Opb's State Of Wonder

Today on "State of Wonder," we talk finalists for the Oregon Book Awards in fiction, poetry, graphic literature, and more."Strange the Dreamer" with Laini Taylor — 1:42Laini Taylor possesses an epic imagination. In her best-selling “Daughter of Smoke and Bone” series, she dreamed up a world where a girl who has a monster as a foster parent gets caught up in an epic war with not-so-benevolent angels. And now she is starting a new series with “Strange the Dreamer,” the story of a day-dreaming librarian who journeys to a fabled land living in the shadow of a war it has yet to recover from. The book received Michael L. Printz Honors for Young Adult lit and is a finalist for the YA Oregon Book Award."American War" with Omar El Akkad — 11:46Journalist Omar El Akkad has spent his career covering the Arab Spring in Egypt, military trials at Guantanamo Bay, refugee camps in Afghanistan and the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, MO. Now he’s poured all of his experiences into his new novel “American War,” a story