Altogether, One at a Time

Newbery Medal–winning author of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler E.L. Konigsburg brings “her offhand humor and her perceptive empathy” (Kirkus Reviews) to this illustrated middle grade short story collection of everyday worries.

What do you do when your mother makes you invite the most obnoxious kid in your class to your birthday party? Or when you have to wait another thirty-three and a third years to see a shower of stars? Or your parents ship you off to fat camp? Or you have to share your private lunch hour with a girl who’s mean to you just because of the color of your skin?

E. L. Konigsburg’s witty and affecting short stories show four young people weather unusual, even uncomfortable, situations and, in the process, learn something that changes their lives.

E.L. Konigsburg is the only author to have received the Newbery Medal and a Newbery Honor in the same year. In 1968, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler won the Newbery Medal and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth was named a Newbery Honor Book. Almost thirty years later she won the Newbery Medal once again for The View from Saturday. Among her other acclaimed books are Silent to the Bone, The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place, and A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver.

Mercer Mayer is an American children’s author and illustrator. He has published over 300 books, using a wide range of illustrative styles.

Gary E. Parker is the bestselling author of ten novels and three novellas, including Secret Tides and Fateful Journeys. A Christy Award finalist, Parker has become CBA’s source for sweeping sagas of faith and family. A PhD graduate of Baylor University, he serves as the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Decatur, Georgia.

Laurel Schindelman is a children’s book illustrator whose art was featured in Altogether, One at a Time by E. L. Konigsburg.

Gail E. Haley is a prolific author and illustrator. Her time living in the Caribbean inspired her book A Story, a Story, and she traced the folklore she heard there to their African origins, which she studied extensively before capturing with woodcuts that she cut and printed herself. She lives and works in New York with her family, surrounded by a large collection of early children’s books, toys, games, and dolls going back to the seventeenth century.