Sarah Prineas's Blog, page 6

…and it's a good one!

This is from Kirkus:

WINTERLING

Author: Prineas, Sarah

An atmospheric middle-grade fantasy ties the coming of age to the turning of the year.

Young Fer (short for "Jennifer") loves her strict Grand-Jane and the herbal lore she teaches, but she feels more at home in the woods and fields than in the concrete and iron cage of her school. When she rescues the shapeshifting puck Rook, Fer opens a Way into a place of wild beauty, deep magic and strange half-human denizens. The...

UPDATE: The contest has closed! Thanks for entering, and the winner will be notified shortly. Come back again!

With starred reviews from Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly, Chris Moriarty's debut middle-grade novel The Inquisitor's Apprentice is one to watch.

You can win a signed hardcover of the book! It's beautifully illustrated, and the endpapers–gorgeous:

All you have to do to enter is pick a number between 1 and 343 and post it in the comments. I'll respond with a line from that page in the ...

We writers about "pellets"–little rewards that keep us–like rats–happily running around our writerly treadmills. A good review is a pellet. An email from an enthusiastic reader is a pellet.

Last week, I got something so far beyond a pellet that called it an "asteroid." And indeed, it is cosmic and out there, and really wonderful, too.

I live in Iowa City, which is known as a literary town–the world-renowned Iowa Writers Workshop is here, and we have...

The contest has ended and the winner notified! Thanks for playing.

The Cabinet of Earths is a fantastic middle-grade novel from debut author . It's coming from HarperCollins Childrens on January 3rd, and it's beautifully written and compelling, with a terrific girl protagonist, Maya.

You can win an ARC–an advanced reader copy–of the book and read it before everybody else!

All you have to do to enter is pick a number between 1 and 256 and post it in the comments. I'll respond with a...

Hey teachers, librarians, and book-group leaders!

One of the best ways I've found for writers and kid readers to connect is via Skype. This is a video chat session lasting around 30 minutes, usually consisting of interactive chat and question and answer.

It's fun and easy to set up, and I do these visits for free! If you're interested, drop me an email: thiefofmagic@gmail.com. All I require is that the kids have read The Magic Thief (or had at least part of it read aloud to them). I have class ...

This contest is CLOSED. Thanks for stopping by! The winner will be notified soon.

Guys, I LOVE this book, The Girl of Fire and Thorns by .

And I'm not the only one:

"Rae Carson's heroine is a perfect blend of the ordinary and the extraordinary. I loved her."

— Megan Whalen Turner, author of Newbery Honor book, THE THIEF

and

"Elisa is a wonderful, believable hero, the kind that every reader can imagine as herself. I charged through the book in two days, savoring Elisa's realness...

CONTEST HAS ENDED. Thanks for stopping by, and please come again.

So here's the deal. You–yes, you!–can win an ARC of this novel, Bigger Than a Bread Box by , which comes out from Random House on September 27th.

- Dave Shallenberger, a co-owner of the Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, Georgia, talks about the book here:

Rebecca's mother uproots her away from father, friends, Baltimore, and everything she knows and transplants her in Atlanta. At twelve years of age and living at...

Here it is! The cover for my next book, coming from HarperCollins Children's on January 3, 2012. Let me know what you think of it!

Cover art by Jason Chan.

And here's the flap copy:

With her boundless curiosity and wild spirit, Fer has always felt that she doesn't belong. Not when the forest is calling to her, when the rush of wind through branches feels more real than school or the quiet farms near her house. Then she saves an injured creature—he looks like a boy, but he's really something...