Photo caption: (Left to right) Jamari Lucas and Steven Guo.
Photo caption: (Left to right) Tarahn Lee, Nicco Turner, and Malique Miller.
Kitty Felde, Southwest resident, author, playwright, and award-winning broadcast journalist, is launching an exciting new venture. The Book Club for Kids podcast on iTunes featuring students from Jefferson Academy will make its debut on July 1.
Book Club for Kids is a half-hour podcast during which young readers meet to talk about the selected book. The show includes a celebrity reading from the book and the author answering questions.
The students will discuss Beautiful Creatures, written by co-authors Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. The young adult novel, published in 2009 by Little, Brown and Company, is a tale of magic, Civil War history, and romance. It is the first book in the Caster Chronicles series. Garcia, a former teacher, will describe how her students encouraged her to write the novel that has become a New York Times best seller. DC Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton will serve as the celebrity reader.
The three-time winner of the Southern California Radio Journalist of the Year award, Kitty created Book Club for Kids in 2000, as a regular feature on the daily show she hosted called “Talk of the City” airing on Southern California Public Radio. She then expanded the show to LA36 cable television, taping at public libraries around Los Angeles. It became the centerpiece of the city’s One Book, One City program, with then-Mayor Jim Hahn of Los Angeles talking about books on stage with middle school readers at an inner-city theater. A live, on-stage version of Book Club for Kids became a regular fixture at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.
The Literacy Network of Greater Los Angeles honored Book Club for Kids with its prestigious Literacy in Media award. This summer, Book Club for Kids returns to the air as a podcast for students, teachers, parents, and librarians. The show will be available on iTunes or readers can listen online at www.bookclubforkids.org.
By: Deborah Jones Sherwood