Parenthetical.net

Callie Tate lives on a wealthy farm of pecan trees and too many brothers in turn-of-the-century Texas. One day she gathers the courage to ask her intimidating grandfather about the two different kinds of grasshoppers she sees in the fields, and he tells her to figure it out herself. From her eureka moment — they’re [...]

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Naomi and her little brother Owen are content living with their great-grandmother in a trailer park — Naomi carves soap into animal shapes, hangs out with the (clearly flaming, even though the text doesn’t say so explicitly) librarian at school, and watches Wheel of Fortune every night with Gram and her best friend Fabiola. But [...]

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Magic is most interesting when it works like a physical weapon: the character is given it (or learns she has it), and has to learn how to use it. It behaves according to rules, and she has to learn those rules in order to use it effectively. In a historical novel, you never see a [...]

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Here’s a chance for you, my friends and readers, to tell my kids what to read: what book do you remember most fondly from your 6th-8th grade years? Get your suggestion to me by Thursday night and I’ll probably put it on my school’s middle school summer reading list! (I still want to [...]

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Sixth grader Miranda walks home with her best friend every day, helps her mom study for her $20,000 Pyramid debut, and reads A Wrinkle in Time over and over again. But suddenly her life is full of odd characters: the crazy man under the mailbox on her street, and the kid who punches her [...]

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Yet another conference speaker, who brought a guitar on stage and performed some Tom Lehrer, among other things. What’s with all the musical children’s authors? Maybe music should be Simmons’ theme next time…
I am not a poetry reader, as a general rule. But a few poems in, I was sold on this [...]

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In two weeks I’ll be heading to the Simmons College Children’s Literature Summer Institute. Three days of talks by and schmoozing with fabulous authors, editors, and other people working in the children’s lit field (not to mention some dear friends). So excited!
I realized that I’m unfamiliar with the work of a [...]

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I wrote a whole long thoughtful review of Savvy a couple of days ago and thought it had posted happily — only to notice today that it actually crashed my whole blog and then got eaten by WordPress. Rar!
I’m too cranky to re-write the whole thing or to be “fair and balanced,” so [...]

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Zoe dreams of being a piano prodigy, of playing classical music at Carnegie Hall in a long, elegant dress. But her agoraphobic dad has trouble saying no to salesmen, so instead of a piano, what she gets is a Perfectone organ and a chance to perform Neil Diamond’s “Forever in Blue Jeans” at the [...]

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Chiggers are a bug that get under your skin and itch; let’s get that out of the way right off the bat. In this book, they’re the plot device that gets one girl out of Abby’s cabin at camp, and a new girl, Shasta, in. Shasta claims to have been struck by lightning, [...]

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