I smiled my way through Wicked Marigold, a middle grade novel by Caroline Carlson. In honor of Tell a Fairytale Day (February 26) I asked Caroline to tell me more about her experience writing this romp of a fractured fairytale. Here is her reply:

Old Narratives, New Worlds: Some thoughts on the long tradition of fracturing fairy tales

[Posted by Jen Breach for Writing With a Broken Tusk]

Kim Rogers (Wichita and Affiliated Tribes) comes from a military family. Many of her family members served  at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, named for Clarence Tinker, the first Native American Major General in the US Military, and the subject of Kim’s recent picture book biography I Am Osage.

Finding Clarence’s story was a surprise to Kim–she stumbled across a record of him in the Oklahoma Historical Society while researching something else entirely–and the process of writing the biography was likewise unexpected.

“The enforcers of law in Canada and the United States sometimes coated their bullets in anti-coagulant. Not for when they shot men. For when they shot dragons.”

Set in the Pacific Northwest, Ness’s YA novel Burn takes readers back and forth across the border between countries. But it also crosses the borders between worlds—parallel universes of possibilities playing out in the lives of the characters.

You know you’ve heard this quip before: “This Woman’s Place is in the House — The House of Representatives.” But do you know who said it? Bella Abzug (1920-1998) was a lawyer, politician, social activist, and pioneer in women’s rights. Here’s Abzuglutely: Battling, Bellowing Bella Abzug, a loving picture book portrait by Sarah Aronson, illustrated by Andrea D’Aquino. I asked Sarah to tell me more about the making of this book.

I was privileged to read Radiant by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson poem by poem, as she wrote it. A few months earlier, I’d been delighted to read Wings to Soar by Tina Athaide.

Those two verse novels spoke to each other, with their musical threads, their self-aware young characters, and the histories unfurling in and around those characters’ families. So I knew I wanted these writers to talk to each other, and to me, about their books.

Marilyn Singer’s reverso poems make for lusciously happy picture book reading, so I invited her to tell us more about this jewel of a poetic form that she has created and made her own. Here’s what she wrote.

Abraham Lincoln warned of “crowned-kings, money-kings, and land-kings” opting instead to create a government of the people, for the people, by the people, a phrase so ordinary for us today that it no longer seems to call for quotation marks. Yet those kings of the material world are in seats of extraordinary power today. Their presence will be writ large in the extravagant and highly politicized presidential inauguration taking place in the United States. Yet, purely by the chance arrangement of the Gregorian calendar, that event, with all the hoopla surrounding it, happens to coincide with Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. That’s my focus today. Another kind of King.

[Posted by Jen Breach for Writing With a Broken Tusk]

Suma Subramaniam’s V. Malar: Greatest Host of All Time is a glorious celebration of Southern Indian culture, diaspora, and family, all told in a personal, intimate story between a young Indian girl and the American-raised cousin she is meeting for the first time. The layers are nuanced and stunningly brought to life.

Vaunda Micheaux Nelson is part of the New Mexico writing group that has given me support, critique, and loving friendship for some 26 years now. Today, Vaun has a new book out, Radiant, a verse novel written in the viewpoint of its young protagonist, Cooper. Here’s an excerpt from the publisher’s promotional copy:

As school begins in 1963, Cooper Dale wrestles with what it means to “shine” for a black girl in a predominantly white community near Pittsburgh. Set against the historic backdrop of the Birmingham church bombing, the Kennedy assassination, and Beatlemania, Radiant is a finely crafted novel in verse about race, class, faith, and finding your place in a loving family and a complicated world.

2024 brought a nice surprise to my email inbox. My first middle grade novel, Naming Maya, published in 2004, had been selected for the Phoenix Award, a little known but most unusual children’s literature award in the United States. Unlike just about every other award, it’s not given to a newly edited, newly published book. Rather it elevates and honors books that were published 20 years before the year of each award.