Children & YA
Making It in Music City
Suzanne Supplee’s new YA novel captures the big dreams of small-town teens
by Lacey Galbraith
June 30, 2010 It's graduation day, and there's little that Retta Lee Jones will miss about Starling High School. Nineteen years old and raised in small-town Starling, Tennessee—about two and a half hours outside Nashville—she's desperate to "get on with my real life"—the life she's been "staring out the window and daydreaming about all through high school." The heroine of Suzanne Supplee's new novel, Somebody Everybody Listens To, Retta has plans—big ones: Retta Lee Jones wants to make it in country music.
Published Wednesday, 30 June 2010
Putting the Fan in Fantasy
Graphic novelist Scott Christian Sava has ten million readers to keep happy every day
by Susannah Felts
June 25, 2010 After Franklin, Tennessee, graphic novelist Scott Christian Sava accomplished his childhood dream of illustrating an issue of the Spider-Man comic, he set his sights on creating an epic fantasy narrative of his own. The result, The Dreamland Chronicles, is now one of the most popular web comics in existence, read daily by more than ten million readers worldwide. And that's not even counting the audience for his books.
Published Friday, 25 June 2010
Across the Age Barrier
Poets from Youth Speaks Nashville add their voices to Nashville's literary census
by Maria Browning
June 1, 2010 Youth Speaks Nashville gives teens the opportunity to learn and express themselves through spoken-word poetry. Some of its talented young poets will add their voices to Nashville Now: 2010 Spoken Word Census, a portrait of the city in poetry, prose, and song. The three-day series of events will take place at the Darkhorse Theater at 7:30 p.m. on June 3, 4, and 5.
Published Tuesday, 1 June 2010
Catcher in the National Spotlight
Siori Koerner's letter to J.D. Salinger wins the Murfreesboro eighth-grader top honors in the Letters About Literature contest
by Susannah Felts
May 31, 2010 It began as just another school essay, with a due date for a grade. The assignment: to choose a book that speaks to you—any book you wish—and write a letter to its author, explaining how the story sheds new light on your own life experiences. Siori Koerner's letter to J.D. Salinger ultimately won its author, an eighth grader from Murfreesboro, top honors in this year's Letters About Literature contest, a national program sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.
Published Monday, 31 May 2010
Sherlock Holmes: The Fifth Generation
Tracy Barrett introduces kids to the descendants of the world's greatest detective
by Chris Scott
May 26, 2010 What if Sherlock Holmes had married? And what if that union had produced children, who produced more children, until there were two great-great-great-grandchildren who had inherited their famous ancestor's detective skills? The siblings would star in a series of detective stories, of course. Welcome to The Sherlock Files by Nashvillian Tracy Barrett.
Published Wednesday, 26 May 2010
Underage in Margaritaville
Jennifer Holm's new middle-grade reader captures the Key West of an earlier age
by Susannah Felts
May 19, 2010 From the looks of the dust jacket, you might assume Turtle in Paradise tells a sand 'n' surf tale of a lucky young girl luxuriating in a beachside resort, perhaps in pursuit of a boy's attention. Instead, Jennifer Holm's wonderful new novel for middle-grade readers takes readers to Depression-era Key West, a place that looks to our heroine, eleven-year-old Turtle, like "a broken chair that's been left out in the sun to rot." Two-time Newbery winner Jennifer Holm appears at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on May 20 at 4 p.m.
Published Wednesday, 19 May 2010
Huck Twin
The heroine of Kristin O'Donnell Tubb's debut children's novel can stir up a mess of trouble
by Lacey Galbraith
April 23, 2010 Autumn Winifred Oliver is eleven years old. She fidgets, speaks her mind, and has a talent for drawing. Her neighbors call her "rascally," "rampageous," and "up to no good," but Autumn can't help it; she's restless, and most of all—as her creator, Kristin O'Donnell Tubb, clearly states in the title of this charming debut novel—Autumn Winifred Oliver Does Things Different.
Published Friday, 23 April 2010
The Human Whisperer
For kids who struggle to read, therapy dogs can be the best teachers
by Susannah Felts
On an early spring day, a visitor comes to Nashville's Julia Green Elementary School. Her name is Emma, and she sits on the floor on a lime green blanket, in front of low shelves packed with books. Before long, a first-grader named Meghan joins Emma and reads her a story, finding her way slowly but confidently through the unfamiliar words. How does a dog help a child learn to read? Rachel McPherson, author of Every Dog Has a Gift: True Stories of Dogs Who Bring Hope & Healing into Our Lives, will be at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on April 13 at 7 p.m. to discuss her book about therapy dogs like Emma.
Published Monday, 12 April 2010
Brothers and Lovers
Martin Wilson's debut novel brings gay coming-of-age tales out of the YA closet
by Susannah Felts
The debut novel from Martin Wilson is a welcome contribution to the small but growing genre of young-adult novels about first love between gay teens. The romance in What They Always Tell Us is wrapped in an authentic portrayal of contemporary, upper-middle-class teenage life. In its portrait of two brothers, the novel also offers an uplifting look at the challenges to—and triumphs of—family loyalty.
Published Friday, 2 April 2010
Teaching and Unteaching—and Entertaining All the Way
For more than three decades, Patricia McKissack has been writing children's books that bring to life the stories, and the truth, of her ancestors
by Susannah Felts
As she was coming of age in Nashville in the 1950s, there were many places award-winning children's author Patricia McKissack was not allowed to go. She remembers hotels and restaurants that forbade African Americans entry, and movie theaters with a separate doorway in the alley for black patrons. The farthest reaches of the Grand Ole Opry's balcony, known as the buzzard's roost, was the only seating open to African Americans, McKissack recalls. She never partook: "My grandfather said that watermelons would bloom in January if any of his children went down there. 'We don't sit in no buzzard's roost,' he said. 'We're human beings, not buzzards.'"
Published Wednesday, 10 March 2010
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