The Texas Book Festival is celebrating 15 years of excellence in gathering outstanding authors in Austin each year to read, discuss and meet with audiences. This year is no different. Here is a sampling of some reviews of major authors who will appear at the Festival this weekend, Oct. 16-17.
CHILDREN'S
Released: June 1, 2010
"A beautiful and engaging debut novel. (author's note, tortilla recipe, glossary) (Fiction. 8-12)"
Twelve-year-old Izzy Roybal, who loves writing stories, is reluctant to spend the summer in a small village in the New Mexican desert, where she was born.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: May 1, 2010
"Clarkson's evocative illustrations bathe each scene in a soft light that accentuates the warmth of the family's love. (author's note) (Picture book/biography. 5-10)"
A grandmother's life story centers this welcome depiction of a contemporary Choctaw family.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: April 1, 2010
"It's hard to choose; both are winners. (Picture book. 3-6)"
With two boys at a toy chest, one clutching a shark and the other a train, thus begins the most unlikeliest of competitions.
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NONFICTION
Released: Oct. 1, 2001
"The pleasures here are in the slow accretion of detail--albeit too many details on occasion--and awareness that allows O'Neill to create an abiding image of a two places during a moment in history."
An unwieldy family memoir that also yields some choice scenes, centering on a brace of grandfathers interned for suspected enemy sympathies, from novelist O'Neill (
This Is the Life, 1991).
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