Children of Jubilee Blog Tour: Guest Post + Giveaway

Welcome to the Children of Jubilee Blog Tour!

To celebrate the release of The Children of Jubilee (Children of Exile #3) on December 4th, blogs across the web are featuring exclusive content from author Margaret Peterson Haddix and 10 chances to win the complete trilogy!

Current Events
by Margaret Peterson Haddix

On September 10, 2001, I finished up a long day of writing feeling relieved and delighted. I was in the early stages of writing a book that would eventually become Among the Barons, and until that day, I’d felt indecisive and directionless and full of doubt that what I was working on would ever amount to anything. But something shifted that day, and by day’s end, I felt as though I suddenly knew everything that was going to happen in the book, what it all meant, and exactly how I was going to write it.

I was as full of certainty as it’s possible to be as a writer.

Then the next day was September 11.

I didn’t live in New York City or Washington, D.C., and though I had friends who did, none of them were injured or killed. I was lucky, and so were they. But like almost every other American, I had the sense that the terrorist attacks changed everything, and everything I’d assumed before then about what life was like seemed wrong.

Every shred of certainty I’d had about Among the Barons was gone, too, and that baffled me. Among the Barons is set in a completely fictional futuristic world, and it has no connection to New York City or Washington, D.C., at the dawn of the twenty-first century; it has nothing to do with Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda. On paper, there was no reason for me to abandon the plans I’d made the day before.

But I knew I had to. There was no way I could write the book as I’d planned it in the innocent ignorance of September 10.

All writers filter the stories they plan to tell through the prism of their own experiences. And when an event as cataclysmic as September 11 occurs, that resets every writer’s filter.

Also, feeling gobsmacked in real life makes it very hard not to feel similarly gobsmacked in writing and plans for writing. And no matter how much writers may want to go into a hermit-like existence while they’re writing, it’s impossible for them not to be affected by real life, both as an individual and in connection with the rest of the world.

Besides Among the Barons, my newest book—Children of Jubilee—is probably the one most affected by the current events swirling around me as I wrote. I began writing Jubilee as the 2016 presidential campaign raged. One of the many factors that horrified me about that election year was the way that people on opposing sides of the political aisle seemed to be able to watch the exact same events—and see something totally different. At times, the two sides didn’t even seem to be speaking the same language.

I wanted to believe that things would get better once the election actually happened, but that was false hope.

So in the midst of that, when people living in the same country seemed unable to find common ground, how could I possibly expect to write a book where creatures from different planets and vastly different civilizations work through their differences and figure out how to work together?

I struggled a lot writing Children of Jubilee. But as horrified as I constantly was, seeing what was going on in my country, it also forced me to dig deeper as I thought about the dilemmas my characters faced. I couldn’t just give my characters a glib, too-easy resolution: “And then everyone saw that they had to work together, and they did, happily and peacefully. The end.” Nope. At a time when I was feeling very angry about political situations, I couldn’t depict entire civilizations just shrugging and easily turning their backs on deeply held viewpoints.

But the real events going on around me also made me feel as though the answers my characters would find were truly important—the writing was worth the struggle. Sure, what I was writing was fiction, but fiction can often lead the way to help people figure out their real problems, too. And because I write for kids, I know that I have a particularly impressionable audience--and, ultimately, a very influential one. The ten-year-old who reads a kids’ book today could theoretically still be voting in the 2116 U.S. election. (And, yes, thinking too much about this is a good way for a writer to become overwhelmed and incapable of writing another word.) 

 Of course I can’t say how everything is resolved in Children of Jubilee—you’ll have to read the book to find out. But if someone who’s still going to be around for the 2116 election wants to think about that ending in the voting booth, I’m okay with that.

*****

Blog Tour Schedule:

December 3rd — Beach Bound Books
December 4th — Ms. Yingling Reads

December 5th— Christy's Cozy Corners
December 6th— Crossroad Reviews

December 7th — A Dream Within A Dream

December 10th — Book Briefs

December 11th — Chat with Vera
December 12th — Bookhounds
December 13th — Java John Z's
December 14th — Unleashing Readers

Description:

Kiandra has to use her wits and tech-savvy ways to help rescue Edwy, Enu, and the others from the clutches of the Enforcers in the thrilling final novel of the Children of Exile series from New York Times bestselling author, Margaret Peterson Haddix.

Since the Enforcers raided Refuge City, Rosi, Edwy, and the others are captured and forced to work as slave labor on an alien planet, digging up strange pearls. Weak and hungry, none of them are certain they will make it out of this alive.

But Edwy’s tech-savvy sister, Kiandra, has always been the one with all the answers, and so they turn to her. But Kiandra realizes that she can’t find her way out of this one on her own, and they all might need to rely on young Cana and her alien friend if they are going to survive.

Add on Goodreads

Buy: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound

Margaret Peterson Haddix is the author of many critically and popularly acclaimed YA and middle grade novels, including the Children of Exile series, The Missing series, the Under Their Skin series, and the Shadow Children series. A graduate of Miami University (of Ohio), she worked for several years as a reporter for The Indianapolis News. She also taught at the Danville (Illinois) Area Community College. She lives with her family in Columbus, Ohio. Visit her at HaddixBooks.com.

 Follow Margaret: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

One (1) winner will receive the complete Children of Exile trilogy: Children of Exile, Children of Refuge, and Children of Jubilee

 
US/Canada only

To enter, leave a meaningful comment on this post and a way for me to get in touch with you if you're selected as the winner!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Summer of Broken Things Tour: Guest Post + Giveaway

Welcome to Day #5 of The Summer of Broken Things Blog Tour!

To celebrate the release of The Summer of Broken Things on April 10th, blogs across the web are featuring exclusive content from Margaret Peterson Haddix and 10 chances to win a copy of the book!

From New York Times bestselling author Margaret Peterson Haddix comes a haunting novel about friendship and what it really means to be a family in the face of lies and betrayal.

Fourteen-year-old Avery Armisted is athletic, rich, and pretty. Sixteen-year-old Kayla Butts is known as “butt-girl” at school. The two girls were friends as little kids, but that’s ancient history now. So it’s a huge surprise when Avery’s father offers to bring Kayla along on a summer trip to Spain. Avery is horrified that her father thinks he can choose her friends—and make her miss soccer camp. Kayla struggles just to imagine leaving the confines of her small town.

But in Spain, the two uncover a secret their families had hidden from both of them their entire lives. Maybe the girls can put aside their differences and work through it together. Or maybe the lies and betrayal will only push them—and their families—farther apart.

Margaret Peterson Haddix weaves together two completely separate lives in this engaging novel that explores what it really means to be a family—and what to do when it’s all falling apart.

Buy: Amazon | Indiebound

Add on Goodreads

Bibliotherapy

Sometimes books are the best medicine.

I knew this instinctively as a kid, when I often retreated into books when I was sad or upset, angry or anguished. Sometimes the books were only an escape; other times, even as they consoled me, they also empowered, emboldened, or, yes, helped heal me. If my favorite fictional characters could survive their much more dramatic—and traumatic—lives, then maybe I could cope, too.

But I have to confess that I didn’t know the term “bibliotherapy” until after I’d written books that were being used in bibliotherapy.

Because of privacy concerns, I’m certain I don’t know even a fraction of the ways my books have been used to help kids solve their personal problems while undergoing therapy or in less-formal settings. And that’s fine. But based on what I do hear from readers and the adults trying to help them, I’m guessing the book of mine that’s been used the most in bibliotherapy is Don’t You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey.

One of the best responses I ever heard to that book was when a middle school teacher told me of reading it to her special education class. Soon after the class heard the chapter where the main character, Tish, finally seeks help for her difficult family situation by writing a letter to her teacher, the real-life teacher found a lengthy, painstakingly written letter on her own desk from a girl in her class.

Unbeknownst to the teacher—until then--the girl was also dealing with an awful family situation, and the girl had felt completely stymied and trapped, thinking she had nowhere to turn. She didn’t feel that it was possible to tell the teacher or anyone else outright. And because of her learning difficulties, she wouldn’t have thought of writing as a way out on her own. But with Tish’s example, the teacher said, the girl was able to seek help. And the teacher was able to provide it.

Obviously in that tale the teacher was a much bigger hero than my book was—she was the one who provided the help; she was the one the girl ultimately trusted. The girl also deserves a great deal of credit for mustering the courage to speak out. And maybe she eventually would have found a way out even without a fictional role model.

But I was so glad to hear that my book played any part in helping that girl escape a bad situation; I’m delighted to hear of any of my books playing that kind of role.

From the beginning of my writing career, I naturally wanted to depict kids dealing with fictional problems as realistically as possible. But the more I heard of my books being used as bibliotherapy, the more I felt that I had an intense responsibility to do so. If kids see realistic depictions of other kids dealing with problems like theirs in books, they’re more likely to view the solutions the fictional characters find as realistic, and possibly feasible for themselves as well. Conversely, I fear that unrealistic depictions of fictional characters finding too-easy solutions can be damaging.

When I began plotting my latest book, THE SUMMER OF BROKEN THINGS, I knew I wanted to tell of two girls whose supposedly carefree trip to Spain is upended when they find out a secret that their families have kept from them their entire lives—a secret that, to varying degrees, also upends the way each girl views herself. Since the secret was not based on anything I’d personally experienced, I did a lot of research to try to depict it accurately, especially by talking to psychologists who deal with patients involved in similar situations.

One psychologist in particular was especially helpful, even going so far as to read my book in a near-final draft to give me additional advice. As I thanked her profusely, she reminded me that she was helping me do my job so she and other psychologists could do their jobs better, too. To the best of her knowledge, my book is the first for teens about kids dealing with that particularly issue, and she saw an increasing need.   

I do realize it can be dangerous for authors to get too invested in seeing their books as potentially therapeutic: I’m not sure there’s a faster way to destroy kids’ interest in a book than telling them, “This is going to be good for you!”

So I’m a firm believer in the idea that an author’s first responsibility is to tell a good story. But I think it’s good stories that kids respond to the most.

  

And with SUMMER OF BROKEN THINGS, the more I understood the psychological underpinnings of Avery’s and Kayla’s situations, the better I was at visualizing and telling their story.

And that’s good for everyone.

Margaret Peterson Haddix is the author of many critically and popularly acclaimed YA and middle grade novels, including the Children of Exile series, The Missing series, the Under Their Skin series, and the Shadow Children series. A graduate of Miami University (of Ohio), she worked for several years as a reporter for The Indianapolis News. She also taught at the Danville (Illinois) Area Community College. She lives with her family in Columbus, Ohio.

Follow Margaret: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

 

One (1) winner will receive a finished copy of The Summer of Broken Things
US only

I'm going to make entering this giveaway an easy one - just leave a thoughtful comment and a way to get in touch with you if you're the winner!

Blog Tour Schedule:

April 16th — BookhoundsYA

April 17th — The Book Rat

April 18th — Book Briefs

April 19th — Parajunkee

April 20th — A Dream Within a Dream

April 23rd — Crossroad Reviews

April 24th — I Am a Reader

April 25th — Page Turners

April 26th — Once Upon a Twilight

April 27th — Tales of the Ravenous Reader

Book Blast + Giveaway: The Summer of Broken Things by Margaret Peterson Haddix

The Summer of Broken Things
Author: Margaret Peterson Haddix
Release Date: April 10, 2018
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Description:

From New York Times bestselling author Margaret Peterson Haddix comes a haunting novel about friendship and what it really means to be a family in the face of lies and betrayal.

Fourteen-year-old Avery Armisted is athletic, rich, and pretty. Sixteen-year-old Kayla Butts is known as “butt-girl” at school. The two girls were friends as little kids, but that’s ancient history now. So it’s a huge surprise when Avery’s father offers to bring Kayla along on a summer trip to Spain. Avery is horrified that her father thinks he can choose her friends—and make her miss soccer camp. Kayla struggles just to imagine leaving the confines of her small town.

But in Spain, the two uncover a secret their families had hidden from both of them their entire lives. Maybe the girls can put aside their differences and work through it together. Or maybe the lies and betrayal will only push them—and their families—farther apart.

Margaret Peterson Haddix weaves together two completely separate lives in this engaging novel that explores what it really means to be a family—and what to do when it’s all falling apart.

You can purchase The Summer of Broken Things at the following Retailers:

 

 

Margaret Peterson Haddix grew up on a farm near Washington Court House, Ohio. She graduated from Miami University (of Ohio) with degrees in English/journalism, English/creative writing and history. Before her first book was published, she worked as a newspaper copy editor in Fort Wayne, Indiana; a newspaper reporter in Indianapolis; and a community college instructor and freelance writer in Danville, Illinois.

She has since written more than 40 books for kids and teens, including Running Out of Time; Double Identity; Uprising; The Always War; the Shadow Children series; the Missing series; the Children of Exile series; the Under Their Skin duology; and The Palace Chronicles. She also wrote Into the Gauntlet, the tenth book in the 39 Clues series. Her books have been honored with New York Times bestseller status, the International Reading Association’s Children’s Book Award; American Library Association Best Book and Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers notations; and numerous state reader’s choice awards. They have also been translated into more than twenty different languages.

Haddix and her husband, Doug, now live in Columbus, Ohio. They are the parents of two grown kids.

    

  (5) Winners will receive a  Copy of THE SUMMER OF BROKEN THINGS by Margaret Peterson Haddix.

Giveaway is open to International. | Must be 13+ to Enter

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Book Blast + Giveaway: Children of Refuge by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Children of Refuge (Children of Exile #2)
Author: Margaret Peterson Haddix
Release Date: September 12, 2017
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Description:

After Edwy is smuggled off to Refuge City to stay with his brother and sister, Rosi, Bobo, and Cana are stuck alone—and in danger—in Cursed Town in the thrilling follow-up to Children of Exile from New York Times bestselling author, Margaret Peterson Haddix.

It’s been barely a day since Edwy left Fredtown to be with his parents and, already, he is being sent away. He’s smuggled off to boarding school in Refuge City, where he will be with his brother and sister, who don’t even like him very much. The boarding school is nothing like the school that he knew, there’s no one around looking up to him now, and he’s still not allowed to ask questions!

Alone and confused, Edwy seeks out other children brought back from Fredtown and soon discovers that Rosi and the others—still stuck in the Cursed Town—might be in danger. Can Edwy find his way back to his friends before it’s too late?

Praise for CHILDREN OF REFUGE:

This is a topical thriller that brings heart and thought to the sci-fi genre. ―Kirkus Reviews

The plot twists are multiple, exciting, and completely logical… An excellent dystopian adventure for tweens. ―Booklist

You can purchase Children of Refuge at the following Retailers:

 

Margaret Peterson Haddix grew up on a farm near Washington Court House, Ohio. She graduated from Miami University (of Ohio) with degrees in English/journalism, English/creative writing and history. Before her first book was published, she worked as a newspaper copy editor in Fort Wayne, Indiana; a newspaper reporter in Indianapolis; and a community college instructor and freelance writer in Danville, Illinois.

She has since written more than 40 books for kids and teens, including Running Out of Time; Double Identity; Uprising; The Always War; the Shadow Children series; the Missing series; the Children of Exile series; the Under Their Skin duology; and The Palace Chronicles. She also wrote Into the Gauntlet, the tenth book in the 39 Clues series. Her books have been honored with New York Times bestseller status, the International Reading Association’s Children’s Book Award; American Library Association Best Book and Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers notations; and numerous state reader’s choice awards. They have also been translated into more than twenty different languages.

Haddix and her husband, Doug, now live in Columbus, Ohio. They are the parents of two grown kids.

    

  (15) Winners will receive a Copy of CHILDREN OF REFUGE by Margaret Peterson Haddix.

Giveaway is open to International. | Must be 13+ to Enter

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Children of Refuge Blog Tour: Guest Post + Giveaway

Welcome to Day #7 of the Children of Refuge Blog Tour!

To celebrate the release of Children of Refuge (Children of Exile #2) (9/12/17), blogs across the web are featuring exclusive content from Margaret Peterson Haddix and 10 chances to win a both books so far in the series!

Description:

After Edwy is smuggled off to Refuge City to stay with his brother and sister, Rosi, Bobo, and Cana are stuck alone—and in danger—in Cursed Town in the thrilling follow-up to Children of Exile from New York Times bestselling author, Margaret Peterson Haddix.

It’s been barely a day since Edwy left Fredtown to be with his parents and, already, he is being sent away. He’s smuggled off to boarding school in Refuge City, where he will be with his brother and sister, who don’t even like him very much. The boarding school is nothing like the school that he knew, there’s no one around looking up to him now, and he’s still not allowed to ask questions!

Alone and confused, Edwy seeks out other children brought back from Fredtown and soon discovers that Rosi and the others—still stuck in the Cursed Town—might be in danger. Can Edwy find his way back to his friends before it’s too late?

Buy: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound

Add on Goodreads

Lies

I’m a terrible liar.

That’s perhaps an odd confession for someone who writes fiction, a job many regard as basically getting paid to lie. But it’s true: Put me in a situation where all I have to do is tell a little white lie, just to spare someone’s feelings, and I usually flub up even that.

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of trying to lie, and getting caught. There was the chocolate ice cream episode when I was four or five: I begged my mother for an ice cream cone; she gave it to me; I carried it outside, took one bite, and made the startling discovery that I hated chocolate ice cream. My parents were big on the virtues of not wasting food, so I thought I’d avoid a lecture by dumping the ice cream on the ground and calling over my dog, Lassie, to eat it. And that was when I made a second unfortunate discovery: Alas, my dog hated chocolate ice cream as much as I did. She also refused to eat it.

So when my mother stepped outside and saw the ice cream melting on our gravel driveway, I tried to cover with a story about how I’d dropped the cone accidentally. It took me years to figure out how my mother knew so instantly that I was lying—why hadn’t I added some convincing tears? Why hadn’t I at least pretended to want another cone?

To this day, I don’t like chocolate ice cream, even though I love pretty much everything else in the chocolate family, and virtually any other flavor of ice cream. To me, chocolate ice cream always tastes of guilt and shame and betrayal. (Though I did quickly forgive Lassie. She was a good dog, even if she wasn’t a very helpful accomplice.)

Lying also still makes me feel terrible.

So it’s perhaps truly odd that I wrote an entire book—CHILDREN OF REFUGE—about a boy who prides himself on his ability to lie. Edwy Watanaboneset, the hero/quasi-anti-hero of this second book in the Children of Exile series, savors his reputation as “the bad kid.”

To put myself in Edwy’s place, I had to think a lot about why kids lie, and about how those reasons applied to Edwy.

I think most if not all kids experiment at some point with the kind of lie I tried to tell about the chocolate ice cream—a lie to avoid getting in trouble. Getting caught usually makes kids eventually come to the conclusion, “Oh, wait. Now I’m not just getting in trouble for my original crime—I’m also getting in trouble for lying. Maybe lying isn’t such a great idea.”

That’s the simple, moralistic view of lying. I’d guess that for most kids there’s also an element of trying to control reality, of magical thinking: if they disobey their parents, that’s bad, but if they say it didn’t happen—or happened in a totally innocent way—then maybe they can erase their crime. Maybe what they say is actually true. Can they make the world work that way? Do they have that much power, just with words?

You have to become a good liar to believe that for very long, or to have that thinking rewarded. Maybe you also have to feel either very safe in your lies or very endangered in your real life.

And Edwy has both situations. In his first home, where he’s surrounded by unconditional love and nurturing adults, his lies are mostly innocent mischief and childish tricks. But he’s smart enough to see that the adults are also all keeping major secrets from him and the other kids, and so his lies and pranks and sneakiness are also attempts at finding out the truth.

By the start of CHILDREN OF REFUGE, Edwy is no longer in a safe place, and no matter how much he wants to stay a carefree, innocent kid, he can’t ignore the dangers and deceptions around him—even as teens and adults around him try to pretend everything’s fine.

Eventually, Edwy comes to see his skill at lying as the only way to protect the people he cares about most.

I think I’m lucky that I never had to learn to lie like that.

But like Edwy—like kids everywhere trying to figure out the relationship between reality and their own words—I see power in lots of stories that aren’t technically true. I joke sometimes that being a writer means that I didn’t have to stop playing make-believe when I grew up.

But the activity many adults dismiss as “playing make-believe” can also serve as a way to see truth more clearly. Or a way to imagine and work toward a better world.

That’s the power in the best of Edwy’s lies, the ones that are told to help, not to hurt.
And while fiction isn’t lying, it can have that same kind of power, too.

CHILDREN OF REFUGE is the second book in the Children of Exile series. The first book, (also called CHILDREN OF EXILE) is newly out in paperback this month. CHILDREN OF JUBILEE, which will be the third and final book in the series, comes out in September 2018.   

Margaret Peterson Haddix grew up on a farm near Washington Court House, Ohio. She graduated from Miami University (of Ohio) with degrees in English/journalism, English/creative writing and history. Before her first book was published, she worked as a newspaper copy editor in Fort Wayne, Indiana; a newspaper reporter in Indianapolis; and a community college instructor and freelance writer in Danville, Illinois.

She has since written more than 40 books for kids and teens, including Running Out of Time; Double Identity; Uprising; The Always War; the Shadow Children series; the Missing series; the Children of Exile series; the Under Their Skin duology; and The Palace Chronicles. She also wrote Into the Gauntlet, the tenth book in the 39 Clues series. Her books have been honored with New York Times bestseller status, the International Reading Association’s Children’s Book Award; American Library Association Best Book and Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers notations; and numerous state reader’s choice awards. They have also been translated into more than twenty different languages.

Haddix and her husband, Doug, now live in Columbus, Ohio. They are the parents of two grown kids.

Follow Margaret: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

(1) set of both Children of Exile books so far (Children of Exile and Children of Refuge) - US Only!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Blog Tour Schedule:

September 11th — Living Simply
September 12th — Crossroad Reviews

September 13th— Word Spelunking
September 14th — YA Books Central

September 15th — Book Briefs

September 18th— Positively Book Crazy

September 19th — A Dream Within A Dream
September 20th — BookhoundsYA
September 21st — Parajunkee
September 22nd — The Book Cellar