2010 Children / Teens Participants

Listed in alphabetical order

Nora Baskin

Exploring Autism: A Journey of Creation - Saturday 3:00 PM

Nora Baskin is the author of seven novels for young people (Little, Brown, S&S, HarperCollins, and Candlewick Press). She was a 2001 Publishers Weekly "Flying Start". The Truth about my Bat Mitzvah was chosen as a Jewish Book Council Network Selection, a Parent’s Choice Silver Award, and Junior Library Guild Selection. Her latest, Anything But Typical was chosen Booklist top middle grade novels for 2009, as well as the recipient of the 2010 ALA Schnieder Award for middle grade fiction. The Summer Before Boys will be released by S&S in 2011. She has also published short stories, and personal narrative essays which have appeared in The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine and The Writer Magazine. Ms. Baskin teaches creative writing both to adult and children through The Gotham Writers Workshop, The State University of New York at Purchase as well as schools and libraries across the country.

Fred Bowen 

Ready to Play: Reading for the Sport of It - Saturday 1:00 PM

Fred Bowen is a sportswriter for kids ages 8 and up. His new book No Easy Way (Dutton Children’s Books) is a gorgeous picture-book biography of Ted Williams, the amazing Red Sox Slugger, and was named a Junior Library Guild Selection for Fall 2009. Bowen has two other new books — Hardcourt Comeback and Dugout Rivals — to add to his sports-fiction series (13 in all) and he writes a weekly sports column for kids in The Washington Post. He was a Little Leaguer who loved to read, and he is dedicated to hooking today’s young sports fans on the joys of reading. For 13 years, Bowen coached kids’ baseball and basketball teams. Some of his stories spring directly from his coaching experience; others spring from his sports-happy childhood in Marblehead, Massachusetts. www.fredbowen.com; and www.SportsStorySeries.com

Nancy Butler

Hooked on Classics: A Hip Approach to Old Material - Saturday 2:00 PM

Nancy Butler had been—more or less—living in the 19th century since the publication of her first Signet Regency romance in 1998. Twelve novels and three novellas later, she found herself rudely back in the 21st century when the Regency romance genre faded (yet not, oddly, Austen-mania). Fortunately, in 2009 Marvel offered her a chance to adapt Pride and Prejudice for their illustrated classics line, putting her firmly back in the era she adored. The hardcover compilation became a New York Times bestseller in the graphic novel category, and when it reached No. 2 on the list there was great rejoicing. Butler also writes nonfiction for middle-schoolers under her real name, Nancy J. Hajeski, and is the author of The Hammond Book of Presidents and of three Hammond Undercover titles: Rocks & Minerals, Princesses, and Sharks. She has won two RITAs from the Romance Writers of America, two Reviewers’ Choice Awards from Romantic Times magazine, and was retired to their Hall of Fame by the New Jersey Romance Writers. Butler lives in the Catskills with two mellow cats and a temperamental Jackabee.

Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord

Handmade Books for A Healthy Planet: Wish Scroll - Saturday 11:00 AM
Hooked on Classics: A Hip Approach to Old Material - Saturday 2:00 PM

Newburyport resident Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord has been a passionate promoter of making handmade books for over twenty years. She has taught thousands of children, teachers and parents in schools and libraries. Her new book, Handmade Books for a Healthy Planet, shares sixteen projects from around the world made with recycled materials. Visit her website at www.makingbooks.com.

Giles LaRoche

What's Inside? A Cut-Paper Workshop - Saturday 9:30 AM

Giles LaRoche enjoys introducing children to paper relief in hands-on workshops he conducts as an artist-in-residence in schools throughout the Northeast. An experienced teacher, Giles also worked for twelve years in the children’s art program at his alma matter, Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts. When Giles isn’t connecting with children, or traveling to faraway places, or illustrating at home in Salem, MA, he likes to escape to his studio in a two-hundred-year-old barn in Washington, New Hampshire. There, surrounded by the mountains he sketched as a child, he creates abstract paintings that have been exhibited in galleries throughout New England.

Rose Lewis

Orange Peels, Birthdays, and Crazy Cakes - Saturday 1:00 PM

Rose Lewis is the author of the three illustrated children’s books including the just released Orange Peel’s Pocket (Abrams), illustrated by Grace Zong. Rose is also the author of The New York Times bestseller, I Love You Like Crazy Cakes (Little, Brown and Company, 2000) and the award winning Every Year On Your Birthday (Little, Brown and Company, 2007). Both are illustrated by Jane Dyer. Ms. Lewis is also the director of marketing and communications for Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Needham in Massachusetts. She has an extensive background in print and broadcast news. Ms. Lewis was a news producer for more than 20 years in Washington, D.C. and at Boston’s number one news station, WCVB-TV, Channel 5. She is also an accomplished still photographer. Ms. Lewis received her master’s in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and a BA in Psychology from the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. Ms. Lewis lives in Massachusetts with her daughter and their West Highland Terrier, Teddy.

Gregory Maguire

Playing With Matches - Saturday 10:30 AM

Gregory Maguire is the bestselling author of Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Lost, Mirror Mirror, and the Wicked Years, a series that includes Wicked, Son of a Witch, and A Lion Among Men. Wicked, now a beloved classic, is the basis for the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical of the same name. Maguire has lectured on art, literature, and culture both at home and abroad. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

Ann McCrea

Wild About Books: A Workshop in Clay - Saturday 3:00 PM

For over twenty years, Ann McCrea has fostered children’s love of literature with storytelling and sculpting. A clay and collage artist, she is the director of Kids•Art, programs for six-to-twelve-year-olds in her Newburyport studio. Her CLAY•WORKS program for schools and libraries is based on the power of storytelling to inspire children to experience art-making as part of our humanity.

Sy Montgomery

Kakapo Rescue: Heartbreak and Hope at the Edge of Survival - Saturday 9:30 AM
Sy Montgomery and Birdology - Saturday 2:30 PM

To research books, films and articles, Sy Montgomery has been chased by an angry silverback gorilla in Zaire and bitten by a vampire bat in Costa Rica, worked in a pit crawling with 18,000 snakes in Manitoba and handled a wild tarantula in French Guiana.  Sy’s 15 books for both adults and children have garnered many honors. The Good Good Pig, her memoir of life with her pig, Christopher Hogwood, is an international bestseller. She is the winner of the 2009 New England Independent Booksellers Association Nonfiction Award, the 2009 Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award (to be bestowed in April 2010), the Henry Bergh Award for Nonfiction (given by the ASPCA for Humane Education) and dozens of other honors.  Her new children’s book, Kakapo Rescue, recounts the dramatic and often heart-wrenching efforts to save the world’s strangest parrot, a naturally tame, flightless, 10-pound bird who looks rather like a monster parakeet. Photograph © Lisa Dabek.

Sara Pennypacker

Surviving Clementine - Saturday 2:00 PM

Sara Pennypacker was a painter before becoming a writer, and has two absolutely fabulous children who are now grown. She has written several books, including Clementine, The Talented Clementine, and Clementine's Letter, illustrated by Marla Frazee; Stuart’s Cape and Stuart Goes to School, both illustrated by Martin Matje; and Sparrow Girl, illustrated by Yoko Tanaka. Sara has recently taken over the Flat Stanley series. Flat Stanley's Worldwide Adventure #4: The Intrepid Canadian Expedition is due to come out at the end of the year. Sara lives in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Jenny Sawyer

Hooked on Classics: A Hip Approach to Old Material - Saturday 2:00 PM

Jenny Sawyer, book critic for The Christian Science Monitor, has achieved national recognition for her reviews of books written for kids, tweens, and young adults. She is a summa cum laude graduate of Bryn Mawr College. As host of 60second Recap (www.60secondrecap.com), Ms. Sawyer has become the next generation's champion of the great works of literature, making these books newly relevant to teens everywhere.