Being Brave in the Face of Danger

Jennifer A. Nielsen is the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling Ascendance Trilogy: The False Prince, The Runaway King, and The Shadow Throne. She has also written The Underworld Chronicles, a humorous middle-grade fantasy series. In her latest middle grade thriller, A Night Divided (Scholastic Press) a girl must escape to freedom after the Berlin Wall divides her family between east and west. With the rise of the Berlin Wall, twelve-year-old Gerta finds her family suddenly divided. She, her mother, and her brother Fritz live on the eastern side, controlled by the Soviets. Her father and middle brother, who had gone west in search of work, cannot return home. One day, while on her way to school, Gerta spots her father on a viewing platform on the western side, pantomiming a peculiar dance. Then, when she receives a mysterious drawing, Gerta concludes that her father wants Gerta and Fritz to tunnel beneath the wall, out of East Berlin. However, if they are caught, the consequences will be deadly. No one can be trusted. Will Gerta and her family find their way to freedom?

Margi Preus is the author of the acclaimed novels West of the Moon, Heart of a Samurai, and Shadow on the Mountain. She also writes and co-writes plays, sketches, and adaptations for theater. The Bamboo Sword (Amulet Books) is her latest novel.  Set in 1853 in Japan, this novel follows Yoshi, a Japanese boy who dreams of someday becoming a samurai, despite his birth to the servant class. He is taken up by Manjiro, the protagonist of Preus’s Heart of a Samurai, and becomes his servant and secret watchdog. Meanwhile, Commodore Matthew Perry and his USS Susquehanna squadron of steamships arrive in Edo Bay demanding “diplomatically” that Japan open its ports to foreign trade. Aboard the commodore’s flagship is a cabin boy, Jack, who becomes separated from his American companions while on shore. When he and Yoshi cross paths, they set out on a grand adventure to get Jack back to his ship before he is discovered by the shogun’s samurai.