The new Whippoorwill Award goes annually to ten distinguished books of fiction for young adults that deal with rural people and places. The books chosen for the award should: • Address universal truths, problems, topics and issues. • Have an enduring quality that...

The question I am asked by readers most frequently is how much of my books come from events in my life. The simple answer is: a whole bunch. I'm queried further to put a percentage on it and I have come up with 90% for PAPERBOY and 50% for COPYBOY. I have no idea if...

A video chat this week with students at Hickory Creek Middle School in Frankfort, Illinois, a community 35 miles south of Chicago, involved a new wrinkle for me. Students in three different English Language Arts classes at the school were asked by their teachers to...