My book recommendation is the recent Golden Kite award-winning YA novel Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys. This book is another gripping tale in the same vein as David's recommendation, Breaking Stalin's Nose. It's set in 1941 when the communists have taken over the country of Lithuania, in particular, but also Latvia and Estonia, and have imprisoned many of the men/fathers/husbands and sent the women and children to desolate work camps in Siberia. Though it is a harsh and brutal story, it is also infused with love, courage, and hope. I was especially intrigued because my aunt (married to my mother's brother) grew up in just such a work camp before her Latvian family managed to emigrate to the United States. Here's a link to the video interview with author Ruta Sepetys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPiQ_LuKtDE/.



And in this post, I'd like to include a few photos from my recent trip through Kentucky and North Carolina. I'm still waiting for photos of me with the amazing Beulah Campbell, my former children's literature professor, but here are some from the culmination of the Family Reading Project at Hardin Park School in Boone, North Carolina. It was a wonderful evening spent with 5th and 6th grade students and their families and two terrific librarians, Candice Trexler and Amy Hiatt!

National Book Award Finalist, Laini Taylor, has written another magnificent fantasy for young adults. I enjoyed the stories in Lips Touch: Three Times, but if you can believe it, Daughter of Smoke & Bone  is even better.

Taylor has bright pink hair; Karou has bright blue hair.

The question "Who am I?" haunts Karou. The seventeen-year-old art student sometimes has to leave school to run errands for Brimstone, who has raised her. She enters portals and goes all over the world, bringing back teeth to him. What does he do with so many teeth? Then black handprints begin to appear on those doorways. If a portal opens, she finds herself still in Prague, where she lives.  It is in Prague where she meets her angel.  True love succeeds, but horrible news calls for a sequel.

For Taylor, every word counts because each word she writes is a fine gem.                

Book Recommendations

For this round of posts we are mentioning a favorite book that we've read recently. I've chosen three.

The first is THE ROMEO AND JULIET CODE by Phoebe Stone. Don't be turned off by the misleading cover. This is not a tween romance novel. Instead, it's a beautifully written middle grade novel set during the beginning of World War II. 11-year-old Felicity Bathburn Budwig is sent from London to live with her relatives on the coast of Maine while her parents are off to...well, she doesn't know where. The book is filled with mysteries and interesting characters and a vivid setting. I looked forward to reading it every night.

My second recommendation comes from my dear friend and school librarian extraordinaire, Julie Reimer. Even though BREAKING STALIN'S NOSE by Eugene Velchin won the Newbery Honor Award, without Julie's recommendation, I would have never picked it up. Historical fiction set during communist Russia? No thank you. But I read this gripping tale in one night. This short middle grade novel portrays a young school boy who learns that the government he has put complete faith in is not at all what he was led to believe. This powerful story taught me a lot about a period in which I was ignorant.

And my final recommendation is BLUEFISH by Pat Schmatz. Travis is a 13-year-old who has gone through school without learning to read. With the help of a flamboyant girl named Velveeta (who has secrets of her own) and a dedicated teacher, things start to change. I found the story very moving, especially Travis' grieving for his lost hound dog. BLUEFISH has rightly won a number of awards, including our region's SCBWI Crystal Kite Award.

Some award-winning news...

I actually got this happy news last week before the other news, and can announce it today. My YA novel The Compound has won the 2011 Nebraska Golden Sower Award. Here are all the winners and runners-up for the three ages.
http://www.goldensower.org/index.htm

So I'll be heading to Omaha in October to collect the award at the state library conference.

Here's a new topic: Piracy

I've had an unsettling two days as it recently came to my attention that electronic review copies of my forthcoming book The Raft are being downloaded illegally. I won't expand here, but if you are interested, head over to my own blog http://latteya.livejournal.com

Stephanie

Growing

I'm looking forward to going over to my community garden and picking asparagus. It's one of my favorite foods and fresh asparagus coming up in the garden still feels magical. I'm looking forward to planting basil, tomatoes, eggplants, and squash. I've got lettuce and radishes in and am looking forward to planting the rest of the garden.

I'm working on new picture books while I wait word on a new young adult novel. I'm also looking forward to writing something new, something that I don't even know what it is right now.

This summer I've been asked to teach about writing for children and teens in a program in Lithuania. I've never been there and I've never been to Denmark where we're staying for a week on the way. I'm excited about both and hope to return with some stories.

I'm also looking forward to the wedding of a family friend in August. It will provide an opportunity for me to be together with my brother and sisters as we approach the one-year anniversary of my mother's death. It feels significant that we will be able together to share stories about the past and to talk about what we're looking forward to.

Around the Bend

Just last Sunday I began a list of what I am looking forward to doing as soon as I finish the illustrations I have been painting for the past three months. The list so far goes like this:

• Clean playroom (my kids are grown, but we still call it the playroom. Everything we do seems to be done in this room. It needs some help.
• Re-hang art in stairwell. (It was all taken down to film a dystopian version of MacBeth over spring break.)
• Garden. (I have hardly noticed spring, locked up in my studio. I dream of plunging my hands into black dirt.)

It is not a long list, but it is the beginning of hope. At the end of a long focused bout of illustrating a book, I always look forward to returning to ordinary things like picking up the house, clean laundry, hot coffee with a friend, reviving the garden, and walks around a lake.

I am looking forward to finishing the illustrations.

I am also looking forward to this book coming out in the fall:

I am looking forward to finally updating my website and blogging on my own blog about this book. I look forward to working on activity sheets to go with it and planning publication events. I look forward to reading it out loud to a listening audience for the first time.

All of these things I look forward to, but sometimes we look forward and we don't know what is around the bend that could change everything for good or bad. This is what happened to me a couple of weeks ago and luckily for the good! Last fall I finished a manuscript to submit for the biannual McKnight Fellowship in Children's Literature. Two weeks ago, I received a phone call telling me that I had been chosen for the Fellowship! Around the bend came fantastic news  and a whole new list of things to look forward to! The list looks like this:

• Plan a trip to Venice, Italy to research a middle grade novel set in Venice that I began during NaNoWriMo .
• Plan a trip to California to stay with an author friend there for a week of writing.
• Buy an iPad and begin learning how to design and make apps for my picture books.
• Enjoy a year of breathing easily about finances.

That is my list so far and it is a dream list thanks to the McKnight Fellowship. The story I submitted to the McKnight is called When Stravinsky Met Nijinsky. I look forward to telling you more about this story. It will be published in May of 2013. Since I am still in the midst of painting it, I will stop here and let you look forward to reading more about it in future posts. The posts I look forward to writing when my house is picked up, my laundry is clean, and my garden is planted.