I often talk about how my work as an actor feeds into my writing and vice versa. Even my first series, The Forge & Fracture Saga, is infused with theatre. This isn’t purely a blending of my two professions. It’s also how I became the writer and storyteller that I am today. My drama teachers and librarians growing up helped set stories in my bones but it was specifically my Black teachers and librarians who made sure I could write myself as a protagonist. I attended three different schools as a child: a public, majority-Black elementary school; a Catholic, majority-Black middle school; and ..read more

I spent the last five years writing a Young Adult biography of Jane Jacobs, the activist, public intellectual, and urbanist. Jane Jacobs was born more than a hundred years ago, yet the ideas she popularized — about cities, about people, about creating a more equitable world — remain hugely relevant today. Jane’s legacy will be celebrated in just a few short weeks as people gather together on her birthday in cities around the world to learn about their place’s history and culture. In the spirit of Jane’s Walk, this annual international event, I’m thinking about community connection. I’m imagin ..read more

I’m seven. I rip out a page of a coloring book because I went outside the lines. I’m ten. I forget a permission slip for a field trip on the day it’s due and hyperventilate. I’m fourteen. It’s two a.m. and I’m still doing homework, painstaking coloring in a poster for the science fair. I’m sixteen and I fall. I’m on stage at a dance competition and I prep for a double pirouette. It’s a basic turn, a move that I’ve executed effortlessly more times than I can count. But this time, on a stage, where I am a part of a team that is being judged . . . my ankle gives out. I fall. My instructor assure ..read more

My mission is to create stories that teens can see themselves in and be entertained by so I can help them find a way through life despite what may have happened to them so far. I grew up in a time before the great Young Adult Literature Renaissance of the late 1990s and early 2000s. While many critics and bibliophiles believe this surge of creativity in YA books occurred in the 70s, or even the 60s, I’m here to say that looking for books to read in the late 80s when I was a teen led me to a scant number of titles I found interesting. One of my biggest life-changing moments wasn’t even my mome ..read more

Riley will turn 22 this year. She is the reason we are Taylor Swift fans in our house. Taylor launched right around the time that Riley started listening to music. And I have raised 2 daughters now with Taylor Swift as the soundtrack of our lives. Swifties from a young age, Sisters forever On Friday, Taylor Swift released her 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department. On Friday night, Thing 2, age 15, came home and we ordered pizza and we sat around listening to the album. Let me start by saying, I love this album. Love it. As my girls and I mature, so does our music and it seems to capture t ..read more

As part of our Mind the Middle project focusing on middle grade books, I’m going to try to do weekly Take Five lists, which is to say, five books on a certain theme.  These Take Five lists can help you with collection development, displays, reading lists, and more. I have a pretty giant list of potential Take Five themes, but if there’s something you’re desperate for a list for, let me know! All descriptions come from the publishers. Today’s list features characters whose gender expression and sexual identities fall under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella. What a wonderful world we live in ..read more

Oxbow Island Gang: Summer Bats is the fifth and final book in this environmental mystery series for middle grade readers. Berend, nicknamed Bear, is heading to his grandmother’s home on Oxbow Island for the Fourth of July when a sudden storm forces the ferry to dock at Great Claw Island. Soaking wet and surrounded by broken glass Bear and his friend, Olivia, decide to sneak off the boat to escape the turmoil of their rough sea crossing. As they set foot on the unfamiliar island, shivering in the howling wind, and surrounded by downed trees, Bear’s vacation dreams of endless ice cream cones, d ..read more

Chances are, you’ve heard of Greta Thunberg – the young Swedish climate activist whose passion for protecting the environment galvanized the Fridays for Future movement. Greta’s voice struck a chord and represented the voices of young people worldwide who are concerned about their future. When Greta first began sitting in front of the Swedish parliament, she was fifteen. Before that, she had spent many years struggling with depression due to concerns about the climate crisis. A growing body of research shows that Greta wasn’t and isn’t alone: young people around the world are increasingly exp ..read more

Scene:  We are at a Literary Conference for Writers, Teachers, Librarians—and All Lovers of Books for Young Readers.  It is dinnertime, and the many conferees have gathered after a long day of sessions for an hour of relaxation and refreshment.  The room is huge, the walls are sort of beige, the carpet is sort of dark, the lighting is sort of industrial, the art on the walls is generated by machines with no taste.  Dinner is being served to something like a million and a half people.  Everyone is hungry. LEAH and GARY are sitting at a large round table.  GARY is ..read more

Publisher’s description Laurie Morrison’s Keeping Pace is a poignant middle-grade novel about friends-turned-rivals training for a half-marathon—and rethinking what it means to win and what they mean to each other. Grace has been working for years to beat her former friend Jonah Perkins’s GPA so she can be named top scholar of the eighth grade. But when Jonah beats her for the title, it feels like none of Grace’s academic accomplishments have really mattered. They weren’t enough to win—or to impress her dad. And then the wide, empty summer looms. With nothing planned and no more goa ..read more