Sara Littman

COS COB – Young Adult author and Cos Cob resident Sarah Darer Littman is not new to awards, but she’s still excited each time her work is recognized.
“I can’t believe my name is next to Morris Gleitzman!” she says, referring to the Australian author of “Once,” a fellow award-winner.
Littman picked up a 2011 Honor Award in the Teen category from the Sydney Taylor Book Award for “Life, After” (Scholastic Press, July 2010). This is the second time Littman has been recognized by the STBA. In 2006, she won the prize in the Older Readers category for “Confessions of a Closet Catholic.” “Purge,” Littman’s second Young Adult novel, on the subject of teen bulimia, was selected among the Bank Street College of Education Best Books in 2010. “Life, After” was also chosen by the Association of Jewish Libraries as a 2010 New and Notable Book.
“Life, After” follows teen Dani Bensimon and her family from the 1994 terrorist bombing at the Buenos Aires Jewish community center and the Argentinean economic disaster, to New York just after the 9/11 attacks.

Sydney Taylor Book Award winner

“Part of the reason I love that the book was honored is that it came from a rejected book proposal,” Littman says. Littman’s son has Asperger syndrome and she had submitted a proposal for a book about a boy with the condition, which was rejected. An editor heard a story recorded by Littman and her son on StoryCorps, a national oral history project, and suggested that Littman write the story from the perspective of a sibling. But friend and fellow author Cynthia Lord had already covered the subject in “Rules,” a 2006 Newbery Honor Book.
She continued to explore ways to write about her son, and noticed that many of his friends in elementary and middle schools were from other countries, particularly South America.
“Ever since 9/11, I had been thinking a lot about the reaction to the attacks in the U.S.,” she says. “I felt that, for most Americans, terrorism had suddenly sprung into existence on 9/11. Having grown up in London in the ‘70s during the IRA’s bombing campaign, my family and I were always aware of bomb threats. After 9/11, it made me very angry that we Americans were so unaware of what was going on in the rest of the world.”
She decided to merge the two concepts as a way to bring the subject of terrorism to young readers. She drafted a synopsis, creating a main character from Buenos Aires, Argentina, whose Jewish community had suffered a terrorist bombing in 1994. “It was a way to put terrorism in a global perspective for teens who might not know about it,” she says. “There are a lot of terrorist incidents we don’t hear about unless they involve American citizens. The majority of Americans probably didn’t think about the subject until it affected Americans.”
But she couldn’t seem to get the characters’ voices right, and shelved the draft. Then a woman who had lost her husband in the World Trade Center attacks suggested to Littman that she consider writing a Young Adult novel on the subject, and encouraged the author to flesh out her plot synopsis. “Because I spoke to her and listened to her experiences, it was easier to find the voice,” Littman says. She came back to the subject and her editors gave her the go-ahead. She dedicated “Life, After” to that woman.
There’s another fluky Morris Gleitzman connection. While Littman was at a 2002 Manhattanville College writers’ workshop, instructor Paula Danziger had students read Gleitzman’s 1990 children’s novel, “Two Weeks with the Queen.” As a result, Littman was inspired to write her first book, “Confessions of a Closet Catholic.”

Learn more about Sarah and her work at www.sarahdarerlittman.com.