Making All Kind of Good Waves
Guest post by Kerry O’Malley Cerra for Lerner Publishing Group, 2024 Platinum Sponsor
Making All Kinds of Good Waves
I’m thrilled to reveal the cover of Make a Little Wave (Carolrhoda Books, Lerner Publishing) here on Read Your World. One of the most exciting parts of the publishing process is seeing a book’s cover for the first time. And the moment I saw this gorgeous art from Ash Roy, I fell in love. Isn’t it wonderful?
I can only imagine how hard it must be for an illustrator to capture the essence of an entire book in one cover, so I try to keep my expectations low when I first look at sketches for my books. But in this case, Ash nailed it, and I’m incredibly grateful.
Make a Little Wave is the story of twelve-year-old Sav—our deaf main character who hears with the help of two cochlear implants—who moves with her family from Orlando to a town in South Florida just before school starts. There, all the kids hang out on the beach each day. Sav is terrified of the ocean, not only because of sharks, but also because she fears the darkness underneath the surface. Light makes her feel safe. She can count on it to help her navigate a world where her hearing loss limits her. Being underwater, where she can’t see and can’t hear, is a giant no-go for Sav, so she struggles to fit in.
When her friendly classmate Tanner invites her to the opening of his family’s new restaurant on the beach, Sav is excited—until she’s served a bowl of shark fin soup. Making the soup involves “finning,” an inhumane method of killing sharks. When Tanner’s family brushes off her concerns, Sav knows it’s up to her to convince them to stop. However, the more passionate she becomes, the less anyone seems to listen.
After butting heads with her friends and family about her increasingly reckless methods of activism, Sav’s ready to quit. But then she learns her state senator is planning to vote against a bill that would ban finning statewide. Sav realizes she needs to raise her voice in a way that will truly help the sharks. A snorkel trip with some lemon sharks in the ocean, which isn’t so dark after all, helps Sav figure out how to make a little wave.
I can’t possibly be more excited for you all to meet my accidental activist, Sav. I hope you love the cover as much as I do. You can preorder the book now anywhere books are sold, and look for it to be delivered on October 1, 2024. Until then, I’ll just be over here swooning.
Download the discussion guide here.
BIO:
Kerry O’Malley Cerra is an award-winning author of middle grade books. Her first novel, Just a Drop of Water, landed on five state reading lists, won the Crystal Kite Award, a Florida Book Award, and was named to VOYA’s Top Shelf Fiction list for 2014. Her second novel, Hear Me, is out now. Stay tuned for her forthcoming books, Make a Little Wave, (Oct. 1, 2024 from Carolrhoda Books, Lerner Publishing) and a nonfiction picture book, The Gallaudet Eleven: The Story of NASA’s Deaf Bioastronauts (March 2026 from Little, Brown BFYR). Kerry’s work has received praise from The New York Times, Kirkus, School Library Journal, Booklist, VOYA, and the Horn Book Guide calling her stories moving, perceptive, well-developed, and woven with an expert hand. Kerry, a former high school media specialist and social studies teacher, lives in South Florida with her husband and two poorly behaved rescue dogs.
Learn more about her and her books by visiting www.kerryomalleycerra.com
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Photo Credit: Nova Southeastern University Oceanographic Center
Part of shark conservation involves studying sharks and their habits. This photo was taken on a NSU research vessel where I participated in a shark tagging expedition off the coast of Florida. This nurse shark is completely fine! It was worked up (we took a fin clip, muscle sample, blood work, and measurements then attached a tag to its dorsal fin) by experts and safely released all in a matter of minutes.
