Beach Reads

I met Sharon Draper in 2003 when I was the senior librarian in charge of organizing the Teen Read Week author visit for the Hillsborough County library system. More than 500 students came to hear the young-adult author speak about her popular Tears of a Tiger trilogy. She was a success, and the teens were thrilled to meet her, but as she was signing books for the students, she passed out. Seriously, she passed out. We called an ambulance, but she refused medical attention. "I'm fine," she said. "Let's go to lunch." We did, and she passed out, again and again. Draper did not want to go to a strange doctor; she just wanted to go back to Ohio. We somehow got her on a plane. The diagnosis? Oh, just appendicitis. "That's one of my favorite stories to tell, and I embellish it every time I tell it," Draper said when I spoke with her again, exactly three years after that incident. Her latest book, Copper Sun, is about the African slave trade. The fifteen-year-old protagonist, Amari, is taken from her village and sold to a plantation owner in the Carolinas.

So, was that your strangest book tour experience?

The time that I had to be rushed by ambulance back to the airport with acute appendicitis? Yes. I really didn't think it was something that needed surgery. My doctor said I was an idiot: "You got on a plane? Your appendix could have burst!"

But that wasn't the worst experience. The very worst was a school visit. It was on October 31. It was Halloween and all of the kids were dressed up. This was high school, and even the teachers were dressed. The principal met me at the door in a pink tutu — and it was a man, hairy chest and all. The kids were high on candy, it was homecoming, there was a pep rally, a homecoming game after that, and then the dance. A kid said to me: "You'd better talk fast, 'cause as soon as the pep rally starts, we're leaving." More than half the kids hadn't heard of me, and none of them had read my books.

Who is your audience in Miami, and what is your previous Miami experience?

Back when Copper Sun came out, I went on my first and only book [store] tour. The bookstores brought in scores and scores of high school and middle school students. There were excited teachers, excited kids. Of all of the cities I went to, Miami was the best. Miami is so huge and so spread out and diverse that's it is hard to get a feel of my audience, but I know that there is interest there. — Lyssa Oberkreser

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Into Africa
Melissa Fay Greene, There Is No Me Without You: One Women's Odyssey to Rescue Africa's Orphans
Saturday, November 18, 11:30 a.m., Room 7128 (Bldg. 7, 1st Fl.)

Journalist and author Melissa Fay Greene says she never quite recovered from her 2001 trip to Ethiopia, where she witnessed firsthand the magnitude of the AIDS pandemic. Though originally commissioned by the New York Times to write an article about the plight of Africa's 12 million AIDS orphans, her research evolved into a book, There Is No Me Without You. In an attempt to put a face on the estimated 25 million people with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, Greene tells the true story of one woman, Haregewoin Teferra, an Ethiopian who turned her home into a makeshift orphanage to care for hundreds of children whose parents fell victim to AIDS-related illnesses. Weaving harrowing tales within a historical framework that traces the history of AIDS in Africa, Greene brings to life the predicament of a continent battling a crisis of staggering proportion.

Why Ethiopia?

My husband and I have four children, and when they began leaving home, we decided to adopt, and Africa was being called a continent of orphans.... I saw these lively, affectionate, playful children, and I realized the same fate awaited all of them — they were all going to die. The whole continent had been written off, and all these people were considered dead — they just happened to still be walking around.

How well has the book been received?

There was a tremendous reaction to the story I did for the New York Times, but within mainstream American media, the book reviews have been mixed.

Describe one of your most memorable book tour experiences.

Some of the most ridiculous and most offensive things have come in online. I did a Q&A discussion on Salon.com, and one person wrote, "AIDS in Africa is overrated." — Joanne Green

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Moral Mystery
Joseph Kanon, The Good German
Saturday, November 18, 3:30 p.m., Auditorium (Bldg. 1, 2nd Fl.)