What Gives Katherine Applegate Hope

More hope. From the kidlit community, to you.  

No matter where you are. No matter what’s going on around you. No matter what is pulling your attention or competing for space in your mind. May these next few minutes offer you rest, peace, and hope.

Hope - May 2, 2026

Katherine Applegate, author of Wombat Waiting (Storytide), shares what is giving her hope today: librarians, including Luanne James of Rutherford County, Tennessee, who was fired for refusing to move over 100 LGBTQ books from children's to adult section.

Listen along:

About the Book: Wombat Waiting by Katherine Applegate. Published by Storytide.

An Indie Next pick!

From the Newbery Award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The One and Only Ivan and Odder comes a stunning middle grade standalone novel-in-verse about compassion, resilience, and surprising friendships, following a dog named Wombat in the aftermath of a catastrophic fire.

Wombat isn’t actually a wombat—but when the homeless dog is discovered, singed and ash-covered after a terrible fire destroys a community, someone tags her with the nickname and it sticks.

Wombat is a “destiny dog.” Something inside of her (she nicknames it “Voice’) keeps telling her there’s a special someone out there who is meant to be her person.

Surrounded by a devastated town, Wombat takes up residence on bench near the makeshift community center, an old brick warehouse that, for the most part, survived the flames. A small part of the community center evacuation site has been repurposed for the local wildlife rehab sanctuary that burned down. All of the animals were spared, and the temporary quarters include an elderly fruit bat and a young Northern saw-whet owl.

No matter what, Wombat refuses to move from her perch, despite the efforts of many humans. Clearly the dog is waiting for someone. But for whom? And what are the odds they survived?

Fans of modern classics like Because of Winn-Dixie, Pax, and Katherine Applegate’s own Crenshaw and Odder, and timeless tales like Charlotte’s Web, will find a friend in Wombat and her story.

More:

Visit Katherine Applegate online at katherineapplegate.com 

Learn more about Boyds Mills and their upcoming programs by visiting boydsmills.org. 

Transcript:

Katherine: "Well, as you know from our discussion, this is a challenging question some days.

And this may seem, um, counterintuitive, but this week a librarian in Rutherford County, Tennessee, named Luanne James was fired. And she was fired because she refused to move a bunch of mostly queer content books, some violence as well, alleged violence, uh, from the children's section to the adult section in order to protect, uh, her delicate audience from gender confusion was the argument. And she stood up and she said no, and cited the First Amendment, cited the freedom to read, and lost her job.

And we have seen so much of that for so long now that, uh, sometimes I'm, I'm startled that it's still happening. I believe somehow that we're gonna get through this, though, and it's librarians who give me that hope.

I was just at Public Library Association. Anytime I'm around librarians, school, public, whatever, I'm heartened because they know the reason they are doing the job they're doing, and because they're not giving up. And if they're not giving up and they're on the front lines, then we can't give up either."