A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Children & YA

The Prize in the Cereal Box

By Margaret Renkl

Nashville nanny Shellie Braeuner didn’t learn about the first Cheerios Spoonfuls of Stories Children’s Book Contest until the final day to enter. Undaunted, she came up with a charming rhyme about bathing the family dog and entered the contest online, barely in time to pick up the older children from school. Despite a typo in the title, The Great Dog Wash beat out a thousand other entries to win the grand prize—five thousand dollars and the chance at a hardcover publishing contract.

Fireworks, at Home and Elsewhere

By Susannah Felts

Today’s young readers, coming of age in a post-9/11 world, should be deeply familiar with a central question of our times: what does it mean to be patriotic, to love—and protect, or protest—one’s country? It’s one question, among others, that they’ll find tenderly explored in Silas House‘s first young-adult novel, Eli the Good.

Voices of Stone

By Maria Browning

Nashville sculptor William Edmondson believed he worked at God’s command. In a collection of poems for young readers, Elizabeth Spires gives his creations voices of their own.

Hot Popcorn, Cold War

By Chris Scott

The 1950s was a scary time, full of drop drills, McCarthyism, and Soviet boasts. It was also the golden age of horror movies. Aliens, mutants, zombies, and werewolves filled theater screens. Coincidence? Not in Ronald Kidd‘s The Year of the Bomb, a young-adult novel that explores the angst of growing up surrounded by real and imagined horror.

Visit the Children & YA archives chronologically below or search for an article

TAKE THE SHORT READER SURVEY! CHAPTER 16 SURVEYOR SURVEYING