Ellen Klages at Peru State College

Ellen Klages visited Peru State College on Thursday, October 7, and Friday, October 8.

She read in the CAATS Conference Room at 11:00-11:30+ on Thursday. Ellen also visited at 2:00 Dr. Holtz's Appreciation of Literature class in Hoyt 105.

And on Friday, Ellen talked with my College 101 students in TJM 326 from 11:00-11;50 about White Sands, Red Menace, the novel about the V-2 rocket and related events that students in the class read.

As these three events underscored, Ellen Klages is both a remarkable person and an engaging, hilarious, serious, and exciting speaker.

Oh, Ellen also loves toys!

I posted photographs of Ellen's visit, which includes a visit to Brownville and a stay at the Riverboat Inn, along with a trip to Seward to attend the Plum Creek Literacy Festival at Concordia University.''

While at the literacy festival, I had the pleasure of watching Sarah Weeks' program and look forward to reading So B. It and the excellent, honest, and hilarious picture book, Sophie Peterman Tells the Truth; Sarah has published some fifty books.

I took special delight from listening to Ashley Bryan, the famous illustrator of children's books. Wow. I loved his readings from The Sun Is So Quiet, a book that features not only his beautiful illustrations but also the moving poetry of Nikki Giovanni.

And I also look forward to reading Beautiful Blackbird, Bryan's illustrated telling of an African folktale--the book earned many awards, including the Coretta Scott King Award.


And on You Tube, you will find a short video of Ellen's reading "Ringing up Baby," a wonderful and humorous satire on, among other things, genetic engineering. You will also enjoy Ellen's reading from the final pages of The Green Grass Sea.

And for more about Ellen Klages, read the following material and follow the links.

As Ellen's web page notes, she visited Nebraska last year, for her award-winning novel, Green Glass Sea, was chosen 2009's One Book for Nebraska Kids. This novel won many awards, including the prestigious won the 2007 Scott O'Dell Award for historical fiction.



You will find a ton of interesting information about Ellen on the internet, including this article from a 2007 article in Locus Magazine.

Ellen's collection of fantasy and science fiction stories, Portable Childhoods, includes the short story that became the novel of the same name, "The Green Glass Sea"; I remember listening to Ellen read this beautiful narrative at WisCon quite a few years ago.

Ellen is a fixture at WisCon, the World's Leading Feminist Science Fiction Conference, at which she was the Guest of Honor in 2009. As Ellen notes on her web page, "she serves on the Motherboard of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, and is somewhat notorious as the auctioneer/entertainment for the Tiptree auctions at Wiscon."

Ellen's numerous and varied publications include the Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated stories "Time Gypsy" and "Flying Over Water." These stories are collected in Portable Childhoods along with Ellen's Nebula Award winner for Best Novelette (2005), "Basement Magic."

This year, my College 101 class--for History, Social Sciences, and Literature majors--reads the sequel to The Green Glass Sea, White Sands, Red Menace, the 2009 California Book Awards
Gold Medal Winner - YA.