Advice For Young Writers, Green-Eyed Monsters and Celebrating The Moment: Bev Katz Rosenbaum Answers Three Questions

Photo of Bev Rosenbaum: Helen Tansey.

Bev Katz Rosenbaum is the author of several works of fiction for young people, her most recent being Who is Tanksy?, published by Orca Books. Bev has worked in-house as an editor for book publishers and magazines and has taught writing at the college level. Currently she juggles writing children's books with freelance editing. Bev lives in Toronto. When she isn't writing, she's catching up on all her friends' books, guzzling coffee, dancing, and hiking ("Not the extreme kind. The mildly challenging and occasionally inspiration kind.") You can find Bev and her work at BevKatzRosenbaum.com as well as on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @bevrosenbaum.

I interviewed Bev for a Toronto blog called blogTO years before we actually met in person and became friends. She is so positive and encouraging, and I'm delighted to have her visit my Inkygirl blog.

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"Don't be afraid to be weird." Advice for young writers from WEAVE A CIRCLE ROUND's debut author, Kari Maaren in a Three Questions interview

I met Kari Maaren through a filk music convention, and fell in love with her song Being Watson (which almost always makes teary-eyed). She also is cartoonist with a webcomic, West of Bathurst, and an active one, It Never Rains. After being a fan of her other work, I was VERY excited to find out she was writing a book.

Her debut novel for young readers, WEAVE A CIRCLE ROUND, is a thoroughly engaging read with an irresistible main character (I love 14-year-old Freddy Duchamp's voice, both inner and outer) in a fearless and original take on time travel and coming-of-age. If you want to know more about the book, you should read the Globe & Mail review, the starred Kirkus review, starred Publishers Weekly review, starred School Library Journal review.

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Three Questions with Jackie Azúa Kramer & Maral Sassouni, debut author & illustrator of THE GREEN UMBRELLA (NorthSouth Books/Simon & Schuster)

I'm delighted to be one of the stops on THE GREEN UMBRELLA blog tour! The story is fun and imaginative, with gorgeous art. The underlying message of sharing, generosity and looking out for one another is even more important these days. 

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Advice for young writers, finding one's voice and CRUSHING IT: Three Questions Interview with Joanne Levy

I met Joanne Levy through the local Torkidlit group. I love her wry wit and also loved her middle grade, Small Medium At Large (Bloomsbury); you can see my interview with Joanne from a few years ago, where she talked about how she wrote the book, her work process and advice for aspiring authors. I'm loving her new book, CRUSHING IT, which debuts *today* from Aladdin/Simon & Schuster as part of their MIX series for tweens.

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Advice For Young Writers, Office Dogs and Motivation: Three Questions With Kate Dopirak, author of YOU'RE MY BOO (Beach Lane Books)

Photo credit: Family Art Photography.

YOU'RE MY BOO by Kate Dopirak and Lesley Breen Withrow would make a wonderful holiday gift for a young reader. An ode to unconditional love, this reassuring and adorable story is like a hug in book form.

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Advice For Young Writers, Fortune Cookies and THE FIRST LAST DAY: Three Questions with Dorian Cirrone

Congrats to my friend Dorian Cirrone on the launch of THE FIRST LAST DAY (Aladdin/Simon & Schuster) today! Can't wait to read this.

Dorian Cirrone was a dance teacher, a choreographer, an assistant city editor for a daily newspaper, and a college English instructor before becoming a writer. Her middle-grade novel THE FIRST LAST DAY will be her fifth published book. She has also published short stories and poetry.

I so enjoyed meeting Dorian at a SCBWI Florida Regional Conference (a fantastic event, strongly recommended) and had fun collaborating on a food doodle with her as well as talking kidlit/YA. You can see our collab at the bottom of this pic:

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Advice For Writers, Taxidermied Piranhas and Family Memories:Three Questions with Sylvia Liu

Photo credit: Copyright K. Woodard Photography

Sylvia Liu is an environmental lawyer turned children’s author and illustrator, inspired by aliens, kraken, cephalopods, and the oceans. She lives in Virginia Beach with her husband, two daughter, Siberian kitten and guinea pig. 

A MORNING WITH GRANDPA is Sylvia's debut picture book! The story won Sylvia the 2013 New Voices Award from Lee and Low. Such a sweet and inspiring story, gorgeously illustrated by my friend Christina Forshay, whom I met through the SCBWI Illustration Mentorship program.

Thanks to Sylvia and Christina for letting me be part of their A MORNING WITH GRANDPA book tour!

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Advice For Young Writers, Patience, ELLA AND PENGUIN STICK TOGETHER: Three Questions with Megan Maynor

Megan Maynor is a former advertising copywriter and author of picture books ELLA AND PENGUIN STICK TOGETHER and ELLA AND PENGUIN: A PERFECT MATCH (coming 2017), both from HarperCollins Children’s Books. She lives in Minnesota with her husband and three children.

ELLA AND PENGUIN is a new picture book written by Megan Maynor, illustrated by Rosalinde Bonnet, published by HarperCollins Children's Books in January 2016. You can see reviews in Kirkus and Publishers Weekly.

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Three Questions For Barney Saltzberg: Advice For Young Writers, Pencil Sharpener Inspiration and INSIDE THIS BOOK (ARE THREE BOOKS)

Barney Saltzberg is the author and illustrator of close to 50 books for children, including Beautiful Oops!, Arlo Needs Glasses, Andrew Drew and Drew, and the bestselling Touch and Feel Kisses series with over one million copies in print. Not only that, but he's also recorded four albums of music for young people (!). See the children's concert clip later in this post.

I was lucky enough to meet Barney at ALA earlier this year and more recently discovered his BEAUTIFUL OOPS!...I can't believe I missed this wonderful book before! Those of you who've seen my found object art demos can guess why I fell in love with this book.

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