
My children’s book on ancient Greece has been getting some great feedback. Dr. Anna Judson (British School at Athens, Greece) and Dr. Susan Lupack (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia) both approved of my Back Matter. Dr. Adele Scafuro (Professor of Classics, Director of Graduate Studies at Brown University) and all the other academics I have talked to are very enthusiastic about this book and getting this story into publication. The wonderfully helpful and knowledgeable people at the Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory (PASP) at the University of Texas at Austin have also been enthusiastic about the book and very helpful digging up original sources.
The author who I consider the top children’s non-fiction biographer, Laurie Wallmark, reviewed the manuscript and called it “Fascinating!” She really enjoyed the Back Matter exercises. Lori Alexander, another accomplished KidLit author, also approved of the book. I have also reviewed the manuscript with two editors at some big publishers during writing workshops, and they were also enthusiastic. One called the book highly-marketable.
So the research has been done, and the manuscript has been written & critiqued. The academics love it and so do the established authors. I am now submitting the manuscript to agents and publishers….here from New Zealand! Submission is the hard part; agents and editors are so swamped with submissions that it is hard to get their attention. If I can just get a single agent or editor to actually read the manuscript, I think that they will find it an engaging and educational book for youngsters. Keeping my fingers crossed.
This is an archeological detective story and focuses on key person who helped solve one of the biggest intellectual puzzles of the 20th century, but she has been all but forgotten today. Although the KidLit world is full of copycats, no one has written about this woman in the genre.
Here were some frescos found on the island of Crete along with the above inscription:

Note: Technically this was from before the Classic Greek Period. It is Mycenaean or some would argue for Minoan.