Newbery Reader’s Theater

For those of us who grew up feeding our brains a steady diet of great young-adult literature, the four writers who Minnesota Public Radio is bringing together at the Fitz are the hidden heroines whose stories and characters transported us to places both comfortingly familiar and refreshingly new. Between the four (Sharon Creech, Kate DiCamillo, Karen Hesse, and Katherine Paterson), they have been awarded no less than eight Newbery Awards or Honors. They write about death, sibling rivalry, illness, fitting in, hope, music, love, family, history, journeys, abandonment, tradition, and mice. In sum, they write about everything that is important to young, and even some old, readers, and in the process lead them toward great adult literature. The shiny embossed medal stamped on the cover of their books attract young readers like a raccoon to a shiny object, and are reminiscent of the moral compass that their stories build inside us.
Sun., Oct. 14, 2 p.m., 2007