🎁 Bookish holiday gifts, new book deals, cover reveals & more 🎁

🎄Our Gift to You This Holiday Season: Our Recs for the 20x2 Top Books of 2019 🎁

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! A season of celebrating. A season of giving. A season of year-end book lists – including this one produced by the Soaring ’20s.

In our lists, we’re sure you’ll find the perfect kidlit book for every book lover in your life. So grab a hot cocoa, cozy up with your favorite blanket, and click here to read on.

No Prompt Needed: Or How Teens Showed Me to Embrace the Open-Endedness of the Writing Life by Angela Burke Kunkel

As I write this, we’re smack in the middle of #NaNoWriMo, something I’m participating in daily with a group of high school students. NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, takes place every November, and participants try to write the first draft of a novel, roughly 50,000 words. When you sign up for NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program, they send you lots of neat swag, including a deck of prompt cards to get those creative juices flowing. The interesting thing, though, is that the teens have emphatically waved those cards off. More than a writing prompt, this group is looking for community, encouragement, support — something all writers crave, regardless of age or grade level.

The group’s rejection of prompt cards got me thinking about ways to teach craft without putting too many restrictions on students.

Read more here.
 

20 Questions: Getting Unstuck compiled by Elisa Boxer  and Kjersten Hayes

This is the place where we here at the Soaring ’20s answer questions about our picture-book process.

While we hate to be Scrooges, there’s nothing like the holiday spirit to put a damper on productivity.

Of course, it’s not just holiday time that presents a challenge to creators. Feeling stuck is a year-long struggle. But between feasting, family, shopping and school vacations, December can really put the kibosh on creating.

We’ve got your back, along with some tips for manifesting more mojo to fill that blank page.

Read more here.

A bevy of new book covers...click on the covers to learn more

Don't forget, you can see all our covers and preorder on our website.

📣 New book deals 📚

Soaring '20s in the news and on the road

• Abi Cushman's SOAKED! (Viking, 2020) and Jasmyn Wright's I'M GONNA PUSH THROUGH (Atheneum, 2020) are featured on Mr. Schu's BOOKS I LOVE presentation.

• Shelley Johannes's BEATRICE ZINKER UPSIDE DOWN THINKER series (Disney-Hyperion, 2019) made the Today Show's list of 28 best gifts for seven-year-olds.

• Rajani LaRocca's middle grade, MIDSUMMER'S MAYHEM (Yellow Jacket, 2019), made the Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2019 list.

• Kirkus reviewed Kirsten W. Larson's WOOD, WIRE, WINGS: Emma Lilian Todd Invents an Airplane (Calkins Creek, 2020) noting its "(e)nergetic, thoughtful text punctuated by Todd's own words and Subisak's inventive, warmly outlined full-color illustrations..." Read more here.

• A personal essay by Jen Malia (TOO STICKY!), Putting the Pieces into Place: A mother advocates for her autistic child and receives her own diagnosis, appeared in the New York Times. Jen also was featured on NBC News in Central New York. Watch here.

• John Herzog (CLARINET & TRUMPET) headed up the first caricature show at Ringling College. Check out his caricatures here.

• Anna Crowley Redding's YA, ELON MUSK: A Mission to Save the World (Feiwel & Friends, 2019), has been named to the National Science Teachers Association's (NSTA's) Best STEM Books for 2020. Find the full list here.