>> Welcome to the Great Reads
from Great Places presentation, a program of the affiliated
Centers for the Book, coming to you virtually as a
component of this year's Library of Congress National
Book Festival. Hello. I'm Tracy Carr, director
of the Mississippi Center for the Book, one
of 53 affiliates of the Library of Congress. The affiliated Centers for the
Book help carry out the mission of the National Center, which
is to promote books, reading, libraries, and literacy
nationwide. We also promote our
local literary heritage by putting a focus on books
and authors with a connection to our states, commonwealths,
districts, or territories. Every year, as part of our
participation in the Library of Congress National
Book Festival, each affiliated center chooses
a book with a local connection that becomes a part
of the Great Reads From Great Places initiative. The books are geared
to young readers and become a wonderful
national reading list each year. You can read more about
the project and find a list of previous years' books
at the website read.gov. Today, we are featuring a
group of Great Reads books, which center on themes of
migration and fitting in. These books were selected by
directors of affiliated centers in Massachusetts, Ohio,
Kentucky, New Mexico, and Mississippi, and we want to
introduce the titles to you now. Mississippi chose Mildred D.
Taylor's All The Days Past, All The Days To Come as
our 2021 Great Reads book. The final installment in
the Logan Family saga, which includes the Newberry
Award-winning Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, All The Days Past,
All The Days To Come focuses on the black family experience
in 20th-century America. From the great migration to
the Civil Rights Movement, this book is ultimately about
one young woman's search for her place in the world. >> Hello. I'm Sharon
Shaloo, executive director of Massachusetts
Center for the Book. Our 2021 Great Reads Selection
is the picture book Dario and the Whale, written
by Cheryl Lawton Malone. It's illustrated
by Bistra Masseva, published by Albert
Whitman and Company. Dario is a wonderful book about
friendship and fitting in, which centers the perspective of seasonal residents
of our commonwealth. It tells the story of a young
Brazilian boy who travels to Cape Cod with his
mother, a summer employee in the tourism industry. While his mother works, Dario
tries to fit in with peers but has some trouble bridging
gaps in language and culture. His loneliness is dispelled
by a developing friendship with a young right whale,
who needs only waving and splashing to
make a connection. When the time comes
for the young whale to continue its migration north,
Dario conquers his sadness with hopeful anticipation
of the whale's return, along with his own,
the following year. >> Hello. Don Boozer. I'm the coordinator of the
Ohio Center for the Book, based at Cleveland
Public Library. Ohio's 2021 Great Reads From Great Places
Selection was Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga. Other Words for Home
tells the story of a young girl named
Jude growing up in Syria with her family and friends. Jude's world is turned upside
down whenever it's decided that she and her pregnant
mother have to move halfway across the world to
Cincinnati, Ohio, to live with her uncle's family. Other Words for Home was the
award-winning debut novel of Jasmine Warga, who
herself was born in and grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. >> Hi, I'm Sara Woods, director
of the Kentucky Book Festival and coordinator of the
Kentucky Center for the Book. Kentucky's 2021 Great Reads From Great Places
selection is Together We Grow by Susan Vaught. Together We Grow, Susan's
debut picture book, received four-star reviews
and is a poignant story that celebrates inclusivity,
acceptance, and the importance of rebuilding a community
in the wake of disaster. An award-winning author of
books for middle-graders, Susan works as a
neuropsychologist at a state psychiatric
facility and lives on a farm with her wife and son in
rural Western Kentucky. >> Hello. I'm Lori Smith
Thornton, the coordinator of the New Mexico
Center for the Book. Our Great Reads From Great
Places selection this year is The Crossroads by
Alexandra Diaz, which is the sequel
to The Only Road. It received a Pura Belpre Honor,
the Americas Award for Children and Young Adult Literature, and the American Library
Association Notable Children's Book Award. Alexandra is the daughter of
Cuban refugees, and she lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. School Library Journal and A
Starred Review described both of these books as
important, must-have additions to the growing body
of literature with immigrant themes. >> We are delighted that four of
the Great Reads authors are able to join us today to
discuss their work. From Massachusetts, I want to
introduce Cheryl Lawton Malone, author of Dario and the Whale. Representing Ohio
is Jasmine Warga, author of Other Words for Home. Joining us from Kentucky
is Susan Vaught, author of Together We Grow. And from New Mexico, we
welcome Alexandra Diaz, author of The Crossroads. Welcome to all of you, and thank
you for being with us today. I'm going to turn the
microphone over to my colleagues to get our discussion going. >> Okay. To get this
discussion going, the National Book Festival's
theme this year is Open a Book, Open the World. And we would like to
start our discussion with having you discuss
or talk about how you see or what worlds you hoped to open up for your readers
of your books. >> Hi. Hi. Thank you so much for having me. It's just an absolute
delight to be here. When I wrote Dario and the
Whale, I was thinking about -- I actually had the experience
similar to something to Dario in that I was on a beach on
Cape Cod walking with my dog, and I happened to hit the timing where the right whales were
migrating through our waters. And literally, a right whale
surfaced maybe 20 feet offshore of this very steep
Grace Point beach. But at the time I wrote the
book, I didn't really think about opening worlds
so much as just trying to capture the magnificence
of meeting a whale. But since then, and in
edits and looking back, I can see that what I also
wanted to capture was this idea of families that work, mothers
that work, fathers that work, people that work, you know,
because they have to work, and then the children of those
families and how they fit in and moving from place to place. And so opening a child's eyes to
the fact that not everyone lives in a house, not everyone
goes to school at the same school every year
or all year, that was one of the worlds that I
was trying to open up. >> Oh, that's great. I think those are
important things to open up. Susan, would you like to say
what kind of world you wanted to open up for your readers? >> Sure. I wanted to
look at what happens when somebody is forced
out of their comfort zone, forced out of where they live
by a disaster, by something that they cannot control, and
the risk that that person takes on that animal, in this
case, takes, and the risk that the community takes
in accepting that person, and the real need
to give everyone in the situation a chance and
to accept each other and to look at the vibrance of the
community that can be developed with the diversity of creatures,
humans, animals that can live in a single space and how
they can blend together. Also, because I live on a farm
and live in the woods on a farm, I liked bringing
in those animals. I think Kelly Murphy did an
awesome job illustrating animals that I want to have one of all
of the things in the book to be. >> That's great. Alexandra? >> Hi, everyone. I'm Alexandra Diaz, the
author of The Crossroads. And as it was mentioned,
this book is a sequel to a modern-day immigration
story. So we often hear about what
goes on with children -- in particular, because we're
children's book authors, what goes on with children when
they immigrate to the US -- but we don't often
hear about what happens to them now that they are here. How are they living their life? How are they integrating
or not integrating into their new environment? So with The Crossroads, I
really wanted to share a story that happens a lot here in New
Mexico but also in other parts of the United States where
a child is suddenly thrown into multiple situations
that they don't understand, that they don't know
how to handle. There's this illusion
that coming to the US is like this great utopia, but
what if the utopia isn't as great as was promised? So that is something I
definitely wanted to share, and I wanted to provide a
book that offers a mirror for the children who
have experienced this, especially if they have traveled
to the US unaccompanied, which is something that
has been happening a lot, but also as a window to show
readers who have no idea that this is happening what it
is like for their classmates, you know, their neighbors, members of the church,
of their community. So this is something
that is going on all over the United States,
not just in New Mexico, and I really wanted to have
a book that allows people to get an idea of what
this situation is like. >> Oh, that's great. And representing Ohio, Jasmine. >> Hi, everyone. I'm thrilled to be here, and what a beautiful
question and beautiful theme. I've loved getting to listen
to everyone else's responses. And my response is a little
bit similar to Alexandra's in that I really wanted to
explore the immigrant experience and identity formation that
comes from that, particularly for the Middle Eastern
community, the Arab community, and the Muslim community where,
oftentimes, that identity, especially for young people,
is made to feel very fraught because there's all
this messaging that makes it seem like, you're
a Muslimness is in conflict with your Americanness. And I think this is in part because of the global
political situation with the US's ongoing
entanglements in the Middle East, but
oftentimes, Middle Eastern and Muslin children only
ever see themselves portrayed as the enemy, as the people
of which we are at war with, and I wanted to dig into those
nuances and also show that a lot of the children like Jude
in the book are fleeing from religious fundamentalism
or totalitarianism, but that isn't an indictment
of an entire religion. And I think that sometimes
that nuance is often lost in our conversations about the
Middle East, and so I wanted to show a young girl who's
really proud of her culture and is proud of her religion and her faith while also
showing the joy that she has about the opportunities she's
going to get to have in America and how all of those things
can exist in one story. So kind of complicating
hyphenated identities was something I was really
interested in exploring. >> That's great. Those are all great answers. Does anyone have any
other thoughts on any of the other authors'
thoughts there? >> I just wanted to add to what
Jasmine was saying that, yeah, I think it's really
important for readers to know that the protagonist doesn't
need to lose their identity just because they are here from a
different country and they are from a different culture. You know, we call the
United States a melting pot, and in many ways, it is, but it
is also an opportunity to share and explore with
others your heritage, your culture, your background. And I think it's
important for kids to know that they don't have to become
just like everyone else, that they are valued and even
encouraged to be who they are, and part of who they are
is where they're come from and their religious beliefs
and things like that. >> That's a very good point. All right. All right. I believe, then, we will go
on to question number two. >> Okay. So books for
young readers span the ages from picture books for our
youngest readers to longer works for middle-graders
and young adults. They can work in
fiction, non-fiction, and verse forms as well. Would each of you talk about why
the form you chose fit the story you wanted to tell the
readers you imagined for it? And I want to start with
Jasmine here, and then we'll go to Susan, Alexandra, and Cheryl. >> Yeah. So Other Words for
Home is a novel in verse, and if anyone is not familiar
with that, what that means, it just means that every
chapter is a standalone, free-verse poem, and all
the poems work together to tell the whole narrative. And Other Words for Home
actually was not originally a novel in verse, which now
is kind of funny to talk about since I now cannot imagine
it not being a novel in verse. But when I first started,
it was just a prose novel, and I was really having
difficulty finding Jude's voice. And then I sort of had this
lightbulb moment that perhaps if I broke the book out into
verse, her voice would be more of the star, and that's
what I really wanted because I think verse is a
form that works very well for the book because I really
wanted to exalt Jude's voice. I wanted it to be
the star of the book. I think so often, kids like
Jude are not given a voice. They're not allowed
to tell their story and be the star of the story. And then also, verse was a form
in which I could capture some of the cadence and lyricality
of Arabic that isn't easy to translate into a book
that's in English, right? There's a suspension of
disbelief that I'm asking of the reader to read this book
that is in English being told to you by a girl who
clearly would be speaking to you in Arabic. And so I felt like verse was
the best format to capture, like I said, some of that
cadence and texture that is so special about Arabic and that
I love about Arabic and I felt like kind of brought her voice
to life in that extra way. So I sort of backed my way
into the book being in verse. I wrote it the wrong way first,
which is oftentimes what happens with my forms, but I'm excited to hear how everyone
else settled on the form for their book as well. >> Backing into it is a great
description for me because, when I first conceptualized
this book, I didn't conceptualize
it with words at all. I have a bird farm, and both
farms I've had have been out in the middle of nowhere. And if you've not had a
farm, you don't realize it, but animals sort of add
themselves to your farm on their own when you're out
in the middle of nowhere. So, you know, a lame racoon
shows up or, you know, somebody's chicken
that you don't know where it came from,
or definitely cats. Cats always add themselves
into the mix. And you know, we even have
had wild chickens show up from other people's farms. And so I wanted to conceptualize
a farm where it could just grow with what showed up,
with what needed a home, with what wanted to
be in that place. And so I wasn't heartbroken
when my editor informed me that people who cannot draw
beyond stick figures usually do not do nonverbal picture books, that that's a really
difficult thing to do, and so she suggested that
I go back and try words. And so then I tried signs
for a while, and finally, I ended up backing into
using the first thing that I ever wrote, which was
rhyming poetry, you know, back in my early years
because I was trying to capture just raw emotion. Most of the scenes and the
verses in the book have to do with the emotion from, you know, fear when the original home is
destroyed, to the trepidation of approaching new people and
their concern and anxiety, and then the hopefulness
of beginning to get to know each other
and work together. And so I tried to keep it
very sparse, very rhythmic, and just very focused on
exactly what was happening in the moment. So that's how I wound up with
the verse and the realization, if I ever want to do
nonverbal picture books, the first thing I have
to do is learn to draw, so I'm probably going
to stick with words. >> Well, I really admire those
of you who are able to write in verse because
that is not something that I have a talent in, nor do I have a talent
in illustrations. So again, I admire those
of you who do those. For me, it was a very natural
choice to go with fiction prose because that's what I read, and that's what I feel
most comfortable writing. I often see my books as a movie,
so the words, the narrative kind of come out very easily for
me, and especially dialogue. So oftentimes, when
I'm writing my book, I will have just
dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. And then I will go back
in there and say, okay, well, what are they doing? What is the subtext? What is happening
around the dialogue? Again, because I'm a
visual person, I'm seeing it as a movie, and it's the format
that just works so well for me. But I would love to have
more diversity in my format because I would definitely
see the advantage of suddenly deciding, oh,
this should be a prose novel. So, really admire you two
for being able to do that. >> Well, I wrote Dario
as a picture book, and it never occurred to me to
write it in any other format. I love picture books. I love how poetic they are. I love how sparse they are. I love the fact that you
can tell layers and layers of the story with few words, and
I think Susan might have said, or somebody said, the
capturing emotion in few words and then letting the
reader just feel the story. And picture books are set up
because half the story's told in pictures and half in
words and set up that way. So it just never occurred to me. The other thing I love
about picture books is -- and it lent itself to this story
because it's a parallel story. It's a story about Dario,
but it's also a story about a whale who's
going through, in its own non-anthropomorphic
way, a similar journey, a journey north to find
food, a journey north to find sustenance and friends. So the physical layout of
a picture book lends itself to that, so that was
why I picked that. >> Thank you all so much. I do want to say,
writing a novel in verse, especially walking
back into that after writing the whole
novel, sounds so difficult, but it's a trend that I've seen
a lot in young adult literature that is growing and
growing and growing. And I think it ties
into music, too, right, and the love of music. So thank you all so much
for sharing that with us. I'll turn it over to
Lori for question three. >> These past 18 months
have been extraordinary, challenging our sense of
control over our world. What role do you think books
play in helping people cope with the challenges to
the way we live now, and are there particular
books you would recommend for these times? Let's begin with
Susan from Kentucky. >> I think COVID-19 has
turned us all into, in a way, immigrants in our own
environment because we've had to put down everything
we found familiar, everything we found comforting,
and remake it quickly, not by choice, into
something that works for us and the people around us. So I feel like all
the books picked in this particular talk are
very addressed to the situation that we're in where you have to
go and find a new way of being and doing while still retaining
those things about yourself that are most valuable
and most important. Of course, I work in healthcare, so my perspective's a little
slanted at the moment because, you know, it's been a pretty
difficult road all along. But I do think that music,
art, literature, books -- I think that people, especially
during the lockdown period, begin to realize that art isn't
just a frill off to the side, that art is its own life,
art is its own therapy, art is its own comfort,
whether it be picture book or singing together with
600 people you've never met on songs about a whale, even. That was one of the big trends
was the Wellerman TikTok where they were singing about a
right whale, so I keep thinking about that whenever she
brings up the whale. But it was a way of connecting. I think that these
are all connections. They're like little
synapses that we all share that we can connect through,
if we're willing to do that. So I think that what people turn
to or what might be the best for them, whether it be, you
know, picture books or novels, has to be the thing that speaks
to them, has to be the thing that makes their heart happy and
makes their heart sing in a time when the fear -- I think
about the fear in my animals when they're running
out of their burrow or when they're trying to
get to know each other, to feel like it's all okay
to be in the barn together. To get past that, you have to
find the thing that has magic for you and the format
that's magic for you. Also, I'm impressed
with any author that finished a book
during this period of time. I would like to send
them all flowers. If I had lots of money, I would, because I don't know
how they did that. I've not been able to pull
that off, but I think, bless them that they did that. Bless the people that
got the movies out, that sang on the internet
and sang on TikTok and gave us all something
to hope for, to believe in. So I'm excited that -- I think
this panel is particularly well-suited to what people have
gone through in the pandemic. >> Alexandra? >> So, for me, books have always
been a way to experience things that I myself wouldn't have
been able to experience. And during the pandemic where a
lot of us found ourselves locked in or restricted in terms of
what we were allowed to do or where we were allowed to go,
friends we were allowed to meet, books, I feel more than
ever, have helped children and adults be able to
connect with the outside world and be able to have experiences
that they would have never had. So for example, befriending
a whale or be a member in a community and
making new friends, even though you speak
a different language or a different religion, or having your animal
friends doing an adventure. So all of that, all of our
books, I feel are great examples of things that you can escape
to, that you can appreciate, and that pandemic has definitely
needed an escape mechanism, especially if you're stuck in
your house the whole day long and you are not interacting
with friends. Characters in the books can now
suddenly become your friends, and you're excited to see
what's going to happen. You're drawn into that suspense. So I'm so thankful for our
libraries that, you know, even though a lot of them
closed down, they did so much to make books accessible
for kids, even if their buildings
were physically closed. I know libraries that offered,
like, even a concierge service, that would just give
you a stack of books. And then also, audiobooks,
that was a great way to listen to stories that you may not
have necessarily been drawn to initially, but because they
were there, they were online, they were accessible, and you
could play it while you were doing other stuff
around the house. I mean, I think that
was just really good that we had these resources and
we had these huge, diverse books that essentially
appealed for everyone. >> Cheryl? >> Yeah. I think that, you know,
during the quarantine, you know, so many parents are home
with their kids and looking for things to do, and a book is
a handy, easy way to, you know, bring in new experiences,
new friends. But more than that, even,
what I love is the idea that books can provide at least
a stepping stone to the wonder and the imagination
and the creativity that may have been prompted by other things that
are now lacking. So, like, you know, things
at school or friends or trips that families would have
taken to look at the stars, to go camping, to go to
magnificent places or even just to visit family, books
can provide that same sort of opportunity for
wonder and joy and heart. So that's what I think. I just love the opportunity
to get more books into homes and to just have more
people looking at books and more kids reading. Just a great opportunity. >> And Jasmine? >> Yeah. I agree with so
much of what's been said, that books are the best
vehicles to expand wonder, to expand hearts, to comfort. I guess I could only -- I'll speak to my personal
experience with the pandemic. I have two young
daughters, and I have sort of rediscovered the joy of
the read-aloud and how sort of comforting it is to
process a story in oral form. And we have loved so
many different stories. You know, we've been
making our way through the Ivy + Bean books, and they're loving the
humor in those books. They cried while reading, you
know, The One and Only Ivan, and we've read tons and tons and
tons of beautiful picture books. But I think it's what
everyone's saying, you know, books have always
been an amazing portal to worlds outside of our own. And I think that in
a time when a lot of us are feeling really
isolated, it's really wonderful to have those portals but
to also have the magic that books have of
sort of growing hearts. I think that this is a time
when we need more kindness and more empathy and especially
for young people to have a sense of community and a sense of responsibility
to their community. And I think books can
really help to build that in our young people,
and that's what I love. And I do, I feel so grateful
to all of the library workers who made it possible for young
people to still have access to books, even when the
world was closed down. And on a personal level, the things that brought me the
biggest joy during the pandemic was going around with a little
bag of books and putting them in all the little free libraries
in our community and just having that feeling of being
able to share a book, even though we were all
distanced from one another. >> Yeah. I think I've read more
books in the past 18 months, or listened, as Alexandra said. I do a lot of audiobooks
as well. So I'm thankful to all of you
for keeping the books flowing. Any other last thoughts or
any book recommendations? >> I was really grateful that
the publishers suspended a lot of their concern about
sharing of materials so that there was more just
overall ability for all children to have access to all books. You know, it was a magic
moment in time there where proprietary
rights of money and everything became less
important, and the word and the art became ascended. And I just love that, so
that brief moment in history. >> Yeah. It was amazing, something I thought
I'd never see. >> Hi. This is Sharon. I've really been enjoying
this conversation, and I did have one
question I wanted to ask, but before we do that, I
couldn't help but think about a project that
many centers sponsor on our home turf called
Letters About Literature where we ask young people
to write letters to authors about books that have
been important to them. And as you were talking about
your books, I was thinking about the kinds of responses
that students would be having. And, you know, one of the
things that students very much like is finding somebody
like them and sharing that experience. And so I think it's so good
to offer that diversity and to give people a way in. The other thing they like
to do is find similarities and differences and
to say, well, that's just like what I do here. And in each of those
ways, being, you know, secure that one's identity
is not strange in the world or finding similarities across
those apparent differences, I think all of you are
writing the kind of books that our students
love to respond to. And one of the things
that they very much like to do is continue the book
and say, what will happen next? And so I couldn't help but
start to think about, well, what would be the next
chapter they would write? And I know that, for
instance, in Cheryl's book, I'm sure that students
would want to talk about what happened next summer and how big would the
whale be, you know? And I wonder if you've ever
thought about that, like, what comes next in your book and
what students might be adding because they very, very
much like to do that. >> Just in terms of Dario, I
get that question all the time. And you know, and then I
usually ask students, you know, what do you think happened next? And everything from, well,
you know, the whale comes back with his family, and Dario
has, you know, lots of friends, and then his mom is, you know,
working still, but, you know, he goes to school with the kids. So they really do integrate
the story into their own lives. And pretty soon, he has a
brother named, you know, whatever the child's
brother's name is, and it's really delightful. It's absolutely delightful. It's a wonderful way to
talk through a story. >> Yeah. Yeah, it's great. I love getting the
responses from readers. And you must love that once -- when you're finally able to meet
your readers again and seeing that enthusiasm and excitement. >> Absolutely. >> So what are your
readers going to be getting next from you? Can you talk a little bit about
the projects you're working on? And how about if we put
you on the spot, Alexandra? Can I start with you to find
out what your next project is? >> So I just want to throw
out there that I have a book out already called
Santiago's Road Home, and a clever reader may
perhaps, you know, possibly find out some information about
characters from The Crossroads in that book, but I don't know. I could totally be making
that up, so just throwing that out there in
case, you know, perhaps they were interested. What I have actually
been working on right now is a very loosely
based historical fiction novel on what my parents went
through when they emigrated from Cuba in 1960s. So for those of you who
are aware, you know, 1960s was a long time ago. Dinosaurs were dead, but the
wooly mammoths were still romping the earth. And it was just a
very different world. There was a lot of
things going on in 1960s, especially in Miami, which
is where my book takes place. So I've had to change
a lot of the aspects from my parents' immigration
story because, for one thing, my parents were on the older
side when they immigrated, and my publisher
wanted me to write for middle-school-age kids. So there has been quite a
lot of changing, but still, I'm trying to keep it true to at
least the culture, the thoughts, the mentalities of what people
were experiencing in 1960, which is very different
than what is going on currently right
now with immigration. So that is my project
at the moment. It's set to come out next
summer, but I don't know if that is still the case,
since I've given it to my editor and I haven't heard
any feedback yet. So we'll see whether that
date gets pushed or not. >> Sounds great. What about you, Cheryl? >> I have a middle-grade novel
that I'm still working on, which is set 10,000 years in the
future and set here on Earth, a snowy Earth that has
suffered a catastrophe and is completely snow-bound. And it's a place where there's
a feudal system, and the haves and the have-nots, and
the kids have a quest to figure things out, to
right the wrongs of the past. So it's a time when it's
illegal to believe in stars. So a little different
than my picture books, but it is a lot of
fun to work on. So we'll see how that goes. >> Well, I can -- It's timely. So, yeah. Jasmine, can you
tell us what you're working on? >> Yeah. So I have a new
middle-grade novel coming out next fall. It is titled A Rover
Named Resilience, and it is about a Mars rover. It's actually narrated in
first person from the rover, and it follows Resilience. That's the name of the rover, though he's affectionately
called Rez. His journey from being
created in the JPL Lab at NASA to his journey to Mars
and his relationship with the other robotic creatures
because this new rover that's on Mars now, Perseverance,
is the first rover that is accompanied
by a drone helicopter. And that's also a
character in the book. It's definitely my pandemic
book in that it's very different from anything that I've
ever worked on before, and I think that it's
because, like, my brain, my imagination got really
shook up from this experience. And in July of 2020 when the new
rover was launching into space, I set up to watch the
launch with my daughters because my youngest daughter,
who was three at the time, was really into space, and she
turns to me and goes, "Mommy, do you think the
robot is afraid?" And right there, I saw the book, and I couldn't stop
wondering about that. And then I did more and more
research into the rovers, and I've just become, like,
fascinated by the engineering and exploration, and it's
been such a joy to work on. So we're kind of calling it,
like, The One and Only Ivan but with robots, is kind
of the vibe of the book. It's really sparsely told, also,
so it's not completely verse like Other Words for Home,
but it's really, like, short, sparse chapters because it's a
robot who's telling the story. So yeah, that'll be out
exactly a year from now, so. >> Wow. I mean, that
sounds fascinating. And you're right,
such a difference. Yeah, I like that
variety very much. Susan, what are you working on? >> Well, we've talked
about what happens next, and I think my next book is
actually what happens next, and the announcement is going
to be today or tomorrow, but Kelly Murphy agreed to illustrate a second
picture book, and it's called Tomorrow
We Build. And it's, you know, basically
one of the things we look at, especially the cover of
Together We Grow is a lot of animals in a limited space. And so one of the things
that happens after any sort of disaster or after any sort of large immigration
event is you redesign. You know, you have to
build your community. You have to start from
somewhere and get bigger. Bigger tables, you know,
for people to come together. And so that's what that book is
about, and I'm excited to see where she takes it with her
thinking on the illustration. And I'm also working on a
middle-grade mystery that's set, partially at least, in an
old psychiatric hospital. My characters, whether they be
middle-grade or young adult, tend to have various mental
health issues and also, more recently, more true to
kind of my own experience, have some autistic
flavor to them. And so my characters in this
middle-grade mystery are -- Right now, it's called
Finding What's Mine. They're participating
in a group therapy to learn something
called the skill system, which helps people regulate
their emotions a little better. It's an actual therapeutic
system out in the world, but they then take it and
operationalize it in their life, and they hang out in this old
psych hospital that is shut down in order to get
away from [inaudible]. And the psych hospital is sold,
and so they pack up their things to go home, but apparently
they packed up something that they shouldn't because
they start getting letters from somebody who wants it back. And so they have to
solve that mystery, even through all the
challenges they're facing in losing their safe haven. >> Wow. That sounds fascinating. We can't wait to read
all of these books, and we thank you all
for joining us today. We were honored to have you,
and we're really excited to be sharing not only the
works that we selected, but giving readers a heads-up about what's coming
next from all of you. So thank you very, very much. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Nice to meet you all. >> And thanks also
to our viewers for joining this Great Reads
from Great Places presentation. All of us in the
affiliated Centers for the Book send best
wishes for great reading. Please return to the
National Book Festival site, and especially to the
Festival Near You section, to see other Great Reads
2021 author panels as well as to participate in a variety
of national and local events to celebrate reading and
writing throughout our nation. [ Music ]
