Cover Reveal: A RIVER OF DUST

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Hurray!!!! Cover Reveals are so much fun…kind of like when an artist designs a sculpture and it is covered with a cloth until the audience gathers and then…

TA-DA! The cloth is lifted and a masterpiece is revealed. And the audience oohs and aahs with delight and admiration.

Written by Jilanne Hoffman – Illustrated by Eugenia Mello – Published by Chronicle – Launching July 2023

Here’s a little bit about the book:

“I am dust,
the dust of North Africa.
I connect continents.”

The dust of the Sahel—a ribbon of land between the Sahara and the savannah—lifts with the harmattan winds each winter season. It mixes with dust from the Sahara and travels thousands of miles westward, across the African continent and the Atlantic Ocean, to reunite with an unforgotten destination deep in the Amazon basin.

Told from the perspective of dust, A River of Dust takes readers on a journey through vibrantly illustrated landscapes, celebrating the power and wonder of Earth’s ecosystems, and showing how these tiny particles are in fact key to the health of our planet. It is a lyrical love letter from one continent to another, continents that have been separated for millions of years, but remain connected via dust, and will be physically connected once again millions of years in the future.

Six pages of back matter include a description of how scientists use NASA satellite data to estimate the quantity that makes the journey, how the nutrients carried by dust feed the Amazon and the South Atlantic Ocean, how dust alters hurricane formation, how geologists figured out that the continents were once a supercontinent, and more! A teacher’s guide will also be available with extension activities that span the curriculum, not just STEM. 

And here’s a little bit about the author:
Jilanne Hoffmann has been a zoo train engineer, a waitress, an engineer for IBM, a fitness trainer, a tai chi instructor, a freelance writer for nonprofit organizations, and now enjoys writing stories for kids and adults. She has a BS in Industrial Engineering and an MFA in Creative Writing, is a San Francisco Coordinator for the SCBWI South Bay region, and has attended Highlights Summer Camp with all the cool children’s authors. Jilanne is also a co-producer of Kidquake, the elementary school program of Litquake, San Francisco’s premier literary festival. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, son, and dog named Wrigley.

Jilanne and I have been kid lit friends for many years…and I am so very proud of her and this beautiful book that she and illustrator Eugenia Mello and Chronicle Books created.

If you want to help books like RIVER OF DUST succeed:
you can PRE-ORDER
you can put the title on your ‘to-read’ shelf at Goodreads
you can review it on Amazon once it launches,
you can tell friends about it
and you can ask your local library to purchase copies.
I hope you do at least one of those for this book!

And I hope everyone has a wonderful week.

79 thoughts on “Cover Reveal: A RIVER OF DUST”

  2. Pingback: A River of Dust – Cover Reveal – Jilanne Hoffmann

  7. Great cover! I love how the elephant’s trunk looks like a river. The book sounds terrific! Congrats on making dust so fascinating. All the best, Julianne!

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