Cath and Wren are twins – how they got their name is just too entertainingly clever. They've been each other's best friend their whole lives, sharing the same room which also serves as a near-shrine to Simon Snow (à la Harry Potter, who does get a...
At 22, Julie Wu had a “vision” about a sad young boy that she immediately rushed to capture in words. From those initial notes, she would take almost a quarter century to bring him to the page: at age 46, she “bloomed” as a first-time novelist....
Vision and Reinvention: Julie Wu’s The Third Son So how many detours can a writer make before becoming that writer? If you’re newbie novelist Julie Wu – who knew as a Harvard undergraduate in the 1980s that writing was what she wanted to do – the answer might include a Master’s program...
What writer and musician James McBride initially thought might take just six months to write required 14 long years to produce his now-almost-20-year-old debut title, The Color of Water. "Mommy" – McBride never calls her anything else – was never a cooperative subject: she shared her memories in her...
First, to catch up: click here for previous volumes (all of which, of course, you need to read for yourself). If these covers placed next to each other above are a bit jarring, I think I might have unintentionally, wrongly grouped the latest volumes together. Let me...
Let's start with this fascinating article: "The One Thing White Writers Get Away With, But Authors of Color Don't" by PolicyMic’s Gracie Jin – go ahead, take a few minutes to read it. You'll see from that giant close-up photo that author Bill Cheng is indeed of...
Here's the perfect companion to Mar Pavón and Nívola Uyá's A Very, Very Noisy Tractor which posted Saturday. Young Nasreddine's answers his father Mustafa's request to ready the donkey for their journey to the market. Mustafa and their large sack of dates sit atop the donkey, while a...
Since we're talking four volumes here, allow me attempt to offer a set-up without too many spoilers. "One thousand years ago," a boy named Teito Klein (not sure of the kanji for 'Teito,' but his last name means "small" auf Deutsch – you'll find many German-inspired references throughout)...
So here's the last of my recent unintentional assemblage of end-of-World-War-II novels that began with Elizabeth Wein’s wrenching Rose Under Fire, and progressed with Chris Bohjalian's desperate Skeletons at the Feast and continued with his latest, the vengeful The Light in the Ruins. Of this week's quartet, Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins (how about that...
Tell me if you've heard this one before: a Cuban, an El Salvadorean, and an Iranian land on the page and spend decades trying to find their place in the world. Yes? Then, you must have read Cristina García’s A Handbook to Luck. No? Then read...
Although published a quarter century apart, these are two books that tell a single tears-of-joy-inducing family story. If chronology is important, you might read Patricia Polacco's multi-generational family epic out of publication order – that is, Blessing Cup (out this year) first, and then Keeping Quilt (which debuted in...
On the evening of her 12th birthday, Mira Levenson receives three life-changing (death-defying) gifts: a diary, a charm, and her period. As one-quarter of a school writing class (led by an author named Miss Print!), Mira finds her voice – silently at first through the diary...
Certain books make me terribly selfish – because once I finish a post, the book gets cleared off my desk and either shelved or shared. British author/artist Grahame Baker-Smith's FArTHER – the many meanings in the title alone, achieved with just the lower-casing of that single 'r' provokes goosebumps...
You could just start reading Uma Krishnaswami's recent middle grade cross-cultural adventure and thoroughly enjoy it, but why have only half the fun? To maximize the knowing giggles, make sure to start with Dini's 2011 debut in The Grand Plan to Fix Everything. Then check out...
Allow me to begin with an intriguing tidbit and a cringe-inducing warning ...
In 2006, Gene Luen Yang made major literary headlines when his then-debut, American Born Chinese, became (not without controversy, ahem!) the first-ever graphic novel nominated for a National Book Award. [Click here for my 2007 post-NBA interview with Yang.] Released earlier this month, Yang's two-volume Boxers &...
Clearly, my kiddies grew up too quickly. Wasn't it just yesterday when I would hear their plaintive "Waaaaaiiiittttt!" on our regular hikes in random places all over the world? One of us old folks would answer with "ketchup," matched with an indignant "mustard" or – even...
Kim Thúy’s Ru: An Apple for the Reader Ah, well . . . better start with true confessions: my words appear on the back cover of the U.S. edition (at least the first printing) of Vietnamese Canadian author Kim Thúy’s debut novel, Ru. The blurb is...
A dear friend lost her mother this week; even if a parent is granted almost a century of life well lived, the surviving child's loss resonates for always. When a parent dies while the child is still very young, to understand and accept such loss...
For you DC-area-locals who were wondering, debut novelist A.X. Ahmad is one of us ...
