The need to know is what keeps readers interested in your novel. Don’t let them down.
Janice Hardy
Author: Susan Uhlig
Continental Drifter
Marvelous Middle Grade Monday
Continental Drifter (First Second, 2024) by Kathy MacLeod is a graphic novel that pulls on the heartstrings. It’s a very good read.
Eleven-year-old Kathy is torn between two worlds–Bangkok, Thailand where she and her family live, and Maine where the family is going for the summer. (Kathy’s been there three times.) In Thailand, she’s luk khrueng–half child, because her father is American and her mother is Thai. In rural Maine, no one looks like Kathy. She likes American pizza and southeast Asian rambutans, a spiky sweet fruit. Why is her family so different from others. Why is life so confusing? How can she fit in anywhere?
This is Kathy’s first graphic novel. You can read about her here. Make sure you read the Afterward in the book.
Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up in your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter, and lead pencil markings endure longer than memory.
Jack London
Keep a notebook
Coyote Lost and Found
Marvelous Middle Grade Monday
Coyote Lost and Found (Henry Holt and Company, 2024) by Dan Gemeinhart is the sequel to The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise. It was so lovely to be with many of the characters from the first book, and fun meeting new ones. My only disappointment was we didn’t see Coyote’s grandmother again.
Coyote and her father, Rodeo, are actually living in a house, but Coyote still hangs out in the bus. And life changes yet again when she finds a hidden box…that contains her mother’s ashes. When she confronts Rodeo, the two decide to spread the ashes. There’s one problem. The location to spread them is written down in a book. And Coyote is pretty sure she got rid of the book last year. She can’t tell Rodeo that, so Coyote devises a journey to rediscover the poetry book. Of course, complications ensue.
The book came out in March.
Dan’s newest book is coming out this month. Aimed at readers ages 3-6, his first picture book is called Once Upon a Friend. Read about it on Dan’s book page.
It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.
J.K. Rowling