With the spread of the internet, an increasing number of young people in war zones have been able to tell their own stories, and to be heard by a wider world. One of the most famous blogs of this kind…
Author: lynmillerlachmann
Crow: If You Think “It Can’t Happen Here”…Well, It Already Has
In the early 1990s I reviewed a historical novel for young readers, part of a historical fiction series from an educational publisher, about an interracial friendship between two 12-year-old boys in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898. In the story, a…
Abandoned Children Nobody Knows
In 2004 the Japanese filmmaker Hirozaku Kore-eda released Nobody Knows, a feature film based on the story of five children in Tokyo, abandoned by their mother and forced to fend for themselves. The film gained widespread attention for its depiction…
The Many Facets of Bullying: A Review of Cornered
Last December I reviewed A.S. King’s excellent young adult novel Everybody Sees the Ants for my local newspaper and interviewed the author on the novel’s central theme of bullying. Since then, several more books have come out on the subject,…
Focus on Malawi: Laugh with the Moon and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
The small country of Malawi, in south-central Africa, rarely appears on children’s authors’ radars, but two books published in 2012—Shana Burg’s middle grade novel Laugh with the Moon (Delacorte) and the picture book version of The Boy Who Harnessed the…
Laugh with the Moon Blog Tour: An Interview with Shana Burg
This month, author Shana Burg has visited a number of blogs as part of her blog tour for her newly-released middle grade novel Laugh with the Moon (Delacorte). The novel, set in rural Malawi, portrays 13-year-old Clare, whose father has…
Focus on the Disability Experience: A Review of Wonder
This weekend I’m headed to Montpelier, Vermont for my final residency and graduation from the Vermont College of Fine Arts program in Writing for Children and Young Adults. One of my MFA requirements is to deliver a lecture on an…
Focus on the Bully: A Review of Orchards
The recently released video of middle schoolers tormenting a 68-year-old bus monitor in Greece, NY, near Rochester, has prompted national outrage aimed at the young bullies. Last week in a post titled “Where Have All the Manners Gone,” my sister…
The Upstanders Award Goes to Ghetto Cowboy!
This past weekend, the Fifth Annual Horace Mann Upstanders Book Award was given to G. (Greg) Neri for his middle grade novel Ghetto Cowboy. The ceremony took place at the Wildwood Elementary School in Los Angeles, and along with Neri…
On Children’s Rights
We’re back after some technical difficulties, and as promised, I’m following up Ann’s eloquent review of Never Fall Down with a report on the Children’s Rights Panel from this year’s PEN World Voices Festival, which featured Patricia McCormick, Arn Chorn-Pond,…