Serena Williams just won her twenty-first singles grand-slam title, and yet there has been more discussion about her body and femininity than about the sheer brilliance of her performance or her dedication to her sport. The U.S. Women’s National Soccer…
Author: E.M. Kokie
Interview with Author Ann Bausum
Ann Bausum has written numerous non-fiction books for children and teens, documenting and breathing life into lesser known stories from our past. Her books often explore critical moments in the struggle for social justice, including the fight for racial justice…
Review: George by Alex Gino
“It’s true, and I have to say what’s true,” says Charlotte in Chapter 5 of E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. One can imagine the 10-year-old main character of Alex Gino’s debut middle grade novel George (Scholastic Press, August 2015) saying something…
Review: Listen, Slowly by Thanhhà Lai
With her first novel for young readers (Inside Out and Back Again, HarperCollins 2011), Thanhhà Lai captured in verse one child’s experience adjusting to life in Alabama after leaving Vietnam. In Listen, Slowly, Lai explores the experience of Mai (Mia at…
Interview With Author Kekla Magoon
In November I reviewed the timely and relevant novel How It Went Down (Henry Holt, 2014) by Kekla Magoon, a novel that begins with an incident all too timely — an African American teenager has been shot and killed by…
Review: I Am Jazz
In recent years, we have seen a number of picture books with gender non-conforming characters or that challenge the typical gender roles generally seen in literature and toys for children. There have also been several self-published books for young children…
Review: How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon
How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon (Henry Holt, 2014) begins with words similar to too many recent news stories – an African American teenager has been shot by a white man. The police arrest, and then quickly release, the…
Review: Tomboy by Liz Prince
Liz Prince‘s graphic memoir Tomboy (Zest Books, September 2014) chronicles her 31-year journey to define who she is in a world bent on doing it for her, and her evolution from rejecting all that is “girl” to someone who embraces who…
Bird: An Interview with Crystal Chan
“Grandpa stopped speaking the day he killed my brother, John. His name was John until Grandpa said he looked more like a Bird with the way he kept jumping off things, and the name stuck. Bird’s thick, black hair poked…
Review: The Freedom Summer Murders by Don Mitchell
“One day…you might find something worth dying for.” Michael Schwerner On June 21, 1964, three young men were murdered because they worked for civil rights in Mississippi. It took more than forty years for anyone to be prosecuted for murder…