Tomorrow we're having Jen Bryant at the shop for a meet-the-author event. Jen's written seven children's books and won the Caldecott Medal for River of Words, her beautiful biography of William Carlos Williams. Her newest book, Kaleidoscope Eyes, is for young adults. Like all her young adult novels, it's written in verse:
We have hit a layer of shale
and some huge tree roots.
Before we dig any further, we bring
the metal detector with us
to the church, strap the battery pack
and headphones on Carolann,
and wait beside the hole. Tonight
the full moon glows like a piece of
pirate gold. We don't even need
our flashlights. And the sound coming
through the instrument is so loud,
we don't even need to ask her
what she hears.
Kaleidoscope Eyes is set in New Jersey in the 60s and besides touching on issues of that time-- like the Vietnam War-- it includes the discovery of an old map and the subsequent quest undertaken by three friends who find themselves involved with pirate legends.
Come by tomorrow to meet Jen-- she'll be in our shop from 11-2!
