Thanks to a joyful visit from author Karina Yan Glaser, the library’s Middle School Author Series is BACK in person! Our reading series brings popular authors to speak to middle schoolers, but a pandemic pause meant we hadn’t hosted an in-person author for more than two years. Then, on the morning of November 15, fourth and fifth graders streamed into the second-floor lobby to listen to Glaser, the author of the wonderful new novel A Duet for Home and the beloved Vanderbeekers series, dispense writing tips, describe her inspirations, and answer thoughtful questions from students. (Question: “Did you know the Vanderbeekers would be a series when you were writing the first book?” Answer: No!) Glaser told the group that she is now putting the final touches on the seventh and final book in the Vanderbeekers series, which chronicles the adventures of a big family living in a brownstone in Harlem (where Glaser actually lives with her husband, kids, and many pets). She also shared that she had been working on A Duet for Home for more than a decade before it was published this year and that seeds for the book, the dual-perspective story of two children living in a Bronx homeless shelter, were planted when she herself worked for an agency serving homeless families. Glaser’s books, always wildly popular in the library, are now absolutely flying off the shelves.
