Eerdmans Books for Young Readers is the proud publisher of fantastic authors and illustrators. Together we have won such prestigious awards as the Batchelder and Caldecott awards, placed many books on national and state reading lists, and touched the minds and hearts of children around the world.
Find out more about these talented men and women we like to call our own.
About Our Authors and illustrators
Get to know Anne de Graaf
A committed advocate for children around the world, award-winning novelist Anne de Graaf has traveled extensively in Eastern Europe and throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa (including Liberia) researching stories about children in places of conflict and collecting quotes from children who have been traumatized by war.
It is these journeys (and the people she has met on them) that inspired Anne to write her young adult novel Son of a Gun, a simple, powerful book that tells the story of a brother and sister, eight-year-old Lucky and ten-year-old Nopi, who are kidnapped from school and forced to become child soldiers in the Liberian civil war.
Anne recalls one of her recent journeys abroad - this time to South Africa - on her blog:
"Memories lift me at the most surprising moments, like birds taking flight. Smiles on the street. The eyes of a 12-year-old I interviewed who said her dream is to get pregnant because then she will receive R200 (€20) per month. The smell of wood smoke and sewage inside a community. Air warm against my cheek while cool water caresses my ankles. Mountains rising across False Bay with a thousand shades of teal between the other side and me. The faces and voices of all those many interviews; their words still swirl though my heart. . . .
I feel . . . mixed up. Sad and relieved. Sad that so many children seem left behind. "You can't save them all." No, but I can save one. And I'll teach and write and use all the gifts I've received: listening and seeing, trying still to understand."
To find out more about Anne de Graaf, you can visit her website or blog. To learn more about Son of a Gun, click here, or check out Rachel Bomberger's review on EerdWord.
For Our Authors and Illustrators
If you already publish your children's book or young adult literature with us or are hoping to publish with us, please visit our special “For Authors” page