In this guest post, author Claudia Guadalupe Martínez reflects on the universal story of coming and going across a border while emphasizing the forgotten history of Mexican Repatriation. Still Dreaming / Seguimos soñando is available wherever books are sold.
Continue readingTag Archives: historical fiction
New Release: The Sky We Shared
Today we are thrilled to celebrate the release of The Sky We Shared by Shirley Reva Vernick! In this thoughtful and deftly woven WWII novel, an American teen and a Japanese teen with lives on opposite ends of the world discover that hate for an “enemy” leaves a heavy heart.
Continue readingBehind the History: A Guest Post by Shirley Reva Vernick
In this guest post, author Shirley Reva Vernick shares her personal connections to historical events and how they led her to write about history in her novels. Her latest historical fiction book entitled The Sky We Shared will be published June 7 and is available for pre-order now.
Continue readingNew Release: Strong as Fire, Fierce as Flame by Supriya Kelkar
Today we’re excited to release Strong as Fire, Fierce as Flame by award-winning author Supriya Kelkar (Ahimsa, American as Paneer Pie)!
This moving and meticulously researched middle grade historical fiction novel takes a deep look at the impact of colonialism in India. When a rebellion against British colonizers spreads in 1857 India, 12-year-old Meera must choose between relative safety in a British household or standing up for herself and her people.
Did Gandhi Really Say ‘Be the Change’?: Editing Historical Fiction
In today’s guest post, author Supriya Kelkar shares a behind-the-scenes look at the research required to write her new novel, Ahimsa—and a few neat things she learned along the way! Ahimsa was released this week and has received starred reviews from School Library Journal and Booklist, which called it a “heartbreakingly charming debut about the universal struggle of overcoming fears and biases in order to make the world a better place.”
Take it away, Supriya!
Finding the Lost Voices with YA Historical Fiction
Pia Ceres was LEE & LOW’s summer intern. She is a recipient of the We Need Diverse Books Internship Program grant. She’s a senior at Brown University, where she studies Education & Comparative Literature, with a focus in French literature. When she’s not reading, you can find her watching classic horror movies from under a blanket, strumming pop songs on her ukulele, and listening to her grandparents’ stories about the Philippines. In this blog post, she asks the question “can fiction be a pathway to fact?” while looking at YA historical fiction.
High school students in Providence, Rhode Island, rallied in January to launch a campaign called #OurHistoryMatters, advocating for greater representation of the contributions of people of color in history curricula. Like many urban school districts, Providence serves a diverse student body where 74% of students identify as Black or Latino and 17% as Native American. Yet when student activists studied an American history textbook used in their school district, they reported that out of nearly 2,000 pages, fewer than 100 mentioned people of color.