Virtual Book Club
Mar 3, 2022 6:30pm
Join us on March 3, at 6:30 pm with the author, Mick Cochrane to discuss his book The Girl Who Threw Butterflies.
Register Here
About the Book:
Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choice 2009
A Booklist Top 10 Sports Book for Youth
For an eighth-grader, Molly Williams has more than her fair share of problems. Her father has just died in a car accident, and her mother has become a withdrawn, quiet version of herself. Molly doesn’t want to be seen as “Miss Difficulty Overcome”; she wants to make herself known to the kids at school for something other than her father’s death. So she decides to join the baseball team.
The boys’ baseball team. Her father taught her how to throw a knuckleball, and Molly hopes it’s enough to impress her coaches as well as her new teammates. Over the course of one baseball season, Molly must figure out how to redefine her relationships to things she loves, loved, and might love: her mother; her brilliant best friend, Celia; her father; her enigmatic and artistic teammate, Lonnie; and of course, baseball.
About the Author:
Mick Cochrane was born and raised in St. Paul, MN. As a boy, he played a great deal of baseball and was a passionate fan of the Minnesota Twins. His early jobs included working for McDonald’s, mostly ineptly, and cutting grass and chalking fields for the West St. Paul Park and Recreation Department.
He graduated with an English major from the University of St. Thomas and earned a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Minnesota. While a graduate student, he published his first story, “The Lenny Green Story,” in Minnesota Monthly magazine. His first novel, Flesh Wounds, was published by Nan Talese/Doubleday and named a finalist in Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writers Competition. His second novel, Sport, was published by Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s and selected for the annual New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age List.
His short stories have appeared in a number of literary magazines, including The Cincinnati Review, Northwest Review, Kansas Quarterly, and Water~stone. The Girl Who Threw Butterflies is his first book for young readers, and Fitz his first book for young adults. He’s also published critical essays on Raymond Carver, Bob Dylan, baseball literature, and the art of biography, and he’s received grants from the Saltonstall Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Currently, he is a professor of English and Lowery Writer-in-Residence at Canisius College, where he has three times been named Peter Canisius Distinguished Teaching Professor. He teaches courses in writing and literature, directs the creative writing program, and coordinates the Contemporary Writers Series. He lives in Kenmore, NY, with his wife and two sons.