Why do we love old stories enough to come back to them, time and time again? Join a panel of diverse children’s authors and Social Impact Fellow Julia Paré for an interactive discussion on the power of myth, creative reworking, and folklore. Authors will share selections from their work and discuss their process and inspiration when making new books out of old stories. Julia Paré will be moderating this panel. She will be in discussion with Dr. Anne Chassagnol, a professor at Paris VIII, whose work on fairy tales examines their significance for audiences through time; Tom Pollock, author of the Skyscraper Throne trilogy, which reworked Roman notions of local divinities; Shana Targosz, whose novel The Underwild: River of Spirits is heavily inspired by Greek mythology; and Tracey Baptiste, whose Jumbies trilogy draws on Caribbean folklore.

About the moderator: Julia Paré will be moderating this panel as part of a Social Impact Fellowship through Princeton University’s partnership with the American Library. Julia Paré holds a BA in Classics from the Macaulay Honors College at Brooklyn College (CUNY) and an MA in Classics from the University of Arizona were she wrote a thesis analyzing Euripides’ Hecuba through the lens of trauma studies. After this brief sojourn in the desert,  she returned to Brooklyn, where she taught middle school Latin before joining the Classics department at Princeton in 2021.

About Shana Targosz: Shana Targosz is the New York Times bestselling author of The Underwild: River of Spirits. She writes about magical girls, budding friendships, ghosts who may or may not be friendly, and fiercely-held hope. Shana is an Oregon Literary Arts Fellow and the 2021 recipient of the Edna L. Holmes Fellowship for Young Readers.

About Tom Pollock: Tom Pollock is the award-winning author of White Rabbit, Red Wolf, Heartstream and The Skyscraper Throne trilogy. His non-fiction has appeared in The Guardian and The Independent. He lives in London, in a flat full of books, cats and chocolate.

About Anne Chassagnol: Anne Chassagnol is a lecturer at Universite Paris-8. She is particularly interested in children’s and Young Adult literature. She is the author of La Renaissance féérique à l’époque victorienne (The Fairy Renaissance in the Victorian Age: Tales and Pictures), among other works.

About Tracey Baptiste: Tracey Baptiste is a New York Times bestselling author, best known for the creepy Caribbean Jumbies trilogy. She is also the author of Minecraft: The Crash, African Icons: Ten People Who Shaped History, and the graphic nonfiction Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin: Civil Rights Heroes. She is a former elementary school teacher, curriculum designer, and editor.

This event is part of the ‘Ways of Seeing’ series, which explores how literature and visual art inspire each other, and invites audiences to uncover connections between different perspectives and media.