Contact: Lisa Moorman

614-873-7951

info@darbycreekpublishing.com

For Immediate Release

August 3, 2005

 

Georgia Author’s Book to Represent State at National Book Festival in D.C.

 

Plain City, OH–August 3, 2005–Watkinsville, Georgia children’s author, Gail Langer Karwoski, has been getting a lot of good news lately. She was named Georgia Author of the Year for her book Miracle: The True Story of the Wreck of the Sea Venture (Darby Creek Publishing), and this book was just chosen by the Georgia Public Library Service to represent the state of Georgia at the 2005 National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., on September 24. The National Book Festival is an annual event and will be hosted by First Lady Laura Bush. In addition, Miracle has been named as recommended reading for the upcoming 400th anniversary celebration of the settlement at Jamestown, beginning in May 2006 and continuing through 2007.

 

Miracle: The True Story of the Wreck of the Sea Venture is an award-winning nonfiction narrative that begins in 1609 with a fleet of ships leaving England for the young colony in Jamestown, Virginia. After six weeks of pleasant sailing, a hurricane hit and scattered the fleet across hundreds of miles of open ocean. The Sea Venture, the largest ship in the fleet, was carrying about 150 men, women, and children, including dignitaries, such as the admiral and governor-to-be of the colony.

 

“Imagine being caught in a hurricane in the middle of the ocean,” Karwoski said. “It’s pitch black outside, and your ship is careening between waves as tall as 3-story buildings. Most of the people on board – even the sailors – don’t know how to swim. There are no radios to send distress signals. In the midst of this incredible disaster, your ship starts to leak!” But the group’s leader insisted that they complete their mission. So the band of castaways built ships to take them to Jamestown in spring of 1610.

 

“This is where the story gets even more amazing,” Karwoski said. “They reached Jamestown at the tail end of the “Starving Time.” During the winter of 1609-10, only 60 of about 500 colonists had managed to survive the horrid conditions in England’s first permanent North American colony.

 

“In Jamestown, the castaways realized that they had it all wrong. They had believed that their miracle was surviving the hurricane and shipwreck. But instead, they realized that the hurricane was their miracle. Without it, they would have reached Jamestown on schedule and faced almost certain death!”

 

Ms. Karwoski is well-known for her historical fiction and nonfiction. Besides Miracle, she has written Surviving Jamestown: The Adventures of Young Sam Collier, Seaman: The Dog Who Explored the West with Lewis and Clark, and Quake: Disaster in San Francisco, 1906.

For more information, see the publisher’s website: www.darbycreekpublishing.com
Gail Karwoski also has a website: www.gailkarwoski.com

Miracle: The True Story of the Wreck of the Sea Venture by Gail Langer Karwoski Illustrated by John MacDonald

ISBN 1-58196-015-8 64 pages Grades 4-6 Hardcover List price $17.95
For a review copy, please send an email with contact information to info@darbycreekpublishing.com

To Purchase: Visit your local bookstore or order by phone 800-328-4929

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