writes books
My 2020 nonfiction picture book with Christophe Jacques has been longlisted for the Green Earth Book Award! Green Machine: The Slightly Gross Truth about Turning Your Food Scraps into Green Energy is a fun look at the process of anaerobic digestion, which produces methane from things like food scraps and can be used to create electricity.
I couldn’t be happier that Misa, the illustrator of Cats Are a Liquid and How Slippery Is a Banana Peel?, and I are working on our first comic series! It’s graphic nonfiction about biomimicry, the process of taking designs from nature and applying them to solve human problems. As you might expect, it’s a little (all right, extremely) silly, too.
Misa Saburi and I have another picture book coming in 2021!
Here’s a funny thing about publishing (and anyone in the business can tell you their own story about it): it’s nothing if not surprising. After a couple of years with no new deal announcements, now I have three within a few weeks.
I’m very pleased to have two picture books on the way with Godwin Books and another middle grade coming from Capstone. I posted the announcement for GREEN MACHINE: THE FOOD ENERGY CYCLE earlier, and here are the announcements for the other two.
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I’m so happy to announce that my first nonfiction picture book, GREEN MACHINE: THE FOOD ENERGY CYCLE, illustrated by Christophe Jacques, will be published by Holt/Godwin Books in winter 2020. It’s a rhyming ode to anaerobic digestion, and if you don’t think that sounds like fun, then you haven’t been to visit a farm’s anaerobic digester in the middle of January in northern New York.
What is anaerobic digestion? Short answer: a great way to make energy from organic matter like food & manure. See–fun! I’ll post more as the book’s production progresses.
I can’t wait to see Christophe Jacques’s art for this book. You can see his portfolio here. Super fun retro-modern, super kid-friendly.
Casey Lyall, author of Howard Wallace, P.I. and member of the stupendous Kick-Butt Kidlit team, invited me (after I begged her to) to answer a few questions about How to Stage a Catastrophe and other butt-kicking subjects. Thanks, Casey!
My good friend and colleague Angela Newman interviews me about HOW TO STAGE A CATASTROPHE and other writerly things on her blog.
HOW TO STAGE A CATASTROPHE is a School Library Journal Spring/Summer 2017 Sneak Peek pick! Download the whole list to see over 150 anticipated children’s/YA titles in all categories.
We’re getting closer to April 1! If you’re hoping to get your hands on an advance copy of How to Stage a Catastrophe before the official publication date, here’s your chance: 10 ARCs are up for grabs on Goodreads.
On January 1st, I tweeted a list of 17 things to do to support your local library in 2017, and it seemed to strike a chord with people. Nothing I’ve ever tweeted has gotten that kind of attention–over 300 RTs & many more likes. I think it says something about the power of public libraries. I’ve seen people quote-tweet it, saying they learned to read because of the library, or they work for a library, and these are the things they most want people to know.
Not everything on the list works for every library, of course. I made the list from the perspective of a 10-year US public librarian, currently the director of a very small rural library, fully taxpayer-funded. And I definitely get the point people are making when they say, “Good list-but check your library’s donation policy!”
Libraries all over the US and the world are different, but we have this in common: there’s a massive amount of goodwill toward libraries. Thanks to everyone who liked, retweeted, or commented on this thread for showing me how much libraries matter.
Here’s a Storify of the thread. Please use it to support your local library!
https://storify.com/_becca_donnelly/17-things-to-support-your-local-library-in-2017
Rebecca Donnelly 