BOOKS

The Crepe Makers' Bond, the highly anticipated sequel to Discovering Pig Magic, was published by Milkweed Editions in May 2011. This second installment of the “Pig Magic Trilogy” chronicles Ariel, Mattie and Nicki's final year in junior high. Just when the girls think their lives have finally settled down, Mattie finds out she has to move away. The girls devise a plan to keep the three friends from being separated, but it backfires horribly. Narrated by Ariel, who is outspoken, funny, and totally obsessed with cooking, The Crepe Makers' Bond explores the true heart of friendship, in all its fragility. The Crepe Makers' Bond garnered a Kirkus starred review, and was named to Book Expo America’s Top 26 for 2011. It also found favor with positive reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kliatt, Booklist and Barnes and Noble, among others. It is available on Amazon.com.

Accolades

Kirkus Starred Review

The Crepe Makers' Bond

The Crepe Makers' Bond: "Funny, self-aware 14-year-old Ariel "find[s] making fantastic food gives me sanity" in this highly entertaining and multilayered sequel to Discovering Pig Magic (2008). She lives in Alameda, Calif. (a suburb of San Francisco), in a close-knit family whose house is "generally kind of messy, usually loud, and frequently crowded." Ariel is grateful to face the first day of eighth grade with her two best friends, M and Nicki, and her "Too Cool for School Cucumber Salad," but nothing can prepare her for how the day unfolds—at the end of it, M calls sobbing with the news that she and her recovering agoraphobic mother may be moving 360 miles north to Crescent City, Calif. The girls come up with a plan that goes dramatically awry. Crabtree is particularly adept at capturing the emotional life of teens. The ease with which she weaves Ariel's clear (and fabulous) recipes and passion for cooking into this story about how even close friends can change unexpectedly is equally impressive. Though very much a work of fiction, it's also an inspiring introduction into how a young chef thinks, and it does in fact include interesting and helpful cooking tips. Creative and refreshing like a good soufflé, this perceptive, heartfelt narrative nevertheless has real meat on its bones." (recipe index, glossary, selected sources).
Kirkus reviews

Winner of the 2008 Milkweed Prize for Children's Literature

Discovering Pig Magic

Discovering Pig Magic is about secrets and power and love and fear, and about defying other people's expectations to become the person you want to grow up to be. Both comic and serious, this promising debut appeals to lovers of magic as its engaging trio of characters learns to sort faith from fake.”

- Julie Schumacher, author of several books, including The Book of One Hundred Truths.

Discovering Pig Magic was also named a "Debut to Watch" by Publishers Weekly.

After reading Discovering Pig Magic, the editors of the American Library Association's Knowledge Quest magazine for 2008-2009 chose Julie to write a column - An In-Depth Analysis of Modern Academic Honesty: The Sparkly Princess Poo Theory - Published in Knowledge Quest magazine vol. #37, issue #3: January/February 2009.

Discovering Pig Magic has been selected for the Accelerated Reader Program. You can learn more about grade level, Quiz Availability and more here.


Reviews

Discovering Pig Magic

Kirkus Review - "First-person narrator Mattie, just 13, and her closest friends Ariel and Nicki find themselves trying to negotiate the wide chasm between childhood and adolescence with a bit of magic. Each girl has a worry, from Mattie’s mother’s agoraphobia to Nicki’s baby brother’s defective chromosome syndrome and Ariel’s worry over a plagiarized, contest-winning recipe. Their ritual burying of important small objects (a pig figurine from Mattie’s collection, Ariel’s antique spoon, Nicki’s doll) is meant to free them from their worries and solve their problems, but as events progress their fears seem to multiply. In the end it’s clear that the greatest power the girls have is their friendship for each other and their growing insight into what they can and can’t control. Crabtree's portrayals both of the charm and power of friendship and of the internal emotional life of a young teen are deft and complex, and her confident pacing never drags. (Fiction. 10-14)"

Minneapolis Star Tribune - "Life is not going as planned for 13-year-old Mattie, and there's just one thing to do. She and her two closest friends gather for a secret burial ritual, purging themselves by tossing prized objects into the earth. But the plan fails. Life gets grittier. Only by digging deep into herself will Mattie find her way out. Despite tough themes, including a mother hooked on computer games to mask a painfully evident depression, Discovering Pig Magic, winner of the 2008 Milkweed Prize for Children's Literature, is a steady, sweet and quiet book, full of humanity."

Writer's Block Reviews

KLIATT Reviews of Selected Books

The Buffalo News Review

Flamingnet New Book Reviews

Barnes & Noble Review

Feminist Review

Flamingnet Young Adult Book Blog

In the News

Julie will be a featured presenter at this year’s North Coast Writer’s Conference in Northern California, September 20-21, 2013 http://www.ncrwc.org

Northeast Middle School in Minneapolis reacts to Julie's author visit.

Julie featured in The Daily Triplicate, the local newspaper of Crescent City, California.

Article from the Sierra Star, a newspaper in Julie's hometown, Oakhurst, California.

Available Now!

The Crepe Makers' Bond and Discovering Pig Magic are widely available everywhere books are sold in both hardback and soft cover. Visit your local bookstore, www.amazon.com or www.milkweed.org to order either book.

© 2013 Julie Crabtree