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About Carmen Oliver

I’m a children’s author, speaker, and I’m the founder and booking agent of a children’s speaker bureau called The Booking Biz that brings award-winning authors and illustrators into schools, libraries, and special events. Thanks for stopping by!

Welcome to the World THE TWILIGHT LIBRARY!

Welcome to the world BUILDING AN ORCHESTRA OF HOPE!

News!

BUILDING AN ORCHESTRA OF HOPE was nominated for A Magnolia Book Awards Nomination 2024 for 3rd-5th grades. Thank you, the University of Southern Mississippi!

BUILDING AN ORCHESTRA OF HOPE is a 2025 Grand Canyon Reader Award Nominee. Thank you, Arizona Library Association and committee members!
BUILDING AN ORCHESTRA OF HOPE: How Favio Chavez Taught Children to Make Music from Trash is the 2022 Writers League of Texas Children’s Picture Book Award winner! Thank you, WLT and Judges!!
THE TWILIGHT LIBRARY is a Foreword INDIES Finalist!!
BUILDING AN ORCHESTRA OF HOPE: How Favio Chavez Taught Children to Make Music From Trash is a Bookstagang Best of 2022 in the Picture Book Biographies category. Thank you, Bookstagang committee!
Favio Chávez, founder of the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura, has a message of inspiration for all of the young readers of Carmen Oliver and Luisa Uribe’s Building an Orchestra of Hope (Eerdmans, Oct. 25). Keep dreaming, always dance! Click Here to View

BUILDING AN ORCHESTRA OF HOPE: How Favio Chavez Taught Children to Make Music From Trash is a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection in 2022. Thank you, JLG!

Update article “Long Kept Secret, Canada’s Ghostly Spirit Bears Are Even Rarer than thought” as reported in The Guardian Sept 14, 2020.

Play Tic-Tac-Toe with Tucker and Librarian Coralee Craig and Bears Make the Best Reading Buddies. Click Here: Tucker is the best doggone player!

Check out the Spanish version of BEARS MAKE THE BEST READING BUDDIES.

In an interview with Canadian Geographic, Simon Jackson reads a few pages from A VOICE FOR THE SPIRIT BEARS and shares how he hopes this book will remind children that anything is possible. See the full interview here. 

A JLG PICK!!!! Beyond thrilled to receive word that A Voice for the Spirit Bears: How One Boy Inspired Millions to Save a Rare Animal, illustrated by Katy Dockrill, published by Kids Can Press  is a spring 2019 Junior Library Guild pick!


Picture book Bears Make the Best Science Buddies released on August 1, 2020 with Capstone Young Readers in the U.S. & Canada and in the UK with the imprint Curious Fox. Here’s a sneak peek at a couple of the interior page spreads!