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Diane Magras

@dianemagras.bsky.social
740 followers 282 following 488 posts

Award-winning author of the Mad Wolf's Daughter books and SECRET OF THE SHADOW BEASTS, all from Penguin Random House. She/her linktr.ee/dianemagras

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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Now the pressure was always on because we always relied on other funding too. But also because my colleagues and I all need our salaries paid, and our cultural programs have a huge impact on people they serve, including in correctional facilities.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
This book banning bill is absolutely horrific: www.ala.org/news/2026/02.... Please contact your legislators and speak out against this massive blow to children's literature. #MgLit #KidLit #ChildrensFiction
ala.org
ALA denounces federal book banning bill
The American Library Association denounced H.R. 7661, a federal bill targeting LGBTQ+ stories that would modify the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to restrict "sexually oriented" mater...
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
It was so much fun to write, such a wonderful respite from a challenging world.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Thank you, my friend! I can't wait to share more about it!
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Thank you, my friend! It's so thrilling for me to finally have another book coming out!
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
Thank you so much! I hope kids enjoy reading the dragon-sport scenes as much as I enjoyed writing them!
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
Thank you! I can hardly believe that this story will (relatively) soon be a book!
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
Aww, thank you so much!
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
I've had to keep this secret for a bit, but here's something I've been working on! This story was a blast to write. I can't wait for you all to meet the characters (including, of course, plenty of dragons!). #MGLit #KidLit
Publishers Marketplace Deal Report: Skyward by Diane Magras, Imprint: Scholastic. Diane  Magras's SKYWARD, in which a 13-year-old, desperate for acceptance to the Junior Division of a competitive sport on dragonback, must win over the dragon she's paired with or see her dream fizzle, to Jennifer Thompson at Scholastic, for publication in 2028, by Sara Megibow at Megibow Literary Agency (world). sara@megibowliterary.com. Children's: Middle Grade Fiction, February 10, 2026
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Dr Jo Kershaw @mthrjo.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
Ok, did not expect “The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe” to feel quite so relevant to this moment. Here’s Edmund, deciding to side with the leader who he’s been told disappears people.
He did want Turkish Delight and to be a prince (and later a king) and to pay Peter out for calling him a beast. As for what the Witch would do with the others, he didn't want her to be particularly nice to them - certainly not to put them on the same level as himself; but he managed to believe, or to pretend he believed, that she wouldn't do anything very bad to them, 'Because,' he said to himself, 'all these people who say nasty things about her are her enemies and probably half of it isn't true. She was jolly nice to me, anyway, much nicer than they are. I expect she is the rightful Queen really. Anyway, she'll be better than that awful Aslan!' At least, that was the excuse he made in his own mind for what he was doing. It wasn't a very good excuse, however, for deep down inside him he really knew that the White Witch was bad and cruel.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
I love seeing this quote because we're in a world where we need to remember this. We all have the potential of being good at what needs to be done to help our world be a better place. I haven't gone back and read this book for a long while, but I'm wondering now if it's even more relevant to today.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 28/09/2025
Every once in a while, I get a Google Alert on one of my past books. this time, it was this amazing video by a young fan. To know that my work is still reaching its readers in this way is so fulfilling. (And what a great vid, too!) www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEk2... #MGLit #MiddleGradeBooks
youtube.com
Wacky Wednesday Review for Hunt for the Mad Wolf’s Daughter
YouTube video by Kristen Grace
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
This is definitely a stellar MG to get lost in. The moral questions are fantastic, and the characters vivid and wonderful. I hope you enjoy it!
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
I had so much fun reading the ARC of @sarahjmendonca.bsky.social's wonderful debut, and gobbled it up yet again when it came out! So it's out, and here's my review. (And librarians and teachers: This is one that will fly off your shelves!) #MGLit #KidLit www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
goodreads.com
Diane Magras's review of An Encantadora's Guide to Monstros and Magic (Encantadora, #1)
5/5: This is such a delightful book. I was fortunate to read an advance copy, and read it again once it had been published, which felt like a visit to a fascinating friend. It was impossible to put do...
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
I have always been a huge fan of those medieval scribes' wonderful imaginations. www.openculture.com/2025/08/why-...
openculture.com
Why Knights Fought Snails in Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts
The snail may leave a trail of slime behind him, but a little slime will do a man no harm... whilst if you dance with dragons, you must expect to burn. - George R. R. Martin, The Mystery Knight As an...
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James McConnachie @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
What questions should writers ask? Katherine Rundell nails it in ‪@thetls.bsky.social‬
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 27/05/2025
Happy #BookBirthday to @amybmucha.bsky.social for her absolutely delightful new #mglit GEO'S FORTUNE, about friendship, predictions, truth, and magic in a realistic world of cool natural stones. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/777234...
penguinrandomhouse.com
Geo's Fortune by Amy B. Mucha: 9781682636718 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
What happens when Geo's fortune-telling scheme exposes what seem to be some very real manifesting abilities? Thirteen-year-old Geo Leoni desperately needs to earn some cash this summer, fast. So she ...
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Lisa Stringfellow @engagereaders.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
KINGDOM OF DUST is a 2025 Children’s Africana Book Award honoree! I had no idea! I’m thrilled that the committee felt my West African-inspired fantasy honored and respected Nigerian culture. 🙏🏾📚 cfas.howard.edu/outreach/cab... #CABAbooks @harperkids.bsky.social #QuillTreeBooks
Children’s Africana book Award honor chapter book

Kingdom of Dust
The Smoke That Thunders
Flying Through Water
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
So many congrats!!!
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
My immediately family has no plans. We'd love to go on a lovely little vacation, but it's not worth the risk.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
So true. It's reached the point where I am seriously afraid of flying.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
And I'm grateful that she continues to be my companion for both my author job and my day job. She's been on my lap for nearly every Zoom presentation or meeting, sometimes showing her face, but often just purring quietly while I do my work and, of course, stroke that very soft and lovely ruff.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
And I think how wonderful it's been for my little boy to grow up with this very sweet cat. He was in 4th grade when we lost our first cat (to FIP), which was heartbreaking. I'm so glad that he's had the chance to enjoy the quiet independent companionship that a wonderful cat will give.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
But I also think about these past ten years and how often we've been in the same room together, three introverts doing our own thing, with Flora sleeping on one lap, then another, then playing with one of us, then climbing "Mount Mommy," as my son called it when he was small.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
I think of that often, how kind her foster owner was, but also how that foster owner had been tempted to keep her. I'm glad she let Flora go to us. For one, I suspect she'd have had trouble in a house with that many other cats. For another, she adores fish and can only take a little bit of chicken.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
When we first met her, she was a friendly but wary young mother (somehow, only 7 months old or so) who had been abandoned as a pregnant cat in TN. She was living with a very kind foster owner who had three or four other cats, in a chicken-only house due to one cat's allergies to fish.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
On Wednesday, Flora will have been part of our family, the sole cat in this house, and beloved companion of her three human subjects, for ten years. And as you can see, she has not lost a wisp of her grace and beauty.
A brown tabby cat with a ruff sits in a contemplative pose, tail curved around her, on a rust-colored throw with a window to one side and the start of a stairway and a doorway behind.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
A beautiful summary of David Attenborough's favorite ocean experiences: "Young children playing on a beach today will live through perhaps the most consequential time for the human species in the past 10,000 years. They will grow up to see how this story ends…" www.thetimes.com/life-style/c...
thetimes.com
David Attenborough at 99: ‘I will not see how the story ends’
The natural history presenter, who turns 99 this week, has an obsession with sea life that began in boyhood. Here he reflects on his most moving encounters
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
So agree. This is one of my favorite novels ever.
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Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
‘The Comprehensive Bookshop” - my cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com books.
Title: The Comprehensive Bookshop 

Image: an enormous, low building fills the frame, running almost to the horizon in a featureless desert.

Captions: 
A ceaseless stream of delivery trucks flows from publishers' warehouses to an ever-expanding building out in the desert. Within, hundreds of miles of shelving hold copies of every book ever published. 

Customers arrive with authors or genres in mind, but the near infinite choice and maze of passages soon overwhelm them. Cars decay in the parking lot as their owners browse for months on end. 

The bedraggled figures who occasionally stagger from the exit are taken to a nearby hospital, but upon recovering, inevitably "Just pop back to grab a few more books."
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
A starred Kirkus review for a fantastic monster-filled #MGlit heist! Check this out, friends, for another amazing book for classrooms, libraries, and kids' hands (Out on July 8, 2025): www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews...
kirkusreviews.com
AN ENCANTADORA'S GUIDE TO MONSTROS AND MAGIC | Kirkus Reviews
A desperate monster hunter gambles on a magical heist.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
That's one of the many things I think about when I hear people wishing that things would return to the way they were a year ago. We need change that goes forward, that supports the world we want to see.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
I just don't understand why our government, when the decent people were in charge, allowed this happen. It's a secret police who can do what they like, and that is against all principles of human decency.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
That is utterly terrifying and heartbreaking. This should have been stopped a long, long time ago.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
You are so welcome! Your book is so amazing. I hope so much that teachers, librarians, parents, and young readers get the chance to hug this close to them, as it is certainly a book to love.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
And #teachers: here is a very cool website that links with the rocks of the book: rockreaders.com. I can see this and the book being fantastic resources for classrooms.
rockreaders.com
THE ROCK READERS – Where Science Meets Magic
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
I just gobbled up GEO'S FORTUNE, a wonderful new #MGLit coming out in a month: May 27, 2025. It's all about #rocks, #friendships, #magic, and #family. A warm, compelling, beautiful story that was impossible to put down. Here's my review! www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
goodreads.com
Diane Magras's review of Geo's Fortune
5/5: With a stellar opening line that feeds directly into the conflict, this beautiful middle grade debut is an utter gem. (Okay, a pun, but it's true.) The author dips into facts, stories, and more a...
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
Wishing you so much luck!!!!
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Cate McQuaid @catemcquaid.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
I weeded out the ways the current administration is targeting the arts – massive cuts at IMLS and NEH, threats to the Smithsonian Institution, interference with the Kennedy Center, and more. Plus, resources, actions, and steps to take. Hands off the arts! catemcquaid.substack.com/p/hands-off-...
catemcquaid.substack.com
Hands off the arts
A catalog of federal attacks on arts and humanities, and concrete steps to resist
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
If we can't raise or regain funding quickly soon, we'll have to slow or stop our programs. And may start losing our staff. One of the biggest impacts I've seen from our work is the connections people feel through our groups. At a time when it's easy to feel alone, this is so important.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
Humanities Councils offer different programs in different states, depending on the state's needs, but these can include book festivals, speaker series, and more. My org does a lot of facilitated book discussion groups for rural library patrons, Veterans, and high school teachers and students.
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
Like many authors, I have a day job. Mine's for a humanities council. On April 4, DOGE attacked our biggest funder, the NEH. Humanities councils nationwide are now without funding. If you care about history and the humanities, please contact your Congress members: www.statehumanities.org/action-ale
statehumanities.org
Action Alert: NEH Targeted by DOGE - Federation of State Humanities Councils
Save Our Humanities Councils: DOGE Cuts to NEH will Damage Cultural Organizations in Every State April 4, 2025 – UPDATE On April 4, the Federation learned—through our contacts and reporting … Read mor...
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Chuck Wendig @chuckwendig.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
Also, libro.fm is great for audiobooks.
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Gints Zilbalodis @gintszilbalodis.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
Ok, this is the last one
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
My now-18yo son was a huge fan of your first books when they first came out, and it's so cool to think of new young readers getting to feel that burst of eagerness and inspiration from your work! (And thank you for having a heroic neurodiverse MC. The world needs more of those.)
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Kbport714 @kbport714.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
Just finished The Bionic Boy @lynnplourde.bsky.social and loved it! What a truly inspiring book about courage, friendship, and finding out “you CAN!” @nancyrosep.bsky.social Out in October
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
This sounds so sweet and heartfelt and wonderful, Lynn! Congrats on the upcoming book!
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
Check this out, friends! This sounds so, so good!
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Diane Magras @dianemagras.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
So many congrats!!!
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Watchdog Progressive @watchdogprg.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
My mom outlived her savings - she was a bookkeeper and very thrifty. Then, Alzheimer's disease took the rest of her savings. Placing her in a home was the only choice for her care. $330 per day. Medicaid paid for that expense. It was a lifesaver. #ProtectMedicaid
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