Joining us today for Creative Spaces is author (and one of my wonderful critique partners) Carrie Pearson!
Carrie is celebrating the release of her nonfiction nature picture book A Cool Summer Tail. Published by Arbordale Publishing and illustrated by Christina Wald, A Cool Summer Tail uses humor, rhyme, and compare/contrast elements to explore the amazing ways animals adapt to heat.
A Cool Summer Tail is a companion to A Warm Winter Tail, which won a Gelett Burgess Award and was selected for the Great Lakes, Great Reads literacy program.
To celebrate the publication of A Cool Summer Tail, Carrie is giving away a copy and a plush animal to one lucky reader who comments either on this post or one of the following interviews from last week:
Anastasia Suen: Booktalking
Nonfiction Monday
Brittney Breakey: Author Turf
Deborah Diesen: Jumping the Candlestick
The winner will be drawn randomly and announced on Carrie’s blog on August 19.… Read the rest
Samantha Vamos is the author of Alphabet Trucks (Charlesbridge, 2013, illustrated by Ryan O’Rourke), The Cazuela That the Farm Maiden Stirred (Charlesbridge, 2011, illustrated by Rafael López), and Before You Were Here, Mi Amor (Viking, 2009, illustrated by Santiago Cohen).
Alphabet Trucks is a rhyming, alphabet story about 26 different trucks and how they serve their communities. Alphabet Trains (Charlesbridge) will be published in 2015.
The Cazuela That the Farm Maiden Stirred won a Pura Belpré Illustration Honor and starred reviews from Kirkus and School Library Journal.
Samantha attended Georgetown University Law Center and practiced law in Washington, D.C. and Chicago.… Read the rest
Joining us today for Creative Spaces is author/illustrator Chiêu Anh Urban. Chiêu is the creator of novelty books, her most recent being Away We Go! A Shape and Seek Book.
Away We Go! is a concept book about basic shapes, published by Scholastic, Cartwheel. Triangles become sailboats and hearts become airplanes as each spread reveals a different mode of transportation made from bright colors and geometric shapes. Die-cuts of shapes are layered throughout each page, for a fun shape-and seek-game. The challenge is to find the vehicles in the shapes and the shapes in the vehicles.
Not only is Chiêu a wonderful creative talent, but she is generous and kind-hearted too.… Read the rest
Melanie Crowder is the author of Parched, her middle grade debut novel which published this month. A bit about Parched from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:
Sarel is a girl with secrets. She knows which tree roots reach down deep to pools of precious water. But now she must learn how to keep herself and her dogs alive. Nandi is the leader of those dogs. She knows they can’t last long without water–and she knows, too, that a boy is coming; a boy with the water song inside him.
Musa is that boy. His talent for finding water got him kidnapped by brutal men, yet he’s escaped, running away across the thirsty land that nearly claims his life.… Read the rest
Tara Lazar is a children’s book author and the creator of PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month), the picture book writer’s answer to NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). This month marks the publication of Tara’s debut picture book, The Monstore:
The Monstore is a one-stop shop for all your monsterly needs in this enormously funny story that’s full of friendly, kooky creatures.
“At the back of Frankensweet’s Candy Shoppe, under the last box of sour gumballs, there’s a trapdoor.
Knock five times fast, hand over a bag of squirmy worms, and you can crawl inside The Monstore.”
The Monstore is the place to go for all of your monsterly needs.… Read the rest
