In Willow (Candlewick, 2014), Tonya Cherie Hegamin’s historical novel set in 1848, Knotwild Plantation borders the Mason-Dixon Line between slave state Maryland and free state Pennsylvania. There are no fences or guards—only a stone marker that separates the enslaved black…
Category: historical fiction
Families Around the World
Marketed as non-fiction, Families Around the World is based on real families interviewed by author Margriet Ruurs, and told in the first person by a child in that family. Each geographical family gets a two-page spread in which colorful illustrations…
Three Middle Grade Titles from Indie Publishing Pioneer Zetta Elliott
Zetta Elliott burst onto the children’s publishing scene with a Lee & Low New Voices Award and the acclaimed 2008 picture book for older readers Bird, the moving story of a boy’s close relationship with his troubled older brother. Since…
A Child on Her Own: Jewell Parker Rhodes’s Sugar
A poet and author of fiction for adults, Jewell Parker Rhodes turned to writing for children with the highly acclaimed Ninth Ward, the story of an 11-year-old girl whose ailing grandmother—and her grandmother’s stories—help her to survive Hurricane Katrina in…
Girl in Reverse ~ A Chinese-American Teen Searches for Her Story
Barbara Stuber has transformed artifacts collected in a museum into fragments of story. Combined, the artifacts create the provenance of teenaged Lily Firestone. Stuber exquisitely extends the use of the term provenance from the life story of a work of art, to…
On Personal and Collective Memory: An Interview with Marjorie Agosín
Last week I reviewed Marjorie Agosín’s debut novel for middle grade readers, I Lived on Butterfly Hill. This lyrical novel is the story of a perceptive and courageous girl living in Valaparaío, Chile and facing traumatic political events that force…
From Chile to Maine and Back: A Review of I Lived on Butterfly Hill
Marjorie Agosín is an acclaimed poet and essayist whose dozens of published works explore the lives of women and Jews in her native Chile and the struggle for human rights around the world. I Lived on Butterfly Hill (Simon &…
Fleeing Genocide: A Review of The Weaver’s Scar
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, which claimed the lives of up to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The massacre revealed the helplessness of international organizations and spurred the establishment of the International Criminal…
HOUSE OF PURPLE CEDAR by TIM TINGLE
HOUSE OF PURPLE CEDAR Cinco Puntos Press 2014 “I was a secret Choctaw Indian.” What a surprise to hear Tim Tingle speak those words in a panel presentation at the Tucson Festival of Books this month. His new cross-over YA/Adult…