Eight Books That Made Me

Librarian Natalie McCall chats with debut author Ryan Douglass. Ryan’s book, The Taking of Jake Livingston, is about a teenage boy who has to deal with ghosts and racism at his mostly white college prep school. It’s a horror coming-of-age story that offers both scares and the exploration of real-world issues. Natalie and Ryan talk about what it’s like being horror-loving chi

Librarian Natalie McCall chats with New York Times bestselling author Aisha Saeed. Saeed has written books for both teens (Written In the Stars, Yes No Maybe So) and children (Amal Unbound, Bilal Cooks Daal). She has also contributed essays and short stories in various collections (Hope Nation, Our Stories, Our Voices, Once Upon An Eid). Natalie and Aisha talk about rewriting Goldi

Librarian Natalie McCall chats with Jasmine Warga. Warga is the author of the New York Times bestseller Other Words For Home. Other Words For Home earned multiple awards, including a John Newbery Honor. She is also the author of young adult books, My Heart and Other Black Holes and Here We Are Now, which have been translated into over twenty different languages. The Shape of Thunde

Librarian Natalie McCall chats with Justina Ireland, author of fantasy novels for young adults including the New York Times bestseller, Dread Nation (a genre-bending historical novel featuring finishing school zombie slayers). Justina also writes for the Star Wars franchise, including the books Lando’s Luck, Spark of the Resistance, and A Test of Courage. Her middle grade novel O

Librarian Natalie McCall chats with Brandy Colbert, award-winning author of books for children and teens (The Voting Booth, Little & Lion, The Revolution of Birdie Randolph, Finding Yvonne, Pointe, The Only Black Girls In Town). Brandy was born and raised in the Ozarks (Springfield, Missouri!) and has a degree in journalism. She is on faculty at Hamline University’s MFA program i

Librarian Natalie McCall talks with Kim Johnson, author of This Is My America, a thrilling mystery that explores racial injustice and the American justice system (think The Hate U Give meets Just Mercy). Kim was active in social justice as a teen and college student and now mentors student activists and leaders in her role as a college administrator. Natalie and Kim talked mysterie

Librarian Natalie McCall talks with Christina Hammonds Reed, author of the New York Times best-seller, The Black Kids. This extraordinary coming-of-age novel explores race, class, and violence through the eyes of a wealthy, black teenage girl in Los Angeles during the 1992 Rodney King Riots. Beautifully written and thoughtful, the novel also sheds light on modern day America and Bl

Librarian Natalie McCall talks with Nina LaCour, the bestselling and Michael L. Printz Award-winning author of four critically acclaimed young adult novels: We Are Okay, Hold Still, The Disenchantments, and Everything Leads to You. Born and raised in the East Bay, Nina received her undergraduate degree from San Francisco State University and an MFA in Creative Writing at Mills Coll

Librarian Natalie McCall talks with Grant Faulkner, Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month and co-founder of 100 Word Story. He has two books on writing: Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Prompts to Boost Your Creative Mojo and Brave the Page, a writing guide for teens. In November 2019, Faulkner gave a talk at the Mill Valley Public Library about the creative bene

Librarian Natalie McCall chats with Traci Chee, New York Times bestselling author of the Reader trilogy (an imaginative fantasy with suspense, magic, and mysterious objects called books). Her historical novel, We Are Not Free (about four San Francisco teens forced into Japanese Internment camps during World War II) will be released in June 2020. The two book obsessives talk about h