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!).

Radio Interview: T Love’s Energy Awareness

head shot of T Love
T Love, host of Ener­gy Awareness

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to get to par­tic­i­pate in anoth­er fan­tas­tic radio inter­view to talk about Be a Change­mak­er, and it was a blast! I real­ly felt like the host and I just “clicked” and were on the same wave­length. I wish we weren’t on oppo­site coasts, because I think we’d have a great time hang­ing out together.
Please check it out here. Enjoy! 🙂

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.

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!

MY DOG IS THE BEST news and #giveaways!

MY DOG IS THE BEST-cover

MY DOG IS THE BEST-coverIt’s almost release day for MY DOG IS THE BEST, avail­able Tues­day, June 9th!
Here’s what the crit­ics have had to say so far:

“… the sim­plic­i­ty of both the words and the pic­tures cre­ates a charm­ing, tod­dler-sized ode to man’s best friend.” —Book­list
“This sim­ple, qui­et sto­ry con­veys the endur­ing bond between child and dog, with the added appeal of a joke that younger chil­dren just begin­ning to under­stand humor can enjoy.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Though ‘a boy and his dog’ may not be a ground­break­ing theme, it’s often a pop­u­lar one—and this gen­tle tale of friend­ship is no excep­tion.… While this is a famil­iar sto­ry, it’s a well-exe­cut­ed and charm­ing one.” —School Library Journal
“… sim­ple word­ing helps young chil­dren who are learn­ing to read.… I real­ly enjoyed this cute chil­dren’s book and enjoyed its depic­tion of man’s best friend.…or should we say ‘boy’s’ best friend!” —Curl­ing Up With A Good Book blog
#Booka­day My Dog is the Best by @LaurieThompson & @PaulSchmidBooks. Made me think of http://t.co/mlzJYBYVm1″ … “In my opin­ion, it is a per­fect can­di­date for The Bak­er’s Dozen.”  — John Schu (@MrSchuReads) Feb­ru­ary 26, 2015

The launch par­ty is Fri­day, June 12th, at Uni­ver­si­ty Book Store in the Uni­ver­si­ty Dis­trict. More info here.
There’s a give­away hap­pen­ing on Goodreads:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

My Dog Is the Best by Laurie Ann Thompson

My Dog Is the Best

by Laurie Ann Thompson

Give­away ends June 16, 2015.
See the give­away details
at Goodreads. 

Enter to Win


Our adorable pup and boy pair are going out on a blog tour begin­ning Sat­ur­day, June 6th. Here’s where to find them (and me) in the next few weeks (note, many of these will have give­aways, too–more chances to win!):

6/6/2015 Book­ing Mama http://www.bookingmama.net/
6/8/2015 Jean Rei­dy http://jeanreidy.com
6/9/2015 Watch. Con­nect. Read. http://mrschureads.blogspot.com/
6/10/2015 5 Min­utes for Books http://books.5minutesformom.com
6/11/2015 KidLit Fren­zy http://www.kidlitfrenzy.com/
6/12/2015 Unleash­ing Readers http://www.unleashingreaders.com/
6/16/2015 Anas­ta­sia Suen: Book­talk­ing #kidlit http://anastasiasuen.com/
6/19/2015 Kir­by’s Lane http://kirbyslane.com
7/1/2015 Library Lions http://LibraryLionsRoar.blogspot.com

 
And, last but not least, if you’d like buy a copy:
You may pre-order a signed copy from Uni­ver­si­ty Book Store.
Also avail­able on:

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.

A Starred Review for Emmanuel’s Dream!

star

star
Emmanuel’s Dream received its first starred review, and it’s from School Library Jour­nal! They called the book,

“a tri­umph.”

And they also said,

“This pow­er­ful and win­ning pic­ture book tells the sto­ry of a young man over­com­ing the odds.”

and

“This uplift­ing account will res­onate with read­ers and sup­ple­ment glob­al and cul­tur­al studies.”

You can read the full review here!


And, just for fun, here’s a cool video that John Schu made of the win­dow dis­play at Unabridged Book­store in Chica­go. It’s in great com­pa­ny, don’t you think? It’s always excit­ing to see one of my books out in the wild, so if you spot one, please share!

Fan mail for Emmanuel’s Dream

It’s always a treat to receive an email like this from a parent:

Last night I read your book to my younger daugh­ter.… She loved the book, and decid­ed it was her new favorite and she want­ed to take it to school when it was her stu­dent spot­light week. Today she and [her broth­er] were fight­ing over it in the car, and I read it to each of them for a bed­time sto­ry. At least this week, it’s a house­hold favorite!

It’s espe­cial­ly great to know that Emmanuel’s sto­ry is touch­ing young read­ers as much as it touched me.

Be a Changemaker is a Cybils award finalist!


I woke up this morn­ing to news that Be a Change­mak­er made the list of final­ists for the 2014 Chil­dren’s and Young Adult Blog­ger’s Lit­er­ary Award, bet­ter known as the Cybils, in the Non­fic­tion for Young Adults cat­e­go­ry. What a way to kick off 2015!
The nom­i­na­tions in this cat­e­go­ry were var­ied and impres­sive, and the books that made the final­ist list are tru­ly among the best I’ve read all year. It’s an incred­i­ble hon­or to have my book in such amaz­ing company!

Alice + Freda cover Alice + Fre­da For­ev­er: A Mur­der in Mem­phis by Alex­is Coe
Be a Changemaker cover Be a Change­mak­er: How to Start Some­thing That Mat­ters by Lau­rie Ann Thompson
Beyond Magenta cover Beyond Magen­ta: Trans­gen­der Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin
Popular cover Pop­u­lar: Vin­tage Wis­dom for a Mod­ern Geek by Maya Van Wagenen
Family Romanov cover The Fam­i­ly Romanov: Mur­der, Rebel­lion, and the Fall of Impe­r­i­al Rus­sia by Can­dace Fleming
Freedom Summer Murders cover The Free­dom Sum­mer Mur­ders by Don Mitchell
Port Chicago 50 cover The Port Chica­go 50: Dis­as­ter, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civ­il Rights by Steve Sheinkin

Thanks, Pat Ziet­low Miller, for nom­i­nat­ing it in the first place. Thanks, Stephanie Charlefour at Love. Life. Read., for the final­ist write-up, and to the entire pan­el (also includ­ing Aaron Mau­r­er from Cof­fee for the Brain, Michelle Lock­wood from Blogs Like a Girl, Karen Ball from Mrs. B’s Favorites, and Danyelle Leach from Book­shelves in the Cul-de–Sac) for read­ing, con­sid­er­ing, and ulti­mate­ly select­ing it. I’ve been a first round Cybils judge twice and am a sec­ond round judge in a dif­fer­ent cat­e­go­ry this year, so I know what a lot of hard work and ded­i­ca­tion goes into it! Final­ly, thanks to the peo­ple who keep the Cybils run­ning. It’s one of my favorite awards in chil­dren’s books as a read­er, author, and judge. I’m always glad to be a part of it, so hav­ing my own book make that final­ist list means even more to me. Kidlit blog­gers ROCK! 🙂

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