Presenting Our First Quarter Graduates
by Sara Zarr
As the editor for the first issue of the e-zine, I had the privilege of assembling our roster of 1st Quarter books and authors. It’s an impressively diverse list—on one end of the spectrum there’s Paula Jolin’s exploration of a seventeen-year-old girl’s conflicted relationship with Islamic fundamentalism. On the other end, we have Julie Bowe’s humorous novel about the ever-changing world of fourth grade best-friendship. Among these nine books you’ll find everything in between, including a dark fantasy epic, a family drama, multi-cultural stories, and more.
Take some time to click through to each author profile for additional resources such as author interviews and discussion forums, as well as blogs and web sites where applicable.
January 10 - Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr - YA
March 6 - So Not the Drama by Paula Chase - YA
March 13 - Prom Dates from Hell by Rosemary Clement-Moore - YA
April 1 - My Last Best Friend by Julie Bowe - MG
April 1 - Kimchi and Calamari by Rose Kent - MG
April 3 - Reality Leak by Joni Sensel - MG
April 3 - In the Name of God by Paula Jolin - YA
April 5 - The Silver Cup by Constance Leeds - YA
April 10 - City of Bones by Cassandra Clare - YA
Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers - January 10 - YA
Deanna Lambert has spent the last three years of her life trying to live down one moment. World-weary at sixteen and stifled by her small town, blue collar existence, she looks to a job, a brother and his young family, a best friend for her salvation. All she wants is to get out of her past. All she wants is family. Kirkus Reviews writes, “This involving, touching first novel will resonate with those who have made mistakes and those who have not.” The book also received a starred review from School Library Journal, and favorable review from VOYA.
Though Sara says that the details of Deanna’s life don’t come from her own, there is a recognizably common experience of what it is to be human, “to be hurt and disappointed, to be humiliated, to want something you can’t have, to feel trapped, to feel like you’ve really screwed something up, to want to fix it and not know how, to long for family, to want to belong to something.”
Visit Sara Zarr’s Class of 2k7 page
So Not the Drama by Paula Chase
Dafina/Kensington - March 6 - YA
There are four basic rules of writing fiction for children of color…
Rule #1: Thou shall not write any young adult meant for a person of color that does not outline, in detail, the fight against good vs. evil, triumph over adversity or something along those lines.
Rule #2: Thou shall lift up the race at all times.
Rule #3: Thou shall set the book between the years of 1790-1865 (period of North American slavery) or from 1900-1960.
Rule #4: If thou breaketh rule #3, thou must incorporate The Good Times Factor—i.e. characters must overcome overwhelming odds presented by living in the ghetto.
Author Paula Chase is breaking all of them, instead offering a story in the vein of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants where young black girls recognize themselves, but with crossover appeal to a wide range of readers. Chase calls her brand of teen literature “hip-lit,” a nod to the diversity spawned by the MTV-watching, 106th & Park-ing, pop culture hungry hip-hop generation.
So Not the Drama follows fourteen-year-old Mina Mooney’s big plans to infiltrate her high school’s social glitterati—plans that take a back seat when a sociology class experiment to rid the world (or at least Del Rio Bay High) of prejudice backfires. Because it just might mean she’ll have to rid herself of her very best friend.
Don’t Get It Twisted, a sequel, is coming in December.
Visit Paula Chase’s Class of 2k7 page.
Prom Dates from Hell by Rosemary Clement-Moore
Delacorte/Random House - March 13 - YA
High school may be a natural breeding ground for evil, but the smell of fire and brimstone is still a little out of the ordinary. When real Twilight Zone stuff stars happening to the school’s ruling clique—the athletic elite and the head cheerleader and her minions (all of whom happen to be named Jessica) Maggie realizes it’s up to her to get in touch with her inner Nancy Drew and ferret out who unleashed the ancient evil before all hell breaks loose.
Rosemary Clement-Moore is a fan of both Jane Austen and Ann Brashares, Doctor Who and Veronica Mars, vintage embroidery and Dance Dance Revolution. She lives in Texas and writes full-time.
Visit Rosemary Clement-Moore’s Class of 2k7 page
My Last Best Friend by Julie Bowe
Harcourt - April 1 - MG
Julie Bowe recommends washing dishes for inspiration. It was over a sinkful of suds that she was given the first line of her novel about Ida May, a fourth-grader who resolves to never have a best friend, ever again. Still, when Stacey Merriweather comes on the scene, Ida May sees friend potential and can’t resist leaving Stacey anonymous notes. Friendship ensues, in spite of her vow.
Julie’s background includes Danish pastries, anthropology, bus driving, foosball, bottle-feeding lambs, youth ministry and curriculum development. The idea for this humorous, charming story was sparked when her own daughter started fourth grade.
Visit Julie Bowe’s Class of 2k7 page
Kimchi and Calamari by Rose Kent
HarperCollins - April 1 - MG
Kimchi and calamari is a quirky food fusion—and exactly how fourteen-year-old Joseph Calderaro feels about himself. Why wouldn’t an adopted Korean drummer feel like a combo platter given (1) his face in the mirror and (2) his proud Italian family? Now Joseph has to write an ancestry essay for school. But all he knows is that his birth family put his diapered butt on a plane to the USA.
What Joseph does leads to a catastrophe messier than a table of shattered dishes—and self-discovery that he never could have imagined.
Author Rose Kent says, “Obviously kids who are adopted or multiracial will relate to Joseph feeling like an ethnic sandwich, but bigger picture, who hasn’t struggled to fit in?” The story was inspired by her Korean adopted children and her part-Korean biological children, as well as the many adoptees she’s had the privilege to meet.
Visit Rose Kent’s Class of 2k7 page
Reality Leak by Joni Sensel
Henry Holt/Holtzbrinck - April 3 - MG
Something’s not right at the new factory that just opened in dusty little South Wiggot. The first clue? The factory owner, Mr. Keen, arrived in a crate. The only witness, 11-year-old Bryan Zilcher, knows suspicious behavior when he sees it. He hires on at the factory for the chance to spy and soon stumbles onto a trail of riddles, popcorn, and invisible ink. But when Bryan’s dad goes missing—except for his pants—Mr. Keen’s strange business takes on a sinister slant. With the help of his trusty friend Spot (who’s a girl, even if she thinks she’s a dog), Bryan races to find his father and discover Mr. Keen’s secret before outright weirdness swallows Bryan, Spot, and everyone else in South Wiggot.
Joni Sensel has had a long-time obsession with factories, assembly lines, and the ACME products of Saturday morning cartoon fame. Reality Leak started out as an idea for a movie before Joni refashioned it as a middle-grade novel and sold it to Henry Holt. She lives in Washington and loves writing about young characters because they’re “still flexible, still discovering themselves and the world, still creating themselves, and I think that’s fascinating.” Holt will also publish Joni’s historical fantasy, The Humming of Numbers, in early 2008.
Visit Joni Sensel’s Class of 2k7 page
In the Name of God by Paula Jolin
Roaring Brook/Holtzbrinck - April 3 - YA
17-year-old Nadia is an excellent student, daughter, and sister, but above all strives to walk the straight path and follow the laws of Islam.
Living in Damascus, Syria, she’s conflicted about her Westernized peers, the internal economic, social and political struggles of her country, and the war raging in Iraq. When her cousin is arrested by the Syrian authorities for speaking out, Nadia finds herself drawn into the dark world of Islamic fundamentalism, eventually contemplating the ultimate sacrifice to take a stand for her people and her religion.
Paula Jolin’s ten years living and traveling in the Middle East laid the foundation for her book. “I also did a lot of academic work on the Middle East in grad school,” she says, “studying Islamic history and anthropology of the modern Middle East, which gave me a lot of opportunities to read texts written by a whole range of Muslims—from fanatics like Sayyid Qutb and Hasan al-Banna to very westernized Muslims like Mohammad Arkoun.” When she decided to write a book, she wanted to fill it with the people she knew: passionate, deeply religious, politically aware. “In the Name of God came out of my experiences in the Arab World, but also out of the realization that Arabs are as diverse as Americans in their thoughts, beliefs and hope for the future.”
Visit Paula Jolin’s Class of 2k7 page.
The Silver Cup by Constance Leeds
Viking/Penguin - April 5 - YA
A little boy disappears. Is it foul play, and is his mother to blame? As Anna wonders what has become of her youngest cousin, his brother Martin is determined to join the gathering armies of the First Crusade.
Anna’s sixteenth fall opens with the usual thankless drudgery, but before winter ends, she finds that neither she nor Martin will ever be the same. When, in late spring in the year 1096, Martin’s Crusaders bring murder and devastation to the Jewish community in the nearby German city of Worms, Anna risks everything to forge a remarkable friendship with Leah, an orphaned Jewish girl.
This is the story of four seasons and a year which transforms the lives of three medieval teenagers.
Constance Leeds is a retired lawyer and the mother of three mostly grown children. When the children were young, the family lived on a farm with an ill tempered pig, a pain in the neck goat, and a motley flock of wonderful, egg laying chickens (including a rooster just like Toes in The Silver Cup). These days she lives in the city of Boston with two exemplary dogs.
Visit Constance Leeds’ Class of 2k7 page
City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
McElderry Books/Simon & Schuster - April 10 - YA
City of Bones is the first book of the Mortal Instruments Trilogy, a dark urban fantasy series about a sixteen-year old girl, Clary Fray, who lives in New York with her single mother, an artist. She comes home one night to find her apartment ransacked, her mother gone—and a slavering demon ready to tear off her head. Clary’s search for her mother leads her into an alternate New York filled with hideous demons, hard-partying warlocks, not-what-they-seem vampires, an army of werewolves and the scariest thing of all: the secrets of her own family’s past. She also finds herself torn between two boys—her best friend Simon, for whom she’s developing new feelings, and the mysterious demon hunter Jace, who has a past more tangled than her own. She becomes a part of the secret word of the demon hunters, or Nephilim, and as she does she discovers that rescuing her mother might mean putting their whole world in jeopardy.
Cassandra Clare was born overseas and spent her early years traveling around the world with her family and several trunks of books. She’s worked as a bookseller, an event planner for a children’s bookshop, a freelance writer, an entertainment journalist in Hollywood and a copyeditor for The National Enquirer, among other odd jobs. City of Bones is her first novel, and the first in the upcoming Mortal Instruments Trilogy, a dark young adult fantasy series set in New York and published by Simon and Schuster. The next two books will be City of Blood, coming in 2008, and City of Glass, coming in 2009. She lives in Brooklyn with her boyfriend and their two cats.