Book Review: Right Behind You by Gail Giles

Book: Right Behind You
Author: Gail Giles
Published: 2007

Once upon a time, there were two little boys. One was named Kip, and the other was named Bobby. One day, Kip got angry at Bobby. So he set him on fire, and Bobby died.

This story has been part of Kip McFarland’s life ever since he was nine years old. He’s spent four years in a mental institution for juvenile violent criminals. Now he’s emerging, with a new name, a new home, and hopefully a new life. But the crime he committed is still buried deep inside. Bobby may have died, but Kip lived. And Wade has to keep on living, knowing what he did, every single day.

Talk about a hook. The booktalk for this one just writes itself. How many of us have contemplated hideous murders on the news and wondered how a human being could do that, and, more, how they could live with themselves after? The idea of sociopathy is a comforting one--they look human, but they didn’t come equipped with a conscience. We could never do that because we’re real people.

In Right Behind You, Giles chooses to tell the wrenching tale of someone who made a terrible mistake and will never stop paying for it. But beyond that, this novel asks the questions: what is forgiveness? What is redemption? Is either possible when you’ve taken another’s life, even if by accident?

This is not a light read, and not for somebody who likes their heroes flawless. But it's most definitely worth reading.

Reading Roundup April 2009

By the Numbers
Teen: 13
Tween: 12
Children: 20

Standouts
Teen: Right Behind You by Gail Giles
Tween: The Dragonfly Pool by Eva Ibbotson
Children: Where I Live by Eileen Spinelli

Because I Want To Awards
Most Extended Happy Dance Upon Arrival: Fire by Kristin Cashore (and yes, it lived up to it)
Most Unusual Character Description: Punk rock Orthodox Jewish sitcom actress Hava Aaronson, from Never Mind the Goldbergs by Matthue Roth
Tearjerker Without Being Sappy: Mick Harte Was Here by Barbara Park
Loved It and I Don't Even Like Baseball: The Brooklyn Nine by Alan Gratz
More Than I Expected: No Talking by Andrew Clements

Ann Rinaldi Defends Historical Fiction

From PW, natch: In Defense of Historical Fiction by Ann Rinaldi.

We've been hearing that "kids don't read historical" for years, and yet the historical keeps on chuggin'. Rinaldi talks about why.

Young people write to me daily to tell me they have grown up with my books, that my books got them through some of the worst times of their lives, that when they visited historical places with their parents they already knew everything there was to know about them, that when they studied history in school they found out it was no longer boring. That they now understood about their country. And finally that, reading my books, they had had fun and enjoyment and not realized they were learning. And wow, did that neat stuff really happen? And when is the next one coming out?

You tell 'em, Ann.

What's New

In my webby wanderings, I ran across YALit.com. Started by a YA librarian and still maintained apparently by hand and the graciousness of publishers that send the webmasters their catalogs,
this is a website that collects and sends forth new YA titles, alerting you to all the good stuff as it comes out. How freakin' handy is that?

I've already discovered a sequel to Neal Schusterman's Everlost. This one is titled Everwild and is coming out in November. Whee!!

Do we have to discuss how much I love that it includes RSS feeds? Keri Adams and Stefan Hayden, you are made of 100% undiluted awesome.

Envelope Please

This weekend was the LA Festival of Books, always a good time. In conjunction, the LA Times presented their Book Awards.

This year's winner was Terry Pratchett, for Nation. Huzzah!

Oh, and apparently there were other books awarded for other genres, but since it's not young adult literature, I don't really care. Does that make me a bad person? Oh, it does? Okay, in that case click through for the rest of the winners.

Admit It, You're Going to Ask For This Cake Now

Courtesy of Cake Wrecks: A Twilight Cake.

I hope it's at least chocolate. There's got to be something good about that cake.

Another One for the Proud to Read YA File

From an unexpected source: HealthNews recently ran an article on the power of young adult literature. Not only do they like it for the kids, they defend the right of adults to read it as well. They sum it up as sweetly as any of us would like in the last lines:

All these things, unbelievably strong friendships, courage, and moral dilemmas of epic proportions are all contained in young adult novels. So, if over the next few weeks, a young adult title catches your eye, and you shrug and think that would be juvenile, rethink that choice, and give it a try. It may turn out to be the best book you’ve ever read.

Book Review: Cycler by Lauren McLaughlin

Book: Cycler
Author: Lauren McLaughlin
Published: 2008

Jill hates that time of the month. The way her body changes, the weird cravings, the sick dreams. No bones about it, turning into a guy for four days each month is terrible. Compared to that, having her period's actually not half-bad.

She's always been able to count on the regularity of her transformations, and on being able to suppress all her memories of life as Jack. But now her cycle is all out of whack. To make it worse, Jack's memories and emotions are creeping into her life as Jill and disrupting the perfect life she’s carefully built up.

Is the world ready for the real Jill--and the real Jack? Ready or not, here they come.

In this novel, McLaughlin asks questions about both gender and sexual identity, and leaves it to us to answer them. What does it mean to be female? To be male? Jill (and her mother) have literally caged away any hint that she does not fall into the rigid pattern of feminine thought and behavior. To them, boys and men (and by extension, masculine behavior) are not merely other, but inimical. They are strange beasts that must be contained.

But as anyone knows, nobody and nothing falls into rigid patterns. Jill begins to be more open to mutability when she falls for a bisexual boy just as Jack begins to fight for his right to exist. (By the way, Lauren McLaughlin, big big kudos for not going, "Well, isn't that handy, someone who can love both Jack AND Jill!" So easy, so wrong.)

When I heard there was a sequel in the works, titled (Re)Cycler and due out in September, I did a happy dance. While the ending is a good one, there are still a number of issues to be resolved for Jill, Jack, and everyone around them. I'm looking forward to seeing how McLaughlin does it.

Wait, We Still Have to Have This List?

The ALA put out their annual most frequently challenged books list. To nobody's surprise, it still has penguins, daemons, and scary stories to tell in the dark. Let's hear it for consistency, people.

My eye was caught by #9:

The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

To echo a co-worker: "Do they know it was written for adults?"

And yes, okay, it was probably from angry parents of high-schoolers reading it for class, but the disconnect still makes me laugh. And then weep.

A Perfectly Beastly Movie

Remember Alex Flinn's rather neato Beauty and the Beast retelling, Beastly? Turns out it's being made into a movie! Woohoo!

So far, info on the adaptation is skimpy, but we do know that Vanessa Hudgens is slated to star. Yeah, High School Musical girl. Well, okay. We'll see.

The Original Anarchist

Found this one on the Child_Lit listserv: A Girl in Full from Haaretz-Israel News--an article on Pippi Longstocking, there known as Bilbi.

I initially thought, "Oh, how interesting, Pippi in translation." (Forgetting, of course, in my US-centric fashion, that Pippi is already in translation, having been written originally in Swedish. D'oh.) Then I got to readin'.

"You have all the elements that create a hit," says Prof. Adir Cohen, an expert in children's literature from the Department of Education at the University of Haifa. "There is imagination, effusive humor, the breaching of frameworks, readable language and characters that readers can identify with. The nonconformism is marvelous, and so are the swipes at sacred cows, such as school and the police."

It's a fantastic article about one of the wildest kids in children's lit. While I was prepared for an account of how Pippi affected one particular country and culture, I realized that just as her appeal is universal, so are her effects. It's long, but you won't be sorry you read it.

Redefining Yourself

. . . or in this case, myself.

I've seen a lot of posts lately about the book blog biz itself. A few years back, we were a new phenomenon and it was anything goes. Now things have settled, and a bunch of us are stepping back, taking a look at what we do, and going, "Okay, let's get some definitions in here, please." I've seen posts on chasing the next big title vs undiscovered gems, on unwanted ARCs, on blogger/author netiquette. Now here's my little contribution to our shared identity crisis.

I've been pouting a little lately because I don't get too many ARCs. Then I realized that my list of books to read, known to longtime readers as the Blue Journal of Books I Gotta Read Before I Die, already runs to three volumes. (I wish I was kidding about that.) And those are books I genuinely want to read based on recommendations from bloggers, parents, kids, other librarians, or even seeing them around and going, "Hmm, gotta read that someday."

Granted, there are ARCs I would sell extraneous organs for (ahemChasing Fireahem). On the other hand, there are plenty of books in my Blue Journal that I look forward to, no matter who else has read and reviewed and in some cases even given them medals. And if the Next Hot Book is really all that, I'll get to it in time.

One of the shared joys of librarianship and book blogging is that older titles and authors whose books don't get as much publicity get a chance in the spotlight. At a bookstore or in the review journals, it's all about the new and hot. But libraries and blogs have the chance to show off older titles or less well-known authors.

So I'm thinking of myself as a backlist blogger these days and I've stopped pouting. Just as there are millions of books and zillions of kids out there, there's a spot in the book blogging world for everyone.

This is Awfully Neat

One of my big thrills is when I encounter something in real life that I first read in a book. For instance, in sixth grade, I was gobsmacked when I realized that the mitochondria in Madeline L'Engle's The Wind in the Door were real parts of our cells. (Of course, the teacher had no idea what I was talking about when I asked for the farandolae.)


I happened across this picture at the Shorpy blog, which posts historical photographs, and instantly thought of Karen Hesse's 2008 MG novel, Brooklyn Bridge, which takes place during the building of New York's favorite river-crossing apparatus. I keep squinting at the background to spot one of the kids under the bridge.

Battle of the Books, 1st Round

I've been hearing about SLJ's Battle of the (Kid's) Books all week. Now that the dust has settled for a moment, let's check in and see how things shaped up.

There are some surprises (I'm astounded that Nation didn't make it beyond round 1) and some tough battles to come (poor John Green now has to choose between We Are the Ship and The Hunger Games. Hoo, mama). What do you think of the winners? Who's your money on for the shiny gold medal?

Round two commences on Monday. To the trenches!

Book Review: Gone by Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson

Book: Gone
Author: Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson
Published: 2007

Nobody's ever stayed with Connor. He grew up with alcoholic parents whom he could never trust to put him before the booze. Now he's living with a great-aunt, but he's always longed for the security of a real family.

Suddenly, there's Ms Timms. Corinna. Once his teacher, now something much, much more. Even though he's seventeen and she thirty-one, this is love. He knows it. Has Connor finally found the one person who will always stay?

The jacket copy of this book makes much of the student-teacher angle of this book, but it didn't wind up being that important. While Johnson makes it clear that they noticed each other while he was her student, the relationship doesn't truly get underway until after he has graduated high school.

Corinna is a conundrum--is she using him? does she love him? we never quite figure that out--but that really doesn't matter. What matters is what Connor feels about the relationship. He sees in it his salvation, his chance to be first in someone's (anyone's) heart.

What he doesn't realize (and we do, quite quickly) is that his aunt, his friends, and even his next-door neighbors are a kind of assembled family who all love him and watch out for him. But he insists on holding them at arm's length, scrupulously repaying his aunt for any money she spends on him and resisting his best friend's efforts to understand what's going on. This blindess may be difficult for some readers to sympathize with, but he eventually gets there.

Counter to the advertising, don't go into this book expecting a salacious tale of clandestine molestation. Instead, prepare yourself for a story about a young man learning that love comes in many forms, and the one that seems obvious isn't the one that's going to stay.

A Tiny Little Smidge of Friday Glee

It's been a stressful day. I need this video. You probably do too.



Oh, I feel better now.

AfterEllen on YA GLBT books

A few weeks back, AfterEllen.com ran a story on the evolving state of GLBT stories and characters in YA. It talks about a number of authors and a lot of books (where is my Blue Journal?), but the thrust boils down to this:

Queer teen characters are no longer limited to coming-out stories. They are now able to deal with ordinary teen issues like dating without the added angst of struggling with their sexual orientation.

That's always been one of my favorite things about books like Far From Xanadu. Once the coming-out (even to yourself) has been achieved, a gay or lesbian teen still has all the normal heartaches and headaches of growing up to handle, just like their straight counterparts. Finding common ground with somebody you never thought you could identify with is one of the jobs of literature.

The article also discusses the rising number of minority GLBT characters and how their culture and sexuality intersect (and in some cases, explode), plus a comparison of the different levels of explicitness in gay vs. lesbian novels.

Check out the article for more, and some great book suggestions.

PW on Multi-platform Books

You kids today. In my time, we had to read books by hand. Using our fingers to turn the pages. Video? Audio? Pah! We made video and audio in our heads! Sometimes we got a stuffed animal with the book, and ya know what? We were happy! You're just spoiled, the lot of you. Get off my dang lawn!

All old-fartness aside, there does seem to be a rise in the number of books that have multimedia components--not merely tie-ins, but necessary elements to understanding and following the story.

Scholastic's 39 Clues series was in the nature of an experiment, but it's an experiment that a number of other publishers are trying as well. Check out this story on multimedia publishing over at Publisher's Weekly for more.

What think'st thou? Of course, it's all about the almighty dollar, but are publishers pandering to increasingly fleeting juvenile attention, or are they capitalizing on the new literacy?

Kidliterate is Awesome

Do you doubt me? Then read this post: An Open Letter to . . . People and prepare to have your doubts smithereened.

This has been bugging me lately--not the feeling that I should be reading "grownup" books, but the reactions of others seeing that I love reading kids' books. From the standup comic who sneered at his dates reading Harry Potter, to the co-worker who told me (jokingly, but he said it all the same) "Grow up!" I'm getting just a little sick of people thinking I am less of a book lover if the books I love are intended for a group that can't pour themselves a glass of wine while they read.

The first step is letting people know you aren't ashamed--then maybe they'll start wondering why they think you should be.

Thanks for the rant, Melissa. It was just what I needed to hear.

Amazon Follow-Up

The word on the internets is that Amazon is blaming a "glitch" for yesterday's furor over books with feminist and GLBT content losing their sales ranks. Interestingly, the glitch seems to have been ongoing since February. The other word on the internets, of course, is #glitchmyass.

Anyway, this is my little contribution to letting Amazon know how pissed off I am. I'm canceling my associate's ID and linking to WorldCat.org for book reviews and further info from now on. The extra bonus, besides not having to sign into Amazon all the time, is that WorldCat.org shows you local libraries that own the book you're looking at, and I think I'd rather support libraries than Amazon.

Amazon Epic Fail

Most of you have probably heard about this one already. I woke up to a flurry of Twitters about it.

Amazon.com, in all its wisdom, has decided to strip the sales ranks of books they consider to contain "adult" situations. What does this mean, other than that the authors suddenly have one less thing to obsess over?

Amazon's search results, lists of top sellers, and even suggested books (the "others have bought . . ." thing you get on a particular book's page) are produced using sales ranks. So a book with no sales rank effectively has no power on Amazon, a website that has made seventy-six-squillion dollars (conservative estimate) by spoiling you for choice the minute you express a preference in books, movies, and everything else they sell.

I went poking around and found a list (apparently still being added to) of books that have had their Amazon sales ranks stripped due to containing adult content.

Among those listed are the lesbian-moms classic Heather Has Two Mommies, Alex Sanchez's Rainbow trilogy (Boys, High, and Road) and Linas Alsenas's Gay America (which I happen to know for a fact contains no explicit content). Where's the "adult" in this equation?

This isn't applying across the board yet. Many of Sanchez's other books (most of which have gay characters if not outright romance) still retain their sales ranks. But it's probably only a matter of time.

Some heterotica has made the list (a dubious distinction) but it's overwhelmingly populated by GLBT titles. Which means? "Adult," in this case, is mainly code for "stuff about those nasty gays and lesbians."

You know what happens when a company like Amazon does this? A teen web surfer, trying to find books which reflect his or her experience, hears, "You're alone. You're a freak. Your sexual orientation, or that of your friend/mom/cousin/next door neighbor, is something you should keep behind closed doors, because everybody else is too grossed out by it. Here, have a book about healthy, normal, heterosexual kids who never, ever, ever think about someone of the same sex THAT way. Euuwwwwww. Does your mother know you're making this search?"

I've been an Amazon Associate for awhile now, linking from my reviews and monthly reading roundups. Mainly it's a way to show the covers and give more info about the book because I've made so little in kickbacks that I've never even gotten a check from them. But I know they have made money from me. If you know of a way I can break the huge number of links I've made from my blog to Amazon, let me know in the comments.

For the world's most pervasive book seller to censor in this way, directly targeting the GLBT population, is nothing short of disgusting. Fix this, Amazon.

Young Sherlock Holmes Books

It doesn't have anything to do with the movie from the 80's, by the way.

Apparently the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle has approved the writing of a 3-book YA series about Sherlock Holmes' youth.

The books will begin in the 1860s with the fourteen-year-old Sherlock sent to spend the summer with eccentric relatives as his soldier father heads for India. Sherlock is drawn into a sinister international plot with a brilliantly imagined villain at its heart.

While I got this bit off a British website, it did say world rights, so I have hopes we'll see them over here about the same time. They're tentatively scheduled for next spring.

Wintergirls Behind the Scenes Video

Like everyone else in the YA fan community, I can't wait to read Wintergirls, Laurie Halse Anderson's newest release. Cuz, dude, Laurie Halse Anderson! But also because it's about one of those subjects that's near, if not exactly dear, to my heart: depression that young women (and even some young men) attempt to control by destroying themselves through food, or the lack thereof.

Now, eating-disorder books are a dime a dozen in the teen area of your local public library, and it takes some real shiny writing to stand out from that herd. But, to repeat, Laurie Halse Anderson. I have faith, y'all.

In the video below, Anderson talks a little bit about how and why she wrote the book.


Thanks to Cheryl Rainfield.

See, I Told You Guys I Had This Article

Found this one (of course) in PW: Books for Film in Bologna. It's a little piece on the preponderance of filmy types at the recent children's book fair in Bologna. Now, besides the fact that it was, y'know, in Italy, there was good reason for their all-expenses-paid trip:

“Kids' and YA publishing have strong footholds in the top Hollywood films” these days, said Gotham Group manager and producer Eddie Gamarra. And it seems to make increasing sense for studios to pursue children's books: looking at the top 10 grossing films of 2008, Gamarra said, “all of them were family movies.”

Why would that be? Read on . . .

[K]ids' books may lend themselves more easily to the medium, said Pender-Coplan. For one thing, “they travel in a way that adult books might not.” Stumbling blocks for adult books—whether a book is '“too American,” for example—are less relevant to children's books, which tend to mine universal themes.

I always thought that the relative length of a children's book also had something to do with it, meaning less to cut. But of course, now somebody's gonna beat me with a copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and call me wrong.

So What Are You Doing in October?

It's never too early to plan your Halloween costume.

Also, the Third Annual Kidlitosphere Conference, organized by MotherReader (of MotherReader fame), takes place on the 17th in Washington, DC. It is the most fun I've ever had in a large room with a bunch of kidlit-lovin' geeks who use the Internet to tell everyone about their favorite books. Reserve your plane ticket now!

I currently don't know if I'm going to make it, but I hope so!

Cassandra Clare on the End of Mortal Instruments

Good ol' PW. You can count on them for interviews. This one's an author interview with Cassandra Clare. She talks about favorite characters (not allowed; it would be like having a favorite kid), her writing plans for the future (a prequel series) and what it feels like to finish a series like this.

You work so hard for so long and are so involved in the world you’ve created that when it is all over, at first you think, This is so great! I’m done! I never have to look at this again! Then, once it’s all bundled off, you get all sad and nostalgic because you realize that it’s really over.

For my own reasons, I didn't expect to like City of Bones when I picked it up. But a few pages in--it may have even been the first one--I went "Yowza!" and got sucked under. Now, like any good fangirl, I'm slavering for the rest. I'm on the wait list at the library for Book Two (City of Ashes) and bugging our central purchasing department to just buy Book Three (City of Glass) already. Boy, do they hate me.

Mr Popper's Penguins movie

Cheryl Rainfield tells me that the classic Mr Popper's Penguins is set to become a movie. This is about the fifty-seventeenth children's book I've heard of (classic and recent) that's in the pipeline to the theatres. Somewhere, I have a neat article about how and why this is happening so much recently. Until I find that, I'll enjoy thinking of penguinine mayhem.

It does, however, terrify me just a smidge that the writers that the studio picked were also responsible for a movie called Sex Drive. Yikes.

And You Thought I Was Going to Leave Twilight Alone

Found this one via Fuse #8: the Twilight series in just sixteen panels. Laughed inordinately.

It also satisfied any lingering wisp of desire I ever had to read the second two books in the series. My favorite bit is Jacob's "Phooey." No, I'm not telling you the context. Click through already!

Book Review: The Minister's Daughter by Julie Hearn

Book: The Minister's Daughter
Author: Julie Hearn
Published: 2005

Grace and Patience Madden, the ministers' daughters, are acting strange. Always the sweetest and best-behaved girls in the village, they are suddenly confined to their beds, unable to rise, prey to wild fits and visions. All the signs point to one thing--witchcraft. And the witch could only be wild, clever, illegitimate Nell, granddaughter to the village healer, heir to all her outlandish knowledge.

But there are things nobody knows about Grace Madden except for Nell. Like the identity of the boy Grace has been sneaking out at night to see. Like Grace's secretive visit to Nell's house. Like the due date.

As the old pagan ways of Nell and her grandmother clash with the new Puritan views of the Madden family, dragging the whole village in after them, one thing comes clear--nobody can come out the winner.

Nell's fate has more than a whiff of deus ex machina (really, Julie Hearn? That guy? Really??) but what made this novel memorable for me was the portrayal of the traps that hold both Grace and Nell. In different ways, both girls are bound up in the social norms for girls of their time. The difference is that Grace will do anything to fit them, and Nell chooses the more difficult route of being herself.

As for Patience--when I was done, I Twittered, "Bitch crazy." While she never plays an active part in the main narrative, her confession years later adds dimensions to the story being played out. The force of her rage and resentment nearly fifty years later permeates her "confession," as well as a self-portrayal as an innocent victim that the main storyline casts into doubt.

The Minister's Daughter is a fascinating novel about the petty, human side of a dark time for anyone who was different.

Interesting note: In the original UK edition, the title was The Merrybegot. I have to say I'm behind the switch. While Nell is the character that everything happens to, it's Grace who's the driving force.

Jacqueline Wilson Interview

This is an old one. It's been sitting around in my Google Reader for awhile now, but I'm cleaning up and you get the benefits. The Guardian did an interview with British author Jacqueline Wilson, talking over the inspiration for her books and the less-than-savory reputation she seems to have acquired amongst middle-class parents.

Her stories are about children in moderately difficult circumstances - with friends who bully them, or parents who quarrel or don't have enough money. Standard fare, perhaps, but the difference from so much traditional children's fiction is that these children live, as the author herself once did, in council flats and go to state schools.

She's much more well-known in the UK than she is on this side of the pond, but her books are starting to get more limelight over here.

I was lucky enough to have Wilson herself come talk to a Children's Literature class I was taking while studying abroad. Unfortunately, this was before I had any idea who she was, and I principally remember the number of rings she had on. Dang.

Where the Magic Happened

Courtesy of 100 Scope Notes, Roald Dahl's writing hut, explorable online due to the graciousness of the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre. Apparently it plays nicest with Internet Explorer, although Firefox did all right for me.

I continue to be amazed by the writing space of some very good authors. You feel as it's not big enough, somehow, to contain all what came to life within its walls. Enjoy.

Reading Roundup March 2009

By the Numbers
Teen: 23
Tween: 11
Children: 24

Standouts
Teen: Cycler by Lauren McLaughlin
Tween: My So-Called Family by Courtney Sheinmel
Children: Jack Plank Tells Tales by Natalie Babbitt

Because I Want To Awards
Most Unexpectedly Hilarious: Hitler's Canary by Sandi Toksvig
Most Difficult to Process: Tender Morselsby Margo Lanagan
Bought It Full Price and It Was So Worth It: Nation by Terry Pratchett
Gave Me the Willies: The Minister's Daughter by Julie Hearn

Totally Not an April Fool's Joke

So last week, Gregory K. emailed me to tell me about this rather awesome project called 30 Days/30 Poets. April being National Poetry Month, he intends to post a brand-spankin' new, never-before-seen poem, specially written for the purpose, every single day, starting tomorrow.

Participating poets include Jack Prelutsky, Pat Mora, Jane Yolen, Nikki Grimes . . . and those are just the ones that made me squeal extra-loud. Since I'm kind of a poetry dunce, you know this is a pretty special collection to make me sit up and take notice.

Stop on by his announcement to see the full list of poets and a list of other ways you can participate in National Poetry Month.

I'm Probably Gonna Regret This

Maureen Johnson keeps getting people bugging her to blog, even though she has lots of things to do, mainly concerned with writing really good books. But she has listened to the voice of the people, or at least those people that are really loudmouthed, and has promised to blog every day in April.

She made the mistake of capitalizing Blog Every Day in April when Twittering about it, and now people think it's, like, a Thing. That You Do. With Capitals. And lo, it has become a Thing That You Do With Capitals.

This sounds like a good idea, especially since I've been lazyish about blogging lately. Plus, you know, people named Maureen are frickin' brilliant. Before I sober up, I hereby pledge to Blog Every Day in April. On both my blogs. Oh my god, you people, what am I getting myself into?

If you want to Blog Every Day in April, stop by Maureen Johnson's blog and find out the rules. It being Maureen Johnson, there aren't that many that don't involve zombies or coconut cream pies. If you Twitter about it, add the tag #BEDA.

Book Review: Jack Plank Tells Tales by Natalie Babbitt

Book: Jack Plank Tells Tales
Author: Natalie Babbitt
Published: 2007

Jack Plank has just been laid off from his pirate job. He's put ashore with a little money in his pocket and no idea what to do next. He finds a boarding house and the landlady reluctantly agrees to let him live there on the condition that he finds a proper job as soon as possible (i.e, nothing piratey). But Jack searches day in and day out, and never finds a job. Or rather, he finds several, but they always seem to remind him of some crazy event in his past.

The household is kept entertained by his nightly tales around the dinner table, but as the days pass, Jack gets more and more worried. How is he ever going to find the perfect job?

While Natalie Babbitt doesn't have the general-public star power of Madeleine L'Engle or Beverly Cleary, she's one of those names known to teachers and librarians for a long, long time. After reading this book, I know why. Jack Plank's stories run the gamut from hair-raising (the mummy's hand) to sweet (the music-loving crocodile. No, really), but the whole book has a light, charming, tall-tale tone about it.

It took me a couple of hours to finish Jack Plank Tells Tales, but due to the episodic nature, this would work perfectly as a middle or upper-elementary classroom or bedtime readaloud across a week or two.

Harlequin Teens

I've been meaning to post this little snippet for awhile now, so when PW ran a story, it was just the kick in the pants I needed.

The publisher Harlequin, best known for their romance novels, is hoping to slice themselves a piece of the YA pie (mmm, pie) with a new line aimed at teens. I would be inclined to snark, but two things stop me: one, that I read a lot of romance myself and that would just be hypocritical, and two, that the ladies from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books would hunt me down and gut me. I'm scared of the smart bitches, y'all.

While the Harlequin Teen line does seem to be focusing on the girls, they don't seem to be (as one would expect) solely teen romances. Instead, the line is going for

a spectrum of genres including fantasy, contemporary, historical, science fiction and—no surprise—romance.

They're also hoping to get market info directly from the girls via a website that asks for direct input. We'll see how that works out.

They have actually done YA before, with Kimani Tru, a not-totally-romance offshoot of their African-American romance line. Kimani Tru hasn't set the world on fire, but from what I've seen of their titles, they've done an all-right job appealing to teen girls.

So what do you think? Are they going to get a nice big piece of the pie, with whipped cream on top? Or just the icky, dry pieces of crust?

Operation Teen Book Drop

So you know how Uncle Sam is totally giving you back all sorts of money this year? What are you going to do with it? How about passing on your deep and slightly scary love of YA by participating in Operation Teen Book Drop?

In all their awesomosity, a whole bunch of blogs like Readergirlz and Guys Lit Wire, plus more, are sponsoring a drive to bring good books to hospital-bound teens. How can you participate, I hear you say? So glad you asked.

Readergirlz invites teens and YA authors to leave a book in a public place on April 16th. Participants can download bookplates to insert into the books they'll leave behind.

And if Uncle Sam is being a cheapskate this year, well, there's always the library book sale. Follow the link to find out what to do once you've gotten the book you want to drop.

"Congratulations--You Pissed a Lot of People Off"

This was one reaction to "Be Still and Know," a play based on one of the few books to deal positively with both faith and homosexuality, Alex Sanchez's eye-opening The God Box. Making it even more fun, the play was adapted and performed by a group from Sacred Heart Preparatory school in the Bay Area, as part of a school-wide unit on homosexuality and faith. Pretty awesome, if you ask me.

Follow the dancing link to find out more about the book, the play, and the reaction.

Farah Mendlesohn and the Campaign for Shiny Futures

Eeeeeenteresting.

Farah Mendlesohn, a name I see often on the Child_Lit listserv, has published an impassioned article about the state of sci-fi in YA, and how it got there. Quotage, you ask? Soitenly.

Very few SF books published for the teen market since 1970 saw the future as something to look forward to, and the downbeat books are not merely skeptical, they are downright doom-mongering and disempowering.

Now I love me some Uglies and Feed as much as the next geek, but I have to admit she's got a point there. Dystopia are so common in YA SF that I have a whole category in my LibraryThing for it. She also makes some remarks about why teens aren't supposed to like classic techno-geek SF (and why that assumption isn't always right) that are worth paying attention to.

She mentions a forthcoming book, The Intergalactic Playground. Now I'm terribly interested in reading it, or at least getting my hot little hands on a booklist.

Thanks to SheilaRuth via Twitter.

New Award on the Horizon

YALSA's adding another award to the Printz, the Alex, and new-kid-on-the-block Morris. This one doesn't have a snappy title yet, but it's for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults.

This one made me blink a little. We've got great nonfic for kids of all ages (even some awesome early-reader nonfic, as evidenced by the inclusion of Wolf Snail on the Geisel award list this past January), but once you get up into the YA zone, it gets pretty thin on the ground. Most libraries, in fact, shelve teen nonfic together with adult nonfic.

On the other hand, maybe that's exactly why we should have an award. I'll keep an eye on this one.

Thanks to AbbyLibrarian on Twitter, again.

The Hunger Games Movie!

After yesterday's post on books being made into movies, here's some news for you: The Hunger Games is next up for the silver screen!

It's just talkity talk at the moment, but I'm excited because a) the book kicked all forms of tail and b) I happen to think it'll translate on-screen very well. Crossing my fingers on this one!

Thanks to AbbyLibrarian for the news, via Twitter.

The Neverending Movie (Again) Plus Special Bonus Lightning Round

I've had this one marked in Google Reader for a few weeks, but something akin to the Black Death laid me low all last week. I'm crawling back towards life now, so I've decided to post about it. Apparently, The Neverending Story is on the radar of Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, for a remake, or a reboot, or some such. I have two questions:

1) Since when does Leo have a production company?
2) Really, Leo, must you?

I have fond memories of TNS, including the book itself, which I buckled down and read in grad school. I fear the Hollywood treatment. Currently, the only studio I trust to make a halfway decent movie out of a really good book is Walden Media.

The link asks pretty much the same questions, including our Special Bonus Lightning Round: what book should be made into a movie? Leave your opinions (and your opinions on the comments at EW) in the comments section.

K.L. Going Rules the World

You know she does. Check out this recent Publisher's Weekly interview, wherein she talks about her circuitous route to publication, her new book (King of the Screwups), and writing in the wake of the critical huzzahs that greeted her first novel, Fat Kid Rules the World (hint: tough. Very tough).

I was used to thinking that writing a novel you had all the time in the world and all of a sudden people were asking, ‘Where’s the next one?’ I was thinking, ‘What? Another one? So soon?’ I can’t do that.

Apparently she managed.

Book Review: The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean

Book: The White Darkness
Author: Geraldine McCaughrean
Published: 2007

Symone Wates is in love with an older man. A lot older. Like 90 years. Ever since her father's death, she's had a passion for the romantic, tragic figure of Titus Oates. She knows everything about his wanderings in the Army and his participation in Scott's doomed expedition to the South Pole. She even has entire conversations with Titus in her head. She's gobbled up every scrap of information about Antarctica that she possibly can, knowing it's the closest she'll ever get to him.

Then her uncle sweeps her away on a whirlwind expedition to Antarctica itself. But this is no ordinary vacation. Uncle Victor is convinced that the path into the hollow earth lies at the South Pole, and he'll stop at nothing to get them there.

Symone might be meeting the real Titus sooner than she thinks . . .

This book was the Printz award winner for 2008, and was a bit of a dark horse as far as I was concerned. (Me: "The White Wha?") I've read Geraldine McCaughrean before, and she's honestly sort of hit or miss. She scored a hit with this one, a very palpable one.

It's a hard trick to create a character that you accept in all their oddity and at the same time want to shake awake, but McCaughrean pulls it off. You know of Symone's imaginary relationship with Oates from page one, and there's something off about Uncle Victor right from his introduction. While Symone knows the Oates thing is weird, (and she's okay with that, which is probably at least some of her charm) she takes considerably longer to catch on in the case of Victor. This could have led to the fifty-page execution order if it weren't for Symone's self-deprecating narration, which is soaked in all the passion that a fourteen-year-old is capable of--passion for a romantic ideal and for a place. I was honestly surprised to read that McCaughrean had never been to Antarctica, because the way she describes it, you can almost feel the frostbite getting at your fingers.

When you get right down to it, this is a story of obsession and its accompanying blindness. Symone, Uncle Victor, and even the doomed 1912 expedition all suffer from obsessions that cloud their understanding of the world around them. Symone just happens to be the lucky one who survived hers.

Friday Glee #4

My glee seems sporadic lately. You may have to live with it. Some weeks are more gleeful than others.

I use Google Reader, and every time I run across a blog post or a news item I think I should put up, I mark it with the little "share this" button, and then it languishes in that file until I get around to it. Consider this cleaning house.

• Somebody made up Harry Potter covers in the style of those Penguin Classics with the sixties-sci-fi vibe about them. I kinda love them. Really really. Thanks to 100 Scope Notes for pointing the way.
• Liz Burns of A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy pointed me at this article about getting grown-ups to read YA. Oh yeah.
• Pride and Prejudice in comic form. O . . . kay. Looks like we're in for another Austen renaissance. Thanks to Smart Bitches, Trashy Books for the link.
  
• This? Right here? Major glee. Ultimate glee. He's pretty hard on schools, but the things he says about public libraries make me want to rush over to his local branch and shake every single staff member warmly by the hand. Thanks to the Goddess of YA Literature for the link.

Rainbow List is Out

No pun intended. Oh, who am I kidding? If there's a pun, I intended it.

Anyway, the 2009 Rainbow List is out and proud. This list, created by a couple of very long-named subcommittees from the American Library Association, is for

well-written and/or well-illustrated titles with authentic and significant gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered/queer/questioning (GLBTQ) content for youth from birth through age 18.

Yowza. Ambitious much? But I'm especially glad that it included picture books, which are hard to find. The list includes titles like Uncle Bobby's Wedding, After Tupac and D Foster, and Another Kind of Cowboy. Good job, guys.

Thanks to Cheryl Rainfield for the heads-up.

Blogging Award

Okay, so this has been in my inbox for awhile. Ronni awarded me a Premio Dardos award. Wow!

The Dardos Award is given for recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing. These stamps were created with the intention of promoting fraternization between bloggers, a way of showing affection and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web.

Thanks for the award, Ronni! I've seen this making the rounds of the kidlitosphere, so I'm going to follow Jen Robinson and Lee Wind's examples and let it stop with me. There are so many good blogs on my blogroll and the nearcircle widget off to the left that I think you should check all of those out.

ARCs at Shelf Space

Liz Burns of A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy has an article up at Shelf Space about ARCs, or Advance Reader Copies, the book blogger's favorite perk (okay, well, mine). She talks to various people involved in publishing about the practice and uncovers some facts, like the real difference between a galley and an ARC.

"[Galleys] are for hot, hot, hot books where the publisher wants to generate buzz," Farrey says. "They're meant to get people talking about the book itself, not necessarily to generate reviews (although that does happen too)." With the recent cutbacks in publishing, Farrey speculates that we will start seeing fewer galleys and more ARCs; and that they will be done digitally, via PDF.

I'd heard about the PDF thing recently. While I've always been a fan of the paper copies that I can lug around in my purse and thwack impertinent patrons with, I have to admit that the idea of e-ARCS (EARCs? Now I'm just getting silly) is more palatable than I thought.

I have an iPod Touch with a free e-reader called Stanza on it. I don't have a lot of books on it (yet) but it's super-handy for grocery store lines and the like. I've even found myself curled up on the couch hunched over my Touch, heedless of time passing, just like with a paper copy. It's lighter and the experience is much the same once you get used to nudging a screen with your thumb instead of turning a page.

Less thwackable though.

The other positive about e-ARCs is that they aren't as environmentally wasteful. While I often give my used ARCs away to kids at my library, I even more often find myself staring at a stack of ARCs that nobody was interested in, steeling myself to toss them in the trash. It's less painful to just delete a file.

What do you guys think? Is this the wave of the future for ARCs, or just for utter techies like me?

Reading Roundup February 2009

By the Numbers
Teen: 18
Tween: 9
Children: 13

Standouts
Teen: The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean
Tween: Genesis Alpha by Rune Michaels
Children: Deep and Dark and Dangerous: A Ghost Story by Mary Downing Hahn

Because I Want To Awards
Coolest Nonfiction: Where in the Wild?: Camouflaged Creatures Concealed ... and Revealed by David Schwartz
Favorite Retelling: Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson
Neatest Structure: Stealing Home: Jackie Robinson: Against the Odds by Robert Burleigh

Book Review: Genesis Alpha by Rune Michaels

Book: Genesis Alpha

Author: Rune Michaels
Published: 2007

Josh has always known that he and Max are more than just brothers. Josh was conceived to save Max's life. They're special. They're a part of each other. He knows his brother best of anybody in the world.

But now Max is accused of a horrific murder. He's innocent, of course, and it's all just a mistake. Except it may not be. When Josh meets the sister of the murdered girl, the evidence mounts until he has no option but to realize that the brother he thought he knew inside-out is a dark and twisted stranger. Now Josh is haunted by the most frightening question of all.

If Max is a murderer, than what does that make him?

Rune Michaels takes a subject already fraught with turmoil, sibling relationships, and adds layer upon layer to it until it becomes a rumination on the very nature and origin of evil. Luckily, the layers never topple over under their own weight. In spite of the quagmire of ethical, emotional, and moral issues at play, this is actually a fast-paced novel that will keep kids turning pages.

One of the most fascinating characters for me was Rachel, the sister of the murdered girl. Storywise, she works in all sorts of interesting ways. Her relationship with her sister mirrors that of Josh's with Max. In addition, she is at Josh's mercy in the same way that Karen was at Max's--yet she is safe, showing that for all Josh's worries, he is not his brother and never could be. And simply put, her pain is raw and compelling. Although an antagonist, she is also Josh's ally and guide as they both wrestle with the pain of losing an adored sibling in very different ways.

I'm going to turn to Albus Dumbledore's immortal words. "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are." This is a book about a boy discovering the terrible truth of those words for himself.

Twitterpated Authors

I recently got sucked into the gigantic group addiction that is known as Twitter. (My name on there is mosylu, in case any of you guys are interested.)

Sheila Ruth recently posted a link to a list of children's and YA authors on Twitter. It's not totally up-to-date yet, but you can apparently submit names, so I have hopes it will grow.

Lisa Yee Interview with PW

I've enjoyed Lisa Yee ever since reading the Millie Trillie, otherwise known as Millicent Min, Girl Genius, and its two parallel books Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time and So Totally Emily Ebers. Her blog is worth checking out as well.

Her newest book, Absolutely Maybe, moves into YA territory, and PW sat down with her to get the skinny on that. Favorite quote on her misspent youth:

I never caused my parents a problem, mostly because I never got caught doing anything wrong. Everyone thought, “Oh, she’s an honor student, she couldn’t have done that.”

Bwaha! Enjoy, kiddies.

Savvy at the Movies!

I haven't read Ingrid Law's Savvy yet, but I've heard enough to be pretty excited by the news that Walden Media is turning it into a movie due out in 2010.

I found that news in the first paragraph of a lengthy article about how Walden is working closely enough with HarperCollins to get their own imprint, Walden Pond Press. Naturally, anything that goes through WPP has the potential to become a Walden flick.

Ordinarily you'd get a lot of wailing from me about Hollywood encroaching on the publishing industry. But I like Walden's adaptations, which are generally well-written and close to the book. So I'll see how this turns out.

Age Lines

This one popped up in my Google Reader yesterday and made me think. How dare it. On a Monday, yet.

In a review of a book called The Local News by Miriam Gershow, the reviewer mentions asking another YA author (Blake Nelson) about his definition of the YA novel.

In the spirit of casual conversation he said, "Anything with a teenage protagonist. Anything."

Ah. Beg to differ. Plead, actually.

Now granted, it was casual conversation. You can't expect airtight arguments over coffee or pedeconferencing down the street. But I feel as if that's just too simple. By that definition, David Copperfield and Great Expectations are both teen books because David and Pip go through the teenage years in the course of the novel. Yes, we make teens read them. But are they teen books? I don't think so.

Betraying my soft white underbelly (what do you expect, it's winter), I have to admit that I myself have no good definition for YA. Teenage protagonists do dominate. Prominent themes include coming of age, identity, relationships (especially first relationships). But does that mean you can throw all that in a pot and call anything that gets ladled out a teen book? I don't know.

Tell me what you think.

AuthorsNow! Online

Here's a link that'll be handy to teachers and librarians: AuthorsNow! bills itself as "The Internet’s Largest Collaboration of Debut Children’s and Teen Book Authors and Illustrators." Pretty keen.

My favorite part? Being able to narrow down authors by age group, geographic location, speaking availability, and a number of other factors. Very nice.

Moribito Interview

Intriguing.

I have Moribito: Guardian Of The Spirit sitting on my shelf, waiting patiently for me to read it. On the same day I took it home, I found this interview with Cheryl Klein, who worked with the author and the translator. She talks about issues of translation and even mentions the kidlitosphere! Woo!

It's a PDF, so you'll have to scroll down a tad, but you'll find it on page 5.

Book Review: Madapple by Christine Meldrum

Book: Madapple
Author: Christina Meldrum
Published: 2008

Aslaug Hellig is on trial for her life, accused of murdering her mother and later her aunt and cousin. That’s not what happened. She knows it’s not. But what did?

It’s only the latest in a series of unanswered (and possibly unanswerable) questions that construct her life and identity. Was she truly a virgin birth, as her mother and cousin claim? Who is the father of her own miraculous child? What do her aunt, Sara, and her cousins Susanne and Rune truly want of her, or think of her?

What is real? What is the truth? And where do they diverge?

Although we covered the concept of an unreliable narrator in my senior-year literary theory class, this was the first time I’ve ever really doubted a narrator on my own. I tend to take things at face value, and yet Meldrum’s story not only encourages, it forces you to question the reality of the words on the page.

The only thing that didn’t completely work for me was the climax of the trial. For me, the character who spurred it hadn’t been fleshed out enough to create a really tense or satisfying climax. However, that’s a small quibble, since aforesaid character is not Aslaug herself, nor anyone else really central to the story.

Moving back and forth between dispassionate trial transcripts and Aslaug’s dreamy, introspective narration, Christine Meldrum weaves a story that will have you questioning everything.

Friday Glee #3

I'm contemplating moving the Glee to another day of the week. I've had a hard time getting it out on Friday lately (although to be fair, lately I've had a terrible time getting any blogging done at all). What do you think? Sunday Glee?

• First up is the future of the book, as envisioned by Kyle Bean and passed along by Bookshelves of Doom. It's pretty neat, but can you take notes in the margin?
• I'm always a little wary of book-to-movie adaptations, but "Coraline" seems to be a winner. At the moment, it's got an 87 rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is pretty darn good.
• Presenting Lenore is podcasting! If you love YA, stop on by and have a listen to the Read Carpet.
• Oh, I like this. I do, I do.
• In more Coraline movie stuff, drop on by one of my favorite webcomics, HijiNKS Ensue. While it's usually a more adult-oriented comic, every so often the pop culture commentary will overlap into kidlit territory. I find it funny that the girl compares it to the Twilight Zone instead of a kids' movie. Who does she think watched those the most?

That's all for now!

Belated Congratulations to Cybils Winners!

I had a busy weekend (Saturday in particular was a day I think I should have just slept through) so it's only now that I'm getting the chance to say:

Congrats to all you Cybils winners!

Especially the winner of "my" category, Fiction Picture Books, which was Bob Graham's beautiful How to Heal a Broken Wing. Watch this space for a review coming soon, and reviews of the other Cybils books. I won't promise reviews for all, but I've got at least a few half-written.

I've been a Cybils judge for two years now, in different categories, and both years it was a blast talking about the different books and debating strengths and weaknesses. It always reminds me why I love not only blogging but being a part of the kidlitosphere, sharing my odd little passion with other people. Thank you, everybody, and I'll be here again next year.

Vampire TV Alert

Apparently, 'tis the season to make money off vampires. They're adapting L.J. Smith's The Secret Circle into a TV series for the CW. Hmmmm.

I never read this series, but I do remember the way my classmates snatched them up at library time. Maybe that's why I never read them. At that age, I was firmly anti-crowd.

Book Review: Wake by Lisa McMann

Book: Wake
Author: Lisa McMann
Published: 2008

Ever since childhood, Janie’s had bad dreams. Not her own. Other people’s. If someone’s sleeping around her, she gets sucked into their dreamworld. She’s seen more naked-in-school dreams, sexual fantasies, and trauma-fueled nightmares than she can count. At least the dreamers don’t remember seeing her in their dreams once they awaken--small mercies.

Then she meets Miss Stubin, a resident at the nursing home where she works, and realizes that she’s not alone with this curse. At the same time, she gets pulled into classmate Cabel’s horrifying nightmare, but discovers that she can actually help him change the course of events and lay it to rest.

Is it possible this curse is a gift in disguise?

This was one of those two AM, can’t-put-it-down books. I kept thinking that I should go to sleep, but fell victim to one-more-page until I turned the last one. McMann’s prose is short and choppy, often using sentence fragments, but strangely enough, the narrative as a whole flows so smoothly and strongly that you’re drawn in like Janie into another person’s dream.

I’m also a sucker for a good romantic subplot, and what made this one particularly interesting is that while Janie learns some of Cabel’s deeply buried secrets early on, he keeps others longer, and for good reasons. After reading the sequel’s blurb on Lisa McMann’s website, I have the feeling there are things we still don’t know about Cabel, which is a pretty neat trick considering how emotionally intimate a relationship is when you dream together.

I do have a minor bone to pick with the publishing house. The blurb on the back made it seem as if the story was going in a different direction, a much more horror/thriller direction. While it’s a great hook, it’s also deceptive and may turn off the kids who would really like the book that’s inside the covers. But overall, I’d hand this book to any fan of the paranormal.

The end does leave you hanging a little, but the sequel, Fade, is out now and the third in the trilogy, Gone, is due out February 2010.

The Tripods Are Coming

. . . to the silver screen, anyway. Did that freak you out? I'll admit it, a little shiver went down my spine.

I vividly remember reading that series around the age of twelve or thirteen. For some reason, the thing that sticks in my head was that not only were people mind-controlled (by means of a mesh cap applied by the Tripods in the early teen years), but even the uncapped kids were brainwashed into believing that the cap was a rite of passage, a sign of adulthood. Talk about efficient control of the masses. Yikes.

Self-Censorship

From School Library Journal comes an article about that shaky line between selection and censorship for librarians buying books. To put it another way, the line between, "My library doesn't need this book," and "I don't need the grief this book will bring me."

It's good stuff--thought-provoking for anyone who's ever had to decide whether to keep or chuck a book, or even to order it at all. Teen books especially suffer from this, as librarians decide that a book is too mature for the kids or too risky for the community or even that it goes against their personal beliefs.

The exciting part, even in a Very Serious Article? The Cybils got mentioned! Last year's YA winner, Barry Lyga's Boy Toy, is discussed as an example of a book that didn't get to kids because librarians simply didn't order it. I'm doubly excited because I was on the YA committee that year. Feels kinda awesome, I must say.

Luv is in the Air

Fine, okay, I know V-Day isn't until Saturday. But you should still be prepared with this list of teen romances from Donna Freitas. Display time!

I am a sop from way back. I was reading historical romance novels at twelve (and still do, in between kids and teen books), and that made me quite the conneisseur of (fictional) relationships. I've read a lot of teen books with romantic subplots, but it takes something special to make me smile and say, "Yeah, they're meant for each other." They've got to be good, strong, imperfect characters who make each other better. Here are some of my personal favorites.

Eugenides and Attolia - The Queen of Attolia (The Queen's Thief, Book 2) by Megan Whalen Turner (And there's a scene in the sequel that is quite frankly Made of Hot.)
Harry and Corlath - The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
Will and Kate - Perfect You by Elizabeth Scott
Katsa and Po - Graceling by Kristin Cashore
George and Beatrice - The Princess and the Hound by Mette Ivie Harrison

And if you love the sweet, sweet mush as I do but get annoyed at the less-than-satisfying "romances" in the teen section, there's a new blogger out there in bloglandia doing the work for us. Ana over at Young Adult Romance Reviews not only features teen books with love stories, but breaks it down for those who love the romance. How much is there? How physical is it? How satisfying is it? (As a romance, you sick puppy!) She seems to be posting pretty steadily, and I hope she keeps it up.

Anyway, that's it for me. What are some of your favorite romantic books?

The Books That Changed Your Life

From the Detroit News, an article that asks, "What are the books that really changed your life?" and answers, "Probably a children's book." Further quotage

It's not that children's books are pure entertainment, innocent of any didactic goal — what grown-ups enviously call "Reading for Fun." On the contrary, the reading we do as children may be more serious than any reading we'll ever do again. Books for children and young people are unashamedly prescriptive: They're written, at least in part, to teach us what the world is like, how people are, and how we should behave — as my colleague Megan Kelso (The Squirrel Mother) puts it, "How to be a human being."

He waxes a bit rhapsodic about the Wholesome Lessons for the Kiddies in children's books, but I think he's got some points in there. And of course, it's nice to see some respect for the literature.

John Green on Reader Appeal

John Green posted at his blog about reader appeal, and how conventional wisdom regarding teen books may not be quite bang on the mark. He then quotes some surprising statistics, and winds it all up by saying,

But none of this really distracts from what I'm trying to argue, which is that a LOT of teens REALLY LIKE the books that many people presume teens won't like, and that a lot of young people have more enjoyable reading experiences with ambitious work than they do with books that pander to their dreams and desires.

Of course, that's always been one of the challenges of an adult working with kids and teens, and something so unpredictable and individual as that kid's taste in books. We can only assume what kids will like, based on our own memories of childhood and our impression of the individual kid we're working with (which is about 1% of what's really going on inside their head anyway). I've settled on a professional philosophy of, "it's a crapshoot and they're gonna surprise you."

Book Review: Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers

Book: Cracked Up to Be
Author: Courtney Summers
Published: 2008

Parker Fadley was once the perfect student, the perfect cheerleading captain, the perfect girlfriend. Now she’s a perfect wreck. Her once-Honor-Roll grades have tanked, she has to see the school counselor every week, and her parents have imposed a seven-thirty curfew.

Geez, you drink an entire bottle of vodka and chase it with a container of sleeping pills one time and nobody ever lets you forget it.

Parents, administrators, ex-friends, even her ex-boyfriend--nobody knows quite how to account for this sudden nosedive, except Parker herself. And she’s not telling, because it’s all her fault. She doesn’t deserve to be forgiven. She keeps everyone at arms-length with a combination of stunning bitchiness and outrageous behavior. But now there’s a new kid at school, Jake, who’s not put off by withering sarcasm or outright disdain.

How can Parker convince him that she’s not worth his time? Because the thing is, she’s starting to doubt it herself.

A lot of people have compared this novel to Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, and I saw the similarities too. But Parker is a very different character. She lashes out, using words as defense in exactly the opposite way from Melinda. The only way Parker could be more self-destructive is if she were actually mid-air after jumping off a cliff. She doesn’t want to be saved. She knows she doesn’t deserve it. The terrible thing that happened is all her fault.

In spite of that, Parker is hilarious. You know she’s a mess, but she’s making you snort with glee so often that you kind of forget that.

Her perfectionism has led her to believe that she not only has to control everything, she is responsible for everything that goes wrong in her life. Now this enormous and awful thing has happened, she’s in pieces and doesn’t know how to rebuild. Summers carefully and slowly reveals the depths of Parker’s despair and simultaneously the events that led to them. It’s not what you think.

Cracked Up to Be is a wowzer of a first novel, and Parker is the kind of character that makes you forget someone had to think her up. She’s as raw and dangerous as a power line in the road, and so real you feel like it’s possible to reach into the book and slap her upside the head like you so badly want to. Good show, Courtney Summers. Keep it up.

Friday Glee #2

It's an all-Twilight-mocking Friday Glee this week. If you worship at the Altar of Edward, do yourself a favor and just skip this one.

• Twilight as performed by bunnies in thirty seconds. Yes!
• Oh dear god. As if the Bella Womb wasn't enough in itself, there's an itty-bitty offspring within. I have to go lie down and whimper now. Thanks a lot, Bookshelves of Doom.
  
• Zee Says posted a High School Musical/Twilight parody from YouTube.
  

That's all for today. Don't send your therapists' bills to me if you click through that second link.

Prepping the Canon

Over at the Guardian, Tim Martin discusses the possibility of a children's literature canon. He offers some title suggestions, but I wonder whether we need one at all.

There are always the books we believe every kid should read, but that tends to fluctuate wildly from person to person. Some of us can't stand the idea that a child hasn't read The Secret Garden, and others believe it's a requirement for graduating elementary school that a kid reads Charlotte's Web.

This is a subject that comes up every now and then. The only benefit I can see is that a canon might lend the study of children's lit some respect in academic circles. On the other hand, maybe not. Canon is becoming something of a dirty word in literary criticism these days.

What do you think?

The Graveyard Movie

You probably noticed it if you watched the interview on "The Today Show," but The Graveyard Book is on its way to the silver screen, directed by Neil Jordan. I think that whole episode in the underground will be pretty cool visually, but I wonder how many of the standalone chapters in the first half are going to be cut to fit time. Oh well--cool anyway.

It's slated for release in 2011.

BBYA 2009

The ALA just released their annual Best Books for Young Adults. I feel all cool because I've read or heard of nine out of the Top Ten BBYA.

Now I have to get my hot little hands on Joseph Monninger's Baby. Any of you guys read that one?

Various Awards Reactions

Today marks a week since the ALA Youth Media Awards were announced, which is more than enough time for everyone start the discussion. Here are some facets of that discussion:

• Esme Raji Codell posts about the contradiction of the Coretta Scott King Award being restricted to African-American authors and illustrators.
• The Guardian (a British newspaper!) ran an article about Neil Gaiman's win for The Graveyard Book, touting the difference between the reaction to his popular novel and quieter winners from the past years. However, someone on one of my lists pointed out that for all the discussion about The Graveyard Book's popularity, we seem to have forgotten that Neil Gaiman is already a mad popular adult author. Many of his fans well could have followed him into the wild realms of kids lit. How is this skewing our perception of kids reading it? Hmmmm.
• Lisa Chellman jotted down her first thoughts on the winners. Like me, she is not surprised.
• Over at the Cybils Blog, Brett crows that the kidlitosphere shares the ALA's opinion of many of the award winners, and notes which books made it onto both the ALA lists and the Cybils shortlists. So who's catching up to who, is my question?
• The Today Show had its traditional nod toward the world of children's lit on the morning after the awards, running a mini-interview with Neil Gaiman and Beth Krommes. Wish I could embed it, but follow the link instead.
• And I'm sure you all know that Just One More Book!! scored big, posting an interview with Neil Gaiman the day after his win. Wowzers, you guys. Check out the kidlitosphere's official podcast.
  

Of course, the discussion never really ends. Heck, we're still arguing about whether Secret of the Andes should have won over Charlotte's Web, and that was in 1953!

Reading Roundup January 2009

By the Numbers
Teen: 23
Tween: 8
Children: 10

Standouts
Teen: Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott
Tween: Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Children: Forever Rose by Hilary McKay

Because I Want To Awards
Best Biography in Verse: Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath by Stephanie Hemphill (okay, you guys, I know it's kind of a specialized category, but I honestly read about three of 'em in a row.)
Most Fun for Puzzle Lovers: The Painted Circus by Wallace Edwards
Book with the Coolest Pre-teen Main Character: Moving Day (Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls) by Meg Cabot