We profile six children’s book creators to watch whose debuts published this past spring.
Spring 2016 Flying Starts: Kate Berube
Kate Berube says she was increasingly “unsatisfied” with the kind of art she was making in art school, and found herself drawn to more narrative paintings. In 2000, she began taking classes in making children’s books, and a diagnosis of thyroid cancer in 2003 cemented her intent “to do work that is meaningful to me.”
Spring 2016 Flying Starts: Terry Fan and Eric Fan
The Night Gardener by the Fan brothers drew inspiration from a source close to home. Terry and Eric’s father was "kind of like Dr. Dolittle,” Terry says. “He’s a beekeeper, he breeds parrots, he has peacocks, roosters, horses, dogs, all kinds of birds.” Eric adds: “He grows all his own vegetables. He’s an incredible potter.” Growing up with a father who revered all growing things gave the brothers’ story its spark.
Spring 2016 Flying Starts: Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock“I tend to write pretty dark,” Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock says. “I think when people ask what makes it a YA book, [the answer is that] it has to come from the first person, not a flashback, and it has to have an element of hope.”
Spring 2016 Flying Starts: Gavriel Savit
In Anna and the Swallow Man, Gabriel Savrit writes of a seven-year-old orphan and the titular figure as they attempt to escape the Germans in 1939 Poland.
Spring 2016 Flying Starts: Jeff Zentner
“I grew up loving movies like The Breakfast Club and Goonies that centered around friendships of misfits,” he says. The setting also plays a huge part in The Serpent King; to the author, Tennessee is a “place filled with ghosts and legends and rustic beauty.”
