A monthly series including news about an Arkansas book, author, event, or item of literary interest to Arkansans.
By Erin Wood
Conway resident and Arkansas native Katy S. Duffield is, incredibly, the award-winning author of more than forty children’s books.
On February 3, Start Your Engines will be released from Sourcebooks/Jaberwocky, with words by Duffield and illustrations by Chiara Galletti.
In Start Your Engines, Frankie the ATV loves to zoom up rocky hills and down bumpy ramps with the other four-wheelers. On the day the book is set, Frankie’s friend Pipsqueak is racing for the first time. Not far from the finish line, Pip gets “bad-luck STUCK.” Will Frankie stop to help a friend when his own victory is in sight?
Duffield’s love of writing began with a love of reading. “In fact,” says Duffield, “when I was in second grade, I decided that I’d read every single book in the library.” As a writer, she began with articles in children’s magazines such as Highlights, Hopscotch, and Cricket, and then grew into a children’s book author with books by numerous publishers, including Simon & Schuster.
Though Start Your Engine and other books she’s written are fiction, her nonfiction includes works on sugar gliders, jellyfish, an albino gorilla, the history of the golf ball, and many other topics.
Her favorite part of the process? Revision. “When I revise,” she says, “I can take that fizzling, sputtering splat of a mess and turn it into something lovely and fun and sometimes (but not always) pretty darn good.”
Duffield also enjoys doing school visits and book talks, including those about the craft of writing. To learn more and discover all her books, visit katyduffield.com.
Hot Springs native Erin Wood is a writer, editor, and publisher in Little Rock. She owns and runs etaliapress.com. Wood is the author of “Women Make Arkansas: Conversations With 50 Creatives” (2019) and editor of and a contributor to “Scars: An Anthology” (2015).
{Additional book reviews by Erin Wood can be found on our website at TheSpringsMagazine.com/AR Books.}
