Member News — February 2020

Member News is a new monthly feature on the EasternPennPoints blog. We want to celebrate our members’ good news and help spread the word far and wide. Send us your children’s-book-related news—book deals, releases, awards, author or illustrator events (signings, launch parties, appearances), etc. If you’d like your news to be included in next month’s column, please e-mail Laura Parnum at epa-ara@scbwi.org before March 20.

Here’s some exciting news from members in our region this month:

Author Jennifer Robin Barr recently signed a book deal with Boyds Mills Kane for her middle grade novel, Thunder and Mercy, in which the protagonist is thrown into a historical mystery that uncovers the secrets of her new home, Mount Pleasant (a wedding gift from Benedict Arnold to his bride, Peggy Shippen), and the infamous Agent 355—a female member of the Culper Spy Ring who helped expose Arnold, and whose real life identity remains a mystery. Publication is slated for 2022.

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Author-Illustrator Adrienne Wright’s debut book Hector: A Boy, A Protest, and the Photograph that Changed Apartheid, published by Page Street Kids in 2019, earned starred reviews from both Kirkus Reviews and ALA’s Booklist. Hector has garnered more accolades and is a 2020 ALA (ALSC) Notable Children’s Book, Kirkus Reviews Best of 2019 (Middle Grade Biographies & Memoirs), 2019 Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection, and is also included on the Center for the Study of Multicultural Children’s Literature (CSMCL) Best Books of 2019 list.

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Author Martha Freeman’s latest, BORN CURIOUS: Twenty Girls Who Grew Up to Be Awesome Scientists, (illustrated by Katy Wu) was released by Simon & Schuster (Paula Wiseman Books) this month. Perfect for people ages seven and up, the book includes twenty illustrated, brief biographies of women from all kinds of backgrounds and all walks of science, among them pharmacologist Tu Youyou, planetary scientist Adriana Ocampo, mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, and microbiologist Carol Greider. Fun facts, thought-provoking quotations, and a detailed glossary round out the book. Kirkus says, “An inspiring look at women who realized curiosity plus tenacity equals success.”

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Author Eric Bell has two reasons to celebrate this month. He just signed with literary agent Robert Guinsler of Sterling Lord Literistic. He also will have a short story appearing in a middle grade queer anthology entitled This Is Our Rainbow: 16 Stories of Her, Him, Them, and Us, edited by Katherine Locke. Publication by Knopf is slated for fall 2021.

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The release date for Lindsay Bandy’s historical YA novel, Nemesis and the Swan (Blackstone Books) has been moved up to October 27, 2020. The book follows nineteen-year-old Hélène, from her prison cell in revolutionary Paris, recalling the events that led her to choose between following in her parents’ unforgivable footsteps or abandoning the man she loves. Stay tuned for her cover reveal!