03/16/2015
One summer, nearly-10-year-old Maddy Johnson gets swept up in the mysteries of the Louisiana bayou. She’s the youngest of her five sisters and the last to spend a summer with her Grandmère Lavalier, hours from her family’s home in New Orleans. Quickly adapting to life in her grandmother’s wooden shack, Maddy learns about signs and healing herbs, listens to tales about her ancestors, explores the waters with a boy named Bear, meets other locals (who, like Maddy, are a “stew” of ethnic backgrounds), and thinks she sees a mermaid, the legendary Mami Wata. Grandmère’s quiet sadness about the past and worry for the future (“To be a hero, bad things have to happen,” she tells Maddy) strike notes of unsettling and suspenseful tension. Readers will be easily drawn into Rhodes’s (Sugar) heady descriptions, and as environmental disaster threatens the landscape Maddy has come to love, her heroism shines as she protects the community and recognizes her own strength. Ages 8–12. Agent: Michael Bourret, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. (May)
Jewell Parker Rhodes is one of the best middle grade writers there is when it comes to tackling tough, heartbreaking history with compassion and hope. The history she writes about includes the very recent past—things that have happened during the lifetimes of young readers that their own children will be reading about in school down […]
There’s nothing better than cozying up with the kind of book that tells the truth about the world and still makes you laugh, nod, and smile when you turn the final pages. These clutch-to-your-heart books are the ones you want to keep safe on a bookshelf-near-you so they’re always in reach when you need a […]
If you have a kid who loves stories about animals and mermaids, give them Bayou Magic, by Jewell Parker Rhodes! It’s 10 year old Maddy’s turn to have a summer in Bayou Bon Temps with her grandmother; it will be her first time away from home in the city. Her four big sisters, who have each […]
Some books introduce us to characters who are different from us, allowing us to see the world from a new perspective. But for children in the process of figuring out who they are, and who they want to be, it is just as important to also read stories about characters they can relate to, and see themselves in. The desire to read […]