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ENTRY TYPE:
WORK TITLE: Into the Rapids
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://annbradenbooks.com
CITY: Brattleboro
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: SATA 405
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in the United States; married; children: two.
EDUCATION:Dartmouth College, graduated 2001.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author. Former middle-school social studies teacher; community activist.
AWARDS:NPR Best Book of 2018, Bank Street List for Best Children’s Books of 2019, both for The Benefits of Being an Octopus.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Vermont writer Ann Braden is the author of three highly praised novels for middle-grade readers. She is also a community activist who was a middle-school social studies teacher at the time of the shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Having grown up in that state, Braden was deeply moved by the tragedy. Unable to find an organization she could join to help with gun safety issues, she decided to start her own, GunSenseVT. The organization tried to find common ground on the issue and in 2018 it was instrumental in the passage of landmark common ground gun safety legislation in Vermont. Also, following the 2016 presidential election, she helped to create the Local Love Brigade, whose mission was to send love postcards those who were facing hate. Soon chapters of Local Love Brigade spread to numerous other states.
At the same time, Braden was working on her writing. On her website she comments: “Because I had gotten used to putting my heart out there for everyone to see, I started putting my heart directly on the page, too. And most of all, I had learned I had the courage to say hard things.”
Braden used this “courage to say hard things” in her debut novel, the 2018 work The Benefits of Being an Octopus. Zoey is a busy seventh-grader, who takes care of her younger siblings every day after school while her mother works a shift at the local pizza parlor. She and her mom live with Lenny, the mother’s bossy and often mean boyfriend, and she attempts to get through the school day by not being noticed. Zoey’s only friend, Fuchsia, has her own issues. Neither has much in common with some of the richer kids in class. Sometimes Zoey thinks life would be a whole lot easier if she had eight arms, like an octopus, so she could do many tasks at once. Octopuses also have the ability to camouflage themselves and have strong protective defenses, as well. But soon Zoey is forced to be highly visible when her teacher has her join the debate club. Slowly speaking up at debate makes her see her world in a very different way, and after gunshots ring out in the playground causing a school lockdown, she joins in the gun debate. She also now sees how Lenny manipulates her mother and speaks up about it.
School Library Journal contributor Laura Gardner lauded The Benefits of Being an Octopus, terming it a “heartbreaking, beautifully written book about finding one’s voice.” Similarly, Booklist reviewer Jeanne Fredriksen found this an “engrossing debut novel,” while James Preller, on his blog, called the novel an “important book that gives face, and heart, and soul, to economically-disadvantaged children who have long been under-represented in children’s books.” The Benefits of Being an Octopus was named an NPR Best Book of 2018.
Braden’s second middle-grade novel, the 2021 Flight of the Puffin, was inspired by the fact that at the time, so many people in the United States felt the country was badly divided. However, as Braden traveled through the states talking with students about her first novel, she saw that there was actually a lot connecting us all. Flight of the Puffin is about four very different kids in different parts of the country who feel isolated and alone. A single act of kindness from a stranger manages to show them they are not alone. Libby is the common thread in the novel. She feels bullied by her family to be tougher and makes cards with positive messages for herself, but also leaves some in public places. Over the next few weeks these cards make their way into the hands of other children who also find encouragement from them. Jack is mourning the death of his younger brother; Vincent is misunderstood by his well-meaning single mom. And an older character, sixteen-year-old T, finds support in the anonymous positive words after leaving his family to live on the streets instead of denying his nonbinary identity.
A Kirkus Reviews critic called Flight of the Puffin “inspirational.” Booklist contributor Lucinda Whitehurst had a high assessment of this second novel, noting: “Inspired by Libby’s cards, all the characters find ways to encourage each other, be less alone, and connect.”
With her 2023 novel, Opinions and Opossums, Braden focuses on Agnes who is expected to attend confirmation classes and believe in God. But Agnes is having trouble identifying with the Old Testament God of original sin. Rescuing a mother opossum, she sees that playing dead is that animal’s defense mechanism. She begins to see her time spent in confirmation class as playing dead. But slowly, with the help of the poetry of Maya Angelou and an understanding anthropologist neighbor, Agnes begins to fashion her own version of a God that makes sense to her. This realization allows Agnes to see that she can challenge authority.
A Publishers Weekly contributor took note of the book’s “solidly constructed arc.” A Kirkus Reviews critic remarked that “Braden crafts a nuanced story supported by clear metaphors and honest, deep emotions.”
In a LILbooKlovers interview, Braden commented on why she became a writer: “I love writing because stories shape us and change us in inexorable ways (both as the author and as the reader) AND because of the way it uses all parts of my brain!”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, September 1, 2018, Jeanne Fredriksen, review of The Benefits of Being an Octopus, p. 112; April 15, 2021, Lucinda Whitehurst, review of Flight of the Puffin, p. 54.
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2021, review of Flight of the Puffin; May 1, 2023, review of Opinions and Opossums.
Publishers Weekly, March 13, 2023, review of Opinions and Opossums, p. 55.
School Library Journal, August, 2018, Laura Gardner, review of The Benefits of Being an Octopus, p. 65.
ONLINE
Ann Braden website, https://annbradenbooks.com (September 17, 2023).
Brattleboro Reformer, https://www.reformer.com/ (January 1, 2018), Mike Faher, “GunSense Vermont Founder Seeks New Direction in Novel and Senate Campaign.”
James Preller, http://www.jamespreller.com/ (January 17, 2023), “5 Questions with Ann Braden, Author of ‘The Benefits of Being an Octopus.’”
LILbooKlovers, https://lilbooklovers.wordpress.com/ (September 3, 2018), author interview.
Nerdy Book Club, https://nerdybookclub.wordpress.com/ (March 15, 2021), “Announcing The Flight of the Puffin Read Aloud: Connecting Classrooms Coast-to-Coast by Ann Braden”; (April 27, 2023), Ann Braden, “When I Read Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. …”
School Library Journal, https://www.slj.com/ (May 23, 2018), Kara Yorio, “#KidsNeedBooks Twitter Campaign Helping Students and Schools in Need”; (August 1, 2018), Kara Yorio, “#KidsNeedMentors Pairs Authors and Educators#KidsNeedMentors Pairs Authors and Educators.”
Seven Days, https://www.sevendaysvt.com/ (April 22, 2015), Terri Hallenbeck, “Long Shot: A Mother of Two Keeps the Gun Debate Alive”; (August 28, 2018), Brett Ann Stancu, “Standing Up, Speaking Out.”
VTDigger, https://vtdigger.org/ (February 13, 2017), Kevin O’Connor, “‘Local Love Brigade’ Aims to Console Targets of Hate”*
The Short Version:
Ann Braden writes books about kids learning to stand up for themselves even when it’s hard. Her debut middle grade novel, THE BENEFITS OF BEING AN OCTOPUS, was called one of “the essential middle school reads from the last decade” by Edutopia, and FLIGHT OF THE PUFFIN sparked a coast-to-coast read aloud with tens of thousands of students taking part. Her newest book, OPINIONS AND OPOSSUMS, was a finalist for the New England Book Award and a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year. Ann founded the Local Love Brigade, which sends love postcards to those who are facing hate. She also founded GunSenseVT, a grassroots group which helped pass landmark common ground gun safety legislation. Previously a middle school teacher, Ann lives in southern Vermont with her husband, two kids, and two insatiable cats.
The Long Version:
When I was a kid I was shy and sensitive, but then I found out that I was a whole lot stronger — and braver — than I thought. As I found my confidence, I realized I had things I wanted to say. That’s when I started to write. (Before that I had never thought creative writing was something I could do.)
The first manuscript I wrote showed me I actually could write a novel (I typed it one-handed while my newborn son slept in my arms, so it was a very short, but still!) Of course, it was not worth anyone’s time, so I wrote another. And then another. And then… you get the idea.
In the meantime, other things were happening. I had been a middle school social studies teacher before my kids were born, and I had always taught my students that for democracy to work regular people had to make their voices heard. When the school shooting happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, I couldn’t turn away. I knew something had to change, but the issue was so polarizing where I lived in Vermont that the conversation couldn’t even be brought up in our statehouse. I tried to find an organization in the state working on this so I could volunteer for them, but there wasn’t one. So, I ended up starting my own.
I didn’t set out to create a whole organization, but I started an online petition and soon agreed to organize a press conference (I had never been to a press conference, much less organized one), and one thing lead to another. It’s amazing what can happen when you say YES to things. Also, when bullies showed up to try to get me to stop talking (and when I realized if they succeeded, they’d try to do the same to the next person speaking her mind), I found out that I wasn’t necessarily the shy, sensitive person that I thought I was. Instead, it turns out I was pretty stubborn, and way more fearless then I could ever have imagined. Sometimes the most unlikely people can help you figure out who you really are.
We called the organization GunSenseVT, and it focused on championing the common ground within the polarizing issue of guns. And in the spring of 2018, after several years of hard work, Vermont passed landmark common ground gun safety legistlation.
Students from a high school in Los Angelos who received love postcards, then came to Vermont for an epic joint love postcard-making party!
After the 2016 presidential election, I also helped to create the Local Love Brigade to send love postcards to people who are facing hate. We started it where I live, but soon awesome people created chapters (with a Facebook group for each!) in lots of other places, too, including Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming. The world needs us to fill it with love, and it turns out it’s a pretty darn satisfying way to spend time. And even though most of the time you can’t see the impact you’re having, sometimes you do.
If this sounds great to you but there isn’t a Love Brigade in your state yet, it’s super easy to start your own. Big, bold change starts with one small step, and the instructions are right here. You (yes, YOU!) should totally do it.
Throughout these years, I kept writing and my writing got better. Because I had gotten used to putting my heart out there for everyone to see, I started putting my heart directly on the page, too. And most of all, I had learned I had the courage to say hard things.
I’m now so excited to have become part of the kidlit community and to have connected with so many amazing children’s authors and educators. Along with author Jarrett Lerner, I helped to start the #KidsNeedBooks Twitter movement. Then, we teamed up with superstar educators Kristin Crouch and Kristen Picone to start the #KidsNeedMentors program to pair up authors and educators so that students can better discover their love of reading and writing. It’s inspiring to see what happens when people come together.
I also co-hosted the podcast Lifelines: Books That Bridge the Divide, along with Pakistani American author Saadia Faruqi. I loved getting to interview librarians and others about the ways that books that help us bring people together.
Finally, here are a few last things about me:
1) We have rescue kitties that destroy every food item we accidentally leave out (except for fruit and cottage cheese, but honestly they eat everything else!) They’re named Boomer and Justice. Boomer is, of course, the shy one whose guilty expressions always give them away. (In this picture they have been devouring a bag of bagels.)
2) When my daughter was born, I discovered my hidden talent of baby-and-stuffed-animal-arranging. Because, who knew?
3) In the first 30 years of my life when I thought I couldn’t write, I should confess that I did write one decent (very short) story. It was in 4th grade, and it was titled The Case of the Double Daring Dragon, and it focused on a character named Emphysema Dandruff.
But as you know, I had decided that story’s decent-ness was a fluke. After all, I’ve never been the person who writes pages upon pages in a journal. In fact, when I’ve been forced to keep a journal in the past, I’ve written them in bullets. Extra words made me itch.
I still remember the day when I was sitting on our old couch, nursing my newborn son (for hours on end) and reading Louise Erdrich’s Bluejay Dance. I had just read the section about her walking to her writing studio in the woods (coincidently with her newborn), and I put the book down.
My first thought was: “How amazing would it be to be a writer?”
My second thought was: “But creative writing is one of the things I KNOW I can’t do.”
My third thought — because I was still on that couch 2 hours later — was: “But if I could, what would I write?”
And that was the beginning. The years that followed were filled with crazy long hours of work, determination in the face of rejection (and more rejection and even more rejection), and so much learning. But the deep thinking that’s required with writing grounded me, and the characters that emerged were people whose stories needed to be told.
So, if you are ever longing to do something but you KNOW it’s something that’s impossible for you, just ask yourself “What if?”
Because if you’re willing to put your voice out there, it’s amazing what can happen.
Ann Braden writes books about kids trying to stand up for themselves even when life is hard. Her debut middle grade novel THE BENEFITS OF BEING AN OCTOPUS was named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2018 and has appeared on numerous state lists. She founded the Local Love Brigade, which sends love postcards to those who are facing hate. Ann also founded GunSenseVT, a grassroots group focused on championing the common ground on the issue of guns in Vermont, which helped pass landmark gun violence prevention legislation. Ann has been a middle school teacher, the co-host of the children’s book podcast, “Lifelines: Books that Bridge the Divide,” along with Pakistani American author Saadia Faruqi, and a co-organizer of #KidsNeedMentors. Ann lives in southern Vermont with her husband, two children, and two insatiable cats. Visit her online at www.annbradenbooks.com.
MOVING BEYOND SURVIVAL MODE by Ann Braden
Posted by CBethM on May 20, 2025 in Author Posts | Leave a comment
When I was fifteen-months old, my dad died in a plane crash. I was in the plane crash, too. So was my mom. My mom saved my life.
It was winter, after sunset, when we crashed into a heavily wooded area in upstate New York.
The small plane was torn apart as it crashed through the trees. The wings and tail section were ripped off and the rest of the plane landed upside down.
My mom kicked her way out of the wreckage. After she worked her way around the site to check on my dad and uncle, she struggled into the back section to unbuckle me from the car seat which had kept me safe.
Then, along with my uncle, she carried me through the woods, first pushing through undergrowth and then following power lines, until they reached a building with people who could help.
When life shows you how fragile it can be, it shapes you as a person.
This is what I explore in my newest book INTO THE RAPIDS. It’s a survival story, but it’s also about how there’s more to life than just survival.
It’s about 12-year-old Addy whose dad was killed in a flash flood accident when she was a baby. Since then, Addy’s mom has raised her to SURVIVE, not to need anyone else. Addy’s even about to prove how self-reliant next week at Survival Camp, where she’ll be testing on survival skills that she’s been gearing up for her entire life.
Except then a flash flood sweeps through their tiny mountain town, wiping out a bridge and destroying the only road to get to Survival Camp. Suddenly, the only way to get there will require Addy to trust her classmate Caleb, who’s one of the reasons Addy doesn’t have friends in this town.
One of the things I wanted to explore in this book…is how none of us can do it alone. I knew that Caleb was going to need Addy because he starts getting panic attacks from the flooding, and Addy had been helping her mom deal with panic attacks for years. And Addy was going to need Caleb because… well the thing is, I got partway through drafting this book, and realized that I didn’t know WHAT Addy needed, other than to get to Survival Camp. Because she was already strong! And she was partly based on me and how I know in my bones how easily death can happen, and so my first instinct was that she was JUST FINE ALREADY—THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
But books need their main character to grow and develop, so I was forced to take a hard look at Addy to see what she was missing, which meant also taking a hard look at myself. And I ended up uncovering parts of myself that I had subconsciously walled off.
I discovered that sometimes when you’ve been grown up always trying to survive, always trying to be self-reliant…
You can miss out on playing.
You can miss out on connections.
You can miss out… on life.
I know many of us feel like we’re in survival mode at the moment. For so many reasons and in so many directions at once.
So, how do we both manage to survive AND make that leap from survival mode to being able to play and relax enough to trust others?
It requires recognizing the people in our lives that CAN be trusted.
It requires letting ourselves feel all the feelings that come with loss.
It requires understanding that some bad things will happen, no matter how hard we work.
It requires having the faith in ourselves that no matter what happens, we’ll find a way through.
And all of that requires huge amounts of courage.
Because there’s NOTHING braver than facing the fact that our time on this earth is short and messy — and to STILL find the ability to laugh, to cry, and to live with abandon.
At the beginning of the book, Addy thinks of herself as brave. She camps in the woods by herself. She wields an axe like it’s an extension of her body. She has survived all of her K-6 elementary school with no friends. She knows death happens, and it doesn’t scare her.
But as she and Caleb become friends, she starts to realize how much she’s been missing. That maybe it’s time to expand her courage and her world––and leap directly into the rapids of life.
Ann Braden is also the author of Opinions and Opossums and Flight of the Puffin. She writes books about kids trying to stand up for themselves even when things are tough. Her debut middle grade novel, The Benefits of Being an Octopus, was an NPR Best Book. Ann founded the Local Love Brigade, which sends love postcards to those who are facing hate. She also founded GunSenseVT, a grassroots group that helped pass landmark gun violence prevention legislation. Ann has been a middle school teacher, the co-host of the children’s book podcast Lifelines: Books That Bridge the Divide, and co-organizer of #KidsNeedMentors. Ann lives in southern Vermont with her husband, two children, and two insatiable cats.
Into the Rapids. By Ann Braden. May 2025. 176p. Penguin/Nancy Paulsen, $17.99 (9780593856369). Gr. 4-7.
After the tragic death of her father several years earlier, Addy, 12, and her mother try to live a normal life in their isolated Vermont community. Mom lives with long-term PTSD, and her symptoms appear in full force as she and Addy find themselves cut off from communication and basic supplies by recent flooding. Simultaneously, Addy is grappling with her own panic over whether she'll be able to get to her much-anticipated Survival Camp, where she'd hoped to do her father's memory proud. Does she dare to step outside her comfort zone to achieve this? She'll need to open herself up to a boy who once hurt her and to locals whom she doesn't even know. Braden successfully explores the inner determination and strength of her characters, accomplishing in under 200 pages what many longer books fail to achieve. Each sentence holds a nugget of wisdom that will touch the reader. But don't blink, or you'll miss details that will take you through the rapids to a satisfying conclusion. --Beth Rosania
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 American Library Association
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Rosania, Beth. "Into the Rapids." Booklist, vol. 121, no. 15-16, Apr. 2025, p. 114. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A847030630/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8b155372. Accessed 1 Nov. 2025.
Braden, Ann INTO THE RAPIDS Nancy Paulsen Books (Children's None) $17.99 5, 13 ISBN: 9780593856369
Twelve-year-old Addy's goals change when a prolonged storm washes out the bridge that connects her small Vermont town to the outside world.
The bridge's loss jeopardizes Addy's long-held dream of attending the same summer survival camp where her mother and her now-deceased father met when they were her age. To her surprise, her long-shunned classmate Caleb offers to help, which opens the floodgates--not only to a workaround that just might get her to the camp, but to ways of moving past the grief and self-imposed isolation that have mired her and her even more traumatized mom ever since her father died in a flash flood. Braden spins a fairly taut natural disaster tale that sees Addy relying on the survival skills that she's diligently practiced for camp. Overall, though, the narrative takes on a heavy-handedly therapeutic cast. Along with mentioning the background reading she's done on trauma since the accident, Addie helps her mom get through depressive fugues, helps Caleb deal with both his own fears of death and an explicitly described panic attack, and interrogates her own feelings and attitudes--all at relative length and all by the end with reassuringly positive results. In her acknowledgments, the author thanks her therapist for helping her through a similar childhood brush with death. Physical descriptors are minimal.
Suspenseful, if somewhat didactic.(Fiction. 10-13)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Braden, Ann: INTO THE RAPIDS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A830532349/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ca2e7630. Accessed 1 Nov. 2025.