• From the Mixed-Up Files... > Miscellaneous > Our New Mixed-Up Authors and Some Mixed-Up History
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    March 28, 2013: Big at Bologna

     

     

    This year at the Bologna Children's Book Fair, the focus has shifted to middle-grade.  “A lot of foreign publishers are cutting back on YA and are looking for middle-grade,” said agent Laura Langlie, according to Publisher's Weekly.  Lighly illustrated or stand-alone contemporary middle-grade fiction is getting the most attention.  Read more...

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    March 10, 2013: Marching to New Titles

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Check out these titles releasing in March...

     

     

     

     

     

    March 5, 2013: Catch the BEA Buzz

     

    Titles for BEA's Editor Buzz panels have been announced.  The middle-grade titles selected are:

     

     

    A Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates #1: Magic Marks the Spot by Caroline Carlson

     

     

    Counting By 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan

     

     

    The Fantastic Family Whipple by Matthew Ward

     

     

    Nick and Tesla's High-Voltages Danger Lab by Bob Pflugfelder and Steve Hockensmith

     

     

    The Tie Fetch by Amy Herrick

     

    For more Buzz books in other categories, read more...

     

     

     

    February 20, 2013: Lunching at the MG Roundtable 

     

    Earlier this month, MG authors Jeanne Birdsall, Rebecca Stead, and N.D. Wilson shared insight about writing for the middle grades at an informal luncheon with librarians held in conjunction with the New York Public Library's Children's Literary Salon "Middle Grade: Surviving the Onslaught." 

     

     

    Read about their thoughts...

     

    February 10, 2013: New Books to Love

     

     

     

     

     

    Check out these new titles releasing in February...

     

     

     

    January 28, 2013: Ivan Tops List of Winners 

    The American Library Association today honored the best of the best from 2012, announcing the winners of the Newbery, Caldecott, and Printz awards, along with a host of other prestigious youth media awards, at their annual winter meeting in Seattle.

    The Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature went to The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. Honor books were: Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz; Bomb: The Race to Build--and Steal--the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin; and Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage. 

    The Coretta Scott King Book Award went to Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America written by Andrea Davis Pinkney and illustrated by Brian Pinkney.

    The Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, which honors an author for his or her long-standing contributions to children’s literature, was presented to Katherine Paterson.  

    The Pura Belpre Author Award, which honors a Latino author, went to Benjamin Alire Saenz for his novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, which was also named a Printz Honor book and won the Stonewall Book Award for its portrayal of the GLBT experience.

    For a complete list of winners…

     

    January 22, 2013: Biography Wins Sydney Taylor

    Louise Borden's His Name Was Raoul Wallenberg, a verse biography of the Swedish humanitarian, has won the Sydney Taylor Award in the middle-grade category. The award is given annually to books of the highest literary merit that highlight the Jewish experience. Aimee Lurie, chair of the awards committee, writes, "Louise Borden's well-researched biography will, without a doubt, inspire children to perform acts of kindness and speak out against oppression."

    For more...

     

    January 17, 2013: Erdrich Wins Second O'Dell

    Louise Erdrich is recipient of the 2013 Scott O'Dell Award for her historical novel Chickadee, the fourth book in her Birchbark House series. Roger Sutton, Horn Book editor and chair of the awards committee, says of Chickadee, "The book has humor and suspense (and disarmingly simple pencil illustrations by the author), providing a picture of 1860s Anishinabe life that is never didactic or exotic and is briskly detailed with the kind of information young readers enjoy." Erdrich also won the O'Dell Award in 2006 for The Game of Silence, the second book in the Birchbark series. 

    For more...

     

    January 15, 2013: After the Call

    Past Newbery winners Jack Gantos, Clare Vanderpool, Neil Gaiman, Rebecca Stead, and Laura Amy Schlitz talk about how winning the Newbery changed (or didn't change) their lives in this piece from Publishers Weekly...

     

    January 2, 2013: On the Big Screen

    One of our Mixed-up Files members may be headed to the movies! Jennifer Nielsen's fantasy adventure novel The False Prince is being adapted for Paramount Pictures by Bryan Cogman, story editor for HBO's Game of Thrones. For more...

     


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Our New Mixed-Up Authors and Some Mixed-Up History

Miscellaneous

Our Mixed-Up Selection Committee has been hard at work reading all the amazing applications we received a few weeks ago.  There were enough people interested to fill our vacancies at least five times over, so it was a hard decision.

This isn't really us, but we'd like to think this is what we'd do if we deliberated in person. Photo by Richard Sclove.

However, we finally narrowed it down, and we’d like to announce our four new Mixed-Up Authors:

Sarah Aronson

Diana Greenwood

Shannon Messenger

and

Rosanne Parry!

We are excited to be adding these wonderful people to our site.  You can read their bios, along with ones from the rest of our Mixed-Up Authors, here. You’ll also be able to read their first blog posts at the end of this month, so be watching for their Mixed-Up debuts.

In addition…

As I was compiling the list of new members for this post, I realized I never actually introduced the other members of this site.  Just to be fair, I’d like to give a shout out to all the people who work behind the scenes here at From the Mixed-Up Files.  So, here’s a little member history lesson I hope you’ll find interesting.

On March 20, 2010, the very first email for organizing our group was sent out to twenty-one people who had expressed interest (twenty-two if you count me, Elissa, since I sent the email).  The following current members are those who have been with us from the very beginning:

Tracy Abell

Jen K. Blom

Amie Borst

Hélène Boudreau

Sheela Chari

Rose Cooper

Elissa Cruz

Jan Gansei

Jennifer Duddy Gill

Danette Haworth

Joanne Prushing Johnson

Brian Kell

Kimberley Griffiths Little

Wendy Martin

Kurtis Scaletta

Karen B. Schwartz

Mindy Alyse Weiss

(You’ll notice this doesn’t add up to twenty-two.  We’ve lost a few people along the way. )

Over the next few days/weeks/months, we continued to add people to our list as we brainstormed ideas and started work on the site.  The following current members joined us during this period (most of them not more than a week or two after I sent that first email):

Tami Lewis Brown

Beverly Patt

Bobbie Pyron

Sydney Salter

Laurie Schneider

Wendy Shang

Tricia Springstubb

(This isn’t a complete list of people who joined us during this period.  We lost quite a few people here, too.)

We launched this site June 7, 2010.  Two people joined us shortly thereafter:

Bonnie Adamson

Laurel Snyder

If you do the math, our members were hard at work for two and a half months before this site was ready to share with the world.  Please join me in sending a hearty thanks to all these dedicated contributors.  They are an amazing group of people who continue to give so much to this site.

And we are excited to add our new members today, as well.  Three cheers for all the Mixed-Up Authors!

One last thing…

There are plenty of other people who’ve been a part of this group, but for one reason or another are no longer with us.  I won’t list names here, because it’s a long list, but I would like to publicly thank them for all they did to make this site a reality.  You know you are…and thank you.

19 Comments

19 Comments

  1. Laura Marcella  •  Oct 2, 2010 @9:54 am

    Congratulations to the new members!!! I’ve been a follower of Shannon Messenger’s blog for awhile, so I’m excited to see her on this site, too!

  2. brian_ohio  •  Oct 2, 2010 @10:50 am

    Whew! I’m still on the list. Another close call… thanks for giving me an eighth chance, Elissa! I promise (and I mean it this time) I won’t talk about that thing we were talking about before.

    Great bunch of writers here!

  3. Elissa Cruz  •  Oct 2, 2010 @11:59 am

    What thing, Brian? I have no idea what you are talking about. *whistles innocently*

  4. Shannon Messenger  •  Oct 2, 2010 @2:12 pm

    YAY–so excited to be part of such an awesome group. Can’t wait to work with everyone! :)

  5. Tracy Abell  •  Oct 2, 2010 @4:09 pm

    Sarah, Diana, Shannon, and Rosanne….

    WELCOME!!!!

    Looking forward to your posts and insights into the world of middle-grade.

  6. Donna Gephart  •  Oct 2, 2010 @5:03 pm

    Hooray for the Mixed Up Authors. And thanks!

  7. Karen Scott  •  Oct 2, 2010 @6:34 pm

    Congrats to the new authors. It will be good to “get to know you” through your posts, etc.

  8. Caroline Starr Rose  •  Oct 2, 2010 @7:48 pm

    Congrats, all!

  9. Karen B. Schwartz  •  Oct 2, 2010 @9:09 pm

    Welcome to the new mixed-up members!!!

  10. Mindy Alyse Weiss  •  Oct 3, 2010 @12:20 am

    Welcome new mixed-up members. We’re thrilled to have you join us, and can’t wait to read your posts. :)

    Elissa–wow, love the way you shared our history here.

  11. Amie Kaufman  •  Oct 3, 2010 @4:44 am

    Congrats to the new members, can’t wait to hear from you! Thank you to all of you who have contributed so far — this website is such a valuable resource and creates such a wonderful sense of community

  12. Jennifer Duddy Gill  •  Oct 3, 2010 @9:55 am

    This has been such a great experience – thanks to Elissa for being our mastermind – and I’ve loved getting to know the other brilliant Mixed Up Files MG writers!

  13. Tricia Springstubb  •  Oct 3, 2010 @4:48 pm

    Hey! I want to REALLY get together just like the photo!

  14. Elissa Cruz  •  Oct 4, 2010 @9:08 am

    Me, too, Tricia! One of these years we’ll have to have a real Mixed-Up reunion.

    Thanks to all our readers, too. I should have added that in this post somewhere, because without them we wouldn’t be where we are today. Three cheers for EVERYONE, I say!

  15. Leanne Tremblay  •  Oct 4, 2010 @3:08 pm

    Thanks and congrats to Shannon Messenger for locating this site for me in the blogosphere. Just what I’ve been looking for. Yay MG!

  16. Amie Borst  •  Oct 4, 2010 @4:45 pm

    Welcome to our new members! You’ll soon learn that I can’t spell worth a poop and I make lots of bad jokes. Oh wait – did I just admit that publically?

    Anyway – thanks Elissa for all you do to keep us in order since we are more than just a little mixed-up!

  17. Amie Borst  •  Oct 4, 2010 @4:46 pm

    (see i even spelled publicly wrong – but that was purposeful incase you didn’t get my joke)

  18. Natalie Aguirre  •  Oct 4, 2010 @7:31 pm

    Glad you picked Shannon. I follow her blog and I always enjoy it.

  19. Joanne  •  Oct 4, 2010 @8:51 pm

    Welcome to the new group of Mixed-Up Authors. I am diligently Mixed-Up in all I do so this is a great fit. I hope you are soon feeling as Mixed-Up as the rest of us.