For Librarians

Children’s Books to Honor Arab American Heritage Month

By Hillary Homzie on April 14, 2023 / Articles, Book Lists, Diversity, Fiction, For Librarians, For Teachers, MUF Contributor Books, Nonfiction

In honor of Arab American Heritage month, I wanted to offer a half dozen children’s books that shed a spotlight on Arab Americans as well as an understanding of the Arab world. In particular, the books selected are geared towards elementary school children and focus on various experiences of Arab American migration as well as a celebration of the achievements of Arab women. A diversity of Arab American faiths is also represented.

1) The Turtle of Oman by Naomi Shihab Nye

This moving middle grade novel shines a light on the struggles of moving (in this case from Oman to Ann Arbor, Michigan) and leaving behind family and friends. It is ultimately a warm tribute to the love between a boy and his grandfather. The exploration of what it means to feels like to relocate are handled with nuance and levity.

Aref’s father had checked a large blue suitcase. He’d been urging Aref to get rid of extra possessions for weeks now, so Aref wouldn’t try to pack too much. But Aref didn’t like letting go of his things.

–from The Turtle of Oman

2) Spell it Like Samar by Shifa Safadi and illustrated by Saliha Caliskan

When Samar moves the United States from Syria, she confronts new challenges. While at first Samar is intimidated by Jenna, a class bully, as well as her new surroundings, she learns to stand up for herself. An uplifting story about the importance of persistence and resilience. And as a bonus, it’s by MUF member Shifa Safadi!

Samar’s face turned red. “I can’t do it, Ms. Bryan!” she said. In Syria, she had been the best student in her class. But here, it felt like she was the worst.
–from Spell it Like Samar

3) Farah Rocks Fifth Grade by Susan Muaddi Darraj and illustrated by Ruaida Mannaa

This is the first in a series of chapter books about 10 year-old Farrah Hajjar, a Palestinian American who deals with sibling relationships (her brother Samir has special needs), and stands up to bullying. The family is part of a tight knit community that goes to St. Jude’s Orthodox Church and supports Farah’s journey to attend a magnet school. Throughout the narrative, it is evident that Farah loves learning.

Even though I don’t like the word gifted, I’m thrilled about going to Magnet.
–from Farah Rocks Fifth Grade

4) Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga

The story of Jude’s relocation from Syria to Cincinnati is poignant and relatable. The novel-in-verse, which was awarded a Newbery Honor in 2021, is accessible and beautiful. It also will challenge stereotypical ideas of Syria.

But our city does not look like Aleppo, before, or after./ It is not sprawling and noisy with buildings/pressed up against/one another/like they are crammed together in an elevator/with no room to breathe.
–from Other Words for Home

5) Muslim Girls Rise: Inspirational Champions of Our Time by Saira Mir and Aaliya Jaleel

This compilation of 21st century Muslim women who are leaders is inspirational. Nineteen women are profiled in this upper elementary picture book, from Amani Al-Khatahbeh, the creator of the website, Muslim Gir,l to NASA’s Hiba Rahmani Kuwait to Dalia Mogahed, an advisor to President Barack Obama.

Mogahed tells girls to be: “Be bold, be fearless and be confident, because you matter”

–from Muslim Girls Rise: Inspirational Champions of Our Time

6) If You Were a Princess: True Stories of Brave Leaders Around the World by Hillary Homzie and illustrated by Udayana Lugo

I’m thrilled to include my newest release, a nonfiction picture book aimed at elementary school students. If You Were a Princess: True Stories of Brave Leaders Around the World features the stories of actual princesses who have made a difference in their community. Several princesses are from the Arab world, including Princess Alia of Jordan who established a wildlife sanctuary, Princess Rema of Saudi Arabia who has trekked up Mount Everest in honor of cancer patients (who is on the cover of the book) and Princess Nisreen el-Hashemite from Iraq, an MD/PHD researcher who worked at Harvard Medical school and established the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.

After Princess Haya of Jordan’s mother died, her father presented a young horse to the princess to help her heal. This gift inspired a passion for show jumping. Princess Haya became the first Arab woman to compete in the Olympics, and then served on the International Olympic Committee

–from If You Were a Princess: True Stories of Brave Leaders Around the World

Hillary Homzie is the author of the Ellie May chapter book series (Charlesbridge, 2018), Apple Pie Promises (Sky Pony/Swirl, 2018), Pumpkin Spice Secrets (Sky Pony/Swirl, 2017), Queen of Likes (Simon & Schuster MIX 2016), The Hot List (Simon & Schuster MIX 2011) and Things Are Gonna Be Ugly (Simon & Schuster, 2009) as well as the Alien Clones From Outer Space (Simon & Schuster Aladdin 2002) chapter book series. She’s also a contributor to the Kate the Chemist middle grade series (Philomel Books/Penguin Random House). And her nonfiction picture book, If You Were a Princess: True Stories of Brave Leaders From Around the World is a look at historical and current princesses from many diverse lands who have made their mark (Simon & Schuster, August 2022). During the year, Hillary teaches at Sonoma State University. In the summer, she teaches in the graduate program in children’s literature, writing and illustration at Hollins University. She also is an instructor for the Children’s Book Academy.

She can be found at hillaryhomzie.com and on Instagram, her Facebook page as well as on Twitter

Author Interview: Dianne Salerni and her latest release, The Carrefour Curse

By Mike Hays on March 15, 2023 / Author Interviews, books, For Kids, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, For Writers, New Releases

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Addams Family meets The Westing Game in this exhilarating mystery about a modern magical dynasty trapped in the ruins of their once-grand, now-crumbling ancestral home.

Twelve-year-old Garnet regrets that she doesn’t know her family. Her mother has done her best to keep it that way, living far from the rest of the magical Carrefour clan and their dark, dangerous mansion known as Crossroad House.

But when Garnet finally gets summoned to the estate, it isn’t quite what she hoped for. Her relatives are strange and quarrelsome, each room in Crossroad House is more dilapidated than the last, and she can’t keep straight which dusty hallways and cobwebbed corners are forbidden.

Then Garnet learns the family secret: their dying patriarch fights to retain his life by stealing power from others. Every accident that isn’t an accident, every unexpected illness and unexplained disappearance grants Jasper Carrefour a little more time. While the Carrefours squabbles over who will inherit his role when (if) he dies, Garnet encounters evidence of an even deeper curse. Was she brought to Crossroad House as part of the curse . . . or is she meant to break it?

Written with loads of creepy atmosphere and an edge-of-your-seat magical mystery, this thrilling story reads like The Haunting of Hill House for preteens. Perfect for late-night reading under the covers.

Introduction

Today, we have the pleasure of hosting a favorite author of mine, Dianne K. Salerni, to talk about her latest release from Holiday House Books called, The Carrefour Curse. Here’s her official introduction:

Dianne K. Salerni has written many books for children, including Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selections Eleanor, Alice, and the Roosevelt Ghosts and Jadie in Five Dimensions. After teaching elementary school for twenty-five years, Dianne now spends her time hanging around creepy cemeteries and climbing 2,000-year-old pyramids for book research. Visit her online at https://diannesalerni.com/

Dianne can also be found online at:

The Interview

MH: One of my favorite things as a reader and a creator is the author’s story of their story. The journey and brain science behind how a story grew from bits and pieces of an idea to a book on the shelf is fascinating to me. What is the origin story of your latest middle-grade release, The Carrefour Curse?

Dianne: There were two main inspirations for The Carrefour Curse: Dark Shadows, the supernatural soap opera, and The Spook House, a vignette written by Ambrose Bierce. My mother was a fan of Dark Shadows, and I used to watch the show as a young child even though I wasn’t allowed to. I hid behind the sofa and became a lifelong fan of all things gothic. As for the Bierce story, the image of a locked room filled with dead people haunted me for a long time, and I tried for years to build a plot around it. When I got the idea to combine Dark Shadows and The Spook House, the result was The Carrefour Curse.

I wrote the first draft in 2017, and when it was finished, I proclaimed it “a terrible mess,” closed the document, and forgot about it. Fast forward to early 2020, when I devoured the Netflix series, Locke & Key. I loved that show so much, I made a list of all the elements that called to me and thought, I’d like to write a story with these elements. Then I remembered I already had! For the first time in three years, I opened the document named Crossroad House, read it, and discovered that, although it was messy, it wasn’t terrible. Revising this manuscript soon became my pandemic project.

MH: I’ve always been drawn to your ability to create real and believable fictional worlds within a recognizable “normal” story world. From the magical extra day of The Eighth Day series to the extra dimension worlds of Jadie in Five Dimensions, you build logical worlds that allow the reader to seamlessly move in and out of. I realize my begging at your feet and screaming, “How do you do this?” is too broad and too unfair of a question to ask, but can you share a few steps of how you create such effective world shifts in your books?

Dianne: Well, it certainly doesn’t happen in the first draft, that’s for sure! The world-building usually starts with an idea. Like: There’s a secret day hidden between Wednesday and Thursday. Or: Our 3-dimensional universe exists inside a larger 4-dimensional universe. In my first draft, world-building is thin, disjointed, and often contradictory as I try to nail down the plot. After the story is complete, I work on a list of “rules” for my alternate world, with my priority being that the rules have to allow all my events to happen and still make sense. In successive drafts, I work on the inconsistencies and the logic and make sure that the world elements saturate the story, instead of feeling tacked on. In the final drafts, I make a list of the chapters and chart what elements appear in each one. Has it been several chapters since my main character felt like Crossroad House was watching her or influencing events? I’ll work a mention in.

MH: Can you describe your creative process of how an idea becomes a fully-formed story in your hands?

Dianne: Every book starts with a premise, like the secret day or the nesting universes, or an inspirational source, like Dark Shadows and The Spook House. Next, come the characters. Who are they and what happens to them? What is the main conflict? In rare cases, before I start writing, I’ll outline the entire story on Scrivener. I did that with Eleanor, Alice, & the Roosevelt Ghosts and also with the second and third books in the Eighth Day series. But most of the time, I outline the first third or half and then jump into writing because I don’t know how it all works out until it happens on the page. Sometimes there are surprises. In The Carrefour Curse, a rather important character invented herself in Chapter 23 and inserted herself into the climax, forcing me—in later drafts—to weave her very existence into the first half of the book. Sometimes, the surprise is that the book is a dud. There are many, many unfinished manuscripts on my computer.

MH: Are you a multiple-irons in-the-fire creator or a one-story-at-a-time creator?

Dianne: Usually, I’ll work on only one story at a time. If I’m struggling with it, I might put it aside to revise and polish an old manuscript. (The Carrefour Curse is not the only one of my books to come out of a resurrected manuscript.) Once in a while, publication deadlines require that I work on more than one thing at a time. While I was under contract for the Eighth Day series, I once found myself proofreading the galley of Book 1, making editorial revisions on Book 2, and drafting Book 3. I got so confused about what Jax knew and when he knew it that I had to rearrange my schedule to work on one at a time: first the proofreading, then the revisions, and finally back to drafting.

MH: Can you describe your experience with Holiday House in bringing The Carrefour Curse to its publication date?

Dianne: Holiday House has been wonderful to work with. My last three books have been published through Holiday House, and I think my editor, Sally Morgridge, is brilliant. I love the covers they’ve commissioned for all three books – they’re all very different but each one perfect in its own way. The publicity department is enthusiastic and very communicative. In the past, I have worked with bigger publishers where I never had any contact with my “official publicist,” so this is a refreshing change!

MH: What’s next?

Dianne: I have a book on submission. Because it’s not recommended that we talk about works on submission, I’ll say only that it’s a comedy-mystery and somewhat different from my other books. While I wait for word on that, I’m drafting a middle grade horror story. We’ll see how that goes because I’m approaching the end of the “index cards” on my Scrivener corkboard and wading into the un-outlined part of the story. For me, this is the scariest part of my horror story!

MH: What are some of your favorite activities, outside of the butt-in-chair life of an author, to recharge your creative battery?

Twice a week, I volunteer at our local animal shelter. I walk dogs and service the cat room – feeding and cleaning up after the cats and assorted critters. (Currently, we have more rabbits than cats in the so-called cat room.) I have three hydroponic gardens in my home. I typically grow lettuce, tomatoes, and baby bok choy, but I’ve also experimented with sweet peas (too much vine and not enough peas), dwarf eggplants (they do better outside), and Swiss chard (nobody at my house would eat it). I also enjoy skiing and scuba diving, and my husband and I LOVE to make homemade pasta.

Conclusion

Thank you, Dianne, for a fantastic insight into your writer’s life and The Carrefour Curse. How can one not want to read a book with a tagline like, The Addams Family meets The Westing Game? The entire MUF family wishes much success for the book and for you. Personally, I can’t wait to read the next one.

For more information on The Carrefour Curse and Holiday House Books, check out the following links.

The Carrefour Curse Book Page @ Holiday House Books

Holiday House Books Socials

YOUNG PEOPLE WORKING FOR CHANGE

By Sue Cowing on February 20, 2023 / Articles, Book Lists, For Kids, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, Nonfiction

Several new books have come out featuring young people working for change in their communities and the world. Child leaders have emerged in almost every activist movement today. Though too young to vote, they organize, draw public attention to issues, and often can get laws and policy changed. The causes they champion directly impact the quality of their future lives. These include water rights, human rights, and especially climate change.
Here are some of the books designed to inform and encourage young readers who want to make a difference. .
The Climate Book (2023) is by 19-year-old Greta Thunberg, an internationally known and respected leader in the movement to combat climate change. This has been her focus ever since she demonstrated outside the Swedish parliament with a hand-made sign at age 15. In this book, she outlines the urgent need for accurate information and effective , and she provides both. She calls on the wisdom and knowledge of hundreds of scientists, indigenous leaders, historians, engineers, and mathematicians. Her book includes graphs and illustrations, and suggests paths for real step-by-step change. Also see Greta’s Story: The Schoolgirl Who Went on Strike to Save the Planet by Valentina Camerini (2019)

We Have a Dream: Meet 30 Young Indigenous People and People of Color Protecting the Planet (2022) is by Mya-Rose Craig.” Mya-Rose, British Bangladeshi ornithologist who was awarded an honorary science degree from Bristol University at age 17. She has created “Black to Nature” camps to encourage indigenous people and people of color to fight for equal rights and environmental protection, since they are the most affected. This book profiles thirty young people around the world, including the US, who are already taking action.

Also see Young Native Activist: Growing Up in Native American Rights Movements by Aslan Tudo. Alsn is a 13 year old member of the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas. When he was 8 and again at 11, Aslan went to South Dakota to join the protests of Lakota Sioux against construction of a oil pipeline at Standing Rock. In this book, he describes native American causes in which he continues to be active.

In Movement Makers: How Young Activists Upended the Politics of Climate change (2022), author Nicke Englefried interviews over 100 youth leaders. She tells the background story of how youth climate campaigns have drawn attention, changed the national discussion, and become a mass movement.

Saving Animals: A Future Activist’s Guide (2021), is by Catherine Kelaher, founder of New South Wales’ Hen Rescue. Her organization rehomes chickens and other animals from factory farms. This well-researched guide is full of ideas about how to protect and make the world a better place for pets, farm animals & wildlife . It includes stories of empathetic young people who are doing just that.

Glimmer of Hope: How Tragedy Sparked a Movement (2018), is by the founders of March For Our Lives. On Valentine’s Day in 2018, a mass-shooter killed 17 students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida. Surviving students channeled their grief and anger into a youth movement to end gun violence. The students of the movement provide a blueprint, showing how they took action in rallies, on social media, in voter registration drives, and with a march on Washington.

Tomorrow Begins Now: Teen Heroes Who Faced Down Injustice (2022) is by Ava Lorelei Deakin. It features stories, ranging from the 1950s to today, of 11 teens fighting for their civil rights and liberties. Their issues include school segregation, sports equality, censorship, unjust deportation, and others.

Putting Peace First: 7 Commitments to Change the World (2018) is by Eric David Dawson, who at age 18 founded a non-profit called Peace First. Peace first is based on the idea that young people can change the world now. Putting Peace First is his handbook for would-be peacemakers, with step-by-step explanations of how peacemakers have achieved their goals