Kidlit Happy Hour

Dan Santat joins Joanna and Caroline to celebrate the launch of their book The Day the Books Disappeared! They share an honest conversation around the impacts of book banning, challenges within the publishing industry at large, and the need for art that continues to push back.

To snag swag and copies of The Day the Books Disappeared signed by both Joanna and Caroline, order from Linden Tree Books

To get swag and a signed, personalized copy by Caroline, order from Politics and Prose

Dan Santat joins Joanna and Caroline to celebrate the launch of their book The Day the Books Disappeared! They share an honest conversation around the impacts of book banning, challenges within the publishing industry at large, and the need for art that continues to push back.

To snag swag and copies of The Day the Books Disappeared signed by both Joanna and Caroline, order from Linden Tree Books

To get swag and a signed, personalized copy by Caroline, order from Politics and Prose

Here are some highlights from our episode with the #1 NYTimes bestselling, National Book Award-winning, former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Jacqueline Woodson:

Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for adults, children, and adolescents. She is best known for her National Book Award-Winning memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, and her Newbery Honor-winning titles After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way. Her picture books The Day You Begin and The Year We Learned to Fly were NY Times Bestsellers. After serving as the Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, she was named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress for 2018–19. She was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2020. Later that same year, she was named a MacArthur Fellow.

Links from the episode:

Highlights from our conversation with Founder and Publisher of Kokila, Namrata Tripathi:

Namrata Tripathi is Founder and Publisher of Kokila. Previously, Namrata held editorial positions at HarperCollins, Disney-Hyperion, and Simon and Schuster. She is the editor of New York Times bestsellers Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry and Vashti Harrison and Antiracist Baby by Ibram X. Kendi and Ashley Lukashevsky; the Newbery Honor-winning middle grade novel The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani; and the National Book Award Finalists Noggin by John Corey Whaley, Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay, and The Legend of Auntie Po by Shing Yin Khor. Namrata grew up in Afghanistan, India, Canada, Pakistan, Germany, and Poland, and has happily called New York City home for the last twenty-five years.

They’re back!!! Here are some highlights from Joanna and Caroline’s first episode after their five-month KLHH hiatus:

Some links from today’s episode:

Here are some highlights from our conversation with the NYTimes bestselling, award-winning cartoonist and graphic novelist Raina Telgemeier: 

Raina Telgemeier is the #1 New York Times bestselling, multiple Eisner Award–winning creator of Smile, Sisters, and Guts, which are all graphic memoirs based on her childhood. She is also the creator of Drama and Ghosts, the adapter and illustrator of the first four Baby-sitters Club graphic novels, and, with Scott McCloud, the co-creator of The Cartoonists Club. Facing Feelings: Inside the World of Raina Telgemeier is based on an exhibition that was held at The Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, and will be published in October 2025. Raina lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Our conversation with Aida Salazar is here! Aida shares about how one workshop radically changed her approach to voice, why writing is a spiritual practice, how she stays open to receiving stories from our ancestors, and so much more.

Aida Salazar is an award-winning author, arts activist, and translator whose writings explore issues of identity and social justice. Her critically acclaimed verse novels and picture books have received numerous awards including: a Caldecott Honor, the Malka Penn Award, the Américas Award, Tomás Rivera Book Award, International Latino Book Awards, California Library Association Beatty Award, Northern CA Book Award, Jane Addams Peace Honor, an NCTE Charlotte Huck Honor among other distinctions. She lives with her family of artists in Oakland, CA. 

Here are some highlights from our conversation with NYTimes-bestselling, award-winning author Jasmine Warga!:

• Excavating not simply WHAT your characters want, but WHY they want it

Jasmine Warga is the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of middle grade novels Other Words For Home, The Shape of Thunder, A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall and A Rover’s Story. Other Words For Home earned multiple awards, including a John Newbery Honor, a Walter Honor for Young Readers, and a Charlotte Huck Honor. The Shape of Thunder was a School Library Journal and Bank Street best book of the year, a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Children's and YA Book Award, and has been named to several state award reading lists. A Rover’s Story, her latest novel, was an instant New York Times bestseller, a Indie Next List and a Junior Library Guild selection, and was named a best book of the year by Publishers Weekly and The Washington Post. She is also the author of young adult novel, My Heart and Other Black Holes, which has been translated into over twenty different languages. Originally from Cincinnati, she now lives in the Chicago-area with her family in a house filled with books.

Here are a few highlights from our conversation with the award-winning Adib Khorram:

• How his notes app has come to be bursting with character ideas and peoples' idiosyncrasies

ADIB KHORRAM is the author of DARIUS THE GREAT IS NOT OKAY, which earned the William C. Morris Debut Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature, and a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor, as well as a multitude of other honors and accolades. His followup, DARIUS THE GREAT DESERVES BETTER, received three starred reviews, was an Indie Bestseller, and received a Stonewall Honor. His latest novel, KISS & TELL, received four starred reviews. His debut picture book, SEVEN SPECIAL SOMETHINGS: A NOWRUZ STORY was released in 2021. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where people don’t usually talk about themselves in the third person.

LINKS:

Website: www.adibkhorram.com

IG: Adib Khorram

First listen to Adib's overshare, then watch him white-knuckle (and crush) his speech at the FYE Conference in 2020

Here are highlights from our conversation with award-winning, NYTimes-bestselling author Randy Ribay:

• How characters explore the same internal questions he’s grappling with in his own life

Randy Ribay is an award-winning author of young adult fiction. His most recent novel, Patron Saints of Nothing, earned five starred reviews, was selected as a Freeman Book Award winner, and was a finalist for the National Book Award, LA Times Book Prize, Walden Book Award, Edgar Award, International Thriller Writers Award, and the CILIP Carnegie Medal. His other works include Project Kawayan, After the Shot Drops, and An Infinite Number of Parallel Universes. His next novels, The Chronicles of the Avatar: The Reckoning of Roku (Abrams) and Everything We Never Had (Kokila/Penguin) will be out in 2024. 

Born in the Philippines and raised in the Midwest, Randy earned his BA in English Literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder and his Ed.M. in Language and Literacy from Harvard Graduate School of Education. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, son, and cat-like dog. 

Randy's website

Randy's Instagram