Shannon Hale’s fifty-plus books have sold over fifteen million copies in twenty-five languages, but the award-winning author is committed to giving her readers even more. Hale continues to dig into her own memories to explore issues important to her young fans. Her middle grade graphic novel Dream On (Roaring Brook Press, 2025), illustrated by Marcela Cespedes, was just [...]

Antwan Eady’s newest picture book, The Gathering Table (Knopf, 2025), illustrated by London Ladd, is a powerful recounting of a year of celebrations happening around one outdoor family table where food is shared alongside heaping helpings of love, hope, pride, and freedom. The book is packed full of affectionate and funny moments, resonating with readers on a universal [...]

Erin Soderberg Downing doesn’t just imagine her characters’ challenges; she often lives them! For her upcoming middle grade novel What Happened Then—which comes out September 2 from Scholastic—that meant writing the first ten chapters while staying on a remote, rugged island. For her adventure-packed novel Just Keep Walking (Scholastic, 2024), she undertook a hundred-mile [...]