Young Adult & Middlegrade Fiction
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Neandergirl (YA)
Pegasus Elliot MacKenzie Publishers Ltd
On a dig in a Spanish desert, archeologist, Jennifer Moore uncovers the skeleton of a young Neanderthal, a prehistoric branch of humans that mysteriously vanished. In its hand is a bone flute. But Neanderthals were not known to create music.
40,000 years earlier, Skeetu, one of the last remaining Neanderthals, finds a flute. This leads her to a small band of Homo sapiens-our ancestors. With her Woolly Rhino, Bulo, they travel together in search of more of their kind. Saber-toothed tigers, monstrous hyenas, cave bears, wolves, and winter storms challenge their survival.
Forward to present time: Jennifer is racing backwards through her dreams; seeing through the eyes of one ancestor to the next. Could it have something to do with the flute she stole from the dig site?
Neandergirl is in essence a time travel story, joining family across the span of 40,000 years, and plays with the challenges of companionship-not between two races, but two different species of human beings.
The Giant from the Fire Sea (MG)
Illustrations Jeffrey Himmelman
Little Cricket Press (2nd edition)
2nd edition
Middlegrade Fantasy
Jat is a boy who wants more from life than collecting coal from the Fire Sea.
Newton is a misfit giant, cast out of his homeland for his "blasphemous" interest in the cosmos.
Brought together by chance, the two become the best of friends. But when enemy giants threaten to ruin everything, it's up to Jat and Newton to defend Jat’s village, leading to the journey of a lifetime.
Junior Library Guild Selection!
Cat: Fantasy/Science Fiction Middle Plus
"Giants only exist in nannytales, or so Jat thought. But when one arrives on the shore of the Fire Sea, Jat is forced to rethink his understanding of the world and how it works. Once Jat and the others in his village grow used to having a giant in their midst, they become comfortable trading chores for food. But this precarious balance between species is threatened when more giants arrive, giants who are not as reasonable as Newton. These giants not only want to (and do) eat the villagers, they also want to capture Newton and return him to their own land to be punished for daring to practice rudimentary astronomy instead of simply accepting the common thinking. An exploration of the joys and dangers of being different, the boundaries of loyalty, and the power of learning, the tale is told within a well-built world that plays gently with readers’ knowledge of fairy-tale conventions." [From Kirkus Reviews]