fighting words by kimberly brubaker bradley

Read more from The Horn Book by and about Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. For more on the 2021 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards, click on the tag BGHB21. Thank you, thank you, for hearing mine.įrom the January/February 2022 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. Thank you, thank you, for hearing Della’s voice. In 2016, her children's book The War That Saved My Life received the Newbery Honor Award and was named to the Bank Street Children's Book Committee's Best Books of the Year List with an 'Outstanding Merit' distinction and won the Committee's. Awards like this one ensure that won’t happen. Kimberly Brubaker Bradley (born June 24, 1967) is an American children's and young adult book author. When I did, my greatest fear was that the gatekeepers of children’s literature - and we all know they exist - would turn Della’s story away.

It took me a very long time to find my words. I wrote the hard book I desperately needed as a child. Teachers email me, What if I have a Della in my classroom? There’s no “if.” They do. In a typical classroom of twenty-five children, that’s three girls, two boys. The best statistics we have are that by age eighteen, one in four American girls and one in six American boys will have been sexually abused. What you can’t see, what you’ll never see, are some of the other replies I received: Kim, I love you, but I can’t. You can see their generous responses on the book jacket. I begged friends to consider blurbing it: This book is a hill I will die on.

Two days later I had thirty-nine pages and was swearing to my editor that I could, in fact, turn them into a book.īut none of us knew how a story for ten-year-olds that featured sexual abuse, foster care, a suicide attempt, boys snapping bra straps, and a whole lot of lightly disguised curse words would be received. I sat at my desk shaking with helplessness and rage the first words I typed - My new tattoo is covered by a Band-Aid, but halfway through recess, the Band-Aid falls off - surprised me. I was at work on a different manuscript when yet another #MeToo story hit the media. I never expected to write Fighting Words. I am honestly so stunned and grateful for this award.

Fighting words by kimberly brubaker bradley