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2025 Summer Blog Series: Kekla Magoon

Author Kekla Magoon shares, “One of the most grat­i­fy­ing things that’s ever hap­pened to me in my career occurred after a school author vis­it, sign­ing books at the front of the audi­to­ri­um. A young man hov­ered at the back of the line. … As he held out his copy of the book for me to sign, he said qui­et­ly, ‘This is the first book I ever finished.’”

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The Secret School

Serialization, Breakfast Serials, and Substack

In the 19th cen­tu­ry, nov­el seri­al­iza­tion made the cost of book read­ing much low­er for the gen­er­al pub­lic. More­over, it trans­formed read­ing from an indi­vid­ual endeav­or to a social phe­nom­e­non, with huge num­bers able to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly share a text. 

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Deborah Hopkinson

2025 Summer Blog Series: Deborah Hopkinson

When writ­ing non­fic­tion I try to keep in mind that many young read­ers (and adults too) pre­fer fan­ta­sy, real­is­tic fic­tion, mys­ter­ies, or sci­ence fic­tion. So I try to use the tools of fic­tion to engage read­ers of all ages, even when the sub­ject mat­ter is chal­leng­ing or disturbing.

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Bruce Coville

2025 Summer Blog Series: Bruce Coville

What­ev­er your aspi­ra­tions for a book or sto­ry are, it will not have any effect if you can’t get kids to read it! To make that hap­pen, you need to start where the read­ers are, not where you want them to end up.

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Alan Gratz

2025 Summer Blog Series: Alan Gratz

Teach­ers and par­ents often tell me that my nov­els are great for get­ting reluc­tant read­ers to love books. I have a lot of strate­gies for keep­ing even the most reluc­tant of read­ers on the edges of their seats.

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Pam Munoz Ryan

2025 Summer Blog Series: Pam Munoz Ryan

Avi’s 2025 Sum­mer Blog Series Pam Muñoz Ryan From Avi: As I have for the last three sum­mers, (sum­mer of 2024, sum­mer of 2023, sum­mer of 2022) I’ve invit­ed 13 admired authors to write for my blog for the next three months. I hope you’ll tune in each Tues­day to see who answered this year’s question,

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Suzanne Supplee

2025 Summer Blog Series: Suzanne Supplee

Hav­ing been a high school and mid­dle school writ­ing and Eng­lish teacher for decades, I’ve had an up-close view of stu­dents and their read­ing habits. I’ve taught kids who couldn’t stop read­ing. There were also stu­dents who proud­ly told me, “I hate to read.”

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