When she enters her country’s most beloved baking competition, Shauna Wickle’s goal is to delight the judges, charm the nation, and make a few friends along the way. But when a fellow contestant is poisoned, it falls to her to apprehend the culprit while avoiding premature elimination from the UK Bakery Tent…and being the poisoner’s next victim!
When an uptight and unpopular contestant in the UK Bakery Tent ends up in intensive care can amateur baker (& sleuth) Shauna Wickle unmask the culprit and prevent rising temperatures in the tent from causing the entire show to melt down.
Gently poking fun at one of Britain’s remaining cultural institutions and those that participate in it, The Great British Bump Off is a joy to read again and again. Fans of Agatha Christie will notice nods to the Queen of Crime’s novels and lovers of The Great British Bake Off will recognize the tropes and types that have become synonymous with the show.
Will Shauna and her friends be safe from elimination long enough to unmask the culprit, are the contestants safe or will the poisoner strike again before filming wraps on the latest season of UK Bakery Tent?
Written by John Allison and illustrated by Max Sarin, better known for their collaboration on the award winning series Giant Days, their latest series, is a gingham-wrapped murder mystery set under the canvas of Britain’s favourite baking show.
A groundbreaking and must-read young adult fiction anthology written by adoptees of all backgrounds, for adoptees, that inclusively represents diverse experiences of youth adoptees, edited by award-winning authors Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung. Includes a letter from the editors as well as a foreword by Rebecca Carroll and an afterword by JaeRan Kim.
Two teens take the stage and find their voice . . .
A girl learns about her heritage and begins to find her community . . .
A sister is haunted by the ghosts of loved ones lost . . .
There is no universal adoption experience, and no two adoptees have the same story. This anthology for teens edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung contains a wide range of powerful, poignant, and evocative stories in a variety of genres.
These tales from fifteen bestselling, acclaimed, and emerging adoptee authors genuinely and authentically reflect the complexity, breadth, and depth of adoptee experiences.
This groundbreaking collection centers what it’s like growing up as an adoptee. These are stories by adoptees, for adoptees, reclaiming their own narratives.
With stories by: Kelley Baker, Nicole Chung, Shannon Gibney, Mark Oshiro, MeMe Collier, Susan Harness, Meredith Ireland, Mariama J. Lockington, Lisa Nopachai, Stefany Valentine, Matthew Salesses, Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, Eric Smith, Jenny Heijun Wills, Sun Yung Shin.
Foreword by Rebecca Carroll. Afterword by Jae Ran Kim, MSW, PhD
Today we have a guest post from one of the editors of this new anthology, Shannon Gibney:
It is a very strange thing to never see yourself represented, and then when you do, to not even recognize yourself.
And yet, this is often the experience of the more than five million American adoptees, and millions more around the globe.
Don’t get me wrong: adoptees and “orphans” are well-represented in American popular culture – especially in KidLit. From Harry Potter to Loki to Peter Parker, adoptees are imbued with magic powers, enact elaborate schemes to seek revenge, and generally misunderstood by all the “normal” non-orphans and non-adoptees around them. Our lack of an origin story is seen as a mysterious advantage, something that not only sets us apart from mundane others, but also conveys a sense of specialness, an ethos that something else of consequence (not just to us, but the world) is buried and waiting to be uncovered.
In real life, of course, things are different.
We feel strange in a culture that so deeply values at least the appearance of a seamless individual or family history, not having any. And as a result of this condition, we are unable to prepare for or even acknowledge any troubling health issues (such as breast cancer in my family) that may be hereditary.
If we are transracially adopted, that is, a BIPOC child adopted into a white family, we may keenly feel the loss of not just our first family and community, but also our culture and racial identity.
All of these losses are rarely if ever present in mainstream narratives of adoption – whether they are imaginary or real. Adoption is presented as an uncomplicated and beneficent act on the part of the adopters, and the positives that adoptees gain (economic mobility, educational stability, etc.) are seen to eclipse any possible negatives.
And of course, this is because the vast majority of these stories are written by non- adoptees. They are written by people who have never felt strange in their own bodies because they don’t look like anyone in their family/school/town. They are penned by people who never had to process the loss of a first mother’s embrace as a baby, the lack of that primary first attachment present in every cell of their body.
Historically, these stories have been written by white adoptive parents, either intentionally or not intentionally putting forth a very different view of the adoptee experience, occupying a very different location in the adoption triad. But lately, many of these stories are being written by non-adopted BIPOC writers, many of whom use troubling tropes of adoption as shorthand (this character is mentally ill because of adoption; due to her blackness in this white family, this secondary character demonstrates the cluelessness of the white protagonists; etc.).
When this is the territory of adoptee stories, as it has been for generations, it becomes clear why it is absolutely necessary for adoptees to write our own. And why a book like When We Become Ours, the first anthology of stories by adoptees about adoptees, is resonating so deeply with adoptee readers and allies.
Edited by myself and Nicole Chung, this collection features sci-fi, fantasy, horror, straight literary, and even graphic stories from fifteen of the best adoptee writers today. Our writers are straight and queer; youngish, oldish, and middleish; cis-gender and gender queer; Black, Korean American, mixed, Latina, Chinese American, Taiwanese American, and Native American; and hail from all over North America and the world (we have one contributor who is Canadian, and another who lives in New Zealand). Their stories are as broad and inclusive as their experiences. And as adoptees, they each have an embodied understanding of living as an adoptee in a world that has little idea what this is actually like.
All of this turns out to be very important, in terms of how readers engage with the stories. Although the book has only been out for two months, the response from adoptee communities has been overwhelming. I had one Chinese American adoptee tell me she never expected to see herself in her favorite genre: sci-fi. She called the experience, “mind-blowing.” A group of transracial adoptees at the same event told me that although they appreciated the honesty and craftsmanship of many adoptee memoirs, the emotional rawness of this genre was just too close. But in the imaginative realms of short stories by and about adoptees, they could confront some difficult truths of their lives far more easily.
We are in an era of incredible adoptee-authored cultural output, and I am here for all of it. Adoptees telling our own stories, on our own terms, in our own voices is transforming inner and outer landscapes: our own, and those of the people we love.
Adoption — the institution, and the stories we tell about it – will never be the same.
Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, and activist in Minneapolis. Her newest book is When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology (HarperTeen, 2023), co-edited with Nicole Chung.
It is a widely-shared belief that Public Libraries are one of the greatest things that society has come up with. For well over a century they have grown and evolved as places that are safe for all segments of society to use and see themselves reflected in the collections and made to feel welcome.
I am a believer in the potential of Public Libraries and a lifer in the service (30 years as student volunteer and library professional this year). However I do not believe that they are an eternally safe and secure space. Over the decades I have seen libraries under threat from those who should be supporting and defending them. I have seen branches crumble and fall, shedding staff like trees dropping leaves in the fall.
As much as many Public Library workers attempt to live up to the publicly stated ethos and values of the profession, Libraries have always been controlled by local government, through the boards that oversee the rules and regulations that govern how libraries are managed and run, and, if right wing individuals gain control of these boards they can negatively affect the services that libraries offer.
You can read previous articles I have written about this subject here:
It can’t be up to Library Workers alone to make sure that Libraries live up to their potential of being safe and open to all.
Gaza’s libraries have been destroyed over the course of the last several months of bombing. The Edward Said Public Libraries, the first English-language libraries in the region, have been at risk for months and require support for their continued existence.
During this virtual event, free to attend and streaming on YouTube, preeminent writers will offer short readings in a show of solidarity with the literary and reading communities of Palestine, and a confirmation of the vital nature of literature and access to written culture.
