Karen Hesse, Author . Scholastic $16.95 (161p) ISBN 978-0-439-27199-8
The author of Out of the Dust
again turns language into music in her second quietly moving novel written entirely in verse. Here, 11 narrative voices chronicle actual events occurring in a sleepy Vermont town after the arrival of the Ku Klux Klan in
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Karen Hesse, read by Jenna Lamia. Macmillan Audio, unabridged, four CDs, 4.5 hrs., $24.99 ISBN 978-1-4272-2720-1
Seventeen-year-old Radley is out of the country when the American People’s Party rises and the United States explodes into chaos with government crackdowns, riots, and vigilante posses. She immediately returns home to Vermont, only to find her...
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Karen Hesse, Author . Scholastic Signature $5.99 (176p) ISBN 978-0-439-27200-1
PW
wrote in our Best Books citation, "Hesse weaves together 11 distinct narrative voices to create a moving account of the Ku Klux Klan's encroachment on a small Vermont town in 1924. Told completely in verse, her quietly powerful novel...
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Karen Hesse, Author . S&S/McElderry $16.95 (156p) ISBN 978-0-689-86189-5
Hesse once again uses free verse to explore a historical period, but while the poetry of her Out of the Dust and Witness built a broad picture of events through the layering of a fully formed cast, here character development is sacrificed in favor...
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Karen Hesse, Author Hyperion Books for Children $14.95 (181p) ISBN 978-0-590-89797-6
As moving as a sonnet, as eloquently structured as a bell curve, this book poignantly explores the most profound of themes--what it means to be human. The narrator, Mila, is discovered by the Coast Guard on a deserted island, where she has been...
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Karen Hesse, Author Henry Holt & Company $13.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-8050-1572-0
Mags lives in a trailer with her overworked mother, her perpetually hungry little brother Mooch and her retarded sister Hannie. As the oldest, Mags is the responsible one, but when Hannie finds a ratty old stuffed unicorn and says it's magic, Mags...
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Karen Hesse, Author Scholastic $6.99 (227p) ISBN 978-0-590-37125-4
In a starred review of the 1998 Newbery Medal winner, set during the Depression, PW said, ""This intimate novel, written in stanza form, poetically conveys the heat, dust and wind of Oklahoma. With each meticulously arranged entry Hesse paints a...
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Karen Hesse, Author Henry Holt & Company $18.99 (148p) ISBN 978-0-8050-1964-3
Twelve-year-old Rifka's journey from a Jewish community in the Ukraine to Ellis Island is anything but smooth sailing. Modeled on the author's great-aunt, Rifka surmounts one obstacle after another in this riveting novel. First she outwits a band of
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Karen Hesse, Author Henry Holt & Company $17.95 (192p) ISBN 978-0-8050-3108-9
After a catastrophic accident at a nuclear power plant not far from their small New England sheep farm, 13-year-old Nyle Sumner and her grandmother slowly discover they have been spared from direct radiation. Gran decides to take in two evacuees, 15-
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Karen Hesse, Author Scholastic $16.95 (227p) ISBN 978-0-590-36080-7
This intimate novel, written in stanza form, poetically conveys the heat, dust and wind of Oklahoma along with the discontent of narrator Billy Jo, a talented pianist growing up during the Depression. Unlike her father, who refuses to abandon his...
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Karen Hesse, Author Scholastic $5.99 (181p) ISBN 978-0-590-89798-3
""As moving as a sonnet, as eloquently structured as a bell curve,"" said PW in a starred review of this first-person novel by the Newbery Medalist about a girl who is raised by dolphins and studied by scientists. Ages 9-12. (Feb.)
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Karen Hesse, Author, Krazcewicz, Author Puffin Books $6.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-14-037628-9
In a starred review, PW noted that ``the author's understated approach heightens the emotional impact'' of this tale about a girl forced to confront loss after a nuclear accident. Ages 11-13. (Sept.)
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Karen Hesse, Author, Brian Pinkney, Illustrator , illus. by Brian Pinkney. Hyperion $18.99 (36p) ISBN 978-0-7868-0619-5
Highlighting eight moments of crisis for the Jewish people in almost as many different centuries, this soul-searching, handsomely produced book is clearly important. It is not, however, festive. Newbery Medalist Hesse (Out of the Dust) imagines a...
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Karen Hesse. Feiwel and Friends, $17.99 (304p) ISBN 978-1-250-01134-3
Hesse (Brooklyn Bridge) beautifully captures the changing landscape of a journey, the wonder of discovery, and a fight to survive in a near-future novel set in the aftermath of a presidential assassination. A group of rebels called the American...
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Karen Hesse, illus. by Rich Deas. Feiwel and Friends, $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-312-67120-4
Hesse’s redheaded narrator begins and ends this book as an unrepentant thumb sucker, but it’s her very intransigence that makes this tribute to the First Digit so refreshing. Even if there are hints that she won’t be a thumb sucker forever (“You...
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Karen Hesse, Author, Robert Andrew Parker, Illustrator Margaret K. McElderry Books $17.95 (328p) ISBN 978-0-689-83987-0
Sparkling with humor, poignancy and adventure, Newbery Medal-winner Hesse's (Out of the Dust) historical novel, told in diary form, was inspired by a real boy who stowed away aboard Captain James Cook's ship Endeavour on its 1768 voyage. The author...
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Karen Hesse, Author, Robert Andrew Parker, Illustrator Scholastic Press $15.95 (144p) ISBN 978-0-590-03382-4
Like her Newbery Award-winning Out of the Dust, Hesse once again celebrates a child's ability to extract beauty, pleasure and even signs of hope from her harsh surroundings. The opening image of Ma ""spreading grape jelly so thin on the sliced white
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Karen Hesse, Author, Robert Andrew Parker, Illustrator , illus. by Robert Andrew Parker. S&S/Aladdin $6.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-689-83989-4
Inspired by a real boy who stowed away aboard Captain James Cook's ship Endeavor
on its 1768 voyage, this historical novel "sparkles with humor, poignancy and adventure," said PW
in a starred review. The author "keeps the action...
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Karen Hesse, Author, Nancy Carpenter, Illustrator Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers $16 (1p) ISBN 978-0-517-58357-9
This atmospheric picture book memorably evokes the long summer evenings of a bygone era, then broadens in scope to convey a boy's sudden courage and the warmth of friendship. The young narrator peppers his story with the inflections and observations
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Karen Hesse, Author, Erik Blegvad, Illustrator , illus. by Erik Blegvad. Scholastic $16.99 (48p) ISBN 978-0-439-67990-9
This unconventional biography offers an impressionistic series of vignettes roughly based on seminal events from Andersen's childhood through to the point at which he leaves home at 14. But the book unfortunately falls short of placing Andersen&#
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Karen Hesse, Author, Chris Sheban, Illustrator , illus. by Chris Sheban. Feiwel & Friends $17.95 (229p) ISBN 978-0-312-37886-8
Inspired by facts surrounding the inventors of the teddy bear, Newbery Medalist Hesse (Out of the Dust
) applies her gift for narrative voice to this memorable story set in 1903 Brooklyn. Fourteen-year-old Joseph Michtom's parents, Jewish...
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Karen Hesse, Author, Marcia Sewall, Illustrator, Karen Hesse, Illustrator Redfeather Books $15.95 (96p) ISBN 978-0-8050-2416-6
Hesse ( Letters from Rifka ) turns out an exemplary chapter book with this superbly structured work about a girl and her dog. Tate's greatest wish is to keep the mutt that has strayed into her family's yard: ``Mam and Pap hadn't said I could keep...
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Karen Hesse, Author, Full Cast, Read by , read by a full cast. Listening Library $18 (0p) ISBN 978-0-8072-0592-1
Hesse's (Out of the Dust) powerful, history-inspired novel about the Ku Klux Klan's encroachment on a small town in 1924 Vermont becomes a riveting audiobook as performed by a stellar cast. The story—told in poetry, in the voices of 11
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Karen Hesse, Author, Kim McGillivray, Illustrator, Evon Zerbetz, Illustrator . S&S/ Aladdin $5.99 (160p) ISBN 978-1-4169-0327-7
The narrator, who lives and works on the Aleutian Islands, describes the aftermath of the Japanese bombing there in the summer of 1942. According to PW
, "The poetic images will linger in the minds of readers." Ages 10-14. (June)
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Karen Hesse, Author, Jon J. Muth, Author, Jon J. Muth, Illustrator Scholastic Press $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-590-33125-8
""Up and down the block,/ cats pant,/ heat wavers off tar patches in the broiling alleyway./ Miz Grace and Miz Vera bend, tending beds of drooping lupines,"" as a whole neighborhood waits for rain. The narrator, Tessie, is the first one to see the ""
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Karen Hesse, Author, David Cale, Read by Listening Library $30 (0p) ISBN 978-0-8072-6169-9
Listeners set sail with 11-year-old Nicholas Young, a stowaway aboard Captain Cook's ship Endeavour, in this solid audiobook version of Hesse's period adventure. In a pleasant English accent, Cale smoothly reads the pages of Young's journal,...
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Karen Hesse, Author, Wendy Watson, Illustrator , illus. by Wendy Watson. Scholastic $16.99 (28p) ISBN 978-0-439-87993-4
Not since Five Little Peppers
or, perhaps, The Waltons
has poverty been quite so romantic as Hesse and Watson (previously paired with Hesse for The Cats in Krasinski Square
) make it seem in this nostalgic book, narrated by the middle of three...
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Karen Hesse, Author, Wendy Watson, Illustrator , illus. by Wendy Watson. Scholastic $16.95 (32p) ISBN 978-0-439-43540-6
In her spare yet lyrical narrative, Newbery medalist Hesse (Out of the Dust
) relays a haunting story based on an actual incident involving Poland's Warsaw Ghetto. Watson, best known for Father Fox's Pennyrhymes
, makes a stunning stylistic...
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Book Wish Foundation. Putnam, $17.99 (288p) ISBN 978-0-399-25454-3
Short stories that revolve around wishes form this volume created to raise money for Book Wish Foundation, a nonprofit organization working to build libraries for Darfur refugees living in Chad. Mixing poems, stories, and even a comic, the book...
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Karen Hesse, illus. by Charlotte Voake. Candlewick, $18.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-5362-1404-8
In this soothing wind-down story, Newbery Medalist Hesse’s lines lull with rhyme and repetition, while mixed-media spreads by Voake (Some Dinosaurs Are Small) follow Granny and Bean on a long walk “in the sand, by the sea, with the sky all gray.”...
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