GOING OVER is a YA Reads for Teachers (And Any Other Adults)

We all know how Beth feels about categories. About books being books, read without prejudice.

And so I was so very happy to hear from Rory, who leads the YA Reads for Teachers (And Any Other Adults) program on Goodreads, and to learn that Going Over will be the discussion book throughout the month of June.

Chronicle contributed 15 books through a giveaway for this program (thank you, Chronicle and Stephanie Wong). Those of you who wish to participate in the conversation should follow this link to learn about the program in general, and about the Going Over discussion.

Rory and YA Reads for Teachers (And Any Other Adults), I again thank you.

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The GOING OVER Teacher's Discussion Guide

Like talented elves secreted away in a very special place, the Chronicle team has been at work on the Common Core Aligned Teacher's Guide for GOING OVER.

When Stephanie Wong sent me the document yesterday afternoon, I nearly fell over. It is so thoughtful, so remarkably thorough, so interesting, so well done that I could barely contain my joy. They asked for nothing from me. They, in fact, surprised me. And it's perfect.

Check out Tamra Tuller's clever tagline: A wall divides them, their love unites them.

This guide will be shared with teachers at the NCTE/ALAN conference I'll be attending next week in Boston. And I'm free to share it here on my blog. Should you know of teachers who might be interested in teaching a book about Berlin, divisions, war, love, and a certain question about the "guest" workers of Turkey who came to help a tattered country survive, please share this with them.

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"This is perhaps the most exciting thing I have ever mailed you,"

 

writes Tamra Tuller.

And, indeed, it is.

What gorgeous (GORGEOUS) work Tamra Tuller and Chronicle Books have done on behalf of Going Over. Look at the neon pop of green. Look at the stenciled Ada, my heroine, who was inspired by one of Chronicle's own (look at the second picture; do you see the likeness?). Look at the boy and how he jumps. Look at the graffiti grit.

Sometimes everything is just right.

This is one of these times.

All love to Tamra Tuller, my editor, to whom this book is dedicated. All love to Jennifer Tolo Pierce, the designer who gorgeous-fied this book—inside and out. And all love to Ginee Seo, Lara Starr, Stephanie Wong, and Amber Morley of Chronicle Books.

It is a privilege.

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Going Over: The Berlin Book Cover Reveal

This is one of the most spectacular book covers I've ever seen.

How amazing, therefore, that it will now be associated with a book I wrote—a book that had its beginnings in a trip I took to Berlin and in a conversation I had with the ever-dear Tamra Tuller.

I have Tamra, my editor, to whom this book is dedicated, to thank for seeing this cover through. I have Ginee Seo, Lara Starr, Stephanie Wong, and the entire Chronicle team—for their great enthusiasm and care. And for this gorgeous, thoughtful, it-says-it-all imagery, I have Jennifer Tolo Pierce, the director of design at Chronicle. Jennifer, this is perfection.

This, then, is Going Over, due out from Chronicle next April 1st. I so eagerly anticipate this release.

It is February 1983, and Berlin is a divided city—a miles-long barricade separating east from west. But the city isn’t the only thing that is divided. Ada, almost 16, lives with her mother and grandmother among the rebels, punkers, and immigrants of Kreuzberg, just west of the wall. Stefan, 18, lives east with his brooding grandmother in a faceless apartment bunker of Friedrichshain, his telescope pointed toward freedom. Bound by love and separated by circumstance, their only chance lies in a high-risk escape. But will Stefan find the courage to leap? Will Ada keep waiting for the boy she has only seen four times a year ever since she can remember? Or will forces beyond their control stand in their way?

Told in the alternating voices of the pink-haired graffiti artist and the boy she loves, Going Over is a story of daring and sacrifice, choices and consequences, and love that will not wait.

“Beth Kephart has done it again. She’s spun gold out of the language of longing and has shown us how to make room for miracles. This novel –about a boy and girl separated by the cruelest of fates–will inspire any reader to make the leap for love.”

Patricia McCormick, author of National Book Award Finalists Sold and Never Fall Down  

“An unforgettable portrayal of life and love divided. Kephart captures the beauty and desperation of 1980's Berlin with prose both gripping and graceful.” 

Ruta Sepetys, New York Times bestselling author of Between Shades of Gray and Out of the Easy

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