreesboro, top honors in this year’s Letters About Literature contest, a national program sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.

“This book features fifteen notable campus forests in eleven states in the eastern United States, stretching from North Georgia, on up through the Ohio Valley and the mid-Atlantic region, into coastal Maine. … Woodlands of the Mind serves as a travel book for wanderers and armchair adventurers alike. These fifteen narratives, or “rambles,” guide readers through forests that range from small, hidden parks to vast preserves.”

~ the publisher