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Marti Dumas

Home Featured Authors & Panelists Featured Participant Lineup Marti Dumas

Marti Dumas is a mom, teacher, writer, and creative entrepreneur from New Orleans, Louisiana. An expert in childhood literacy, Dumas has worked with children and teachers across the country for the last 15 years to promote an early love of reading both in and out of the classroom. Her best-selling Jaden Toussaint, the Greatest series combines literacy with STEM skills and humor and adds much-needed diversity to the children’s chapter book landscape.

 

Schedule

11:00 am to 11:45 am

State Library, Second Floor Meeting Room

Friends, Enemies, and Saving the World: Middle Grade Mysteries

with Marti Dumas, Deron R. Hicks, and Lee Reed

 

Noon to 12:45 pm

Cavalier House Books Tent

Book Signing

 

1:00 pm to 2:00 pm

State Library, Second Floor Meeting Room

Do You Believe in (Middle Grade) Magic?

with Marti Dumas. Yoon Ha Lee, Jasper Price, and Sarah Tolcser

 

2:15 pm to 3:00 pm

Cavalier House Books Tent

Book Signing

Fortunes & Frenemies

Fortunes & Frenemies is the third book in Marti Dumas’s Creole tradition inspired, fun middle-grade contemporary Wildseed Witch fantasy series, about a social-media-loving tween—and witch!

In the past year, Hasani has learned she’s a witch, been accepted by Les Belles Demoiselles, and formed her own coven—and her YouTube followers for her makeup channel are growing every day. Now that she’s in eighth grade, she’s ready to rule the school with all her witch powers and best friends by her side.

But frenemy LaToya is still at Riverbend Middle causing trouble, both magically and socially. LaToya’s determined to befriend every single possible witch at school (and turn them against Hasani), and Hasani can’t help but wonder if she’s got another scheme going. Witches aren’t supposed to interfere in each others’ business—but what if LaToya is going to hurt someone? Or herself? Hasani and her friends Dee, Angelique, and Luz have to figure out for themselves when it’s right to let things lie—and when it’s their responsibility to stand up for their community.

The Wildseed Witch series
Wildseed Witch (Book 1)
Charmed Life (Book 2)
Fortunes & Frenemies (Book 3)

Nina and the Mysterious Mailbox

"Girls running for office, secret leadership lessons from the past, and a dash of mysterious mailbox magic? Yes please!" ―Kate Messner, New York Times best-selling author of Breakout and the History Smashers series

A school election.
A mysterious mailbox.
And a letter from . . . Cleopatra?
Middle school is so weird.

Nina is determined to help her best friend Maya win the race for 6th grade representative. But when she uses her robotics skills to spy on Maya’s opponent, the girls wind up in detention. There, they are asked to write a letter to a woman from history. Nina pours her heart out to Cleopatra, and instead of throwing the letter away so her parents don’t find it, she slips it into a battered old mailbox she and Maya find in the woods. It was all just a game . . . until a giant scroll arrives at Nina’s house, signed by Cleopatra herself!

Do the girls really have a pen pal from 2,000 years ago? Will their friend Zoe ever speak to them again? Why is their science teacher acting so oddly? And what on Earth is a time taco?

Original story and characters by Anna McCleery