Happy New Year to our MUF community. We all wish you a peaceful, purposeful, and productive 2021. To our writers, teachers, librarians, and parents, we applaud your resilience and thank you for your commitment to creativity, learning, books, and children. We are grateful for your work and for your support of our blog, and we’re excited to share more middle-grade book joy in the coming year.
Happy Chanukah (or Hanukkah) to all of our Mixed-Up Files friends who celebrate! We love this time of year when social media is filled with pictures of delicious sufganiyot and beautiful candles in the menorah. (Yesterday, a friend posted her creation: sushi in the shape of a menorah. Brilliant.)
Hanukkah’s eight-day celebration commemorates the rededication of the Temple of Jerusalem after the Maccabees recaptured it from the Greeks in the 2nd century BCE. It’s also about the miracle of the oil, and how just a tiny bit lasted for eight days.
I think we can all use the inspiration of that triumph and that magic right now, no matter what holidays we celebrate.
If you’re searching for gifts, look no further than this list of terrific books written by Jewish authors. Adding on to that list, don’t forget A Place at the Table, by Laura Shovan and Saadiya Faruqi.
As we (finally) see the shining light of a new year on our horizon, it’s time to welcome the launch of a Native focused imprint: Heartdrum. The HarperCollins initiative will publish only Native creators and will be led by award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee Creek), and Rosemary Brosnan, Vice President, Editorial Director, HarperCollins Children’s Books.
Beginning in January, their launch list includes Ancestor Approved, an anthology of stories that take place at an intertribal powwow, edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith, and The Sea in Winter by Christine Day (Upper Skagit).
For more about Heartdrum, read our upcoming December 9 interview with Cynthia Leitich Smith, in our new series We Need Diverse MG (WNDMG)
Artwork by Aixa Perz-Prado
