[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.

Margriet Ruurs is a writer and the author of books like Where We Live, an exploration of neighbourhoods around the world, and Come, Read With Me, which loops a world of stories into a bedtime read. I was delighted to find that my Look! Look! was included in her Global Book Recommendations list for The International Educator.

Earlier this year, Margriet raised funds for The Book Bus, a UK charity dedicated to getting books into the hands of kids, educators, and volunteers in Malawi, Zambia, and Ecuador. Here she writes about her ensuing trip to Zambia.

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

I was utterly moved by Rina Singh’s 2020 picture book biography 111 Trees, which profiled Shyam Sundar Paliwal, an Indian village leader and eco-feminist who, with trees and compassion, replenished the villages water and food supplies, and established equal rights to education for girls. Rina followed that up in 2023 with two more moving and meticulously researched profiles of Indian feminist and conversation activists. I am thrilled to talk with her about her process. 

For those intrigued by offbeat days dedicated to strange pursuits, December 8 is Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day. By whom this was first declared, and why, remain unclear, but let’s celebrate here by considering Erin Entrada Kelly’s middle grade novel, The First State of Being.

It takes a visitor from the future for the protagonist, 12-year-old Michael Rosario, to find himself. The novel raises questions about what it means to be human and to live in a particular time and place, and about how history is fashioned and shaped out of the lives of people.

When I talked about Two at the Top: A Shared Dream of Everest at the Fort Collins Book Fest earlier this year, I mentioned that the book began its life as a collection of twenty-two poems about Mount Everest, of which only one, a poem in two voices, made it into the final picture book. I showed my middle grade audience some slides with a couple of the other poems, whose content became transformed into two spreads of back matter. And I showed them a couple more that didn't even make it that far.

“Will you do anything with those unused poems?” Amy Holzworth, Children’s Services Librarian at Council Tree Library, asked me. I said, “I don’t know. Probably not. I don’t think there’s another book in there.”

I met Alice Curry years ago when I brainstormed with a group of talented writers and storytellers with the objective of designing a MOOC on Coursera with a focus on writing for children. It was a fascinating process. Among all the other ripples those early conversations generated was the remarkable growth of a publishing house under Alice’s leadership. This year Lantana Publishing celebrated its 10th birthday. Here’s my conversation with Alice about this uncommon milestone.