Middle School is Hell with Kate Milford, Rebecca Stead, and Mariko Tamaki

A great rule of thumb is to never trust someone who enjoyed Middle School. It's a miserable time for any halfway-decent human, that murky area between being a kid and being a teenager, between Charlotte's Web and The Outsiders, between elementary and high school. 

The right books can be the key to surviving these years of purgatory, but writing for the 11-14 year old set poses its a very unique set of hurdles. Join three authors who are up for the challenge in conversation about the not-so-wonder(ful) years and the books that can help kids get out (relatively) unscathed. We are thrilled to have Nancy Paulsen, President & Publisher of Nancy Paulsen Books at Penguin Young Readers, moderating this discussion. 

Kate Milford  is the author of The Boneshaker, The Broken Lands, The Kairos Mechanism, Bluecrowne and, most recently, Greenglass House, winner of the 2015 Edgar Award for Young Readers. She has written for stage and screen and is a regular travel columnist at www.nagspeake.com. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. To find out more about Kate and her work, visit www.clockworkfoundry.com.

Rebecca Stead has written four novels for children: When You Reach Me (A New York Times bestseller and winner of the Newbery Medal and the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for Fiction); Liar & Spy (Winner of the Guardian Prize for Children's Fiction and a New York Times Book Review Notable Book for Children); First Light (a Junior Library Guild Selection and a New York Public Library Best Book for Teens); and, most recently, Goodbye Stranger. Rebecca lives in New York City with her family.

Mariko Tamaki's works include the comics This One Summer (First Second/Groundwood Books), Skim (Groundwood Books), with Jillian Tamaki, Emiko Superstar (DC Comics), with Steve Rolston, and the YA novel (You) Set Me on Fire (Penguin Canada). Her upcoming YA novel, Saving Montgomery Sole (Roaring Brook Press), is about unsolved mysteries, California and frozen yogurt.