Shelf Life

Tag: The Book Stall

  • “The Wildes” by Louis Bayard Book Signing

    “The Wildes” by Louis Bayard Book Signing

    On Thursday, Oct. 3rd at 6:30 PM,  Louis Bayard, author of The Pale Blue Eye and Jackie and Me, will be in conversation with novelist Lori Rader-Day at The Book Stall. They will discuss Bayard’s new novel, The Wildes, a profoundly empathetic story about Oscar Wilde’s wife Constance and their two sons in the aftermath of the famous playwright’s imprisonment, told against Victorian England and World War I. 

    This program is free, but registration is required. CLICK HERE to reserve your spot.

    Benjamin Dyer, New York Times bestselling author of Dreyer’s English, says, “It requires a novelist of great audacity to dare to attempt to bring Oscar Wilde back to life, and it requires a novelist of great skill, to say nothing of wit, to manage the feat persuasively. Happily, Louis Bayard is both of those novelists.

    “As if that were not enough, The Wildes also presents us with a portrait of Oscar’s wife, Constance, that is little short of breathtaking in its vibrant depth, and a recounting of the heartbreaking tragedy of the Wildes that is eloquent and fully compassionate to all its characters, certainly to the Wildes’ sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, and even to (almost astonishingly) that feckless instrument of destruction Lord Alfred Douglas. I read The Wildes in an improbable state of breathless suspense, so wonderfully well has Bayard presented us with real people pressing, often excruciatingly, toward fateful decisions. This is an intoxicatingly gorgeous novel.” 

    Louis Bayard is the critically acclaimed bestselling author of nine historical novels, including Jackie & Me and The Pale Blue Eye, which was adapted into the global Netflix release starring Christian Bale. His articles, reviews, and recaps have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Salon, and the Paris Review. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

    Lori Rader-Day is the Edgar Award-nominated and Anthony, Agatha, and Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning author of Death at Greenway, The Lucky One, Under a Dark Sky, The Day I Died, Little Pretty Things, and The Black Hour. She lives in Chicago, where she is co-chair of the mystery readers’ conference Midwest Mystery Conference and teaches creative writing at Northwestern University. She served as the national president of Sisters in Crime in 2020.

  • New Eco-Centered Middle-Grade Adventure Teaches Kids How to Make a Difference

    New Eco-Centered Middle-Grade Adventure Teaches Kids How to Make a Difference

    The Book Stall (811 Elm Street in Winnetka) on Tuesday, July 16th at 4:30 PM is hosting a fun and informative afternoon program with middle-grade author Carolyn Armstrong. She will be discussing her new book, No Time to Waste, a heartfelt eco-adventure about youth activism and the complexities of climate change. The exciting second installment in the award-winning “Eco Warriors” series will transform readers’ eco-anxiety into eco-action, inspiring a new generation of youth activists. You can make a difference! This book is perfect for kids ages 9 to 12. 

    There will be a trivia contest, with prizes, and eco-friendly refreshments will be served!

    This event is free with registration. To register, please CLICK HERE.

    The series follows 11-year-old twins Sydney and Sierra — and their talking animal friends — on their missions to tackle the greatest threats to wild habitats. This time, the twins head to the coast for an adventure that highlights ocean plastic pollution, its effects on marine mammals, and the power small actions have in making a difference.

    Fresh from their Arctic adventure of saving polar bears, Sydney and Sierra visit a sea kelp habitat off the coast of California. While scuba diving, the girls are enlisted to rescue an animal in trouble. Sydney’s animal contact, a sea otter named Sunny, tells them that ocean plastic pollution has entangled another otter, and it needs immediate help.

    Even if the girls can release the otter from its plastic prison, there’s a much greater threat in the ocean. Together, they’ll have to use all of their wits, ingenuity and determination to somehow help their animal friends. But as they try — and fail again and again — Sydney has a sinking feeling that she’s in over her head. One thing is clear: there’s literally no time to waste.

    Author Carolyn Armstrong — environmentalist and former educator —blends her love of travel and animal well-being into the Eco Warriors series, encouraging readers of all ages to be advocates for planet Earth.

    NO TIME TO WASTE — as well as Armstrong’s previous book, AT THE EDGE OF THE ICE — will transform young readers’ eco-anxiety into eco-action, inspiring a new generation of youth activists.

    Praise is already rolling in for NO TIME TO WASTE!

    “The dynamics of twin sisters with contrasting personalities, nosy parents, new content-specific vocabulary, and imminent danger will keep readers on the edge of their seats and, by the end, convert them into allies of ocean conservation.”  —Bibi Belford, Christopher award-winning author of Crossing the Line, Canned and Crushed, and Another D for DeeDee (Kirkus Star)

    “Armstrong hooks her audience with the novel’s conflict and leaves them with tangible ways to positively impact the planet.” — Meaghan H., a middle school teacher from Evanston, IL

    NO TIME TO WASTE is available on Amazon and other popular retail outlets where books are sold.

    AUTHOR BIO

    Carolyn Armstrong is the award-winning author of Earth-friendly middle-grade fiction. A former educator and now an imperfect environmentalist, she blends her love of travel and animal well-being into her stories. She encourages everyone to be advocates for planet Earth. It’s as easy as refusing a plastic drinking straw (and doing it every single time). 

    Carolyn has received multiple awards for excellence in independent publishing, including the National Indie Excellence Award and the Spark Award from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). At the Edge of the Ice made the 2024 Green Earth Book Awards’ Recommended Reading List for best environmental literature for children and young adults.

    Head to www.ckabooks.com to sign up for her monthly newsletter called The Earth-Friendly Edition for People Who Love the Planet. Also on the website: an educator guide, free downloads, blog posts, author visits, and more!

  • Nancy Chadwick-Burke, Michelle Cox, and Patti Eddington: Three Authors Discuss Their New Work at The Book Stall

    Nancy Chadwick-Burke, Michelle Cox, and Patti Eddington: Three Authors Discuss Their New Work at The Book Stall

    The Book Stall (811 Elm Street in Winnetka) will be welcoming authors Nancy Chadwick, Michelle Cox and Patti Eddington on Thursday, July 11th at 6:30 PM. In a discussion moderated by Michelle Cox, each author will talk about her writing process, and the origins of her book. Our guest authors work with similar themes, and they will be exploring these connections in their new works of historical fiction, connections with the natural world, and memoir. Whether you are a fan of writing by and about women or a writer looking for guidance on completing and publishing a book, this is the program for you!  We’ll leave plenty of time for audience Q&A. 

    This event is free with registration! Visit their website or CLICK HERE.

    Nancy Chadwick is the author of Under the Birch Tree: A Memoir of Discovering Connections and Finding Home. Her essays have appeared in The Magic of Memoir: Inspiration for the Writing Journey, Adelaide Literary Magazine, and Turning Points – The Art of Friction, as well as in blogs by Off Campus Writers’ Workshop, the Chicago Writers Association Write City, and Brevity. Her debut novel, The Wisdom of The Willow, has been included in the “Most Anticipated Books of 2024” by the Chicago Review of Books. She finds writing inspiration from her many meanderings through any forest.

    Michelle Cox is the award-winning author of the Henrietta and Inspector Howard series, a mystery/romance saga set in 1930s Chicago. She also pens the wildly popular, “Novel Notes of Local Lore,” a weekly blog chronicling the lives of Chicago’s forgotten residents. Her debut novel, The Fallen Woman’s Daughter, is her first foray into women’s historical fiction and is based on a story she heard working in a nursing home. She has spent years crafting it into a novel and is delighted to finally share it with the world.  

    Patti Eddington is a newspaper and magazine journalist whose favorite job ever was interviewing the famous authors who came through town on book tours. She never dreamed of writing about her life because she was too busy helping build her husband’s veterinary practice, caring for her animal obsessed daughter—whose favorite childhood toy was an inflatable tick—and learning to tap dance. Then fate, (and a DNA test) led her to a story she felt compelled to tell. Today, the mid-century modern design enthusiast and former dance teacher enjoys being dragged on walks by her ridiculous three-legged dog, David, and watching egrets and bald eagles from her deck on a beautiful bayou in Spring Lake, Michigan.

    The Book Stall is an independent bookstore and cultural institution on Chicago’s North Shore. We are known for our great selection of books, cards, and gifts, as well as our long-running author event series. Learn more at www.thebookstall.com.

  • In My Time of Dying: An Evening with Sebastian Junger

    In My Time of Dying: An Evening with Sebastian Junger

    The Book Stall (811 Elm Street in Winnetka) is thrilled to host New York Times bestselling author Sebastian Junger at the store on Wednesday, June 19 at 6:30 pm for a discussion featuring his new book, In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife. Part medical drama, part searing autobiography, and part rational inquiry into the ultimate unknowable mystery, a near-fatal health emergency led to this powerful reflection on death and what might follow by the bestselling author of Tribe and The Perfect Storm. 

    This is a ticketed program. The ticket price of $30.51 includes a copy of the book, and options include a ticket that admits two people (with one book) or one person with one book. Sebastian Junger will be signing his work following the talk! To purchase tickets, please visit The Book Stall’s website or  CLICK HERE. 

    More About the Book: As an award-winning war reporter, Sebastian Junger traveled to many front lines and frequently put his life at risk. And yet the closest he ever came to death was the summer of 2020 while spending a quiet afternoon at the New England home he shared with his wife and two young children. Crippled by abdominal pain, Junger was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Once there, he began slipping away. As blackness encroached, he was visited by his dead father, inviting Junger to join him. “It’s okay,” his father said. “There’s nothing to be scared of. I’ll take care of you.” That was the last thing Junger remembered until he came to the next day when he was told he had suffered a ruptured aneurysm that he should not have survived.

    This experience spurred Junger, a confirmed atheist, raised by his physicist father to respect the empirical, to undertake a scientific, philosophical, and deeply personal examination of mortality and what happens after we die. How do we begin to process the brutal fact that any of us might perish unexpectedly on what begins as an ordinary day? How do we grapple with phenomena that science may be unable to explain? And what happens to a person, emotionally and spiritually, when forced to reckon with such existential questions?

    Sebastian Junger author photo by Christopher Anderson

    Bestselling author James Patterson says, “Let me start this way: I believe that Sebastian Junger is one of the finest writers of our generation. In My Time of Dying is a stunning book about life, about death, about the afterlife…Junger has clearly obsessed about his subject. The result is a powerful book that comes as close as anything I’ve read in explaining what it means to be human.”

    More About the Author: Sebastian Junger is the New York Times bestselling author of Tribe, War, Freedom, A Death in Belmont, Fire, and The Perfect Storm, and co-director of the documentary film Restrepo, which was nominated for an Academy Award. He is also the winner of a Peabody Award and the National Magazine Award for Reporting.

  • Corner Office: Poetry by Susan Hahn

    Corner Office: Poetry by Susan Hahn

    The Book Stall (811 Elm Street in Winnetka) is is hosting award-winning author, playwright, and poet Susan Hahn to the store on Thursday, May 16 at 6:30 pm to discuss her new book of poetry, Corner Office. Multi-talented Hahn returns to poetry after two novels with a book-length poem in three voices, Man, Woman, and Earth, that reflects her experience as a playwright. Ms. Hahn will be happy to sign her work! This event is free with registration, to register, please visit book store’s website or CLICK HERE. 

    Edward Hirsch says, “There are three recurring speakers in Susan Hahn’s quirky, wistful fantasia, a book-length meditation on lost power, the story of man and woman, the earth as it once was, how it might have been, what we’ve done to it. Corner Office is a dramatic poem that manages to be both contemporary and archetypal.”

    In praise for her earlier works, David Kirby from the Chicago Tribune says, “Reviewers of Hahn’s earlier books have linked her work to that of the confessional poets of the ‘50s and ‘60s, with the lurid, tell-all poems of Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, John Berryman and Plath.  The resemblance is there, but Hahn can’t be written off as a mere neo-confessional, because her poetry is much more deeply rooted in the American mindset than that.  For the Gothic viewpoint accounts for everything the founding fathers overlooked: terror, perversity, strangeness, a sense of not knowing where one is or how one got there.  It is a way of viewing the world that continues to affect American writing and that appears in works by such recent authors as William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Ralph Ellison, Truman Capote and Joyce Carol Oates. And now we can add Susan Hahn’s name to that list.”

    Susan Hahn is the author of ten books of poetry, two produced plays, and two novels. Among her awards for writing are a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry, Pushcart prizes, The Society of Midland Authors Award in Poetry, and numerous Illinois Arts Council Fellowships and Literary Awards. She was the inaugural writer-in-residence at the Hemingway Foundation, the editor of Triquarterly literary magazine for fourteen years, and the co-founder of Triquarterly Books. Learn more at www.susanhahnauthor.com.

  • Celebrate Independent Bookstore Day with Romance and Brews

    Celebrate Independent Bookstore Day with Romance and Brews

    On Saturday, April 27 at 3:30 pm, join the folks at The Book Stall for an afternoon of Romance and Brews to celebrate Independent Bookstore Day! Author Stephanie Jayne joins us at The Book Stall (811 Elm Street in Winnetka) with three fellow Romance authors for a meet & greet with some frosty refreshments! Stop by for a brew and say hello to romance author Kelly Farmer, romance and mystery author Sharon Michalove, and historical romance and mystery author Felix Alexander. Copies of their titles will be available to be signed! Ms. Jayne will be signing her new book, I’ve Got My Mind Set on Brew. A down-on-her-luck craft beer brewer and her privileged new boss clash as they work together to save a quirky brewpub in this enemies-to-lovers workplace rom-com. 

    More About the Book: Kat Malone is left cash-strapped after a job loss and a bad breakup when she discovers a surprising new career path: craft beer brewer. When the brewpub is sold, the new owner places his light-on-experience son in charge of the pub. Ryan is as basic as a pale lager and aims to turn quirky Resistance into a run-of-the-mill sports bar. Despite clashes between Kat and Ryan, he confides that Resistance is in financial trouble and that drastic changes will be needed if the pub has any hope of survival. Forced to collaborate, Kat realizes Ryan isn’t as bland as she assumed—he might even be exactly what she’s been craving.

    More About the Authors: Stephanie Jayne loves to write relatable characters striving to make their mark on the world as they fall in love in the process. When not crafting quirky love stories, she’s often found playing video games or fangirling over romance books with a book club. She lives in the greater Chicago area with her multi-talented creative husband and two persistent cats.

    Kelly Farmer, author of It’s a Fabulous Life, has been writing romance novels since junior high. The stories have changed, but one theme remains the same: everyone deserves to have a happy ending. She loves telling tales with a touch of snark and a lot of heart. Kelly lives in the Chicago area, where she swears every winter is her last one here.

    Felix Alexander is a Mexican-born, American-raised novelist and poet of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent. Being third-generation military, after a grandfather and three uncles who served in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, respectively, Alexander is proud of his service in the U.S. Army and grateful for his experience. He lives in the Chicagoland area and volunteers to promote literacy among youth. His books include the Aiden Leonardo mystery series and the Labyrinth of Love Letters historical romance series. 

    Sharon Michalove writes romance, suspense, and traditional mystery, as well as being a published historian. After growing up in suburban Chicago, she spent most of her life in a medium-sized university town, working as an academic professional. Sharon moved back to Chicago in 2017 and started writing fiction, publishing her first book in 2021. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America and Chicago-North Romance Writers. Currently, she is president of the Sisters in Crime Chicagoland Chapter and an at-large board member of MWA Midwest. Her Global Security Unlimited series is a finalist for the Chanticleer International Book Award for Genre Series.

    Independent Book Store Day is a national effort to recognize the importance of independent bookstores. This national one-day party held on the last Saturday in April celebrates independent bookstores across the country online and in-store. It’s a party you don’t want to miss!

  • The French Ingredient: Making a Life in Paris One Lesson at a Time

    The French Ingredient: Making a Life in Paris One Lesson at a Time

    The Book Stall (811 Elm Street in Winnetka) is delighted to host author Jane Bertch on Thursday, April 11 at 6:30 pm for a discussion featuring her new book, The French Ingredient: Making a Life in Paris One Lesson at a Time, the inspiring and delicious memoir of an American woman who had the gall to open a cooking school in Paris. A true story of triumphing over French naysayers and falling in love with a city along the way, The French Ingredient is the story of a young female entrepreneur building a life in Paris. As she established her school, Jane learned how to charm, how to project confidence, and how to give it right back to rude waiters. Having finally made peace with the city she swore to never revisit, she now offers a love letter to France, and a master class in Parisian cooking and living.

    To register for this free event, please visit their website or CLICK HERE. Space is going fast!

    More About the Book: When Jane Bertch was eighteen, her mother took her on a graduation trip to Paris. Thrilled to use her high school French, Jane found her halting attempts greeted with withering condescension by every waiter and shopkeeper she encountered. At the end of the trip, she vowed she would never return. Yet a decade later she found herself back in Paris, transferred there by the American bank she worked for. She became fluent in the language and excelled in her new position. But she had a different dream: to start a cooking school for foreigners like her, who wanted to take French cuisine classes in a friendly setting, then bring their new skills to their kitchens back home.

    Predictably, Jane faced the skeptical French, as well as real-estate nightmares, and a long struggle to find and attract clients. Thanks to Jane’s perseverance, La Cuisine Paris opened in 2009. Now the school is thriving, welcoming international visitors to come in and knead dough, whisk bechamel, whip meringue, and learn the care, precision, patience, and beauty involved in French cooking.

    More About the Author: Jane Bertch has spent more than two decades living and working in Europe. In 2009, she started La Cuisine Paris, which has become the largest nonprofessional culinary school in France. She holds a BA in English, an MA in labor and industrial relations from the University of Illinois, and an executive MA from the French business school INSEAD. The French Ingredient is her first book. Follow her on her blog.

  • Poisoned Passover: Book 2 Torah Mystery Series

    Poisoned Passover: Book 2 Torah Mystery Series

    he Book Stall (811 Elm Street in Winnetka) is delighted to host mystery author Susan Van Dusen on Wednesday, April 17 at 6:30 pm for an in-store discussion featuring her new book, Poisoned Passover, the second book in the Torah Mystery Series. With no experience except watching TV detective shows, Julia Donnelly, the wife of the mayor, and her Torah group leader, Rabbi Avrum Fine, have been pressed into service to solve the town’s mysteries. 

    This event is free with registration. To register, please visit their website or CLICK HERE.

    More About the Book: Who’s poisoning Passover guests in Crestfall, Illinois? When Julia Donnelly brings chopped liver to her Torah group friend Devorah’s seder, she has no idea it will result in mass poisoning, murder, and a connection to past arson. Julia, wife of Crestfall’s mayor, and Rabbi Fine, Torah study group leader, become involved in a mystery surrounding Sophie’s Kosher Deli. Someone is trying to put her out of business. Is it Lester Pintner, a developer who wants to put up a building, her good-for-nothing son Milton who wants to transform the store into a pool parlor, Sweet Cheeks, a mysterious woman who has attached herself to Milton, or perhaps Nate, another deli owner who wants to buy Sophie’s store. 

    Meanwhile, Julia must also deal with challenges on the home front when her son Sammy refuses to go to school. She has a full plate! How does she cope with everything? By teaming up with the Rabbi, using powers of observation, and logic from Jewish tradition to solve a confusing puzzle of danger and greed!

    More About the Author: Susan Van Dusen is an international award-winning writer of books, editorials, magazine and newspaper articles. She was the Communications Director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs and Associate Director of Public Affairs at the University of Illinois. Susan created “The Read In” project at the University of Illinois in Chicago and “Coming Together in Skokie and Niles Township,” acknowledging the diversity of those communities. In Israel and in Chicago’s Uptown area, while teaching English to non-English speakers, she wrote songs and plays to stimulate interest in language. Susan was the editor of a neighborhood weekly newspaper, then became the award-winning editorial director of WBBM-AM Newsradio as well as writing for newspapers and magazines. While studying with a Torah group for ten years, she realized it was the perfect vehicle for a series of books, with the first book in the series being The Missing Hand. Currently she is retired, a normal human being, a mayor’s wife, a mother and grandmother, and participant in several civic and writing groups.  

  • The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook: Discussion and Book Signing

    The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook: Discussion and Book Signing

    The Book Stall (811 Elm Street in Winnetka) is thrilled to host historian Hampton Sides on Monday, April 15 at 6:30 pm for a discussion featuring his new book, The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook. (Doubleday). From the New York Times bestselling author, an epic account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook’s death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day. 

    At once a ferociously-paced story of adventure on the high seas and a searching examination of the complexities and consequences of the Age of Exploration, The Wide Wide Sea is a major work from one of our finest narrative nonfiction writers. 

    This event is free with registration. To register, please visit The Book Stall’s website or CLICK HERE. 

    More About the Book: Hampton Sides’ bravura account of Cook’s last journey wrestles with Cook’s legacy and provides a thrilling narrative of the titanic efforts and continual danger that characterized exploration in the 1700s. Cook was renowned for his peerless seamanship, his humane leadership, and his dedication to science. He was also deeply interested in the native people he encountered. On previous expeditions, Cook mapped huge swaths of the Pacific, including the east coast of Australia, and initiated first European contact with numerous peoples. He treated his crew well and endeavored to learn about the societies he encountered with curiosity and without judgment.

    Yet something was different on this last voyage. Cook became mercurial, resorting to the lash to enforce discipline, and led his two vessels into danger time and again. Uncharacteristically, he ordered violent retaliation for perceived theft on the part of native peoples. This may have had something to do with his secret orders, which were to chart and claim lands before Britain’s imperial rivals could, and to discover the fabled Northwest Passage. Whatever Cook’s intentions, his scientific efforts were the sharp edge of the colonial sword, and the ultimate effects of first contact were catastrophic for Indigenous people around the world.

    The tensions between Cook’s overt and covert missions came to a head on the shores of Hawaii. His first landing there was harmonious, but when Cook returned after mapping the coast of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, his exploitative treatment of the Hawaiians led to the fatal encounter.

    Kirkus Reviews,in a starred review, says,“An acclaimed historian takes to the sea in this rousing tale of exploration … Sides draws on numerous contemporaneous sources to create a fascinating, immersive adventure story featuring just the right amount of historical context … Lusciously detailed and insightful history, masterfully told.” 

    More About the Author:  Hampton Sides is an award-winning editor of Outside and the author of the bestselling histories Hellhound on his Trial, Blood and Thunder, and Ghost Soldiers. He lives in New Mexico with his wife, Anne, and their three sons.

  • John Schu: Author Discussion & Book Signing in Conversation with Heidi Stevens 

    John Schu: Author Discussion & Book Signing in Conversation with Heidi Stevens 

    The Book Stall (811 Elm Street in Winnetka) proudly welcomes to the store author John Schu on Thursday, April 4 at 6:30 pm for a powerful discussion of his new book, Louder Than Hunger. (Candlewick Press). Based on his own experience of these conditions, Mr. Schu presents a vivid and immersive look at a teenage boy’s experience of anorexia, OCD, and depression. As a revered teacher, librarian, and story ambassador, Schu has created a wrenching, transformative, and unforgettable novel in verse with a moving introduction by two-time Newbery Medalist Kate DiCamillo. Mr. Schu will be in conversation with Heidi Stevens. This book is appropriate for readers ages 12 to adult. 

    This event is free with registration, to register, please visit The Book Stall’s website or CLICK HERE. 

    More About the Book: Jake volunteers at a nursing home because he likes helping people. He

    likes reading mysteries and comics aloud to the senior residents. He likes skating and singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune. He also likes avoiding people his own age . . . and the cruelty of mirrors . . . and food. Jake has read about kids like him in books, the weird one, the outsider, and would do anything not to be that kid, including shrink himself down to nothing. But the less he eats, the bigger he feels. How long can Jake punish himself before he truly disappears?

    A fictionalized account of the author’s experiences and emotions living in residential treatment facilities as a young teen with an eating disorder, Louder Than Hunger is a triumph of raw honesty. With a deeply personal afterword for context, this much-anticipated verse novel is a powerful model for muffling the destructive voices inside, managing and articulating pain, and embracing self-acceptance, support, and love. 

    Katherine Applegate, author of The One and Only Ivan says, “Every so often a book comes along that is so brave and necessary, it extends a lifeline when it’s needed most. This is one of those books.”

    More About the Author: John Schu is the author of the acclaimed picture books This Is a School and This Is a Story. He also wrote the adult study The Gift of Story: Exploring the Affective Side of the Reading Life and was named a Library Journal Mover and Shaker for his dynamic interactions with students and his passionate adoption of new technologies as a means of connecting authors, illustrators, books, and readers. As a children’s librarian for Bookelicious, part-time lecturer at Rutgers University, and former Ambassador of School Libraries for Scholastic Book Fairs, Mr. Schu continues to travel the world to share his love of books. He lives in Naperville, Illinois. You can find him at www.JohnSchu.com and on social media @MrSchuReads.

    More About Our Conversation Partner: Heidi Stevens is a Chicago-based writer and the Director of External Affairs for the University of Chicago’s TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health, which works to provide parents, caregivers, and communities the knowledge and tools to optimize foundational brain development in all children. Prior to joining University of Chicago, Stevens worked at the Chicago Tribune for 23 years, where she wrote a daily column called “Balancing Act.” She was awarded the Anne Keegan Award for Distinguished Journalism in 2018. Stevens maintains a nationally syndicated weekly column and serves on the Family Action Network board of directors.