Leaving Home as a Rite of Passage April 25, 2007

April 25 | Leaving Home as a Rite of Passage

Where: Small Press Center: 20 West 44th St.
What time: 6–7:30 p.m.

With Neil Gaiman, Isabel Hoving, Janne Teller, Markus Zusak; moderated by Robert Lipsyte

Free and open to the public. No reservations.
Co-sponsored by the PEN Children’s/Young Adult Book Authors Committee

Creators of a variety of works for young people discuss the way they treat the universal theme of striking out on one’s own for the first time. In Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, a little girl leaves her ordinary life behind only to find she’d rather go back. Markus Zusak was inspired to write The Book Thief by stories of the childhood homes of his parents in Munich and Vienna during the Second World War. The characters in Isabel Hoving’s The Dream Merchant are lured into another reality by an international corporation intent on cornering the market on the past. Beginning with a boy who leaves school to go sit in a plum tree, Nothing, by Janne Teller, recounts the quest of a group of schoolchildren for the meaning of life. They’ll be guided by award-winning children’s book author Robert Lipsyte.

Official Website: http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/1320/prmID/1376