The week of September 22-26 has been declared National Hazing Prevention Week, with the purpose of raising awareness of this destructive and frequently dangerous practice. Young people endure emotional and physical abuse because they believe it will make them part…
Author: lynmillerlachmann
The Post-Apocalyptic Present: A Bird on Water Street
The landscape resembles the surface of a distant, inhospitable planet. The air smells of sulfur. Children carry inhalers and adults die young of cancer. There are no trees, no birds, no insects even. Periodically, alarms sound as victims of mining…
Exploring False Consciousness and Intersectionality: A Review of Willow
In Willow (Candlewick, 2014), Tonya Cherie Hegamin’s historical novel set in 1848, Knotwild Plantation borders the Mason-Dixon Line between slave state Maryland and free state Pennsylvania. There are no fences or guards—only a stone marker that separates the enslaved black…
What Makes Family: A Review of Kinda Like Brothers
Coe Booth has captivated readers and critics alike with her three gritty, fast paced novels of urban life in New York City: Tyrell, Kendra, and Bronxwood. This bard of the Bronx writes of tough times in the language of her…
Making the Invisible Visible: Estela Bernal’s Can You See Me Now?
I met Estela Bernal at a novel revision workshop led by the wise and generous Barbara Seuling. Estela and I shared a room and she told me about her work rescuing abused animals and educating people about responsible pet ownership.…
Environmental Awareness for the Very Young: Stacy Nyikos’s Toby
It is often hard to convince people of the value of saving endangered species. One can argue for the importance of biodiversity, but when one asks people to sacrifice—whether not to build that beach resort, for instance—there has to be…
Three Middle Grade Titles from Indie Publishing Pioneer Zetta Elliott
Zetta Elliott burst onto the children’s publishing scene with a Lee & Low New Voices Award and the acclaimed 2008 picture book for older readers Bird, the moving story of a boy’s close relationship with his troubled older brother. Since…
A Child on Her Own: Jewell Parker Rhodes’s Sugar
A poet and author of fiction for adults, Jewell Parker Rhodes turned to writing for children with the highly acclaimed Ninth Ward, the story of an 11-year-old girl whose ailing grandmother—and her grandmother’s stories—help her to survive Hurricane Katrina in…
On Personal and Collective Memory: An Interview with Marjorie Agosín
Last week I reviewed Marjorie Agosín’s debut novel for middle grade readers, I Lived on Butterfly Hill. This lyrical novel is the story of a perceptive and courageous girl living in Valaparaío, Chile and facing traumatic political events that force…
From Chile to Maine and Back: A Review of I Lived on Butterfly Hill
Marjorie Agosín is an acclaimed poet and essayist whose dozens of published works explore the lives of women and Jews in her native Chile and the struggle for human rights around the world. I Lived on Butterfly Hill (Simon &…