People who are accustomed to seeing me on Facebook, Threads, Instagram, or Bluesky may or may not have noticed my absence over the past few weeks. I’ve been having problems with my eyes due to reading on small screens, so I’ve decided to take some time off. It seems to be working, because my eyestrain headaches have disappeared.
Unfortunately, it also means that I have fallen behind (meaning gone completely AWOL) in letting people know about two timely events that involve my published books. One of them is a 60% off sale on the audiobook edition of Eyes Open, which means you can pick up the audiobook for the amazingly low price of $5.20. The sale runs until May 5, 2026, and coincides with an award won by the excellent reader of this verse novel, Soneela Nankani.
The second is an auction to raise money for the Boyds Mills (formerly Highlights) Neurodiverse Kidlit Collective Scholarship. I’ve donated a Teens4Freedom Book Bundle that includes signed copies of Gringolandia, Torch, and Eyes Open. The auction ends on April 30, 2026. Last year’s auction raised over $2,500 to send neurodivergent writers to Boyds Mills for writing workshops and retreats, and we’re hoping to match or exceed that number this year. Our goal is to help several neurodivergent writers attend an in-community retreat in August. Here’s the statement of the Neurodiverse Kidlit Collective about our mission and the goals of the auction:
We in the Neurodiverse Kidlit Collective believe we need neurodivergent stories by neurodivergent storytellers with honest, genuine first-hand experience. Our hope is to lift up and support neurodivergent storytellers, making more room for authentic stories in children’s literature, to help young readers be seen and create increased empathy and understanding by neurotypical readers.
I know that the economy is sinking and money is tight, but both the audiobook sale and the auction are ways of getting books (or in the case of the auction, manuscript critiques) at a significant discount. And in the case of the auction, you’ll be supporting a great cause.
My social media hiatus has given me the time, however, to read more books. It’s something I would recommend to everyone. Books are a lot more satisfying than doomscrolling, hustling, or dealing with the trolls and bullies on social media. Books don’t threaten, doxx, or insult, nor do they lure people into scams (or even unwise purchases). I just finished a book I’ve been meaning to read for a while, Carolina De Robertis’s The President and the Frog, and just texted my daughter to recommend it to her and her fiancé. The novel is based on the life of José Mujica, the former president of Uruguay, who was known as “the poorest president” for his humble lifestyle and his mission to use his office to benefit the people of his country and not himself. Today, that’s a refreshing concept at odds with what’s going in in the U.S. In the novel, the retired president is interviewed by a Norwegian reporter who has traveled to his small farm from the other end of the world, and he recalls the years he spent in prison, in a dirty hole in solitary confinement in the 1970s and 1980s. Without any human contact and suffering the effects of torture, the future president begins to lose his mind. He talks to the ants and spiders, and one day, a frog talks back to him. The frog encourages him to tell the stories of his childhood, his youthful decision to join the guerrilla movement, and the events leading up to his capture. He questions his turn to armed struggle and comes to realize the most important thing — the one thing that will keep him alive and sane when there is no hope of freedom for his country and release from prison for him.
Having appreciated The President and the Frog, I’m now reading De Robertis’s earlier novel Cantoras, about five queer women in Uruguay who attempt to flee the military dictatorship in the 1970s and the country’s persecution of LGBTQ+ individuals. As we’re seeing right now with Russia’s arrest of the CEO of the country’s largest publisher for keeping a LGBTQ+ book in print and the Project 2025-sponsored national book banning bill in the U.S., there’s a tight connection between authoritarianism and homophobia.
As part of my regular reviews for the Historical Novel Review, I’m in the middle of California or Dust, a middle grade novel by Mindy Nichols Wendell that portrays a family escaping the dust storms of Oklahoma and encountering prejudice when they try to rebuild their lives in a federal camp in central California in the 1930s. The book is due out in August of this year. And my forthcoming reviews for #WorldKidLit Wednesday will include Nadine Takvorian’s recently published YA graphic novel Armaveni, in which a high school student travels to Armenia and uncovers the complicated history of her family during the 1915 genocide, and Yamile Saied Mendez’s YA novel Hear Ye Mortals, set during Argentina’s Dirty War and featuring the members of a boy band who run afoul of the regime. Hear Ye Mortals will officially launch next week, but one of the perks of reviewing books is that I get to see them before everyone else does.
In any case, my eyes are recovering, and I urge everyone to reduce the social media and read books instead. There are books for every interest, so you’ll have a lot of choices. Audiobooks count too! We’ll be a lot smarter and happier for making this move.
