Mitali Perkins launches Bamboo People at Porter Square Books

On August 19th Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, hosted the launch party for Mitali Perkins' new book Bamboo People.

Here is video of Mitali reading from Bamboo People:



A huge thank you to everyone at Porter Square Books, especially Nathan who took such good care of us and made this event so great.

If you went and enjoyed the delicious appetizers, please note that this came from YoMa restaurant on North Beacon Street in Allston. They specialize in traditional Burmese recipes. Awesome.

Here are some pictures from the event:


Mitali discusses the background of Bamboo People.















Mitali and some young fans.















Mitali signs a copy of Bamboo People for a young fan.











Sharing a story with a young reader.













Mitali and a few Charlesbridgians.
From left to right: Sarah, Gina, Lili, and Mitali.












Mitali and Deborah Sloane.













Mitali shares a copy of Bamboo People with Nathan, of Porter Square Books.

ALA Midwinter in Boston

Don't call it Beantown. It's "America's Walking City" and it is our understanding that on Saturday, January 15th, you could walk around town quite comfortably during our January thaw. We wouldn't know. We were tucked away underground in the Boston Convention Center (the fairly new big boy of convention centers), enjoying the warmth of librarians.

While it may have been 40 degrees outside, it was hot in the aisles. And it was wicked hot ("wicked" is a popular word in New England that means "really, really"), at the Charlesbridge booth with authors like Mitali Perkins and Lynn Plourde signing.

At left is a photo of Mitali signing copies of the ARC of her upcoming novel, Bamboo People (July 2010). Notice Angus Killick and friends hovering Zelig-like for photo ops.

(Photo from American Libraries Photostream)



But the most exciting part of all -- as always -- was Monday morning and the awards announcements. This year Charlesbridge got to scream real loud (just like on Pee Wee's Playhouse). The Day-Glo Brothers by Chris Barton and illustrated by Tony Persiani, was named a Sibert Honor Book. Fantastic to be in our own backyard and to be able to have people in the hall to holler (despite the now-bad weather) because it's just sad when it's just the two of you. And what a great dollop of cream filling for a cupcake of a year for that most awesome of books.

Speaking of cupcakes... whenever anything remotely good happens at Charlesbridge -- a book wins a major award, someone has a baby, a brand new episode of Lost -- the staff at the Bridge tends to celebrate. Never met an office-full of people so ready to stop, drop, and gather in the conference room for some chips and dip. Or, in this case, Day-Glo cupcakes. With champagne (surprisingly not a bad combo). There was orange juice for mimosas for those that don't like their alcohol straight up first thing in the morning. We're "rock stars", not rock stars.
(Don't they look disgusting and possibly toxic? But, Duncan Hines! Don't mess with perfection)







Look at them all ogling those tasty cakes. Wait, now, everybody. You'll be told when you can dig in.








At left, the creative team, who put the "day" in Day-Glo. The uncreative team toddled off to seek out more cerebral pursuits.










And MORE good news! The Importance of Wingsby Robin Friedman is the WINNER of the Sydney Taylor Book Award. Congratulations, Robin! Well-deserved.

"Friedman does an exquisite job in bringing the two older girls to life" - Booklist

"[A] voice that is both sardonic and sincere..."
- Kirkus Reviews

"...middle school angst, first crushes, and the importance of finding one’s own wings." - School Library Journal

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Find out more about The Day-Glo Brothers and The Importance of Wings at www.charlesbridge.com.

Mitali Perkins takes us home

In February 2007, Mitali Perkins wrote the following story in her blog. We are glad to re-post it here and share this story of going home. Please feel free to comment or tell us a story about your own home and family.

Pub Date: In Search Of My Mothers' Gardens

It's 1996. I'm returning to our ancestral property in Bangladesh fifty-some years after my Hindu parents fled during the war. The Muslim man who lives there now looks suspicious as I approach, and I don't blame him. After all, my ancestors hated his with a passion, and I suspect the feeling was mutual. As we begin speaking, though, two white doves fly down and perch over the entrance to the house where my father was born. They stay during my entire visit, even while I go inside to chat, laugh, and share tea with the women and girls. (If you think I'm drifting from the genre of blogging into fiction, check out the photo I took that day.)

Today, as we send Rickshaw Girl out like one of those doves, I think of my tiny paternal grandmother who raised nine children on that jute farm. Barely educated herself, she made sure my father had a hot meal of rice and fish and lentils after his long walk from school, and enough kerosene in the lamp to do his homework. I think of my maternal great-grandmother, forced to marry my great-grandfather when she was nine and he was eighteen. (If you're curious about their post-nuptial details, you'll have to wait for The Secret Keeper/Asha Means Hope. But do some math in the meantime: her youngest child was a dozen years younger than my mother.)

The novelist and poet Alice Walker remembered the women who came before her in a famous 1974 essay called In Search of Our Mother's Gardens: The Creativity of Black Women in the South:

In the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., there hangs a quilt unlike any other in the world. In fanciful, inspired, and yet simple and identifiable figures, it portrays the story of the Crucifixion. It is considered rare, beyond price. Though it follows no known pattern of quiltmaking, and though it is made of bits and pieces of worthless rags, it is obviously the work of a person of powerful imagination and deep spiritual feeling. Below this quilt I saw a note that says it was made by "an anonymous Black woman in Alabama, a hundred years ago." If we could locate this "anonymous" Black woman, she would turn out to be one of our grandmothers - an artist who left her mark in the only materials she could afford, and in the only medium her position in society allowed her to use.

Were there any storytellers among the "anonymous" grandmothers who lived centuries before me in Bangladesh? Any painters? Musicians? Rickshaw Girl is for them. And for girls throughout rural Bangladesh today, unknown to us but full of heart and dreams, like Naima in my story.

Reprinted with permission. Visit Mitali Perkins online at Mitali's Fire Escape.