Cathy Camper
Cathy Camper is the author of Lowriders in Space, Lowriders to the Center of the Earth, Lowriders Blast from the Past, and Lowriders to the Rescue, (May 2022) all from Chronicle Books. She won the 2022 CSD Lampman Award, for her significant contribution to the children of Oregon as both a librarian and an author. Her picture book Ten Ways to Hear Snow (Dial/Penguin/Kokila) is the winner of the 2021 Burr/Worzalla Award, for Wisconsin Children’s books, and was selected to be included in Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Kokila also published a Spanish edition of the book in November 2022. Her 2022 picture book Arab Arab All Year Long (Candlewick), won the Arab American Book Award for Children in 2023. She also wrote Bugs Before Time: Prehistoric Insects and Their Relatives (Simon & Schuster). Her zines include Sugar Needle and The Lou Reeder, and she’s a founding member of the Portland Women of Color zine collective. An Arab American, Cathy is a former board member of the Arab literary journal Mizna. She was the Graphic novel Editor and reviewed graphic novels and comics for Lambda Literary from 2010-2019. Cathy is a librarian and lives in Portland, Oregon. Cathy is represented by Jennifer Laughran of Andrea Brown Literary Agency.
A generous and helpful introduction to the richness and variety of what it means to be Arab that will have readers comparing and contrasting scenes with their own family activities.
—School Library Journal (starred review)
Camper offers 12 charming glimpses into the experience of being Arab in the diaspora, organized across the months of the year and accompanied by heartwarming, loose-lined digital illustrations.
—Kirkus Reviews
A detailed patchwork of representative food, clothing, music, celebration, art, and history, the sum of which gives a joyfully round impression of the richness and diversity found within Arab culture. . . . A lovely tribute to an underrepresented ethnic group.
—Booklist
"A warm, comforting story with a wintry backdrop... A fine selection for teachers requesting picture books on the senses and a natural for reading aloud before the season’s first snowfall." --Booklist, starred review.
"Not since Ezra Jack Keats in Snowy Day and Karen Gundersheimer in Happy Winter has snow been so lovingly depicted, in a counting game for children in all seasons." --School Library Journal
"Readers will savor this calm, kind, and loving moment between a granddaughter and her grandma." --Kirkus Reviews
"Just right for winter reading." --Publishers Weekly
"Forges new ways to think about intergenerational, intercultural connections." --Horn Book
This cries out for a choral performance of the snow sounds, and it might prompt librarians to bring out Perkins’ classic Snow Music." --BCCB
