Three award-winning Oregon writers are in great demand among state librarians this year to help commemorate Oregon’s sesquicentennial. And some will be stopping at local libraries to talk about their books as part of the annual Title Wave reading program.

Virginia Euwer Wolff is the author of Bat 6, a teen novel that explores the Japanese-American experience following World War II. She said she got the idea for her story when she was asked to write a piece about sports for a young readers’ anthology.

“When I looked into my brain with the question, ‘What do I know about sports? I saw a crowd of people gathered around first base on a children’s softball diamond,” she wrote in an e-mail.

From there she developed a story about a group of young girls playing on a softball team after the war. One of the girls lost her father in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Another had her family taken away in the ensuing fear over Japanese-American espionage.

Wolff grew up during this time period and remembers the silence adults enforced when the topic of Japanese-American internment came up.

“We were all nice kids in nice communities and there were so many crucial things we never talked about,” she wrote. “In working on the book, I studied what had been underneath those silences.”

The Title Wave series also will feature Deborah Hopkinson, the author of the children’s book “Apples to Oregon.”

Having moved to Oregon in 2004, Hopkinson read a history of the fruit industry, learning about the Luelling family and saplings it brought along the Oregon trail. She decided it would make a good foundation for a children’s story.

“I hope that by reading Apples to Oregon and other works of historical fiction children will come to see that history doesn’t have to be boring,” Hopkinson wrote in an e-mail.

The third book, Stubborn Twig, offers a historical perspective of a Japanese-American family that arrived in Oregon at the start of the 20th century. 

Its author, Lauren Kessler, can’t attend, said Coos Bay librarian Carol Ventgen, noting that she has been booked at a number of other events around the state.

Mitzi Loftus and Joan Yasui Emerson will speak in her stead. Both grew up in Hood River, the setting for much of Stubborn Twig. It tells the story of the Yasui family, starting with the arrival of Masuo Yasui in 1904. It goes on to tell the story of three generations of the family, including the World War II years.

Emerson plans to share stories about growing up in Hood River and remembrances of family members depicted in Stubborn Twig. Although she admits to being intensely private, Emerson said Kessler did a fine job depicting her family’s struggles to overcome adversity. She said she would hope that people reading the book remember immigrants aren’t the only ones with a history in Oregon. Despite their forced removal and exile,  American Indians have something to contribute, too.

“Hopefully ... we will begin to understand that the great promise of democracy is only possible if we include all the people who are our American brothers and sisters,” she said.

Loftus, who has written about her experiences in Oregon, plans to talk about her personal connection with three members of the Yasui clan. Loftus, the youngest of eight children, was close in age to the youngest of the nine Yasui siblings, and their fathers were close friends.

Kessler consulted Loftus’ book in writing Stubborn Twig, though Loftus plans to clarify some things when she speaks in Coos County.

Wolff said she hopes readers will check out all three books and compare the stories’ actors to themselves

“I hope readers learn about trusting their very best instincts,” she wrote. “Their very best instincts tell them we are an equal opportunity culture, with the freedom to make awful mistakes but not the license to get away with them.”