middle grade writer
fragmenta I feel late to the gushing party for the Incorrigible Children series and Natalie Lloyd’s beautiful contemporary fantasies, but they’re all delightful and brought me a fizzy kind of joy this summer. My reading of Linda Williams Jackson’s Midnight Without a Moon and A Sky Full of Stars happened to coincide with the anniversary of Emmett Till’s […]
Nothing like sliding in at the last moment to keep your blog from dying after six months hibernation…. //READING// The Empty Grave by Jonathan Stroud I was a latecomer to Lockwood & Co., so I got to read ALL FIVE THIS YEAR. This series rocketed to one of my favs, and I’m already dying to […]
I read The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill after it won the Newberry though it languished in my TBR pile for far too long (thanks, library-holds-all-coming-available-at-once!). But while reading, all I could think was, “DUH it won.” It is breath-taking, heart-wrenching, and swoon-worthy. Several things in particular fascinated me about this book […]
It’s been a wild ride since I last posted. I survived Pitch Wars. I signed with an agent. I had a baby. But regular occasional posts will begin again soon!
So this time my absence has a good reason… After being chosen for Pitch Wars, I spent the past two months polishing my MS and preparing it for the agent round (which begins tomorrow, egads!). And now Doomsday is upon us, and all the MG writers are freaking out behind the scenes after watching the A/NA entries rack […]
Who needs to blog every [other] month?! Not I. Ahem. I kicked off my summer MG reading with these two delightful books by Rebecca Behrens, both with charming female protagonists shaped by their interactions with characters from the past. [Note, mild spoilers ahead] In When Audrey Met Alice, 13yo Audrey is struggling to adjust to the […]
I’m a Latin teacher living with my husband and menagerie (two cats + corgi) in Alabama. I wrote a lot of stories in middle school and high school, determined to be the next Agatha Christie, but gave up in despair and went to college. No creative writing happened for a long time, but there was a whole lot […]
I didn’t purposefully pair these two books to be read at the same time,  but Mr. Lemoncello’s Library Olympics by Chris Grabenstein  and Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman complement each other nicely. Both stories center around book-centric puzzle games, and I would recommend them to anyone who likes to work out problems within the text as they read. […]
I saw reviews comparing Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach and cynically thought it wasn’t possible…but now I think that wasn’t high enough praise. (I would add Mary Poppins to that list of comps.) Circus Mirandus is charming, bittersweet, and timeless. A shy boy, a dying grandfather, a mean aunt, and […]
realizing you’re probably a Hufflepuff
