Children's Literature Celebration

Suzanne Fisher Staples (South Asia)
Bibliography

Suzanne Fisher Staples is a novelist who writes for young adults and lives in Tennessee. Among her novels is the 1989 Newbery Award winning Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind. In this deeply affecting novel set in present-day Pakistan, Suzanne has created a beautiful portrait of a spirited young heroine who must balance her own desires against her obligations to her family and to centuries of tradition. Suzanne used her first-hand experience to write the stories; from 1985 to 1988, she had the opportunity to live on and off with a nomadic tribe in the Cholistan Desert in Pakistan, a predominantly Muslim country. Suzanne's experiences eventually found their way into her two novels, SHABANU and HAVELI. Selected Publications: Shiva's Fire (2000); Haveli (1993); Dangerous Skies (1996).
For more information on Suzanne go to: http://www.suzannefisherstaples.com

Tololwa Mollel (Africa)
Bibliography

A Tanzanian-born storyteller and author of over fifteen published and forthcoming children's books. He worked as an actor and university theatre instructor in Tanzania and Canada, and as a writer-in-residence for the Edmonton Public Library. Tololwa is presently adapting one of his children's stories into a play for a Theatre Company in Edmonton, and conducting research into the use of song in stories and storytelling. He
was educated in Tanzania and Canada. He and his wife and two sons live in
Edmonton. Selected Publications: Song Bird (1999); Kitoto the Mighty (1998); Kele's Secret (1997); Rhinos for Lunch and Elephants for Supper (1992); The Orphan Boy (1990).

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Kyoko Mori (Japanese)
Bibliography

A Japanese-American poet, novelist, and nonfiction writer, Mori was raised in Kobe, Japan, and, inspired by her mother and grandfather, began to write in both Japanese and English at an early age. At age 12, Mori was devastated when her mother committed suicide. She moved to the United States four years later to attend college, receiving her bachelor's degree from Rockford College and a master's and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. Her first novel for young adults, Shizuko's Daughter (1993), was followed by a collection of poetry, Fallout (1994). In Mori's well-received memoir The Dream of Water (1995), she travels back to Kobe to make peace with her mother's suicide and to visit the family she left behind. That same year she published her second young adult novel, One Bird (1995). Polite Lies, essays about her life as a Japanese American woman in the Midwest, was published in 1998. Stone Field, True Arrow (2000) marks her first book of adult fiction and relates the story a middle-aged woman's awakening after her father dies in Japan.

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Ibtisam Barakat (Middle East)
Bibliography

Ibtisam S. Barakat is a Palestinian-American writer, poet and educator. Her work centers on healing the hurts of racism, sexism, and the oppression of young people. Ibtisam was a delegate to the United Nation's conference on the elimination of racism, which was held in Durban, South Africa, August 2001. She leads Write Your Life seminars and speaks frequently on using personal narrative and literature to repair social relationships, and toward the collective authoring of a world fully welcoming to everyone. Recently, Ibtisam was interviewed at NPR's Talk of The Nation, and sponsored by the Harvard-based Arab Educational Forum, she led writing workshops for young people and educators in Morocco. Selected Publications: "The Second Day" in Shattered, Ed. Jennifer Armstrong (2002); "Marked for Destruction", in Why Do They Hate Me: Young Lives Caught in War & Conflict, Ed. L. Holliday (1999); "Beating a Bully", in 25 Read-Aloud Stories For Teaching Powerful Writing (2001); "The Home Within", reprint, in The Flag of Childhood, Ed. Naomi Shihab-Nye (2002).