Last night I heard from a writer in the UK who just put up a Wikipedia entry referencing Strong at the Heart and linking to this site. Thank you, Tony! His Wikipidia entry Pedophilia and Child Sexual Abuse in Fiction is an excellent descriptive overview of literature--mostly in English--that deals in one way or another...On a personal note...
Well, this is cool. I have an email from FSG, my publisher, that Strong at the Heart was chosen as a Skipping Stone Honor Book. Every year this multicultural children's magazine choses roughly ten books to honor and Strong at the Heart is one of them this year. The links aren't up yet, and I don't have more information, but when I do I'll post it here. Yesterday's event in Cambridge went so well despite the PowerPoint projector not . . .
Hip Librarian has a five star review of Strong at the Heart up on their website. Nice! Readers from SNAP keep coming (see below for post on Jonathan, a SNAP member featured in Strong at the Heart). I also heard from Catherine Atkins, author of When Jeff Comes Home, which was inspired by the Steve Stayner case here in California. Her book is currently being challenged in Texas. . .
Last weekend, this site was linked to the homepage for SNAP (Survivor's Network of those Abuse by Priests) and included in their on-line bookstore. Thank you, Phil! There's been a lot of traffic from the SNAP site. So I want to let you know that SNAP plays an important role in the second chapter of Strong at the Heart which is an interview with Jonathan, the teen with the double earrings in the slide show above. Since I haven't yet (sorry!) posted parts of his story on the interview page, I'll give you a taste of his chapter here. When I met Jonathan, he was seventeen years old . . .
I've just read two books for teen readers that portray very different experiences of sexual assault through the eyes of boys. Target, by Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson, is about a boy named Grady who is the victim of a gang rape. The second book is Inexcusable, by Chris Lynch, which came out the week before Strong at the Heart. Inexcusable is told in the voice of high school senior, athlete, and self proclaimed "good guy" who rapes his date on the night of the prom. Surprised? Young adult literature is taking some interesting turns. . .