who “howls with the wolfpack” as, nearby, there are “five rhinos in a row/all
jumpin,’ bumpin’ to Mr. DJ Elephant’s funky, hip-hopping grooves.” Joining
in the festivities are monkeys, giraffes, kangaroos, and “Milo, teaching them
all to tango.”
“It’s just funny to put all these animals in funny situations—we put them in
as many of them as we could make up,” says Loggins. He adds that he recently
became a grandfather for the first time, which has caused him to look back
on the joys of reading aloud to his own five children.
“This book is about getting up and dancing,” he says, adding that Footloose
is also a paean to freedom, during a time when politicians in certain states
are trying to curtail personal freedoms, particularly for LGBTQ persons.
“Nothing speaks so eloquently to people about personal freedoms as rock-and-roll,” Loggins insists. “That’s what it’s been about from the beginning.”
—Claire Kirch
Jennifer Weiner
Takes a Big Step into Middle Grade
Jennifer Weiner is widely known to adult
readers for her bestselling women-centric
novels (Good in Bed; Who Do You Love), her
columns for the New York Times Op-Ed pages
and Sunday Review, and her humorous Twitter
feed. But it was her role as mom to daughters
Lucy and Phoebe (now eight and 12) that spurred
her to embark on her latest writing gig as a
children’s book author.
Weiner explains that her middle-grade debut,
The Littlest Bigfoot (S&S/Aladdin, Sept.),
“started about three years ago as a story that I
was telling my then five-year-old. I was thinking
about it a lot and embroidering on it. And my
daughter was obsessed with a TV show called
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.
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Kenny
Loggins
Cutting Loose on the
Page
Grammy Award–winning rock-and-roll musician Kenny Loggins isn’t nervous about performing today, at 1
p.m., at the Quarto Publishing
Group’s booth (2300, 2301), where the
company’s 40th anniversary party will
be in full swing. After all, over the past
four decades, he’s performed in front
of much more raucous audiences and
in much larger venues all over the
world. What he’s most worried about, Loggins says, is that he is going to mess
up the lyrics of “Footloose,” one of several songs he’s scheduled to sing at the
in-booth concert.
“There’s a whole lot of lyrics I need to learn between now and then,” he says
in a phone interview before BEA. “There’s a lot of fast words. And a lot of
chords I gotta learn.” One might wonder why Loggins, 68, would worry about
singing correctly the song that he’s been performing since 1984, including
on the soundtrack of the eponymous movie, which has assumed a place in
popular culture as an anthem to personal freedom.
Loggins arrives at the convention to promote his first children’s picture
book, Footloose (Quarto/MoonDance Press, Oct.), illustrated by Tim Bowers.
Loggins and his partner, Dean Pitchford, have tweaked the original lyrics so
that, instead of blue-collar workers cutting loose by dancing wildly after
punching out on the clock, animals in a zoo cut loose by leaving their enclosures and dancing under the light of the full moon.
This time, Jack takes a step forward, rather than back: he’s the zookeeper
©STEP
HE
NMORAL
ES
C. Christopher Smith explores
the practice of reading and, in his
words, “how we can read together
in ways that drive us deeper into action.” Discover how books can help
your churches and neighborhoods
bring flourishing to the world.
Ian Morgan Cron (author of Chasing
Francis) and Suzanne Stabile share
their Enneagram wisdom, taking
you further into personal discovery.
Funny and filled with stories, this
unique take goes inside the heads
of people who represent each of the
nine Enneagram types.
The church in the West is at a critical
moment, facing militant assaults
from every side. What is needed, says
Os Guinness, is “impossible people,”
followers of Christ who are willing
to face reality without flinching and
respond with a faithfulness that is
unwavering.
AVAILABLE
OCTOBER 2016
AVAILABLE
JULY 2016
AVAILABLE
JULY 2016
IVPRESS.COM
THURSDAY
Life’s Too Short
to Pretend You’re
Not Religious
by David Dark
FRIDAY
Silence and
Beauty
by Makoto
Fujimura
SATURDAY
Knowing God
by J. I. Packer
NEW IVP TITLESatBOOKEXPO AMERICA
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