AuthorFest 2022 -- Author Spotlight: Rajani LaRocca

AuthorFest is thrilled to welcome Rajani LaRocca, who will be visiting Greenwood’s 3rd and 4th grade students on Wednesday, March 23rd!

Rajani LaRocca was born in India, raised in Kentucky, and now lives in the Boston area with her wonderful family and impossibly cute dog. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, she spends her time writing novels and picture books, practicing medicine, and baking too many sweet treats. She is also the cohost of the STEM Women in KidLit Podcast. Rajani believes “that promoting diversity in children’s literature leads to empathy, and empathy makes the world a better place.”

Her middle grade novel in verse, Red, White, and Whole (Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins, 2021), has received multiple starred reviews and is a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, a Spring 2021 Indie Next Top Ten Title, a BookPage Best Middle Grade of 2021, a Washington Post  Best of 2021, a NYPL best of 2021, a SLJ Best Book of 2021, A Mighty Girl Best of 2021, a 2022 NCTE Notable Verse Novel, a Project LIT Book Club Selection, a Nerdy Book Club Award Winner, a Cybils Award Finalist, and a Notable Books for a Global Society Award Winner. It is the winner of the 2021 New England Book Award, the 2022 Walter Dean Myers Award, and a 2022 John Newbery Honor. Her middle grade debut, Midsummer’s Mayhem (Yellow Jacket/Little Bee Books, 2019), was an Indies Introduce selection, an Indie Next pick, a Kirkus Best Middle Grade Book of 2019, and a 2020 Massachusetts Book Award Honor title. Her third middle grade novel, Much Ado About Baseball (Yellow Jacket/Little Bee Books, 2021) was featured on the TODAY Show and is a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection with a Kirkus starred review. Her debut picture book, Seven Golden Rings: A Tale of Music and Math (Lee & Low), received multiple starred reviews and is the winner of the 2021 Mathical Book Prize for grades 3-5 and a Massachusetts Book Award Honor title. She is also the author of the picture books Bracelets For Brothers (Charlesbridge), Where Three Oceans Meet (Abrams), The Secret Code Inside You (Little Bee Books), I’ll Go and Come Back (Candlewick, 2022), Masala Chai, Fast and Slow (Candlewick, 2023), Your One and Only Heart (Dial, 2023), Summer Is For Cousins (Abrams, 2023), and more. 

Learn more about Rajani and her books at www.RajaniLaRocca.com.