The 48-Hour Book Challenge starts Friday!

Time once again for one of my favorite challenges in the kidlitosphere, the 48-Hour Book Challenge, hosted by MotherReader. This is a special year because it's the 10th annual. Tenth! We've been doing this for 10 years! That's the Mesozoic in the life of the Internet.

How it works: pick 48 consecutive hours in between the start and the finish and read, read, read! Blog about your reading and cheer others on Twitter and Facebook with the #48HBC tag. Check out MotherReader's blog post for more details and to throw your hat into the ring.

I love doing this because I often get my TBR pile winnowed down and build up a stock of reviews for my busy summer months. Plus I also make new friends!

It starts at 7 am on Friday, June 19th and concludes at midnight on Sunday the 21st. That's just about enough time to order your pizza, gather up your books, and worm out of all but the most pressing social engagements.

Will you join in?

They're Here, They're Here!

Check out the 2014 Cybils finalists! What do you think?

The Bibliovore is in Your Ears!

Or I will be.

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books is one of my very favorite non-kidlit book blogs, and I am a devoted listener to their weekly podcast as well. Awhile ago, blogger/host Sarah Wendell put out a call for kidlit recommendations. Not only was I all over that, much of her audience was as well. She was reading kidlit booklists for months.

When she asked for possible interviews, I put my name out to her, and to my great excitement, she said yes! We talk about everything from picture books up to YA, and everything in between.

You can hear the podcast, which is almost an hour long, at the Smart Bitches Trashy Books website or you can download it from iTunes under "DBSA romance fiction podcast," episode 120.

Enjoy!

Cybils Eve

Guess what!

Go on, guess!

Okay, fine, I'll tell you. Starting tomorrow through October 15, you get to nominate books for the Cybils! The world's only Children's and YA Blogger award opens its nomination period tomorrow, in thirteen categories from picture books to YA fiction, from book apps to poetry.

Anybody can nominate, and the books can be anything published in English in the US or Canada in the past year. 

Remember, each book (or app) can only be nominated by one person. So if you're going in, take at least a few faves in each category with you. 

More info here: Nominating for the Cybils.

The 48-HBC is Nigh! and a Sobering Realization

MotherReader just announced her annual 48-Hour Book Challenge, fondly known around the interwebs as the 48HBC. It's quite simple - you pick 48 consecutive hours somewhere in the weekend of June 6-8 and read for as many of those hours as you humanly can. You also blog what you've read, chat on Twitter, and visit each other's blogs.

This year, because it's always (unfortunately) a Topic of Concern amongst the kidliterati, the focus is on diversity. WeNeedDiverseBooks is a hashtag that's been going around the Twitters and the Tumblrs and I don't know what else these kids are using these days, get off my lawn.

By the way, it's 2014. Why is this still a thing? Why is it still so hard to find these books about kids that are other than white, straight, neurotypical, and able-bodied? Agh.

As I do every year, I went wading through my TBR list to see what I wanted to read. These things have to be ordered, you understand. There has to be planning. I generally read about 9 books during the 48-HBC challenge. To give myself choices, I decided to pick about 12 or so books out of my list. I also decided to be as broad as possible. Anything where the main character didn't fit that "default" setting stated above would qualify.

I went in going, "This should be easy. These are the kind of books that catch my eye." Several pages later, I was still scrolling, muttering, "Really? Out of all these books, it's taking me this long to find the ones I would call diverse?" I did finally pull together several books, but I was dismayed by how long it took.

So . . . that was sobering.

In my defense, I just read two books that would qualify under my terms, Varian Johnson's The Great Greene Heist, whose incredibly multicultural cast started this leg of the ongoing diversity conversation, and Wendelin Van Draanen's The Running Dream, about a runner who has to adjust to life with a leg amputated below the knee. Also in my own defense, I was going off titles, authors, and a fuzzy memory of why I'd put certain books on my list. But still, I should have more choice. I should be putting more of these on my list, and I should have more available to put on my list in the first place.

If you know of a book I should read for the challenge, please leave it in the comments. Also, it should be the main character, not a supporting cast member. Yes, inclusivity in the characters surrounding the main character is nice and I like it. But nobody is a sidekick in their own life.

Are you going to join in? What are you going to read? Share!

Interview: Danielle and Delco Library Notes

This was homework for Sheila Ruth's Kidlitcon session on CSS and HTML, but it was also a chance to highlight a brand-new blogger. This is one of my favorite parts of Kidlitcon, discovering new or new-to-me bloggers and what they have to say.

Q.

Who are you and what is your blog?

A.

I am Danielle Guardiola and I work at Delco Primary School as the school librarian. My blog, Delco Library Notes, is for teachers, parents, and kids, to showcase what the library is doing. I review books and talk about the skills that the kids are learning.

Q.

What got you into blogging?

A.

I was exposed to social media resources during library school. I saw many early-grade/picture book blogs and thought I could do this as a way to showcase what the school library is doing for kids.

Q.

What do you hope to learn at KidlitCon?

A.

I'm hoping to acquire practical tips on increasing the blog's reach, how to blog better, and how to keep myself consistently blogging.

After the conference was all over, I caught up with Danielle again to see how she'd liked her first Kidlitcon. If you notice a difference in the interview, it's because I just listened and took notes for the first section, but this second section I actually recorded and transcribed later.

Q.

So what did you learn from KidlitCon?

A.

I think I got a big focus of what I want to start with my blog. Because the one that I have right now is for school, and the purpose of that one is just to inform parents of what we do in the library. But besides that, I want to start one where I'm reviewing literature. I've noticed a big need in bilingual books, that we sometimes don't find good quality bilingual books that are available for students. I've talked to several people who said they thought I could be a really good resource, so I think I found a really good focus. That's one major thing, and just a lot of practical tips on how to reach out to other people, how to stay connected with one another and just also be able to go to the Kidlitosphere website and find as much support as possible. That session about the burnout, I was like oh god, it's good I'm hearing this now.

Q.

Yeah! Well, it's something that happens to a lot of people . . .

A.

[It's good] to know that you're not always going to get a lot of responses, that sometimes you're writing for yourself, and that's okay. So overall there was a wealth of information, but those are the three big things: a focus, a community, and a sense of a place where I can go for help, and just not to get overwhelmed.

Much thanks to Danielle, who let herself be interviewed (twice!) in the middle of what must have been a couple of dizzying days. Visit Delco Library Notes and say hi!

KidlitCon 13

Every year, I set aside some vacation and make my way to KidlitCon, wherever it may be. It's been in D.C., Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, Seattle, and now Austin.

Other bloggers have done lovely roundups of the different sessions. Since I live-tweeted most of the sessions (see #kidlitcon13 for everybody's tweets) I won't attempt to be comprehensive, especially since the sessions aren't my primary reason for being there. They're useful and informative, don't get me wrong. The session on blogger burnout in particular gave me a lot to chew on, as did the session on diversity. I got to sharpen my tech skills and contemplate the future of blogging.

But my reason for being there was the people. Walking into the pre-con get-together and immediately getting a big hug from Pam of MotherReader, being able to say hello to Lee Wind and Jen Robinson for the first time in years, hanging out with Kelly Jensen of Stacked and Leila "Bookshelves of Doom" Roy and discussing the horrendous addiction that is Candy Crush (seriously, so many of us seemed to be playing it this weekend!), meeting Kim (also of Stacked), Sherry Early of Semicolon, and brand-new blogger Danielle of Delco Library Notes, and that was just in the first day! I also got to room with Sheila Ruth from Wands and Worlds, and dine with Charlotte Taylor and Melissa Fox of Booknut and Sarah Stevenson of Finding Wonderland, as well as many others that my brain is just a little too fried to remember.

I am not a person who loves meeting people, you have to understand. But I always, always love meeting people at KidlitCon, because I know without being told--by the fact of their presence--that they are kindred spirits, a term brought up in the future of blogging session. They love something that I love, and that's a pretty steady foundation. These folks do it for the same reason I do it; for the love of it. Some of us have been doing this for years; some have just started.

We all come at it from different directions. Our keynote speaker, Cynthia Leitich Smith, and Lee Wind both discussed the diversity within ourselves. Sitting in a room with an archaeologist, a computer programmer, a film critic, many parents, and a number of librarians, I completely understood that! But we've all got that in common, our shared love of reading, of kidlit, and of spreading that love as far and wide as possible.

Thanks to the organizers, Pam, Jen, Sarah,  Kim, Kelly, and Leila. Also, Tanita from Finding Wonderland and Jackie of Interactive Reader (who both deserve some kind of award for putting in all this work and not even being able to make it!) for another lovely year.

Next year, the West Coast! Will you be there?

48-HBC, now with a new Hostess!

Yes, my dears, the 48-Hour Book Challenge is coming! It commences this Friday, June 7, and concludes Sunday night, June 9. How does it work? Select 48 consecutive hours in that period and spend the whole time reading, blogging about what you read, and connecting with other bloggers doing the very same thing.

Meals? That's what Domino's is for. Showers? Eh, you can hold the book out of the spray. Walking the dog? Isn't that why you had kids? Sleep? Well, I guess we all have weaknesses.

I'm looking forward to it. I've been in a slumpy sort of place for about a month with my reading. A lot of books I really felt "meh" about. I prepared for this weekend by requesting and checking out books that I'm really looking forward to, and I'm fairly sure I will like. I've done this for a number of years, and it has always served to relax and energize me, stock up my blog with plenty of reviews during the crazed months of Summer Reading at work, reinforce my ties with the blogging community, and of course, trim down my TBR shelf.

This year, the inestimable Ms. Yingling is hosting it. If you want to participate, please stop in at her blog on Friday morning to sign up!

Happy Cybils Day!

Hop on over to the Cybils blog to discover the winners for this year. Congratulations to all the authors and illustrators, and many, many thanks to all the judges and organizers. This is a big job and it's all volunteer-driven.

I had a great time with my fellow judges for the YA fiction panel, and I feel awfully proud of our choice. Hope you like it as much as we did.


Also, there's some holiday about love or something. Yeah. I don't see it catching on.

Stuff I've Missed

Mind, you haven't missed it, because there are people living in caves in the Marianas Trench who've blogged about some of this stuff. But if I don't write about this, they'll take away my kidlit blogger card.

• Cybils! On the the 1st, the Cybils finalists were announced. And because they're awesome, the Cybils team already has a printable PDF for teachers, parents, and librarians of the finalists. I'm a second-round judge for the YA category. Did you see the list that my fabulous fellow judges and I get to choose from? It has Code Name Verity AND I Hunt Killers. Seriously, guys, this is gonna be hard.
• Comment Challenge! It starts today, y'all. MotherReader and Lee Wind are running their famous Comment Challenge once again, because they're awesome like that. Never done it before? It works like this: Sign up. Pledge to comment at least 5 comments a day for 21 days, from 1/11 to 1/31. (That is so 21 days. Shup.) Watch as other people visit your blog and comment too. Sound good? Hop over to Lee's blog to sign up.
• ALA Youth Media awards! Otherwise known as the Newbery, the Caldecott, and an increasing boatload of others. They're still a little over two weeks away, (January 28th), which means the kidlit community is progressing through the frothing-at-the-mouth stage of speculation on the winners and headed full tilt toward the uncontrollable twitches and vague death threats. (Probable actual quote: "If Wonder doesn't win something, I will BURN THINGS.") Me? I have no opinions. No, honestly. I'm still reading stuff from 2011, guys. I have no idea. I haven't even read Wonder. I just get up for the webcast at ridiculous hours of the morning for the Twitter party.

Okay, that's enough. Over and out, folks. Over and out.

Kidlitcon 2012: The Bloggers Take Manhattan

This past weekend was one of my favorite weekends of the whole year. It was KidlitCon, in which bloggers gather to talk about books, blogging, and the intersection of the two. There's also many hijinx and some drinking of alcoholic beverages.

Every year, a different city is selected and different bloggers organize it, making each KidlitCon a unique experience. This year, it was New York City, and it was put together by Betsy Bird of A Fuse #8 Production and Monica Edinger of Educating Alice.

On Friday, we were treated to publisher previews, which were apparently Monica's brainchild, as well as her blood, sweat, and tears. No word on the proportion of tears to blood and sweat. I attended the Simon and Schuster preview in the morning, and the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt one in the afternoon. I heard about a lot of exciting books coming up, and got a few advanced reader copies to take home. More valuable than that, however, was meeting publisher peeps and talking with them.

At Simon and Schuster, we got the chance to see the research and art that goes into one of Megan McCarthy's appealing nonfiction picture books. She shared with us some of the things she had to do in order to get the pictures and info she needed for her next opus, coming out Summer of 2013. (Hint: illicit photography was involved.)

At the Houghton Mifflin, we discussed Common Core and how books can be used in the classroom. For those of you not in the know, Common Core is the newest thing in education circles. Basically, it's an upgraded set of standards for teachers to plan their lessons by. Of particular interest is that it emphasizes nonfiction reading in language arts, which means librarians get to haul out all the incredibly awesome nonfiction on our shelves. We also briefly chatted about e-galleys vs print ARCs. I was interested to hear that they limit their e-galley distribution just as they do their print galleys, and they were interested to hear that I actually prefer e-galleys.

By the bye, I've since heard from others that they prefer print, so now I'm interested in the topic. How many of you like e-galleys better, print ARCs better, or don't really care as long as you get to read a good book? I may actually do a blog post. Craziness, I know.

On Friday night, the bloggers en masse descended on a midtown restaurant, decimated their sushi bar (Actual quote from a blogger who would prefer to remain anonymous [me]: "Oh, I'll try this one, it's pink!"), and heard Grace Lin speak about her journey from art school to children's-book-illustration. I hear tell that she came into the city with a very small baby and a very large Sasquatch (also in attendance) just to talk to us, and I can't help but feel flattered. We also got the chance to purchase Starry River of the Sky a few days before it was officially on the shelves. If you think we were all over that, you would be right.

Next time: How All The Bloggers astonished Maureen Johnson, and this particular one creeped her out a little bit.

2012 Cybils News!

I have been doing a secret happy dance for a week. Why, you ask?

Do you need a reason to do a happy dance?

Well, in this case, I actually had a reason, and that reason is because I got asked to be a Round 2 Judge for the YA category! I'm awfully excited about this. Can you tell?

I'll be judging with these other magnificent bloggers:

Maureen Eichner
By Singing Light
@elvenjaneite
Adrianne Russell
The Writer's Republic
@writersrepublic
Michelle Castleman
The Hungry Readers
@ShelTheProf
Jessica Silverstein
Reading on the F Train
@SilversteinELA

Congrats to all the other judges and the other panels. It's always a fun time, working on the Cybils. 

Nomination period opens up, as always, on October 1 and run to the 15th of that month. Follow the Cybils blog for the latest!

It's Time for KidlitCon!

Well, almost. In strict accuracy, it's time to register for KidlitCon. This year, it takes place in New York City, September 28-29. This is your chance to meet and hang out with all the bloggers you ever wanted to know, plus a few more. Talk about bloggy topics, books, and blogging about books.

Because it's in New York City, AKA the Big Apple, AKA You Want How Much for That Apple?, they've lowered the price of the conference itself to just 55 dollars. For the whole thing! This includes a pre-con on Friday, with dinner (and special guest speaker Grace Lin!), lunch on Saturday, and naturally the conference itself. If you don't feel like coming to the other stuff (although I don't know why you'd miss out when you're already in New York anyhow), the conference itself is free. Can't get much better than that.

So if you've always wanted to try it out and you've always wanted to visit New York City, consider this your big opportunity. This is the seventh year and I haven't missed one yet.

Plans for the 48-Hour Book Challenge

So, MotherReader announced the official date and rules for the Seventh Annual 48-Hour Book Challenge about two weeks ago. If you've never  heard of such a thing, here's the lowdown on one of the Kidlitosphere's tentpole events.

Basically, we pick a span of 48 hours within the selected weekend and read. Yep. That's it in a nutshell. We read for 48 hours, or as close to it as we can get without suffering hallucinations. We also blog about it. So, we read and we blog for 48 hours. If you read that description and went, "Ooo!", think about joining us. If you read that and went, "Wow, these people are cool but nuts" . . . think about joining us anyway. There are very few hardcore enough to actually read for 48 hours straight. I myself have never broken the 30 hour mark because, y'know, sleep. I like it.

(If you read that and went, "Why would anyone want to read for 48 minutes, much less 48 hours?" I don't think you're on the right blog.)

We also gab on Twitter, Facebook, and each others' blogs. And finally, we tally up what we've done and pledge money to various charities. This year, MotherReader has formalized it and asked us all to donate to Book People Unite for Reading is Fundamental, which has had its budget slashed like a cheerleader in a horror flick.

It's a community-builder (all that gabbing!), it's a marathon, it winnows down our TBR stacks, it flexes our blogging muscles, and it's a way of harnessing all that energy into doing good. How can you lose?

I've been contemplating my plan of attack. I tend to pick a theme and stick with it. I've done Books I Told Someone I'd Read, ARC-a-Palooza, and Books I Can't Wait to Read. I've had the best success with the last theme, so I'll go with that again. I'm already trawling through my LibraryThing wishlist and putting in my order at work for those books that make me do a little happy chair dance.

In past years, I've written each review and put them up immediately . . . then proceeded to let my blog stagnate over the summer, because a children's librarian during Summer Reading Program is analogous to a one-armed paper hanger. So this year, I'm still going to write the reviews, but what I'll post during 48HBC will be the bare-bones info about the book and the time, plus capsules or comments. Then I'll have a backlog of reviews to go up during the summer. This will be especially handy since many of things I already know I want to read are electronic ARCs from NetGalley, some many months out, and I prefer to post those as close to the actual street date as I can.

So that's my plan. What about yours? Will you join us? Will you cheer us on? What will you read? Share!

KidlitCon 2011 Recap - Part Two

So, besides panels about new things, the other highlight of this conference was a return to the basic question of book blogging (e.g., why and how). Along with Melissa of Book Nut and Jen of Jen Robinson's Book Page, I had a panel discussion about blogging a mix of older books and newer books. For the purposes of our discussion, we said that "older" meant it was published more than six months ago. While that sounds massively silly, the topic came up at last year's KidLitCon that publishers have a window of three months before and three months after the publication date of a book that seems to be the golden time for the publicity blitz. After that, it's on to the next thing. So six months? Collecting Social Security.

Melissa, Jen, and I discussed how reading and reviewing both older and newer books had their own advantages and disadvantages. Since we were missing the delightful Terry Doherty of The Reading Tub, we invited the audience to jump in just as much as they liked, and they certainly did!  We agreed that while it was exciting to get shiny new ARCs and review copies, often months before they hit the stores, there was a sense of obligation towards the publishers that's missing when you blog a book from ten years ago or even last year. And blogging older books could help you stand out when everyone seems to be talking about the same books. Obviously, there was a lot more nuance to this discussion, but these are some of the core points.

The most interesting thing to come out of that, for me, was some input from two publisher's reps in the audience. There's a feeling around some areas of the kidlitosphere that you can't blog older books because the publishers won't pay you any attention. They stated the opposite. For smaller to mid-size publishers, a fair amount of their stock is backlist. Even for bigger publishers, attention to an author's older book could ramp up excitement for newer titles. Yes, there's not the same publicity push for backlist titles, because they only have so many publicity dollars, but hey, publicity is publicity. Thanks to everyone who came and contributed. I was so nervous about doing my very first conference presentation ever, but I had a blast!

The other great panel I went to was  presented by Kelly Jensen of Stacked, Abby Johnson of Abby the Librarian, Julia Riley of Spine Label, and Janssen Brandshaw of Everyday Reading, on critical reviews. Actually that's a topic that came up over and over throughout the conference, at multiple panels. Critical, by the way, does not equal negative. It simply means reading the book with a clear eye and being honest yet professional in your review. You can call out negative aspects of a book and still have an overall positive review. One of the premier reasons for this is because your readers trust you more if they see you're being honest, rather than posting shiny-happy reviews all the time. I personally only blog about a book when I really have something to say about it, which most often translates into the books I like best. I have to give some thought to how I review after this panel.

The biggest highlight, even more than the panels, was getting to meet people and hang out with old friends. I live-tweeted all the panels I attended, once I got Twitter to behave itself, and struck up conversations on there. I got to meet Roseanne Parry and geek out over the religious themes in Heart of a Shepherd, and in kidlit in general, a conversation that I continued with Anne Boles Levy. I got to chat with old friend Liz Burns and new pals Lisa Song and Sondra Eklund about Battlestar Galactica. I got to catch up with Pam Coughlan and astonish Colleen by bringing out my knitting during our lengthy lunch break. Thanks to Jackie and Colleen for building in lots and lots of hangin' out time to a fairly short conference, by the way. Definitely one of the planning highlights. I even got to even got the chance to buy Goliath two days before the laydown date, just so we could get it signed by our keynote speaker, Scott Westerfeld. Aren't you jealous! He chatted with us all very nicely, even while the fangirl vibes were practically peeling his hair back.

And remember that exchange of Tweets I mentioned in the first half of this post? After playing tourist on Sunday, and doing everything I could to support Seattle's economy, I left on Monday morning and ran into Scott in the airport on his way to his next tour stop. We chatted briefly and then I Tweeted thusly:

Ran into @ScottWesterfeld in the airport just now. Random. #Orwasit #amnotstalkerIswear

Scott's reply/retweet?

This really happened. *alerts security*

Hee!

Check out the roundup of all the recaps, here at the Kidlitosphere site. If I met you at KidlitCon, I had a great time! If you didn't make and are reading this, green with envy, just know that next year is in New York City. Hope to see you there.

KidlitCon 2011 Recap - Part One

This is my fifth year attending the annual Kidlitosphere Conference, affectionately known as KidlitCon. Every year is a little different . . . different cities, different attendees, different activities. But I'll tell you what's always the same: getting to meet new friends, hang out with old ones, attending sessions that make me think critically (and not always comfortably) about the way that I blog and review. Most of all, though, this is the one weekend a year I can be sure that I'm talking to people who just get it. They get the blogging thing, they get the kid's books thing, and they have nothing but respect for both.

This year, the festivities went down in Seattle, arranged by Jackie of Interactive Reader and Colleen of Chasing Ray. It's a gargantuan task, and they did a stellar job. The conference was expanded by an extra half-day of panels on Friday before the full day on Saturday. I could go through all the panels I attended one by one, but I think I'll just call out the highlights.

I decided that this year I'd try out new things, and went to two panels on new ways of storytelling and delivering content. The first was on transmedia storytelling, meaning stories told through a variety of platforms. Examples include Patrick Carman's Skeleton Creek series, which mixes a paper book with online videos, and the 39 Clues series from HarperCollins, which blends a book series with card collecting and an online game. The presenters themselves were the creators of the Angel Punk world, which encompasses a novel, a comic book, and a feature film, among other things. The point I came away with was that transmedia is more than just tie-ins; it's using multiple platforms to tell the story.

The second was presented by Mary Ann Scheuer of Great Kid Books, Betsy Bird of Fuse #8, and Paula Wiley of Pink Me. They talked about the brave new world of picture-book apps. Currently the 900-pound gorilla in that market is the iPad, although chatting with Chris of BookDads afterwards, I discovered that the Nook Color also has some picture-book apps as well. These aren't tie-in games, these are the digital equivalent of pop-up books, with activities embedded within the story. To my surprise, it's not confined to the picture-book realm. There were some ridiculously awesome nonfiction titles in the stack, as well as one particularly neat chapter book. It was pretty neat to see how well (or not) publishers had enhanced content without sacrificing story or information. It strikes me that Choose Your Own Adventure would be an ideal fit for this medium (and a quick iTunes check shows me that there are indeed a few Choose Your Own Adventure titles on the market). I'll be keeping an eye on this because I really want to figure out how libraries intend on using them, if they do at all.

Enough for now! Leave 'em wanting more, that's my motto. Up next: more panel goodness, and fun with Tweeting. Fittingly enough, my KidlitCon experience ended with an exchange of tweets. But you'll hear that next time.

The Comment Challenge is Here Again!

If you've ever wanted to get more involved with the kidlitosphere, now's your chance. Hop on over to MotherReader's blog and sign up for the 2011 comment challenge. In a nutshell, here's how it works: You try to comment on other people's book blogs. That's . . . really about it.

I love this when it comes around, because it reminds me to put my reactions to other bloggers in writing, to be part of the conversation that is this great blog adventure we're all having. I also try to check out a lot of the other participants' blogs, and this challenge has introduced me to lots of neat new blogging friends. Well, what are you waiting for?

This also dovetails rather nicely with my own desire to blog more. I have great half-written reviews on my hard drive, but they don't do me much good there, now do they?

The Cybils Shortlists Are Out!

Woohoo! Click on over and see the Cybils shortlists, and start placing your bets on the winners now.

It's another great set, with a mix of famous and unknowns. Generally, I have the books on my list but haven't gotten to them yet. That's not a surprise, because I'm almost always way behind in my reading. There are one or two on each list that are totally new to me - woohoo! There are at least a few that I've seen around the blogs and decided not to read, but this nomination might change my mind. Maybe.

What's your Cybils score?

For Your Blogroll

In honor of Veteran's Day today, I want to point you at a neat little blog I heard about at KidLitCon: The Children's War. This blog focuses on current and older books written about kids during WWII.

That sounds like a pretty narrow field of focus, and it is, but they still manage to post really neat books at least once or twice a week. It's a young blog, only since June, but I like the mix of fiction and nonfiction, newer and older, and the in-depth reviews.

Happy Veteran's Day everyone. Go hug a soldier.

Blast from the Past

One of the panels at KidlitCon was all about blogging the backlist - that is, older books. We often get caught up in the bright shiny new sparkly books out there, and forget what great books have been published already. Whether these books are four years old or forty, there's a kid out there who hasn't read it yet, and that's why they still deserve to be talked about. Too, if they are forty years old, it's an education to go back and look at them with 21st century eyes.

Over at her Fire Escape, Mitali Perkins is picking up this idea and running with it, by way of what she calls a Cuci Mata reading of classic children's books, to see how they read to our eyes. First on the docket: Emily of Deep Valley by Maud Hart Lovelace. If this is an old favorite, or you've never picked it up, stop on by to join the fun.

And of course, I don't need to remind you that most of these marvelous older books are available at your local library.