Ted Sanders | The Children’s Book Review | April 20, 2016
Ted Sanders’ Selfie with The Keepers: The Harp and the Ravenvine
Ted Sanders’ Shelfie
I collect children’s books, some of which you can see here, including a few of my very favorites—Watership Down, The Westing Game, and The Golden Compass. A few of the books on these shelves are from my childhood, like that very battered collection of Winnie the Pooh on the top right. What you can’t see are the three shelves below, which are all filled with picture books. I love picture books, and we have a few hundred of them, plus lots of prints hanging around the house from some of my favorite illustrators.
Something most readers don’t know about me is that I like to draw and paint as much as I like to read and write. When my son, Rowan, was very small, I made him a hand-painted set of alphabet blocks. The four blocks on the lower shelf are a part of this set—they feature a number of different animals all painted to the same scale. If you rotate the blocks, you can see a couple of whales, a giant squid, and pteranodon. Here you can also see the bottom of a giant redwood tree. I haven’t had much time to paint recently, since I’m busy writing the next book in the Keepers series, but I’d like to get back into making more blocks some day.
The Keepers: The Harp and the Ravenvine
Written by Ted Sanders
Publisher’s Synopsis: IN THE WORLD OF THE KEEPERS, IT’S BEST NOT TO SPEAK IN TERMS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE.
Horace F. Andrews, Keeper of the fabled Box of Promises, knows that nothing is impossible. After all, he has the ability to see into the future, and his friend Chloe can walk through walls. But before either of them can master their Tan’ji–their talismans of power–a new threat looms over all Keepers, and they must prepare to battle their eternal enemies–the Riven.
Far away, drawn by an irresistible summons, a mysterious girl is making her way to the Warren, the Keeper stronghold. She wears the Ravenvine and is learning to wield its fascinating power; but this Tan’ji is damaged. There’s no telling what will happen to the instrument or its Keeper if it cannot be made whole again. April’s journey is long and dangerous, with strange new companions at her side and a pack of sinister hunters tracking her. Will she reach the Warren in time, and is it a safe haven, or will it offer only more danger?
Ted Sanders’s magical series began with The Box and the Dragonfly and continues with this powerful sequel that expands the extraordinary world of the Keepers, where nothing is ever ordinary and three words rule: Curiosity. Discovery. Possibility.
Ages 8-12 | Publisher: HarperCollins | 2016 | ISBN-13: 978-0062275851
Add this book to your collection: The Keepers: The Harp and the Ravenvine
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About Ted Sanders
Ted Sanders is the author of the short-story collection No Animals We Could Name, winner of the 2011 Bakeless Prize for fiction. His stories and essays have appeared in publications such as the Georgia Review, the Gettysburg Review, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories anthology. A recipient of a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts literature fellowship, he lives with his family in Urbana, Illinois, and teaches at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Box and the Dragonfly was his first book for younger readers. You can visit him online at www.tedsanders.net.
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