Eureka! Nonfiction Honor Award for Emmanuel’s Dream

EMMANUEL'S DREAM cover

EMMANUEL'S DREAM cover
I’m thrilled to announce that Emmanuel’s Dream: The True Sto­ry of Emmanuel Ofo­su Yeboah has been select­ed to receive a 2015 Eure­ka! Hon­or Book Award from the Cal­i­for­nia Read­ing Asso­ci­a­tion.
The Cal­i­for­nia Read­ing Asso­ci­a­tion has estab­lished this award to cel­e­brate and hon­or non­fic­tion children’s books. The Eure­ka! Non­fic­tion Children’s Book Award will assist teach­ers, librar­i­ans, and par­ents in iden­ti­fy­ing out­stand­ing non­fic­tion books for their stu­dents and children.
And, it means a shiny new stick­er for the cover! 🙂
Eureka Honor AwardEmmanuel’s Dream is in some excel­lent com­pa­ny, too! Click here for the full list of win­ners. I guar­an­tee you find some great non­fic­tion for kids (which means it’s great for adults, too!).

Texas Book Festival 2015

20151017_140152Last week­end I had the plea­sure of par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Texas Book Fes­ti­val in Austin, TX. It was a huge event, with over 300 par­tic­i­pat­ing authors and spread out over the capi­tol area of down­town. I had the hon­or of read­ing Emmanuel’s Dream with illus­tra­tor Sean Qualls to a huge crowd in the Chil­dren’s Read Me a Sto­ry tent.
 
20151017_140202First, Sean and I were intro­duced by the most adorable (and well-rehearsed) class of kinder­garten­ers. They’d each mem­o­rized a line of our bios and had them print­ed on a card for the audi­ence to read as they recit­ed them in order. Best. Intro. Ever.
 
2015-10-17 IMG_2538 CynthiaThen, Sean and I read the book togeth­er, tak­ing turns with each alter­nate two-page spread. This was the first time we’d ever done this, and, in fact, the first time we had ever met! What a treat!
 
2015-10-17 Akiko 1The best part for me was hear­ing about Sean’s process for mak­ing the art. I love the art in the book, and it was fas­ci­nat­ing hear­ing the details behind it. I was able to share some of this new knowl­edge in a school vis­it a few days later!
 
2015-10-17 Akiko 2After the read­ing, our talks, and a Q&A ses­sion, we head­ed over to the sign­ing tent. We met some great peo­ple, includ­ing some of the kids who had intro­duced us and their par­ents, as well as local teach­ers, authors, and illus­tra­tors, includ­ing the tal­ent­ed Akiko White. Akiko has been get­ting her hat signed by illus­tra­tors for years, and it is quite a work of art, let me tell you! She was gra­cious enough to let me sign it… I tried to write small. 🙂
 
Many thanks to local author and friend Cyn­thia Levin­son for the hos­pi­tal­i­ty, cama­raderie, moral sup­port, and pho­tos. You all are in for a treat when her new book, The Lit­tlest Marcher, comes out (I got a sneak peek)!
Thank you, too, to Sean for being such a great co-pre­sen­ter and awe­some human being. I’m so hap­py we final­ly got to meet!
Thank you to Akiko and my friends Mike and Jeanne Dah­mus for tak­ing pho­tos and giv­ing me per­mis­sion to use them here, and for buy­ing books!
And thank you to the Texas Book Fes­ti­val orga­niz­ers and vol­un­teers for mak­ing it all hap­pen. It was such an hon­or to be a part of it all.

Nonfiction Monday: Courage & Defiance blog tour and interview

Facts First! Nonfiction Monday

Facts First! Nonfiction MondayAs you can prob­a­bly tell by my books Be a Change­mak­er and Emmanuel’s Dream, I love writ­ing about heroes and change­mak­ers. It should be no sur­prise, then, that I love read­ing about them, too. My favorite kinds of sto­ries are those about ordi­nary peo­ple who act­ed with extra­or­di­nary strength, con­vic­tion, and courage, and the book I just fin­ished read­ing is full of peo­ple doing just that. In Courage & Defi­ance: Sto­ries of Spies, Sabo­teurs and Sur­vivors in World War II Den­mark by Deb­o­rah Hop­kin­son (Scholas­tic Press, August 2015), the author has clear­ly done a great deal of care­ful research to bring us nar­ra­tive non­fic­tion about the WWII resis­tance move­ment in Den­mark from the per­spec­tive of some of those who took part in it. It’s a grip­ping tale of adven­ture and sus­pense, and one that has rarely been told.

Deb­o­rah has been inter­viewed on this blog before, and I’m super excit­ed to wel­come her back once again as part of the Courage and Defi­ance blog tour. I hope you enjoy the interview!
LAT: I know I thor­ough­ly enjoyed this book, Deb­o­rah. What kind of young read­er do you think Courage & Defi­ance will appeal to? What oth­er books might be read-alikes? 
DH: I vis­it schools all over the coun­try and love to ask stu­dents what they’re read­ing. While fan­ta­sy and sci­ence fic­tion are always pop­u­lar, I’m usu­al­ly sur­prised by the num­ber of stu­dents – girls and boys – who tell me they like to read about his­to­ry and like non­fic­tion. There are def­i­nite­ly kids who read every­thing they can get their hands on top­ics such as the Titan­ic and World War II, but I think read­ers who enjoyed Num­ber the Stars by Lois Lowry or The Diary of Anne Frank will also enjoy Courage & Defi­ance.
LAT: This is a sto­ry that many of us prob­a­bly haven’t heard before. Why do you think that might be?
DH: I think per­haps that here in the U.S., we’re most nat­u­ral­ly inter­est­ed in sto­ries that take place after Amer­i­ca entered World War II on Decem­ber 7, 1941. (As it hap­pens, my next non­fic­tion book about sub­marines in the Pacif­ic war begins with the attack on Pearl Har­bor and will be out in 2016 for the 75th anniver­sary.) While I did find a num­ber of adult non­fic­tion books about the expe­ri­ence of Danes dur­ing the Ger­man occu­pa­tion, which began on April 9, 1940, almost all were schol­ar­ly titles or of inter­est pri­mar­i­ly to his­to­ri­ans (includ­ing a 600-page book about the SOE in Den­mark). I feel for­tu­nate that I was able to find as much as I did in Eng­lish, but I am sure there is much more avail­able in Dan­ish. We were able to access the pho­to archives of the Muse­um of Dan­ish Resistance.

Hopkinson-headshot
Deb­o­rah Hopkinson

LAT: Dur­ing the research phase of Courage & Defi­ance, what dis­cov­er­ies did you come across that made you feel like you’d struck gold? Was there any­thing in the research that came as a surprise?
DH: At author vis­its, I tell stu­dents that my favorite part of writ­ing is the research. And since I knew lit­tle when I began sev­er­al years ago, I felt like I was dis­cov­er­ing some­thing new and incred­i­ble at every cor­ner. Prob­a­bly the most sig­nif­i­cant dis­cov­ery I made was find­ing a mem­oir in Eng­lish enti­tled A Let­ter to My Descen­dents by Niels Skov. Niels, whom I lat­er had the priv­i­lege to meet, came to the U.S. after the war, where he received a Ph.D. and became a col­lege pro­fes­sor. His per­son­al account was so incred­i­bly live­ly and vibrant – which matched his per­son­al­i­ty, even at age nine­ty-four. To my sur­prise, he had been deport­ed to a Ger­man labor camp at the same time as anoth­er activist whose sto­ry I tell, but they did not meet. It made me real­ize just how many incred­i­ble sto­ries there are in his­to­ry, and how eas­i­ly they are lost.
LAT: This one may be tricky, but if you can fath­om a guess… What do you think it was about the Danes that made them able to resist the Ger­mans and sup­port their Jew­ish coun­try­men so effectively? 
DH: Well, I am not sure I am qual­i­fied to say, but what comes across in all the first-per­son accounts I found was that ordi­nary peo­ple shared an unwa­ver­ing sense of human decen­cy, a love of coun­try, and a com­mit­ment to doing the right thing – even at great cost. It seems to me that as the war went on, the con­fi­dence and belief that peo­ple had in demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues helped to give them the courage to take risks.
LAT: In the book, you asked Niels what his advice to young peo­ple today would be. Now that you’ve done all this research and writ­ten such a fan­tas­tic book, what is YOUR advice to young peo­ple today?
DH: While young peo­ple in Amer­i­ca now may not be faced with life-and-death deci­sions as Dan­ish cit­i­zens were in the 1940s, we all grap­ple with dif­fi­cult per­son­al choic­es. So per­haps I’d sim­ply give the same advice I’ve often told my own two chil­dren: make good choic­es and do good work in the world. And, of course, I have to add: keep reading!
LAT: That’s great advice, Deb­o­rah. Thanks so much for vis­it­ing today! 
For oth­er stops on the Courage and Defi­ance blog tour please check deborahhopkinson.com.

Texas Book Festival 2015 authors announced!

A record 300 authors will be appear­ing at the 2015 Texas Book Fes­ti­val, Oct. 17 and 18, and I’ll be one of them!
This is excit­ing for many reasons:
1) I get to talk about EMMANUEL’S DREAM!
2) I get to meet the illus­tra­tor of Emmanuel’s Dream, Sean Qualls, for the first time ever!
3) Many of my favorite authors and author friends will be there.
4) I love Austin.
5) I love readers.
I can’t wait!
Many thanks to the folks at Blue Slip Media and Schwartz & Wade/Penguin Ran­dom House for mak­ing it happen. 🙂

Radio Interview: Sister Jenna’s America Meditating

I had the great good for­tune to be on anoth­er radio show a cou­ple of weeks ago, this time with Sis­ter Jen­na on Amer­i­ca Med­i­tat­ing.
I come on at about 15:28, talk­ing about my writ­ing jour­ney, Be a Change­mak­er, and Emmanuel’s Dream.
I hope you enjoy listening!

Check Out Self Help Pod­casts at Blog Talk Radio with Amer­i­ca Med­i­tat­ing on BlogTalkRadio

 

Thank you to Sis­ter Jen­na and her assis­tant, Anto­nia, for the inter­view and also for their won­der­ful, pos­i­tive ener­gy through­out. It was a plea­sure to participate!

 

Radio Interview: Brooke Taylor’s A Special Connection

I recent­ly had the hon­or of being inter­viewed by Brooke Tay­lor on her inspir­ing radio show, A Spe­cial Con­nec­tion on WHKW AM1220 in Cleve­land, Ohio. Brooke just hap­pened to have stum­bled across one of my books at her local pub­lic library and was moved by it, so she reached out to me to talk about it.
The whole show is fan­tas­tic, but if you’re in a rush, we start dis­cussing Emmanuel’s Dream: The True Sto­ry of Emmanuel Ofo­su Yeboah at about the 31:58 mark, and Be a Change­mak­er: How to Start Some­thing that Mat­ters at about 45:37.
I hope you’ll enjoy listening!
https://soundcloud.com/living-the-word/a‑special-connection-with-brooke-taylor-july-25th-2015
What fun! Huge thanks to both Brooke and her pro­duc­er, Brett Crowe, for mak­ing it such a pleasure.
I’ve got a cou­ple more radio inter­views in the works as well, so please stay tuned for more audio in the com­ing weeks!

First Book selects Emmanuel’s Dream for #StoriesForAll

Emmanuel's Dream cover

FirstBook logoFirstBook.org is an orga­ni­za­tion that helps kids in need get access to new books of their very own. I’m a huge fan of what they do and have per­son­al­ly sup­port­ed their mis­sion for a long time, so it’s an incred­i­ble hon­or to have one of my books select­ed for their mar­ket­place. It’s an even big­ger hon­or to have one of my books select­ed for their new diver­si­ty cam­paign, called Sto­ries for All. Accord­ing to their webpage,

First Book’s Sto­ries for All Project™ Arms Edu­ca­tors with Diverse, Inclu­sive Children’s Books to Fuel Learn­ing, Pro­mote Edu­ca­tion­al Equi­ty.

With Sup­port from Top Busi­ness Lead­ers, Non­prof­it Launch­es 60,000 New-to-Paper­back Books, as Part of its Mar­ket-Dri­ven Solu­tion to Make Diverse Sto­ries Afford­able and Rel­e­vant for Those Serv­ing Chil­dren in Need.

Emmanuel's Dream coverWhat that means is that teach­ers and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als who work with under­priv­i­leged chil­dren can now request a spe­cial edi­tion of Emmanuel’s Dream for just $3.30, which means more chil­dren will get a chance to read about Emmanuel’s sto­ry and hope­ful­ly be inspired to fol­low their own dreams!
Short­ly after the announce­ment, First­Book host­ed a Twit­ter chat about diver­si­ty in chil­dren’s books with fel­low #Sto­ries­ForAll author Jes­sixa Bagley and I. You can read the tran­script here.
Please help me cheer on First­Book, along with their spon­sors and part­ners, for rec­og­niz­ing the need for diverse books for kids and their ongo­ing com­mit­ment to get­ting books into the hands of the chil­dren who need them most. And, if you wish to make a finan­cial con­tri­bu­tion, you can do so here. Thanks!

The Emmanuel’s Dream blog tour wrap-up

Emmanuel's Dream cover

Emmanuel's Dream cover
This is some­thing I’ve been mean­ing to do for a very long time now, but just nev­er got around to doing. Bet­ter late than nev­er, right? Here’s a roundup of all the fab­u­lous blogs that fea­tured Emmanuel’s Dream a few months (gulp) ago for the blog tour. If you want to read reviews of the book, guest posts from me, or inter­views with me about the book, look no fur­ther! Here they are gath­ered all in one place to make things easy for you.

Mon, Jan 12 Great Kid Books Review and interview
Tues, Jan 13 5 Min­utes for Books Review
Wed, Jan 14 Unleash­ing Readers Review, teach­ers’ tools, and interview
Thurs, Jan 15 Sharpread Inter­view
Fri, Jan 16 Crack­ing the Cover Inter­view
Sat, Jan 17 Book­ing Mama Review
Mon, Jan 19 Once Upon a Story Review and interview
Tues, Jan 20 Pros­e­and­kahn Review
Wed, Jan 21 Geo Librar­i­an Review and interview
Thurs, Jan 22 Non­fic­tion Detectives Review
Fri, Jan 23 The Fourth Musketeer Review
Fri, Jan 23 Kir­by’s Lane Guest post, Friend Friday
Mon, Jan 26 NC Teacher Stuff Review
Tues, Jan 27 Teach Men­tor Texts Review and writ­ing prompt

Many thanks to these fan­tas­tic blog­gers for their ded­i­ca­tion to pro­mot­ing great books for kids! I hope you’ll check them out for their oth­er reviews and posts, too.

Announcing the book giveaway winners!

Be a Changemaker cover

A cou­ple of weeks ago I announced give­aways here and on Goodreads for both Be a Change­mak­er and Emmanuel’s Dream. We have winners!
From my list of newslet­ter sub­scribers, cho­sen by Random.org, the win­ners are…
Be a Changemaker coverJim McGin­ley wins a signed copy of Be a Change­mak­er! I swear it was com­plete­ly ran­dom, but this is just so per­fect. Jim was one of the very first peo­ple to help and encour­age me on my quest to write this book, and his ear­ly sup­port meant a lot to me. He’s even men­tioned in the acknowl­edge­ments. Some­times fate is hard to deny, you know?
Emmanuel's Dream coverThe win­ner of a signed copy of Emmanuel’s Dream is Lind­say Fouts! This seems like a great fit, too, since Lind­say is both a pic­ture book writer and the moth­er of a young son. I hope they enjoy the book.
And on Goodreads, the win­ners were far flung: Adage from Roma­nia won Be a Change­mak­er, and Jessy from India won Emmanuel’s Dream. Yes, it’ll cost me a lit­tle extra in postage, but it’s excit­ing to know that my books will be trav­el­ing around the world!
Final­ly, in case any­one is curi­ous, some give­away stats from Goodreads…

  • 1004 peo­ple request­ed Emmanuel’s Dream and 464 added it to their To-Read shelf, and
  • 1441 peo­ple request­ed Be a Change­mak­er and 610 added it to their To-Read shelf.

 
 
 

Let’s celebrate with a giveaway (or four)!

MY DOG IS THE BEST cover

I’m so hap­py about the recent acco­lades my books have received that I’ve decid­ed to host not just one giveaway–but FOUR!
To cel­e­brate the fact that BE A CHANGEMAKER: HOW TO START SOMETHING THAT MATTERS was a final­ist for the Cybils awards, I’ll be giv­ing away a signed copy of the paper­back edi­tion on Goodreads, here:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Be a Changemaker by Laurie Ann Thompson

Be a Changemaker

by Laurie Ann Thompson

Give­away ends April 02, 2015. 

See the give­away details
at Goodreads. 

Enter to win


To cel­e­brate the starred review from School Library Jour­nal for EMMANUEL’S DREAM: THE TRUE STORY OF EMMANUEL OFOSU YEBOAH, I’ll be giv­ing away a signed copy on Goodreads, here:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Emmanuel's Dream by Laurie Ann Thompson

Emmanuel’s Dream

by Laurie Ann Thompson

Give­away ends April 02, 2015. 

See the give­away details
at Goodreads. 

Enter to win


AND, I’ll give away a signed copy of either one (win­ners get to choose!) to two ran­dom sub­scribers to my mail­ing list. If you’re not a sub­scriber yet, just sign up below. (I only send a short newslet­ter once/month.)

Subscribe to my mailing list

* indi­cates required



Email For­mat

MY DOG IS THE BEST coverFinal­ly, School Library Jour­nal recent­ly called my upcom­ing release “well-exe­cut­ed and charm­ing.” I can’t give this one away just yet (it will release on June 9, 2015), but feel free to share the MY DOG IS THE BEST love by adding it to your Goodreads shelf and/or pre-order­ing it at one of the fol­low­ing links:
My Dog Is the Best


NEWSLETTER
SIGN-UP