Newbery Medal Winner Erin Entrada Kelly Talks About her Latest Book “Lalani of the Distant Sea”

    In Erin Entrada Kelly’s beautiful new novel, “Lalani of the Distant Sea”, we meet mythical creatures, faithful friends and an ordinary girl who braves impossible odds to help the people she loves. The story, which is Entrada Kelly’s first fantasy novel, was inspired by Phillipine folklore and the stories her Filipina mother told her as a child. Entrada Kelly – who won the Newbery Medal in 2018 for “Hello, Universe”, which will soon become a movie – began writing novels as a child to channel the loneliness she felt as a Filipina-American growing up in Louisiana. Now, as the New York Times Bestselling “authoress” of five beloved middle-grade books, she creates the characters she longed to see a child.