Take some time today and head on over to author Cynthia Leitich Smith’s blog Cynsations to read her Guest Post with author Holly Thompson entitled “Holly Thompson on the Perfect Setting & Orchards“.
Orchards is Thompson’s debut novel for young adults and is written in verse. It tells the story of Kana Goldberg, a half-Jewish, half-Japanese American teenager who, after a classmate’s unexpected death, is sent to her family’s farm in Japan to reflect on her participation in the events that led up to the classmate’s suicide.
Orchards has been receiving rave reviews since it’s release this past Spring (read PaperTigers’ review here) and is included on the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) Best Fiction for Young Adults Nominations list.
Holly has been keeping extremely busy this year (click here to visit her blog) and has just returned from the Manila International Literary Festival where she presented three panel discussions:
“Writing for Young Adults” with author Perpi Alipon-Tiongson and publisher RayVi Sunico;
“The Many Forms of the Novel” in which she spoke about writing in verse and read an excerpt from Orchards; and
“The Stranger Experience” on writing away from home, cross-cultural experiences, and the multi-faceted immigration experience with Gemma Nemenzo and Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz. The immigrant’s experience plays a vital role in Junot’s work and I have to share this amazing quote from him that I found on Tarie Sabido’s blog Asia in the Heart, World on the Mind:
“You guys know about vampires? … You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. And what I’ve always thought isn’t that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. It’s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all. I was like, Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don’t exist? And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it.” — Junot Diaz
Press Release:
April 28, 2010- Winners of the 2010 Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards were announced today by the Jane Addams Peace Association.
Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan
, written and illustrated by Jeanette Winter, Beach Lane Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, is the
winner in the Books for Younger Children Category.
Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary by Elizabeth Partridge, Viking Children’s Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, is the winner in the Books for Older Children Category.
In Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan Nasreen’s parents are gone, her father taken one night by soldiers, her mother lost on her search to find him. Now living with only her grandmother, Nasreen stays inside herself, silent with trauma. Whispers about a forbidden school reach her grandmother who, with stealth, bravery and hope, brings Nasreen to the secret school hidden in the home of an equally-brave woman, a teacher of girls. Framed stylized paintings in hues that symbolically reflect the path of Nasreen’s healing extend the story told in the plain, heartfelt voice of her grandmother. The power of education and resistance stand out in this all-too-true contemporary tale of the human toll exacted by war and the oppression of women.
Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary is a breathtaking tribute to the courageous, passionate African-American children who demanded voting rights through nonviolent action in the historic 1963 March from Selma to Montgomery. Riveting chronology, stunning photographs, and telling details from oral history interviews recreate the children’s anger, terror, solidarity and purpose moment-by-moment. This palpable sense of immediacy crystallizes the commitment of young people who acted on behalf of human rights when they were most frightened and “the end” was unclear and out of sight. Vital and forceful, this testament to the power of youth and collective nonviolent action inspires activism by delving deeply into the heart of a pivotal moment in the history of youth and civil rights in the United States.
Two books were named Honor Books in the Books for Younger Children Category:
Sojourner Truth’s Step-Stomp Stride, by Andrea Davis Pinkney & Brian Pinkney, published by Disney-Jump at the Sun Books, has been named an Honor Book for Younger Children. Born a slave in upstate New York, Sojourner Truth, an iconic figure in the abolitionist and woman’s suffrage movements, was “Meant for speaking. Meant for preaching. Meant for teaching about freedom.” Told with punch and vigor, this energetic picture book biography marches along with Truth as she frees herself from bondage and ultimately delivers her legendary women’s rights speech to a church filled with white men in 1851. Short storyteller-style sentences punctuated with exclamation points and meaningful capitalizations evoke Truth’s spirit and force. Illustrations in a palette of yellows alive with whirling lines keep the momentum, energy, sorrow, seriousness and fervor of Sojourner Truth’s unwavering quest for social justice front
