This month our Selective Collective book was “Loud Awake and Lost” by Adele Griffin. It’s our turn to highlight our selection’s author, so we’re sharing information about her and her work. Many thanks to Random House for sending us copies of the book to review!
According to her website, Adele Griffin is a two-time National Book Award Finalist and highly acclaimed author of numerous books for Young Adult and middle grade readers. Her works include Sons of Liberty and Where I Want to Be, as well as the popular Witch Twins and Vampire Island series. Her most recent thriller Loud Awake and Lost was released on Nov. 12 from Knopf.
Adele lives with her husband, Erich their two young children, and their dog, Edith, in Brooklyn, New York.
Several of Griffin’s books have been the recipients of some notable awards and honors:
- 2005 Where I Want to Be: National Book Award finalist, Kirkus Best Book, ALA Best Book
- 2002 Amandine: Publishers Weekly Best Book, ALA Best Book
- 2001 Hannah Divided: Booklist Editor’s Choice
- 1998 The Other Shepards: SLJ Best Book, ALA Notable Book and ALA Best Book, Publishers Weekly Best Book
- 1997 Sons of Liberty: National Book Award Finalist, ALA Best Book
Recently Griffin participated in a Q&A on Random Buzzers where she answered questions from readers. It’s worth checking out to learn more about this prolific author. One particular reader asked her what the inspiration for this story was and she answered by saying:
One was my motorcycle boots.
I love these boots. They are all really old, all banged up, ugly-beautiful– and they deserved a mystery slash romance.
Second was my brother Robert. He was hit by a car when he was 12 years old and he almost died. I was 14.
Ember’s memory loss, her trauma, and her recovery were based on my memory of that time
She further elaborated when asked a similar question by a different reader by stating:
I have a clear point of inspiration on this book– my brother Robert.
He was hit by a car while crossing the street. He was 12 and he should have died. Instead, he was in a coma, then it took him months to rehabilitate. He had lost a lot of his memory of the weeks before the accident. It was like a file had been deleted in his brain.
So I thought– what if I had a character suffer this accident, but something really BIG had happened to her in those weeks before? What then?
Griffin has a diverse body of work, and we hope to add some of her other books to our must-read list in 2014. If you’d like to win a copy of Loud Awake and Lost, enter our Rafflecopter form below!
Make sure to check out everyone else in the Selective Collective’s features!
Brittany @ The Book Addict’s Guide | Page to Screen
Tammy @ YA Crush | Essential Memory Loss Stories
Candice @ The Grown-Up YA | Roundtable Discussion
Daphne & Kristina @ Gone Pecan | Book Review
Ohhhh that’s so interesting! I had no idea her brother inspired this story. Wow, what a story and what a powerful thing to inspire a book! Very cool. I loved hearing more about the inspiration!
I love amnesia books!
After reading about this book over on I immediately went to my library website to see if they have it on order (which they do, yeah!) and saw they have other books by Adele so I’ve ordered a couple of them in too!