M.T. Anderson's classic Feed (Candlewick) presents a satirical, futuristic look at the corruption of the bond and mind electric. His two-volume The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing (Candlewick) explores similar themes through an historical lens.
Bryan Collier presents an artful biography of multimedia collage art in his Coretta Scott King Medalist and Caldecott Honor book Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave (Little Brown).
Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon, winners of the Corretta Scott King New Talent Award, revive an iconic writer and her charged works in their fictionalized account of Zora Neale Hurston, Zora and Me (Candlewick).
In Out Of My Mind (Atheneum), Sharon Draper shapes the brilliant, but physically challenged Melody whose life changes when she is plugged into a computer that allows her to "speak".
Brian Floca's art for Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring (A Neal Porter Book/Roaring Brook) reimagines the soul of Martha Graham's Dance Company's creative genius.
Helen Frost powers up the poetic form in Crossing Stones (Frances Foster Books/Farrar) whose "cupped-hand" sonnets alternate with free verse to engirth readers with stories of love and loss during World War I.
Jack Gantos sings a song of himself in the memoir Hole In My Life (Farrar) and animates the characters of Joey and Jack Henry to explore the space of American boyhood.
Caldecott Medalist Mordicai Gerstein leaves behind the painter's brush for the writer's pen. In The Old Country (Roaring Brook) the plot amps up when a young girl and a fox exchange bodies.
Sandra Jordan and Jan Greenberg write an incandescent text in their Sibert Honor Award Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring (a Neal Porter Book/Roaring Brook) with spare, evocative words that mime the mood of Graham's movement.
Kenneth Kidd, an Associate Professor of English at the University of Florida, conducts cross-disciplinary work including Making American Boys: Boyology and the Feral Tale (University of Minnesota) and Wild Things: Chidlren's Culture and Ecocriticism (Wayne state University).
Artist Karen LaFleur layers image an text on her digital canvas to reanimate familiar folk tales.
Newbery Honor medalist Grace Lin switches audiences artfully. Her recent early reader Ling and Ting: Not Exactly the Same (Little Brown) reveals the pluses and minuses of being identical twins.
Cathryn M. Mercier, Professor and Director of the Center for the Study of Children's Literature at Simmons College, will illumine the Institute's proceedings.
Barbara O'Connor constructs lightning swift characterization in The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester (Frances Foster Books/Farrar) where the ordinary -- including a lowly frog -- and the astounding interact.
Sara Pennypacker's magnetic heroine, most recently seen in Clementine, Friend of the Week (Hyperion) lends spark to the travails and joys of childhood with humor and honesty.
Stitches jolts the reader as David Small compoese a grpahic memory of a family galvanized by betrayal.
Internationally recognized artist Tommy Simpson constructs artifacts that give physicality to the life force in surprising and enchanting ways.
Multi-award winning author Jacqueline Woodson populates novels, picturesbooks and poetry with characters embodying Whitmanesque "fullness" in such diverse offerings as Pecan Pie Baby, Feathers and Locomotion (all Putnam).
Comic artist Gene Luen Yang electrifies literature for children and young adults with works original in form and content. His American Born Chinese (First Second) was the first graphic novel to garner the Printz Award.
