(DLA Las Piñas HS LRC) April Author of the Month - Maureen Johnson

Maureen Johnson is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling American author of several YA novels including 13 Little Blue Envelopes, Suite Scarlett series, The Name of the Star, and Shades of London series. She has also done collaborative works such as Let It Snow (with John Green and Lauren Myracle), and The Bane Chronicles (with Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan).

She was born an only child in Pennsylvania. Maureen admits to always being one of those reading and writing kids. After a little dalliance with astronomy (as she had a glow in the dark star chart) and archaeology (she had a little shovel), she declared her intention to become a writer at the age of eight or nine or so.

Even though Maureen isn't Catholic, she attended an all-girl Catholic prep high school. She graduated from the University of Delaware a writing major but spent most of her time working on shows.

After college, Maureen became the literary manager of a wonderful but now defunct Philadelphia theater company. Soon after that, she moved to New York to study theatrical dramaturgy and writing at Columbia University School of the Arts. As a graduate student, Maureen held at least a dozen different jobs to pay her way through school. She spends most of her time writing books. Maureen has been nominated for an Edgar Award and the Andre Norton Award. Her books appear frequently on YALSA and state awards lists.

In 2012, she was crowned QUEEN OF TEEN in the UK and reigned until 2014. In addition to writing books, Maureen was also a scriptwriter for the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince handheld video games. She is also the chair of the Lit Track of GeekyCon. Time Magazine has named Maureen one of the top 140 people to follow on Twitter (@maureenjohnson). She lives in New York.

(DLA Las Piñas GS LRC) April Book of the Month - Where Is The Cake?

A stimulating look-and-find book originally published in Dutch as Waar is de Taart? told entirely through pictures by award-winning 82-year-old Netherlands-based children's book illustrator T. T. (Thé Tjong) Khing with new endearingly comical story lines to follow and items to discover in each browsing. It's a puzzle, a maze—and so much more! The beautiful watercolor pages make for a perfect backseat activity while encouraging lateral thinking and optical awareness at the same time.

Mr. and Mrs. Dog’s mouthwatering cake is mysteriously stolen from a table outside their house by two very odd creatures! But that’s just the beginning...

As they chase the thieves through a variety of landscapes, one calamitous event after another ensues. Baby Bunny loses her toy., mischievous monkeys take Miss Cat’s hat, and Little Piglet goes astray.

Readers must track the mischievous marsupials and, of course, the cake which looks as if it has been lost forever.

While it is important especially for young readers to read books with rhyming words to practice vocabulary, wordless picture books cannot be overlooked to allow some room for story development and narrative creativity with a blank canvas and your own choice of words. The art is fun and very hip but the best thing is that they expose kids to major time shifts in stories before they can even get their hands on Geronimo Stilton or The Hunger Games.

Astonishingly clever and filled with genius wit, it's meant for fans of Where’s Waldo? and similar works. A companion picture book called Where Is the Cake Now? by the same author follows its beloved groundbreaking predecessor and is also told entirely in detailed illustrations brimming with wordless whimsical characters. These two will probably make you look forward to more books from the author in the future.

(DLA Las Piñas HS LRC) April Book of the Month - The Improbable Theory of Ana and Zak

Can uptight and laid-back co-exist? This Stonewall Book Award-winning author Brian Katcher's hilarious he said/she said romance about two teens discovering themselves on an out-of-this-world accidental first date is perfect for fans of The Big Bang Theory, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, and Rainbow Rowell's work. The book quite possibly has the most improbable (as promised) plot someone could've come up with but somehow, it works.

It all begins when type-A Ana Watson's brother, Clayton, ditches the quiz bowl semifinals to run wild at the Washingcon sci-fi convention on what should have been a normal, résumé-building high school trip.

If slacker Zak Duquette hadn't talked up the geek fan fest so much, maybe Clayton wouldn't have broken the rules or jeopardized Ana's last shot at freedom from her uptight parents.

Now, teaming up with Zak is the only way for Ana to chase down Clayton in the sea of Star Wars, zombies, bikini-clad princesses, card games, and Smurfs before morning comes. Zak learns he may have more in common with Ana than she thinks in spite of his devil-may-care attitude.

They certainly don't expect the long, crazy night which starts as a nerdfighter manhunt to transform into so much more... On the surface, it's a lighthearted and entertaining romp but serious undertones explore the fractured side of parent-child relationships and misfits desperate to find a tribe. Heavy on clichés from the opposites-attract protagonists to the utterly predictable points, the book will sometimes feel more like a screenplay treatment than a novel.

Even so, teenagers will relate to the quirky and funny characters featured in alternating narrations with perfect comic timing and outrageous twists. It's geeky, silly, and makes no sense at times but every moment is enjoyable. The Improbable Theory of Ana and Zak is partly a coming-of-age story which will show you that there are always two sides to a story and that first-impressions aren’t always intended to stay because everyone has more to them than who they appear.

(DLA Las Piñas GS LRC) April Author of the Month - Patricia MacLachlan

Patricia "Patty" MacLachlan was born March 3, 1938 on the wide-open Wyoming prairie although she has lived in Massachusetts most of her life and carries a small bag of prairie dirt with her wherever she goes to this day as a reminder of what she knew first. This love comes through strongly in the 1986 Newbery Medal-winning novel Sarah, Plain and Tall and its sequel, Skylark, as does another of her loves — the sea.

After spending a few years in Minnesota, Patty traveled to the East Coast to attend the University of Connecticut. She subsequently married psychologist Robert MacLachlan and had three kids.

Even if Patty didn't officially put pen to paper until around the age of thirty-five--after her children were all in school--her childhood was heavily populated with stories and storybook characters. Her parents, she writes, invited her into books. It’s no wonder then that she grew up to become one of today’s most respected children’s authors of many timeless novels for young readers and many beloved picture books, many of which she co-wrote with her daughter, Emily.

She says that young people who want to be writers should be readers first. Patty recommends writing every day, even when you don't want to. "The more you do it, the stronger you get at it…. But I don't love to do it every day. Children are really interested to hear that I don't love to write every day because neither do they, so we have something in common but it does help you tell your story in a more efficient way."

Patty loves writing for children because of their openness and the comments she gets from her young readers either in letters or during her visits to classrooms. Patty is a board member of the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance (a national not-for-profit that actively advocates for literacy, literature, and libraries). She lives with her husband and two border terriers in western Massachusetts.