Monday, July 15, 2013

What is Ann Bonwill reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Ann Bonwill, author of When Mermaids Sleep.

Part of her entry:
When it comes to fiction reading, the common core of my favorite books is a fully realized world. Whether it's the fantastic and wholly imagined world of Hogwarts or the Irish friend next door world of Maeve Binchy, if a book transports me to a new place or allows me to see a familiar place in a new way, then I am a happy reader. For this reason I find myself drawn to books with strong settings. There's nothing like feeling the chill of the Alaskan frontier with Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child or the heat of Hell in Laini Taylor's Lips Touch: Three Times. I can picture the stark white hives of the afterlife in Lenore Appelhans's Level Two and could probably build the cereal box garden in Joan Aiken's Armitage family stories. In each of these books I'm not just reading about a place - I am there.

This summer I have read several such books, and coincidentally they all involve islands. Perhaps my sub-consious book chooser is recalling my childhood summers in Maine, where islands were just a low tide away. Though I can't be there in person this year, these books have led me there all the same.

I just finished The Scorpio Races, by Maggie Stiefvater. Although her...[read on]
About When Mermaids Sleep, from the publisher:
In this beautifully lyrical bedtime picture book, young readers will be whisked to a land where mermaids sleep and pirates snore; where fairies slumber on flower petals and a giant's sleepy sighs make the valleys rumble. Featuring dream-like illustrations by Society of Illustrators Gold Medal recipients Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher, When Mermaids Sleep is an ideal addition to the bedtime canon.
Learn more about the book and author at Ann Bonwill's website.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Ann Bonwill and Arthur.

Writers Read: Ann Bonwill.

--Marshal Zeringue