Why did Weis want to leave? Her work at the company transformed her from a book editor to a New York Times-bestselling author. Margaret Weis said that the success of Dragonlance, “changed my life,” because it allowed her to leave TSR.

It was a fate that would also befall Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. It happened to Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax. So New York Times-bestselling authors and pioneering game designers would be discovered, nurtured, and then allowed to leave the company. Once these worlds were created, management's attitude seemed to be that these great minds could be replaced with cheaper labor. Yet it was less than careful about retaining them. It went to great lengths to find creative souls to employ.

The company knew it needed brilliant minds to do this work. Her books include Jumped, Every Time a Rainbow Dies, and One Crazy Summer, which won the Coretta Scott King award in 2011.TSR was a company that discovered geniuses, and paid them to create worlds for the rest of us to live in. Rita Williams-Garcia is an award-winning writer of books for young readers, and is known for her realistic portrayal of teens of color. Margi also writes plays, hikes, skis, paddles, or sits quietly with a book in her lap. Margi Preus writes books for young people, including the novels Shadow on the Mountain and Heart of a Samurai, a 2011 Newbery Honor book and featured by NPR's Backseat Book Club. Her most recent novel is the New York Times bestseller A Long Walk to Water. Linda Sue Park is the author of many books for young readers, including A Single Shard, winner of the 2002 Newbery Medal, and two books in 'The 39 Clues' series.

She has worked for Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C., and currently serves as the chair of the Children and YA Author Recruitment Committee for the Gaithersburg Book Festival in Gaithersburg, Md. Gussie Lewis is an independent bookseller focusing on childrens' and YA titles. He reviews children's books for School Library Journal and writes about all things children's literature on his blog, 100 Scope Notes. Travis Jonker is the elementary school librarian for Wayland Union Schools in Wayland, Mich. His first novel, The School for Good and Evil, debuted on the New York Times Bestseller List and is currently being adapted into a film by Universal Pictures. Soman Chainani wrote his graduate thesis on why evil women make irresistible fairy-tale villains. (Here's a printable version of the list, too.) And if your favorite book is missing, please tell us about it - nicely! - in the comments. So if you're looking for a new book for the young readers in your life - or you want to relive that age yourself - please stick around and browse our bookshelf. There are animal stories, pioneer sagas, science-fiction adventures and, of course, beloved classics. So we turned to our expert panel (read more about them - and their Newbery honors! - here), who combined audience favorites with their own choices to come up with a curated list of 100 must-reads.Īnd our final Backseat Book Club list has a little bit of everything: tales of trying to fit in, escaping to magical lands, facing prejudice, coming of age and fighting to survive. More than 2,000 of you replied, giving us hundreds and hundreds of titles to consider. As we enter the last stretch of summer before school starts again, we present our big annual book list - and this year, we're focusing on great reads for kids.īack in June, NPR's Backseat Book Club - our book club for young readers - asked you, the NPR audience, to nominate your favorite books for kids age 9-14.

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