Vaudeville

Those of us who write for kids don’t write only for kids. We want our books to be shared and enjoyed widely. That’s why it’s so gratifying to me when one of my books for young readers gets acknowledged and appreciated by folks outside of the children’s literature world.

It doesn’t happen all that often, but it does happen: Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet got some splashy coverage on Boing Boing last year, and The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch has recently been included in the Charleston Syllabus.

And now, this review from the Huffington Post of my upcoming book ‘The Nutcracker’ Comes to America: How Three Ballet-Loving Brothers Created a Holiday Tradition:

This is much more than the story of the transplanting of a famous Russian ballet. And not just a book for little girls who dream of dancing in tutus and pink satin pointe shoes. This is a real-life adventure story about “a trio of small-town Utah boys” with grit and talent, who bucked stereotypes, endured failures and persevered, and who individually and together enriched the cultural life of America.

Thank you, Carla Escoda, for this review, for your insight as a dancer, and for seeing all that illustrator Cathy Gendron, publisher Millbrook Press, and I tried to put into our book.