News

Goodreads giveaway for Be a Changemaker ARCs

Good news: There’s a give­away going on right now on Goodreads for two ARCs (advance read­er copies) of Be a Change­mak­er! This is a pleas­ant sur­prise, because a) I did­n’t know there were any ARCs left, and b) the pub­lish­er set this up with­out me hav­ing to do any­thing (thank you, Simon & Schus­ter)! If you’d like to try to

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BE A CHANGEMAKER cover

It’s the Be a Changemaker launch party!

Please come cel­e­brate the release of my first book: Sun­day, Sep­tem­ber 14th, at 2 p.m. Seat­tle Cre­ative Arts Cen­ter 2601 NW Mar­ket St Seat­tle, WA 98107 (Click here for direc­tions and park­ing infor­ma­tion. Eat, drink, min­gle, hear more about the book from the author, and—best of all—meet some local teens who are already chang­ing the world! Load­ing… I hope to see you there! If you can’t

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BE A CHANGEMAKER cover

First reviews for BE A CHANGEMAKER

I’ve had great feed­back from friends all along (you know who you are–thank you!), but I’ve been anx­ious­ly await­ing that first third-par­­ty judge­ment of BE A CHANGEMAKER: HOW TO START SOMETHING THAT MATTERS. The first pro­fes­sion­al reviews feel huge to me, kind of “make or break” moments, where the tone gets set for all that may fol­low for that particular

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EMMANUEL’S DREAM popping up in some exciting places!

My upcom­ing pic­­ture-book biog­ra­phy, EMMANUEL’S DREAM: THE TRUE STORY OF EMMANUEL OFOSU YEBOAH, has been pop­ping up in a few excit­ing places late­ly! First, I recent­ly got to see–for the first time–how the illus­tra­tions by Sean Qualls are pro­gress­ing, and the art­work is noth­ing short of amaz­ing! I was sit­ting in a qui­et cof­fee shop work­ing on my lap­top when

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On overnight success (Surprise! It’s a lot like failure.)

I post­ed over on the Emu’s Debuts blog yes­ter­day about what makes an “overnight suc­cess.” If you missed it, here’s a lit­tle excerpt: Both of last week’s posts here were about fail­ure, or at least the con­stant per­ceived threat of fail­ure that so often makes it hard for us to move for­ward. I’m going to con­tin­ue the theme, but on

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The writing process blog tour is here!

You may have seen this meme going around on var­i­ous author and/or illus­tra­tor blogs where peo­ple answer ques­tions about their writ­ing process. I’ve been enjoy­ing read­ing oth­er peo­ple’s answers and learn­ing from their thoughts about process, so when I was tagged by my tal­ent­ed author/illustrator friend, Jen­nifer K. Mann, I decid­ed to add a post about my process here. Enjoy! Jenn

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Edward Jiang

Meet Changemaker Edward Jiang, founder of StudentRND

This is the sec­ond post in the series intro­duc­ing the amaz­ing young peo­ple who are pro­filed in my upcom­ing book, BE A CHANGEMAKER: HOW TO START SOMETHING THAT MATTERS (Beyond Words/Simon Pulse, Sep­tem­ber 2014). Today I’m intro­duc­ing Edward Jiang, founder of Stu­den­tRND, and giv­ing some behind-the-scenes details about our in-per­­son interview.

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I am not my book… Or am I?

Ear­li­er this month over on Emu’s Debuts, I blogged about the impor­tance, and dif­fi­cul­ties, of sep­a­rat­ing the cre­ator (our­selves) from the works cre­at­ed. Since some of you may not fol­low that blog, I thought I should post it here, too. Here’s an excerpt…

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Facts First! Nonfiction Monday

Review: ABAYOMI, THE BRAZILIAN PUMA

Dar­cy Pat­ti­son and Kit­ty Harvill have teamed up again, and I could­n’t be hap­pi­er with the result. You might remem­ber when I reviewed their pre­vi­ous col­lab­o­ra­tion, WISDOM, THE MIDWAY ALBATROSS, here. Unlike Wis­dom, the main char­ac­ter in ABAYOMI,  THE BRAZILIAN PUMA, is a mam­mal, a feline, not a bird. Unlike Wis­dom, Abay­o­mi lives in South Amer­i­ca, in Brazil, not on an island

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Be a Changemaker cover

Meet Changemaker Charles Orgbon III, founder of Greening Forward

Today, I’m kick­ing off a series of blog posts that will intro­duce you to some of the amaz­ing young peo­ple who are pro­filed in my upcom­ing book, BE A CHANGEMAKER: HOW TO START SOMETHING THAT MATTERS (Beyond Words/Simon Pulse, Sep­tem­ber 2014). Each of the 18 chap­ters in the book includes a short piece about how one or more young people

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