Publisher, Listening Library / Random House Audiobooks (October 2010)

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An Odyssey Honor Winner! - The Odyssey is an annual award given to the producer of the best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults, available in English in the United States. It is a joint award from two ALA divisions, the Association for Library Services to Children (ALSC) and the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), and the award will be bestowed on the producer, Orli Moscowitz of Random House’s Listening Library, at the ALA Annual meeting this summer. It’s a fairly new award -- instituted in 2008 – and is helping to bring more attention to creative excellence in the growing field of audio books.

“Andi Alpers, a 17-year-old music lover, is about to be expelled from her elite private school. Despite her brilliance, she has not been able to focus on anything except music since the death of her younger brother, which pushed the difficulties in her family to the breaking point. She resists accompanying her work-obsessed father to Paris, especially after he places her mentally fragile mother in a hospital, but once there works in earnest on her senior thesis about an 18th-century French musician. But when she finds the 200-year-old diary of another teen, Alexandrine Paradis, she is plunged into the chaos of the French Revolution. Soon, Alex’s life and struggles become as real and as painful for Andi as her own troubled life. Printz Honor winner Donnelly combines compelling historical fiction with a frank contemporary story. Andi is brilliantly realized, complete and complex. The novel is rich with detail, and both the Brooklyn and Paris settings provide important grounding for the haunting and beautifully told story.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred

“Every detail is meticulously inscribed into a multi-layered narrative that is as wise, honest, and moving as it is cunningly worked…The interplay between the contemporary and the historical is seamless in both plot and theme, and the storytelling grips hard and doesn’t let go. Readers fascinated with French history, the power of music, and/or contemporary realist fiction will find this brilliantly crafted work utterly absorbing.” —The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, starred

"Andi Alpers’s younger brother died two years ago and his death has torn her family apart. She’s on antidepressants and is about to flunk out of her prep school. Her mother spends all day painting portraits of her lost son and her father has all but disappeared, focusing on his Nobel Prize-winning genetics work. He reappears suddenly at the beginning of winter break to institutionalize his wife and whisk Andi off to Paris with him. There he will be conducting genetic tests on a heart rumored to belong to the last dauphin of France. He hopes that Andi will be able to put in some serious work on her senior thesis regarding mysterious 18th-century guitarist Amadé Malherbeau. In Paris, Andi finds a lost diary of Alexandrine Paradis, companion to the dauphin, and meets Virgil, a hot Tunisian-French world-beat hip-hop artist. Donnelly’s story of Andi’s present life with her intriguing research and growing connection to Virgil overshadowed by depression is layered with Alexandrine’s quest, first to advance herself and later to somehow save the prince from the terrors of the French Revolution. While teens may search in vain for the music of the apparently fictional Malherbeau, many will have their interest piqued by the connections Donnelly makes between classical musicians and modern artists from Led Zeppelin to Radiohead. Revolution is a sumptuous feast of a novel, rich in mood, character, and emotion. With multiple hooks, it should appeal to a wide range of readers." —School Library Journal, starred

“…sharply articulated, raw emotions and insights into science and art; ambition and love; history’s ever-present influence; and music’s immediate, astonishing power…” —Booklist

"Even kids who don’t usually like historical fiction won’t be able to put Revolution down, especially given its great modern-day story." —PublishersWeekly.com

"Before the book is done ... we'll have taken a long strange trip of our own in Andi's company: back and forth between present-tense Andi and past-tense Alexandrine, between contemporary Paris and the filthy, terrorized streets of Robespierre's day, and deep into the clammy, bone-filled catacombs that underlie the city and where, in this ... memorable novel, past and present connect in a frightening, disorienting fashion." —The Wall Street Journal

"As in her previous novel for young adults, the award-winning A Northern Light, Jennifer Donnelly combines impeccable historical research with lively, fully fashioned characters to create an indelible narrative. REVOLUTION is a complex story, moving back and forth in time and including allusions not only to historical events but also to literature (especially Dante’s Divine Comedy) and to music from Handel to Wagner to Radiohead. Yet this undeniably cerebral book is also simultaneously wise and achingly poignant." —BookPage.com

“This beautiful and complicated story effortlessly blends history, romance, music and tragedy into a must-read about two girls who connect across centuries.” —Justine

"I could say that I recommend Revolution to lovers of music and historical fiction (which I do), but that is not enough. The story is an impressive blend of contemporary fiction and historical fiction, with heart-wrenching character development." —LoveYALit.com

"Revolution is an exciting foray into history, music and grief. It's a melodic story of love and friendship—of bonds that tie time together.” —The Daily Monacle (blog)

BROOKLYN: Andi Alpers is on the edge. She’s angry at her father for leaving, angry at her mother for not being able to cope, and heartbroken by the loss of her younger brother, Truman. Rage and grief are destroying her. And she’s about to be expelled from Brooklyn Heights’ most prestigious private school when her father intervenes. Now Andi must accompany him to Paris for winter break.

PARIS: Alexandrine Paradis lived over two centuries ago. She dreamed of making her mark on the Paris stage, but a fateful encounter with a doomed prince of France cast her in a tragic role she didn’t want—and couldn’t escape.

Two girls, two centuries apart. One never knowing the other. But when Andi finds Alexandrine’s diary, she recognizes something in her words and is moved to the point of obsession. There’s comfort and distraction for Andi in the journal’s antique pages—until, on a midnight journey through the catacombs of Paris, Alexandrine’s words transcend paper and time, and the past becomes suddenly, terrifyingly present.

Jennifer Donnelly, author of the award-winning novel A Northern Light, artfully weaves two girls’ stories into one unforgettable account of life, loss, and enduring love. Revolution spans centuries and vividly depicts the eternal struggles of the human heart.

About the Author: Jennifer Donnelly loves spending time in the company of old dead people. In fact, she often prefers it to talking with living ones.

When she was a kid, she never wanted to go to Disneyland. Mickey and Minnie held no allure. “Please, please, please can we go to Colonial Williamsburg this summer?” she would beg her parents.

She caught the history bug in third grade when her mother took her to see the movie Mary, Queen of Scots starring Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson. She loved the drama and the intrigue, to say nothing of the dresses and the jewelry.

She finds the only problem with a passion for history is that it makes it hard to live in the real world. “Who wants to do the dishes or vacuum the floor when you could be at the Battle of Agincourt instead?” she says.

Jennifer’s ideas for books all come from the past. “Something clutches at me and catches me. It’s usually a dark thing. I hear or see or read about someone or something, and it grabs hold of me and won’t let go of me—or maybe it’s that I can’t let go of it—and so to resolve my obsession, I do what writers do, which is make up a story,” she says. “At first it’s all ideas and imagination, which is exciting and wonderful, but then the ideas have to be converted into a book. I outline neurotically, blocking out each and every scene, fitting them together, taking them apart, smoothing and finessing, until I’m satisfied that there is indeed a story there and that it has a beginning, middle, and end.”

Jennifer also does a lot of research for her books. “There is nothing I like better than poking about in dusty old archives, reading yellowed diaries and notebooks and letters, hearing the voices of another time. A point eventually comes when I feel I have enough control of the facts to start writing, but I always have to stop researching before I want to stop. I like a certain level of richness in what I write and read. I don’t enjoy skinny books. I want to create believable human beings, and believable stories, and to do that, I need a lot of knowledge about the period in which I’m setting my story. It’s my job to create a seamless and compelling past. If I don’t, I won’t earn my readers’ trust.”

Writing is something that Jennifer has always wanted to do. “I don’t remember making a conscious decision to become a writer,” she says. “It’s something that was always there. Words have always been a part of my life. I was read to as a child and my parents and many members of my extended family were storytellers, and so it seemed natural to me to go from hearing stories to telling them myself.”

Jennifer Donnelly lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and daughter. She grew up in New York State, in Lewis and Westchester counties, and attended the University of Rochester where she majored in English Literature and European History.

Her first young adult novel, A Northern Light, was awarded Britain’s Carnegie Medal, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Fiction and a Michael L. Printz Honor.

She has also written a picture book for children entitled Humble Pie, and a series of historical novels for grown-ups, which includes The Tea Rose, The Winter Rose, and the soon-to-be published novel, The Wild Rose.

About Emily Janice Card: Emily Janice Card is an actor, singer, and writer from North Carolina, where she appeared in leading roles in stage productions such as The Fantasticks, The Importance of Being Earnest, Bye Bye Birdie, and Once Upon a Mattress. Since moving to Los Angeles, Card adapted and starred in the play A Sepulcher of Songs, based on a short story by her father, Orson Scott Card.