Celebrating Annie!

This year, the publisher of my best-known novel for teens, Annie on My Mind, is celebrating the book's 25th year in print with a commemorative edition that has the lovely cover you see here. In addition to the novel itself, the new edition also contains a conversation between yours truly and Kathleen T. Horning, Director of the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Katy's questions are very perceptive and were lots of fun to answer.

The Story and the Book:
The story is about high school senior Liza, who falls in deeply love with Annie, whose school is as rough as Liza's is sheltered. Not only does Liza have to come to terms with her own feelings, but she also has to deal with the reactions of her parents and her school's administration.

Annie, considered a breakthrough book when it was published in 1982, was initially very well received. But in 1993, it was burned in Kansas City and removed from school libraries in several districts. Finally, it was the subject of a First Amendment lawsuit when a group of courageous teens sued to have it returned to school library shelves. After a trial in 1995, a federal district court judge ruled in the book's favor.

Annie was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and is for people 12 and up. It's been on many "Best" lists: ALA Best Books for Young Adults; ALA/YALSA Best of the Best; Booklist Best; Booksellers' Choice; ALA/YALSA 100 Best Books for YAs, etc. It has also been written about in books that are about books, in articles--and even in student theses and dissertations. It's been taught in both high school and college courses, too. (ISBN 13: 978-0-374-40011-8; ISBN 10: 0-374-40011-3)

For more information about the court case involving Annie, please email me at nancygarden@aol.com.

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Celebrating Struggle, Progress and Hope!

Hear Us Out: Lesbian and Gay Stories of Struggle, Progress, and Hope from 1950 to the Present is both history and fiction combined. Putting this book together was exciting for me, for I've lived throughout the eras represented and have participated in various ways in some of the events I've described. Writing the final history section was especially exciting—and especially frustrating—for LGBT history was being made as fast as I wrote about it. By the time you read the final chapter, it'll have changed again—I hope mostly for the better!

Here's how Hear Us Out works. It's divided into sections, one for each decade from 1950 to the present. You'll find two stories in each section, plus an introductory essay about LGBT history—with, when possible, an emphasis on how that decade's history affected (or affects!) teens. The stories all feature lesbian or gay main characters who are dealing with situations that could have arisen in the same decade. Feel free to read just the stories, just the essays, or both as you wish; the book will work either way. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; ISBN 13: 978-0-374-31759-1; ISBN 10: 0-374-31759-3)

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Recent Books

Endgame

Endgame is for teens 14 and up. It was inspired by the terrible shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999 in which 23 people were wounded and 13 people were killed (15 if you count the two shooters, who committed suicide). Reporters, law enforcement personnel, educators, and just about everyone who was stunned by the tragedy and by similar events both before and after it struggled to understand what makes some kids turn guns on their fellow students and on teachers. Like many people, I wished there were something I could do to add to the understanding of what had happened, especially because I believed understanding it and similar events might help prevent school shootings from happening again.

As time went on, one causal factor stood out to me in news reports and analyses, especially because although it was mentioned over and over again, it was never (until quite recently) emphasized. That factor is bullying. Just about all the shooters I read about had been the victims of severe, repeated bullying. I'd been bullied myself as a child, and know a little about how it feels—and I decided to write a novel focused on bullying and the tragic consequences it can have on both bullier and bullied. Endgame is the result. It's been named a 2006 Best Book by School Library Journal, and a 2007 New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. (Harcourt; ISBN 13: 978-0-15-205416-8; ISBN 10: 0-15-205416-2)

Read an excerpt from Endgame.

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Books In Progress

Candlestone Inn #2: The Case of the Vanishing Valuables

This book is written, but publication has been temporarily (I trust!) delayed.

I am also working on :

• A new contemporary novel for teens
• A new novel that takes place in the future
• Lots of ideas--always!

But remember, there's no guarantee that anything that's in progress will actually come to pass!

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Book Excerpt

"Gonna be better, gonna be better here," Gray Wilton thinks when he and his family move and he starts high school in a new town and a new state.

But in less than a year, he finds himself in a juvenile detention center...

Hexagons.

Six sides.

The wire mesh embedded in the window glass formed little six-sided figures.

Yeah, hexagons.

Gray stared at them.

But so what? It didn't matter.

Nothing much mattered anymore. Had it ever?

Yeah, maybe. Long ago.

The glass was so thick and dirty that by a trick of light, Gray could see his reflection in it, in hexagon after hexagon.

It made him mad that the secure rooms, the ones like his, had wire hexagons in the window glass and dead bolts in the heavy steel doors, and that the doors had little steel sliding windows so they could spy on you and shove food through without coming in, like you were too dirty to get close to. It made him even madder that the secure rooms were right on the quad. That was extra torture, probably on purpose, so when you heard the other losers playing basketball you had to remember that you weren't going to get outside till they finally scheduled your trial.

Losers.

Six sides to a hexagon.

How many sides to a loser?

How many sides to me?

Son, brother. Friend? Archer. Drummer.

That's five.

What about six? The sixth side.

Come on, the sixth side!

As if he were dreaming, Gray saw his reflected face morph into Lindsay's: friendly, then worried, then scared; then into Zorro's: disdainful, jeering, finally incredulous.

Son, brother, friend. Archer. Drummer.

Murderer.

Copyright © 2006 by Nancy Garden. Published by Harcourt, Inc., and reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

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