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2 months ago | 
hbook.com | Amanda Uhle |Dave Eggers |Lisa Yoskowitz |Alexandra Hightower
WinnerThe First State of Being by Erin Entrada KellyIntermediate, Middle School Greenwillow 272 pp. 3/24 9780063337312 $19.99e-book ed. 9780063337336 $9.99It’s the summer of 1999. Twelve-year-old Delawarean Michael has worries, chief among them the approach of Y2K. What if everything falls apart? Family finances are precarious, so he’s amassing a stash of groceries acquired through shoplifting. Then he meets an odd new kid.
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Jul 17, 2024 | 
hbook.com | Amanda Uhle |Dave Eggers |Lisa Yoskowitz |Alexandra Hightower
Dave Eggers. Photo: Mark Davis. Dave Eggers believes that true friends exist. His unwavering faith is carried onto every page of The Eyes and the Impossible, the 2024 winner of the Newbery Medal. Its protagonist, Johannes, is a free dog, a fast dog — oh, what a fast dog — who keeps watch over a sprawling urban park where he lives among his beloved friends.
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Jul 2, 2024 | 
hbook.com | Ibi Zoboi |Lisa Yoskowitz |Alexandra Hightower
I have been writing and telling stories my entire adult life. My first love was journalism — what I consider to be truth-telling. Then I fell in love with spoken word poetry — what I consider to be testifying. The need to tell the truth and to testify has always fueled my passion to write. It is my purpose and my life’s work. I was born in Haiti. English is not my first language. I was raised by a single immigrant mother. And where I come from, writers are silenced or sent into exile.
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Jul 1, 2024 | 
hbook.com | Dave Eggers |Lisa Yoskowitz |Alexandra Hightower
My journey to you today started in first grade, when my teacher Mrs. Wright, an impossibly kind woman with round-framed glasses and a short brown bob, told us one day that we were going to write our own books. I was seven years old. This made no sense at all, a seven-year-old writing a book, but then again it made all the sense in the world. I got started.
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Jan 22, 2024 | 
hbook.com | Lisa Yoskowitz |Alexandra Hightower |Frank Morrison
WinnerNigeria Jonesby Ibi ZoboiHigh School Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins 384 pp. 5/23 9780062888846 $19.99e-book ed. 9780062888860 $12.99Sixteen-year-old Nigeria is expected to lead the youth of the Movement (which is “like a small African West Philly village in the big, white state of Pennsylvania”) and model what it means to be a revolutionary.
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Jan 22, 2024 | 
hbook.com | Lisa Yoskowitz |Alexandra Hightower |Kathleen T. Horning
WinnerThe Eyes and the Impossibleby Dave Eggers; illus. by Shawn HarrisIntermediate Knopf 272 pp. 5/23 9781524764203 $19.99e-book ed. 9781524764227 $10.99REVIEW TO COMEHonor BooksEagle Drums by Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson; illus. by the authorIntermediate Roaring Brook 256 pp. 9/23 9781250750655 $18.99e-book ed. 9781250750662 $10.99Hopson’s (Iñupiat) debut novel is the story of the origin of the Messenger Feast, an Iñupiat festival of song and dance.
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Jan 22, 2024 | 
hbook.com | Lisa Yoskowitz |Alexandra Hightower
Winner An American Storyby Kwame Alexander; illus. by Dare CoulterPrimary, Intermediate Little, Brown 56 pp. 1/23 9780316473125 $18.99Alexander and Coulter have created a powerful counternarrative in their efforts to answer the question, “How do you tell a story about slavery?” Starting before Africans were forcibly brought to the Americas, both text and art reinforce the family structures, cultural traditions, and ways of life Africans enjoyed.
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Jul 21, 2023 | 
hbook.com | Lisa Yoskowitz |Alexandra Hightower
This year’s ALA Youth Media Award winners represent a range of experiences, expertise, interests, and topics. There are previous, beloved winners and there are newcomers to the stage — notably Doug Salati for the Caldecott Medal and Amina Luqman-Dawson for both the Newbery and Coretta Scott King Author awards.
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Jul 19, 2023 | 
hbook.com | Alexandra Hightower |Kathleen T. Horning |Martha Brockenbrough |Lisa Yoskowitz
Future editor of Freewater. Photo courtesy of Alexandra Hightower. On a recent visit to her family home in Atlanta, Alex(andra) Hightower came across some papers from her tenth-grade English class. Looking at her essays and the notes in the margins, Alex was struck by how the work she did in that class informed her work now as an editor. Her teacher, Mr. Newman, always encouraged his students to dig deeper and think about how books and media connect to other artwork and the larger world.
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Jul 10, 2023 | 
hbook.com | Alexandra Hightower |Kathleen T. Horning |Martha Brockenbrough |Donna Barba Higuera
Amina in seventh grade. Photo courtesy of Amina Luqman-Dawson. Working with Amina Luqman-Dawson has been nothing short of joyous. Back before the incredible double whammy of the Coretta Scott King and Newbery awards, before Freewater became a New York Times and Indie bestseller, I knew from my very first editorial calls with Amina that she was delightfully observant. She has a knack for taking in her surroundings, ingesting that information, and then executing with precise strength.
