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Video of Magical Garden Book Launch
The virtual book launch of Behold Our Magical Garden was magical! You can watch it right here! I shared Daniel Duncan’s artwork and read a few choice poems. It was a treat to have special guest Jordan Diamond, the director of the delicious FEAST garden education program. You can purchase copies of the new book anywhere books are sold. Or you can order specially signed (by me) copies through Malaprops, my hometown bookstore, HERE.
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Behold Our Magical Book
Warning! You may never look at an eggplant in the same way again! Behold Our Magical BookJust in time for Spring! Say hello to my brand-new book, Behold Our Magical Garden, a collection of poems set in and around an elementary school garden. Poems about compost, seeds, germination, roots, digging, watering, eating, harvesting, bugs, birds, worms, dirt and every other magical thing that makes a school garden . . . well, magical. Plus, every poem is paired with the engaging illustrations of Daniel Duncan. This book begs to be read aloud, and yes, you’ll discover a few multi-voice poems in the mix. Behold Our Magical Book LaunchPlease join us for the virtual…
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Solar Sonnet on PBS
PBS At-Home Learning (Classroom Connection) has created a special lesson, aimed at 3rd Graders, to help students understand the basic structure and characteristics of a poem. And the lesson features the Solar Sonnet from The Day the Universe Exploded My Head! Check it out!!
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CELEBRATING OTHER POETS
TWINKL is a website of teacher-created resources that celebrated National Poetry Month by featuring the work of ten poets, including me and a couple of my favorites, April Halprin Wayland and the iconic Charles Ghigna (aka Father Goose). You can check out the post HERE!
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The YA Novel About the Donner Party You Never Knew You Wanted
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Happy Poetry Month!
To kick off National Poetry Month, 2021, I’d like to share this fun video of The Haiku Song. Please share it around, and remember that April 17th is National Haiku Day. This 3-minute video snippet is a part of a full-length video I’ve put together for the older elementary grades. New Author/Poetry Videos for Elementary Grades While in-person author visits are on hold due to the pandemic, I’ve begun to offer full-length videos for the elementary grades. Each video features fun performances and talking points just as my live presentations do. Available for classrooms, schools, and libraries in search of an asynchronous author experience, we can also arrange synchronous on-line…
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The questions hunger asks
I was interviewed by Bookpage about The Snow Fell Three Graves Deep! In his new novel in verse, critically acclaimed author Allan Wolf revisits a grisly chapter of westward expansion with a fresh and thought-provoking look at the doomed travelers of the Donner Party, a group of 89 pioneers who became trapped in the Sierra Nevada and infamously resorted to eating their dead to survive. We spoke to Wolf about the unique narrator of The Snow Fell Three Graves Deep, some of the unexpected ways he researched the book and why cannibalism wasn’t the hardest part of the book to write. Read the rest here.
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Finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize!
My latest novel, The Snow Fell Three Graves Deep: Voices from the Donner Party, has been chosen as one of five finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature. While the winners will not be announced until April 16, I’m honored simply to be in the running for this prestigious prize. There is no “campaigning” for inclusion. No author, publisher, bookseller, editor, or publicist is allowed to directly recommend books to the 3-person panel of judges. In a tumultuous year of racial, political, and pandemic upheaval what would cause a book about the Donner Party to rise to the surface of such crowded, choppy waters? The…
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No Buddy Like a Book Virtual Party Feb. 12th!
I’m excited to celebrate the release of my new picture book No Buddy Like a Book with the illustrator Brianne Farley at my favorite independent bookstore Malaprops! RSVP here February 12th, 6 pm EST Preorder the book here and get it signed and personalized if you want! Just indicate in the comment section of checkout.
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Why a novel about the Donner Party is the perfect thing right now
“Disasters are fascinating,” Wolf says. “You know what’s going to happen, and you know it’s going to be bad, but the characters don’t.” The Mountain Xpress interviewed me about the new book. It gives some background on how I did my research, and touches on why this book is so relevant right now. Like all good stories, we are drawn in to relate to the characters, and gain insight into how they behaved under difficult circumstances. You can’t help but see eerie similarities to our current crisis. How do you keep your humanity in a situation like that? So I guess this book, like COVID, it’s just a bunch of…