Last weekend I visited the Maurice Sendak exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. It was fantastic—like taking a walk through his life as an artist. I was interested to learn about a practice he called “Fantasy Sketches.” In this exercise, he listened to a piece of classical music and challenged himself to draw a complete story before the last note sounded. Some of these ended up being the beginning seeds of books that were later published. (Like Where the Wild Things Are.)
I’ve been wanting to do more writing that’s just “for play”, to keep things feeling fun for myself, and the combination of sharing my prompt for Storystorm last week, plus seeing the Maurice Sendak exhibit, has sparked the idea of giving myself weekly writing prompts.… Read the rest
Ms. Balsam, a teacher at White Pines Intermediate School in Michigan, read Book Scavenger with her fifth-grade students last fall and she incorporated puzzles and cipher challenges as they were introduced in the story. She said her kids loved it! She also did a logo contest, where her students designed the Book Scavenger logo based on the descriptions given in Chapter 12:
“The picture was a drawing of the Earth and a treasure map blended together.” (p. 107)
And:
“The more Barry stared at it, the more the dotted lines on the treasure map/Earth blurred together. And then, quick as a lightbulb flicking on, Barry could see a letter hidden in the drawing.… Read the rest
If you’ve been with me for a long time, you might remember when I did an interview series on my blog with children’s book creators called Creative Spaces. (Those interviews can be found to your right in the right sidebar.) To go along with those interviews, I also ran the occasional “Book Cover Bingo!” game, which was a lot of fun.
I was thinking about those things recently, and about how much I love middle grade literature, and how we have so many fantastic books being made for kids these days. I was a children’s bookseller in 1999 (Linden Tree Books, whoop whoop!),… Read the rest
Fourteen middle-grade authors will be chatting LIVE about our new spring books – all in one place, all in one hour, all free, all followed by a live Q&A. If you weren’t able to join us live, don’t worry–there’s a replay! View it at this link to hear about a lot of wonderful books! https://www.crowdcast.io/c/pv7bv0l5ywq5
… Read the rest
Hooray!!! Sisterhood of Sleuths is now available in paperback! I love this story, I love these characters, and I’m so excited it’s now in paperback and hoping that helps it reach more readers.
Sisterhood of Sleuths is a funny mystery about friendship, family, and was inspired by my love of Nancy Drew mysteries when I was a young, as well as the fascinating history behind the series and how it has endured for nearly 100 years. Yes, did you know that the iconic teenage sleuth is nearly 100 years old?!
The main character is Maizy, an aspiring film-maker who is working on a class project with her best friend, Izzy.… Read the rest
