Honors for Heart of a Shepherd
It’s been an exciting summer for my little cowboy. Heart of a Shepherd has been honored with the Oregon Spirit Book Award which is given by the Oregon Council of Teachers of English. This puts me in the company of two previous winners for whom I have enormous respect, Susan Fletcher, who won for Alphabet of Dreams and David Gifaldi who was honored for Listening for Crickets.
It was my pleasure to be the guest of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Women’s National Book Association in June. They made Heart of a Shepherd an Honor Book for their Judy Lopez Memorial Book Award. Thank you ladies, you are an inspiration!
Heart of a Shepherd has received the Rodda Award from the Church and Synagogue Library Association. I’m thrilled to be honored in this way and in particular when the field of nominees contained many books I admire. I’ll be in Houston to accept this award July 25th, 2010.
Heart of a Shepherd was also on the Best Children’s Book of the Year list at the Washington Post and Kirkus Reviews. It was on the Hornbook Fanfare list.
Local honors for my book included being on the Beaverton School districts Newbery Club list which meant I was able to visit many Newbery Clubs nearby. It was great fun and I learned a lot from all those wonderful avid-readers. In the 2010/2011 school year, Heart of a Shepherd will be in the Oregon Battle of the Books!
Exciting News!
Heart of a Shepherd has been optioned for a movie!
I’m very excited about this. I never even dreamed of the movie end of the writing business, so there is lots for me to learn about films and how they work. My production company is Tashtego Films and the screenwriter they’ve chosen is David Myers. Optioned is a long way from made, but I should know if the film will go forward some time in the summer of 2010.
HEART OF A SHEPHERD received its first starred review from Kirkus and a second starred review from Hornbook Magazine!
Kirkus, 1 December 2008
(STARRED) Parry, Rosanne HEART OF A SHEPHERD
Sixth-grader Ignatius—he goes by “Brother”—faces a hard year as his father is deployed to Iraq, and he, the youngest of five boys, is left with his aging grandparents to manage the family ranch in Oregon. The episodic presentation, with each chapter a vignette from one of the months his father is gone, effectively portrays the seasonal changes of farm life. The spare, evocative language of his first-person narration immediately captures readers’ interest and never falters in describing a year in the life of this eminently likable boy trying hard to be the man of the house, facing up to one believable challenge after another. From raising orphaned lambs he names after hobbits to delivering a calf to rescuing a farmhand and the stock from a raging prairie fire, each event moves Brother toward a new sense of his own emotional strength. At once a gripping coming-of-age novel and a celebration of rural life, quiet heroism and the strength that comes from spirituality, this first novel is an unassuming, transcendent joy. (Fiction. 10 & up)
Hornbook Magazine, May/June 2009
Parry, Rosanne
HEART OF A SHEPHERD
With his artist mother living in Italy, his four older brothers away at school or in the service, and now his Army-Reserve father off to serve an extended tour in Iraq, sixth-grader Ignatius (thankfully nicknamed Brother) is the only one left to help his grandparents run the family ranch. “I get to thinking about the long line of soldiers that have marched away from this table, which is great if you’re the patriotic type. But it’s not so great if you are the one waiting for your dad to come home.” Distinctively set in the cattle and sheep country of eastern Oregon, this first novel chronicles Brother’s year of hard work (lambing, calving), danger (a rattlesnake, a fire), worry about his father’s safety, and pondering what direction his own future will take. (The conclusion he comes to is surprising only because we haven’t seen anything like it in children’s books in quite a long time.) Brother’s honest voice conveys an emotional terrain as thoughtfully developed as Parry’s evocation of the Western landscape. r.s.
