You solve problems every day, from what to eat for breakfast to how to finish your homework before bedtime. The kids in the books we read face problems, too—from everyday hurdles like these to huge obstacles we hope we’ll never encounter. In this session, we’ll hear from four authors whose characters tackle problems—and we might even learn about what challenges the authors faced while writing about them! In The Perfect Score, school story specialist Rob Buyea writes about how a group of students approach a familiar predicament: taking standardized tests. In her latest middle grade novel, Saturdays with Hitchcock, Printz Award–winning author Ellen Wittlinger writes about Maisie, a tween facing a pair of problems: her grandma’s growing dementia and her own messy love triangle—something she’s not sure she even wants. Norah, the heroine of Barbara Dee’s Halfway Normal, just wants to put her big problem (overcoming leukemia) behind her and start middle school like a normal kid. And in Michelle Cuevas’s wildly inventive The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole, Stella’s problems of loss and grief take on cosmic significance, manifesting as a black hole named Larry. Do you have a problem—in writing or in life—you’d like a creative solution to? Bring your questions to this session, hosted by educator and former BPL writer-in-residence Jennifer De Leon.
Ages 7–12
