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Who would you like to see flying through the sky to save the day? In ways big and small we all have someone in our life that is a superhero. To young readers, you yourself may be a hero—a teacher who protects a group of students during a tornado, a librarian who helps you find the perfect book that to turn you a reader…
Have your students and readers tell us about their real-life hero in 500 words or less and they could win a SUPER cool prize: Matthew Cody, the author of Super, Powerless and Villainous will write the winner of this contest into a short story as a SUPER.

Submit real-life superhero stories by December 20th, 2014 to:
Email: [email protected]
Snail Mail: Sadie Trombetta
1745 Broadway
New York, NY 10019
Matthew, along with four fantastic ace readers from Knopf Books for Young Readers, will select the winners. The grand prize is the short story and a full set of signed copies of Matthew’s books. Five others will receive signed copies of all of Matthew’s books. As a bonus, any teacher who submits stories from her entire class will be eligible to win a class set of Matt’s books, as well as some select additional titles from Random House. The winner will be selected by January 15th, 2015.

How do you create a villain? We’ve rounded up some handy tips from around the literary world.

1. During her talk at CraftFest, suspense author Gayle Lynds said that “without a great villain, your hero has no one to play against.” She felt that all characters should be fully-developed human beings; heroes have to have flaws and “villains aren’t necessarily total monsters.”

2. Writer Kari Allen tweeted with this bit of advice on writing villains: “I heard Katherine Patterson speak recently and she said if you can’t find yourself in your villains, rewrite.”

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