Simmons College

M.T. Anderson's Octavian Nothing sequence (Candlewick) traces the growing awareness of betrayal committed in the name of science, democracy, and equality.

Newbery medalist Avi returns to his beloved Victorian landscape in The Traitors' Gate (Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books) to tell a Dickensian tale fraught with villainy and featuring a colorful cast of criminals, sergeants, and inspectors.

Within the classic tradition of fantasy, Natalie Babbitt's opus Tuck Everlasting (Farrar) features a kidnapping, a murder, and a prison escape.

In her third art mystery, The Calder Game (Scholastic), Blue Balliett captures the reader in a maze of twists and turns in a tightly-wound whodunit.

Canadian playwright, novelist, and short fiction writer Martha Brooks explores the imprisoning bonds of guilt in Mistik Lake (Farrar).

In her debut novel Graceling (Houghton Harcourt), Kristin Cashore introduces Katsa, a female warrior with the ability to kill with her bare hands.

Jack Gantos writes a veritable jailbird memoir Hole in My Life (Farrar) in which readers witness early signs of Joey Pigza and Rotten Ralph.

In award-winning picture books and middle grade fiction including Bird Lake Moon (HarperCollins), Caldecott medalist Kevin Henkes probes the burdens borne of youthful misdeeds.

Graphic novelist Gareth Hinds adds The Merchant of Venice (Candlewick) to his retelling of well-known tales bathed in deceit, violence, and murder.

Poet JonArno Lawson courts linguistic trickery in his inventive A Voweller's Bestiary (Porcupine's Quill), an alphabet book based on vowel combinations.

Law and politics inform Ellen Levine's work as she writes of conspiracies and confinements in Henry's Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad (Scholastic).

Ruby Lu and Alvin Ho suffer the trials and tribulations of childhood in Lenore Look's easy readers, such as Alvin Ho: Allergic to Girls, School, and Other Scary Things (Schwartz & Wade).

Connecticut Poet Laureate Marilyn Nelson excavates the crime of racism in the lyric, searing verse of The Freedom Business: Including A Narrative of the Life & Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa (Wordsong).

For the forthcoming Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children's Book (Roaring Brook) Anita Silvey interviewed over 125 in the public eye who testify to the power of children's literature.

Vicky Smith, children's book review editor of Kirkus Reviews, sifts through new children and young adult books for evidence of excellence.

Deborah Stevenson, editor at The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, is an assiduous and reliable inspector on the trail of quality children's literature.

Editor of the The Horn Book, master sleuth Roger Sutton will direct the investigation of Crimes and Misdemeanors with graduate students.

Susan P. Bloom, Associate Professor Emeritus, Director of Summer Institute

Cathryn M. Mercier, Professor, Director, Center for the Study of Children's Literature, Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences