5.15.09/Author Lauren Myracle visits LREI

This past Wednesday several of our middle and high school students met with Young Adult author Lauren Myracle to discuss her latest novel, Peace Love & Baby Ducks. Often hailed as the new Judy Blume, Lauren is the author of several books for tweens and teens, including Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen starring Winnie Perry, the TTYL series, and most recently, the YA horror novel Bliss. She is also the co-author of Let it Snow and How to Be Bad. Like the Laurie Halse Anderson author visit blogged below, Lauren’s visit was part of a joint venture between Penguin Young Readers and LREI to bring students and authors together to talk about books and have their discussions filmed for use on both Penguin’s and LREI’s website. PLBD is at it’s heart a story of two high school sisters trying to navigate the treacherous waters of high school, but it also presents issues of social class and race in a realistic and nuanced way that teens will relate to. This was evidenced by the lively, frank discussion Lauren had with our students, who ended their time together sitting on the floor, laughing and posing with our stuffed library shelf shark. Before Lauren left for the airport to fly home to Colorado, she took the time to personalize each student’s signed book and pose for a ton of photos. We hope to host more Penguin author events in the future, and will post the videos of the book discussions on the LREI website as soon as they are edited. Until then,

I’ll see you in the library,

Jennifer Hubert Swan, MS librarian