What is Jennifer Longo reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Jennifer Longo, author of Up to This Pointe.

Her entry begins:

The Only Child by Guojing

China's 'One Child' policy has ended, and now a generation of only children has grown up. This gorgeous book tells a story in black and white images of one Only Child, left home alone one day, who ventures out into the wintery world to find her grandmother's house. She falls into peril and is rescued by a stag who takes her on a magical journey. It is a deeply emotional exploration of loneliness, bravery, imagination and love, based on the author's experience growing up with no siblings. This book is gorgeous, but tape a pack of tissues to the bow when you wrap it. The reader...[read on]

About Up to This Pointe, from the publisher:

Harper had a plan. It went south. Hand this utterly unique contemporary YA to anyone a who loves ballet or is a little too wrapped up in their Plan A. (It’s okay to fail, people!)

Harper Scott is a dancer. She and her best friend, Kate, have one goal: becoming professional ballerinas. And Harper won’t let anything—or anyone—get in the way of The Plan, not even the boy she and Kate are both drawn to.

Harper is a Scott. She’s related to Robert Falcon Scott, the explorer who died racing Amundsen and Shackleton to the South Pole. Amundsen won because he had a plan, and Harper has always followed his model. So when Harper’s life takes an unexpected turn, she finagles (read: lies) her way to the icy dark of McMurdo Station . . . in Antarctica. Extreme, but somehow fitting—apparently she has always been in the dark, dancing on ice this whole time. And no one warned her. Not her family, not her best friend, not even the boy who has somehow found a way into her heart. It will take a visit from Shackleton’s ghost–the explorer who didn’t make it to the South Pole, but who got all of his men out alive–to teach Harper that success isn’t always what’s important, sometimes it’s more important to learn how to fail successfully.

Learn more about the book and author at Jennifer Longo's website.

The Page 69 Test: Six Feet Over It.

My Book, The Movie: Six Feet Over It.

The Page 69 Test: Up to This Pointe.

Writers Read: Jennifer Longo.

--Marshal Zeringue