Moonbeam Children's Book Awards names Bass Lake Bunch a Silver Medalist for best chapter book series

   Authors Charles R. Ratliff and Leslie J. May announce that their middle grades novels, The Bass Lake Bunch series, were named last week a Silver Medalist for Best Book Series - Chapter Book in the Moonbeam Children's Book Awards.

   "We are so excited to receive this prestigious award for our hard work and efforts," Ratliff said. The Moonbeam Awards are given to independent authors and publishers whose work has been published in the last year (2017-18). Although Bass Lake Bunch 1 - The Hideout at the Abandoned Fish Hatchery was published in 2009, Ratliff said BLB 2 - The Secret of the Lost Lake Cottage was released in March 2018.

   The second book was published by Lost Lake Cottage Publishing, a company Ratliff founded to self-publish BLB 2. The original publisher of BLB 1, Tate Publishing, went out of business in 2015, which forced Ratliff and May to examine other avenues of publication for their second novel. Ratliff said Tate returned all materials of BLB 1, which allowed him to reprint their first book under their publishing logo. Both books are now part of the Lost Lake Cottage Publishing house.