KidLitCon: Overview Part One

What a great weekend this was! I love meeting the people whose blogs and books I've been reading. I hung out and talked books, blogging, general geekery, and all manner of other things.

As to the conference itself, here's what we did.

The Blog Within: This was a solo presentation by MotherReader, about the 5 W's and one H of blogging. It wasn't so much a presentation as a rather Zen reflection on why we blog, who we blog for, etc. She also recommends doing this at specific times during the year to return yourself to your original intentions for your blog, and re-energize yourself.

Building a Better Blog: MotherReader and GalleySmith did this one as a team. They talked about such nitty-gritty, nuts & bolts things as the design of your blog to make it a better experience for your readers and how to comport yourself online knowing that the Internet is forever. While they gave a lot of great tips, it all boiled down to three things to keep in mind: purpose, passion, and professionalism.

At this point, we split into concurrent sessions. I went to It's All About the Book, presented by BookNut, BiblioFile, The Miss Rumphius Effect, and A Year of Reading. We talked about writing reviews, content vs. filler, and ways to participate in the larger blogging community. By the way, what do you guys think about comments? I don't often get the chance to leave comments, but there's a difference between "Cool post, yeah" and "Interesting, here's my thoughts." Greg Pincus of The Happy Accident thinks blogs should have a "Like This" button like Facebook, and I agree. It's a way to participate a little if you don't have time for more. Google Reader did recently add a "Like" option, but it only works for readers, and the blogger doesn't get notified. Hmm. Something to think about.

Then it was back to the big ballroom for Meet the Author. My inner fangirl really comes out to play at these things. I got to talk to Varian Johnson (who gave me one of the two ARCs he'd brought with him, largely because I begged shamelessly), Elizabeth Scott, Joan Holub, Jacqueline Jules, Paula Chase, Pam Bachorz, and too many other authors to count. Between this session and the ARC table in the back, I ended up mailing boxes to myself. It was either that or lug it all in my carryon luggage, and then the plane would never get off the ground.

Then it was time for the last-minute, special surprise treat of the conference: FTC Regulations for the Blogger. Okay, that's not the formal name but it was so last-minute that it didn't even have a formal name. Pam got ahold of the FTC last week and managed to get a representative to come out to us. Mary Engle, Associate Director of Advertising Practices, agreed to visit and hear our concerns, and give the answers that she could. This was probably the most useful session in a whole valuable day. There are excellent, thoughtful recaps from Galleysmith, Jennifer R. Hubbard at WriterJenn, A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy, and any number of others. Here are the main points I got out of it:

• There's a difference between an impartial reviewer and someone who's part of a specific marketing campaign. We're the former; they're looking at the latter.
  
• The FTC is targeting corporations who are advertising unethically, not individuals who are the medium by which the corporations are advertising. They have no ability, or desire, to patrol the entire blogosphere and bring the hammer down on individual bloggers.
  
• That scary $11k figure that was getting thrown around is a miscommunication. That fine is for the hard-and-fast rules, and the recent blogger regulations are more guidelines. Like the pirate code.
  
• It's a smart idea to disclose review copies, but the FTC isn't requiring it. (That being said, the kidlitosphere has pretty well agreed that disclosing ties like free reviewer copies, Amazon Affiliate/Vine membership, etc, is the professional and ethical thing to do.)
• However, if you do disclose, especially things like Amazon Affiliate membership, it needs to be upfront and prominent. In Engle's words, readers should not have to search for it. The best way is probably a short line right in the post. For instance, LizB at A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy has taken to noting her Amazon Affiliate membership at the end of every post.
  
• This is all a work in progress. Engle admitted that they could have set more definitions to clarify the difference between reviewers and marketing programs. The FTC has set up an email address, endorsements@ftc.gov, for concerns. They can't answer individual questions, but it sounded like they were going to use the emails they get to write a FAQ for bloggers.

Awesome work by MotherReader getting that set up, and thanks to Mary Engle and the FTC for taking the time for us.

After that, it was lunchtime. Part Two of the day is coming your way tomorrow! By the way, if you want some more dimension than my brief comments provided, check out other roundups around the blogosphere (here are a few, in the comments of MotherReader's post) or check out the Twitter transcript that Greg Pincus posted at the Happy Accident on the evening after the conference.

KidlitCon: Checking in

It's our break hour now, before the cocktail hour/dinner this evening. The conference has been so much fun! I Twittered like crazy, and now my fingers are so tired that I'm just going to direct y'all to the handy-dandy transcript that Greg Pincus posted over at The Happy Accident. Plus this way, you get everyone's tweets, not just mine. If you couldn't be there, following the Twitter stream seems to have been the next best thing.

So many new friends met, old friends reconnected with, blogs to read, books to find. Thanks to MotherReader for putting this all together--it was truly a heroic undertaking. More tomorrow.

KidlitCon: T-Minus 1 Day!

I'm hanging out at my hotel, waiting for the fun to begin. The full conference doesn't start until tomorrow morning, but there are expeditions planned to the Library of Congress Children's center today, and tomfoolery at a local house of eating later tonight. The LOC trip is awesome enough for this geeky librarian, but the real fun is meeting/seeing again the fun, cool people that make up the kidlitosphere.

By the way, MotherReader worked some kind of magic and got somebody from the FTC to stop in and talk to us tomorrow about the recent regulations regarding bloggers and review materials. Wowza. I don't know whose goat she sacrificed but we're all excited. That will most definitely be Twittered and blogged.

If you're unspeakably jealous and now want in, there are a few slots that just opened up due to illness. Stop by MotherReader's blog for the details.

If you're coming, I'll see you there! If you can't make it, I'm sad--but hey, there's always next year. If you want to spy on the hijinx, follow #kidlitcon at Twitter or keep an eye on the blogs.

Bloggers and the FTC - Again

The big news in the blogosphere today is about the FTC's new regulations on bloggers' endorsements, be they clothes, furniture, or those weird papery things people read before the Internet. There's a PDF file that's something like 81 pages of legalese, so thank god there are smarter people than me to untangle it.

Some commentary from a Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy:

In a nutshell, I think it's best for book reviewers to note on the individual post if the book (whether final version or ARC) came from a publisher, publicist, or author for the purposes of reviewing it or posting about it on a blog.

Given that as a community, we pretty much decided that was a good idea awhile back, I don't think this is going to be any skin off our nose.

So much for the general thrust. For all the little details, hop on over to Edward Champion's Reluctant Habits. This blogger actually called up the Bureau of Consumer Protection and had what he describes as a "civil but heated" discussion with one Richard Cleland of that bureau.

Cleland informed me that the FTC’s main criteria is the degree of relationship between the advertiser and the blogger.

“The primary situation is where there’s a link to the sponsoring seller and the blogger,” said Cleland. And if a blogger repeatedly reviewed similar products (say, books or smartphones), then the FTC would raise an eyebrow if the blogger either held onto the product or there was any link to an advertisement.

Did you notice that bit about holding onto books? Hmmm. It gets elaborated on later, with Champion and Cleland debating the regulations' apparent double standard between unpaid bloggers and paid newspaper critics. Thanks to both men for taking the time to do this.

I appreciate what the FTC wants to do here. It's awfully easy for an apparently neutral blog to be not much more than a well-hidden advertising trumpet, with no one the wiser. It's even easy for a blogger to develop such a close relationship with a particular company that they're tempted to review everything positively.

However, whether it's in print or online, a good reviewer reviews what's in front of him or her. I've had relationships with publishers before, getting ARCs in the mail or at conferences, but I like to think that I reviewed the book, not the publisher. Because my policy is to only blog what I love, I don't always write a review either. In fact, I once did the math and realized that I review about 10% of what I read. Between BEA and ALA 08, I amassed eight months' worth of books. I wound up reviewing seventeen titles--the bulk of those during the 2008 48-Hour Book Challenge, which was an anomaly in that I reviewed everything, and not always positively.

Okay, now as to keeping the books. Most of my ARCs have found new homes with the teens at my library, or sometimes get traded to other bloggers. As far as I know, the publishers don't want them back, for a number of reasons. They don't always have cover art or inside art, they can contain mistakes or sections that are edited from the final book, they're of lower quality (paper, binding, etc) than the finished product, and finally, they're not terribly useful after the book is published. Legend holds that publishers have closets full of the things. If we had to start sending them back, there would probably be a lot of bonfires in New York City.

Cleland acknowledged that they're still working out the kinks, so I imagine we'll hear more about this from the FTC and also from bloggers. What do you think?

ETA: All things being Twittered, the hashtag is #HeyFTC. There's some interesting commentary bouncing around Twitter as well.

Children's Authors' Exquisite Corpse

Although they probably would leave exquisite corpses, I'm not talking about imminent death. Unless it's in the story.

Exquisite Corpse is apparently a game in which writers write a chapter each, picking up where the last left off. Other than that, no rules. Sound awesome yet? Wait, it gets better. Jon Scieszka wrote the first chapter in this game, with other chapters to be written by fellow children's lit writers. Chapter 2 is up now, written by Katherine Paterson. The game runs for a year, with a new episode by a new author every 2 weeks.

It's hosted by the Library of Congress at Read.gov. You can get emailed updates or follow them through RSS. Thanks to KidsLit for the heads-up!

Banned Books Week Non-Glee

If I post on Fridays, I usually do a Glee. No glee here, but there is intense pride that authors, librarians, and readers aren't taking this kind of crap lying down.

• Over at I'm Here, I'm Queer, What the Hell Do I Read? Lee Wind posted a marvelous two-part group interview with six authors whose books have been banned, including Ellen Hopkins, Sarah Brannen, and others.
  
• Speaking of La Hopkins, she wrote what may become the rallying cry for Banned Books Week and anti-censorship efforts for about the next century. Check out Manifesto. I posted the link last week, but it's worth seeing again.
• BookDads talks about And Tango Makes Three, returning to the number one slot on the Banned Books list for the third year in a row. Seriously, check this post out, you guys.
  
• The irony, it burns. Bookshelves of Doom dissects an ongoing book-banning case, and all the little dips and loops thereof. (Define "dips and loops" however you please.)
• The comic strip The New Adventures of Queen Victoria is running a special Banned Books week storyline all this week. Awesome. Link goes to Monday's strip; just keep clicking next.
  
• And last but not least, author Jacqui Robbins talks about her experience of reading a banned book to her child:
  

Banned Book Week ends tomorrow, but this stuff goes on all year round. Every parent has the right to tell their child what to read; they do not have the right to tell yours.

Reading Roundup September 2009

By the Numbers
Teen: 23
Tween: 11
Children: 6

Standouts
Teen: Body Drama by Nancy Amanda Redd
Tween: Sonny's House of Spies by George Ella Lyon
Children: Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin (review coming soon!)

Because I Want To Awards
So Had the Wrong Cover: The Taker by J.M. Steele. It was a romantic comedy in problem novel clothing.
Wrapped Things Up Nicely: Starclimber by Kenneth Oppel
Best Depiction of Everyday Kid Concerns That Didn't Become the Problem of the Novel: Eighth Grade Superzero by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich. Hard to explain, exactly, but Reggie encounters racism, parental joblessness, and other things that impact kids' lives without any of them overtaking the storyline. Nicely done.
Kickoff That Will Leave Kids Begging for More: Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute by Jarrett J. Krosoczka

Cybils-Tastic

You guys! Tomorrow, the Cybils are opening up their nominations! Have you got your titles ready yet? Have you, have you?

They've revamped the nomination system this year, so you don't have to read through a zillion posts to see if your title has already been nominated or accidentally nominate two titles.

Oh, and I'm a judge this year, too. I'm joining the SF/F team, which is comprised of these awesome people:

Panel Organizer: Sheila Ruth, Wands and Worlds

Panelists (Round I Judges), MG/Elementary:

Anamaria Anderson, bookstogether
Cindy Hannikman, Fantasy Book Critic
Brian Jung, Critique de Mr. Chompchomp
Eva Mitnick, Eva's Book Addiction
Charlotte Taylor, Charlotte's Library

Panelists (Round I Judges), Teen/YA:

Steve Berman, Guys Lit Wire
Gwenda Bond, Shaken & Stirred
Tanita S. Davis, Finding Wonderland
Nettle, The Muse, Amused
Sheila Ruth (see panel organizer)
Angie Thompson, Angieville
Samantha Wheat, Twisted Quill

Round II Judges:

Maureen Kearney, Confessions of a Bibliovore
Anne Levy, Cybils
Sam Musher, Parenthetical
Tarie Sabido, Into the Wardrobe
Tasha Saecker, Kidslit

Stop by the Cybils blog for more info on everything, and get your nominatin' fingers ready!

Book Review: Dooley Takes the Fall by Norah McClintock

Book: Dooley Takes the Fall
Author: Norah McClintock
Published: 2008

Seventeen-year-old Ryan Dooley (just Dooley, thanks) thinks he's doing all right, pulling his life together. He's got a (crappy) job, a place to stay, and he's even managing to make it to school regularly. All he's got to do is keep his nose clean, follow his uncle's rules, and graduate on time, and his juvie past will stay in the past.

But then he's the only witness to a seeming suicide. All at once, Dooley's back in the familiar mess of cops and suspicion. This time, he knows he's innocent, but the cops thinks otherwise. Every morsel of evidence that turns up seems to do two things--one, make it more likely that Mark Eversley's death was homicide, and two, blame it all on Dooley.

This was a pretty decent mystery (maybe the end was a little sudden), but the great strength of this novel was Dooley's voice. Cynical, tough, a few unexpected pockets of softness, and a certain maverick streak that could be frustrating but also appealing. McClintock makes it clear that the crime that sent him to juvie was no aberration, but the logical extension of his difficult past, replete with drug and alcohol problems as well as petty theft and occasional bursts of violence.

There was a plotline with Dooley's counselor that got dropped midway through, but I didn't miss it too much. I was more interested in the mystery and how Dooley was going to work his way out of it.

McClintock goes for, and succeeds at, a very hard-boiled feel with Dooley Takes the Fall. From Dooley's criminal past to his dispassionate assessments of the people around him and not always letting the reader in on the pertinent information until it hits the fan, Dooley reads like a young Sam Spade. This should appeal to older teens, especially those who are far from angels themselves.

And It Rages On

About a month back, the New York Times published an article about letting kids pick their own books. Wow! What an astonishing, avant-garde educational philosophy!

In response, Meg Cabot posted about "How to Foster a Hatred of Reading," talking about her own experience with the Great Books and affection for (read: obsessive love) of the novelization of The Fantastic Voyage.

Here's another side of the discussion. Over at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books a few weeks back (yeah, I'm a little late on this one) Smart Bitch Sarah talks about the two camps in literary-land, which might be called the snobs and the slobs.

The slobs think the snobs think everything you read should be a work of literature that will enrich your life forever, and be a statement of art and the human condition. . . . The snobs think the slobs are intellectually lazy, and don’t understand why you’d want to read something poorly-written, or that adhered to a formula. . . . Both sides are really annoying, because they both, by and large, have it wrong, even if they do get a couple of things right.

(There's more; click through for the full, fascinating post.)

Like any really good debate, I find myself nodding at some things all the debaters say, and going, "Ummm . . ." at others. As a public librarian, I'm more firmly in the "Pick Your Own" camp, but some of the things Sarah mentions about the two camps' pre/misconceptions of each other resonate.

Where do you fall?

Well-Aged Twitterbits

It's time for another edition of Tuesday Twitterbits, wherein I hoard interesting tweets like a squirrel hoards nuts and then forget where I hid them and when I find them, they're all stale and moldy and this metaphor got lost somewhere.

• Hello, Wikipedia. Why, is that a Cybils entry I see in you? It is? Oh, Wikipedia. Keep this up and maybe librarians will one day stop burning you in effigy. Thanks to @abbylibrarian. (By the way, are you gathering your Cybils nominees? Nominations start October 1!)
  
• Cracked.com takes on Twilight. Make sure you have fresh pants on hand before clicking through. Thanks, I think, to @LizB.
• Hey, wow! Wicked Lovely, the first of Melissa Marr's dark urban fairy books, is headed for the screen. Thanks to @OfficiallyAlly, and congrats Melissa!
• Interesting. Harmony Book Reviews has a discussion about ARCs, or specifically what happens when you're done with them. We all know it's illegal to sell them or add them to the library's collection (although both happen, a lot), but how do you feel about swapping them with other bloggers? Is that too far in the grey, or the best possible fate? Thanks to @thestorysiren.
  

That's what I've got. Follow me, @mosylu. Who are you following this week?

YA for Beginners

Liz over at A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy pointed me at Mary Pearson's rather excellent discussion, "What YA Lit Is and Isn't" at Tor.com. She addresses some of the things being said to adults who read or write YA, and ponders why this particular field of literature gets more than its fair share of derision.

I wonder if everyone’s very strong opinions about this one segment of literature comes from our attitudes about the teen years? We fear them. We want teens to “get over it” quickly, and heck, let’s not mess with books that just dwell more on the teen years! Move on!

As someone who works with teens and reads 99.5% teen or kids' books, I'd say she's got a point. I was once told "Grow up!" by a co-worker because of what I read. I'm sure he meant it to be funny. If I hadn't read books like Looking for Alaska, Speak, Boy Toy, The First Part Last, Living Dead Girl, and many other books that some adults might not be able to handle, I might have laughed.

Click on through to see her follow up.

Have You Read a Banned Book Today?

It's the second day of Banned Book Week here in the U.S. I've said a lot about banned books and censorship on this blog, but I don't think I've ever said anything that summed it up as well as Ellen Hopkins' amazing Manifesto.

This is the week where free-speech-lovers everywhere call attention to the attempts to silence others' voices. I applaud those librarians, teachers, and others. But don't forget that there are 51 more weeks in the year. This may be the week we focus on censorship, but it happens year-round.

ETA: I can't read a calender. How sad is that? Banned Book Week actually starts on September 26th. Go reserve your favorite banned book at the library today.

Book Review: Sight by Adrienne Maria Vrettos

Book: Sight
Author: Adrienne Maria Vrettos
Published: 2007

Dylan has a secret.

When she was five years old, she saw a classmate's dead body in a vision. Three days later, the police found Clarence's body. Ever since then, she's seen dead or dying children, always too late. She does her best to deal with it, though. She helps the police with kidnapping cases and keeps it a deep, dark secret, even from her closest friends.

Then Cate comes to Pine Mountain and somehow, Dylan finds herself spilling all to this flatlander stranger. What she doesn't know is that Cate has secrets too . . . and she's not the only one.

One of the most interesting things about this book was that Vrettos took some time to explore the effect of a child's murder on other children, even years later. There's one scene where everybody who was in Clarence's kindergarten class takes turns to tell the story to Cate. They've told the story to each other over and over, so many times that it's acquired a pattern of who says what when, and that routine is now part of the memory. The murderer himself has become a formless monster that shadows their shared childhoods.

Dylan's struggle to make sense of her gift and the way it affects her friends and family form the core of a compelling book about the secrets we keep and the destruction they wreak. The child-killer mystery itself gets a little lost among all the other plot threads--I never got a sense of why the murderer did what he did, for instance--but I still enjoyed it immensely.

Book Blogger Appreciation Week is Here!

You guys! It's totally Book Blogger Appreciation Week! And I just turned into Cher from "Clueless"!

Hop on by the BBAW website to see all the nominees, and check back all week for the winners. I was especially happy to see how well-represented the kidlitosphere was this year. I've already added lots of feeds to my Google Reader.

The Next Big Thing Has Feathers

Some time back, a blogger posted the question, what's the Next Big Thing? We're tired of vampires, so who gets the next ride on the hot-topic carousel? We said it would be werewolves, mummies, and zombies. Well, we got a little of each (though I'm still waiting for the swoony romantic novel with the bandage problems), but now it seems that angels are next on the list. An editor ponders the appeal over at PW:

“The young books like [Sharon Creech's The Unfinished Angel] are using angels to suggest the world can be a better place,” said Kate Jackson, editor-in-chief of HarperCollins Children's Books. In YA books, however, she believes angels “are a symbol of forbidden love. What's more forbidden than having a romance with someone who's not human?”

Not to mention he's got a really powerful boss.

I joke, but there do seem to be some swoony possibilities in angels. About ten years ago, there was a little explosion of angels in romance novels. At the time, I couldn't fathom it, but now it makes sense. There's the fearsome goodness, for one. There's the hint of superpowers. There's the feeling that your love interest has a higher calling, and is involved in Big Things. Hopefully for the story, this means that you get mixed up in Big Things too. (Of course, all that's upended when the angel in question is fallen, and that's even more fun.) And anybody's who's seen Mischa Collins as the angel Castiel on the TV show "Supernatural" (you're welcome) knows that being angelic doesn't mean you're all fair and pasty and go around strumming the harp all day.

Will the vampires turn to dust? (Ha, see what I did there?) I'm sure all those trends from the first paragraph will hang on for awhile, especially as the New Moon adaptation comes out this fall. And of course, there is the caveat to every trend--a really good book, even if it's waaaay out there, is going to find its readers.

Myself, I'm hoping that the upcoming angel books will also be books that ask questions about faith, religion, and morality without being so heavy you could tie them to the feet of your worst enemy and toss them in the East River. What would you most like to see in the upcoming angel books?

KidLitCon Meme

There's a new meme in town, and it's all about the KidlitCon. Being as I've been to both so far and am all set to go to year 3, I figured I'd chime in.

Why did you decide to attend the KidLitosphere Conference?

The first year, when it was in Chicago, because my brother lived in Chicago. It was a two-fer--I'd get to visit him, and I'd get to meet some of the people whose blogs I followed (and still do).

Plus, as it got bigger and bigger, it just sounded like so much fun that I didn't want to be left out.

Who was most like their blog? Who was least like their blog?

MotherReader was exactly as I would have expected from her blog. With Pam, what you see is what you get. Lee Wind, also, pours forth the same energy in person that you can feel from his blog.

Who was least like? A startling number of people were on the quiet side in person, but were still great fun to hang out with.

What surprised you at the conference?

That people actually knew my blog. Perhaps because blogging is so physically solitary, I had this idea that my words were drifting out into the void. I was shocked when somebody said, "Oh, yeah, of course! Confessions of a Bibliovore!" Me: "Bwuh?"

What will you always remember about the last conference?

Hanging out with people in the evening, talking for hours about nothing and everything. That was also the night that Jackie of Interactive Reader talked me into buying an iPod Touch merely by demonstrating WorldCat on her iPhone that evening. My god, I'm a geek.

Did you blog about the conference?

Sure did.
KidlitCon 07
KidlitCon 08:
Parts One
Two
Three and
Four.

KidlitCon 09 is October 17th, in DC. Step on over to Kidlitosphere Central to find more information, including the sign-up page.

Book Review: Sonny's House of Spies by George Ella Lyon

Book: Sonny's House of Spies
Author: George Ella Lyon
Published: 2004

When Sonny's daddy left, he said, "A man can't live in a house of spies." But seven years later, thirteen-year-old Sonny feels as if he has no choice but to spy. Nobody will tell him anything, and there are so many things he doesn't understand. Where did his father go? Why did he go? Is he ever coming back?

Over the course of one summer, Sonny will come to the realization that the answers about life, his family, and his father are at least as complicated as the questions. Understanding them--and himself--is a process that could take the rest of his life.

Longtime readers of this blog will know that I generally don't snip passages, but Lyon has such a gift for quirky-yet-evocative description that I kept wanting to mark passages to include in this review. (Note to other librarians: no, I didn't actually mark the book. You can breathe.) This one particularly stood out:

We just stood by the shiny gray coffin with its handles like fancy toilet-paper holders and . . . breathed whatever breaths came by: mint, onion, tobacco, whiskey, and bad.

This isn't the generic sadness of a funeral, but a sharp eye for the experience of a person near the center of all that ceremony.

The plot hinges on setting--the 1950's, in Alabama--and the specific prejudices and beliefs that go along with that. Even today, the man who leaves his family because he's gay is in for some trouble, but back then, it was the kind of thing that could cause any number of little worlds to fall in, which it does in this book.

I wasn't entirely sure we needed the race-relations subplot--it felt sort of obligatory for a book set in 1950's Alabama--but it did intensify Sonny's growing knowledge of the complexity and unfairness of his world.

With Sonny's House of Spies, George Ella Lyon brings a particular time and place to life while telling a universal story about the hard questions we all confront sooner or later.

Unshelved Zombies

I do love the Unshelved Book Club. They featured The Forest of Hands and Teeth a few weeks ago. While I read it for the 48-Hour Book Challenge, this comic made me kind of interested again, and capped it with a line that made me giggle plenty.

Fantastic Mr Fox Featurette

I got this one from 100 Scope Notes--a featurette on the upcoming "Fantastic Mr. Fox" movie. It's done in that incredible stop-motion animation, and while it does appear to be set in the US, if you go by the accents, everything else about it looks made of awesome.

Book Review: Geek Magnet by Kieran Scott

Book: Geek Magnet
Author: Kieran Scott
Published: 2008

K.J. Miller has a problem. She's surrounded by geeks, and she can't seem to give any one of 'em the heave-ho. They're impervious to body language, hints, or any other subtle form of discouragement. It's going to take a sledgehammer to rid K.J. of her entourage so she can focus on her ultimate crush, gorgeous Cameron Richardson.

Enter Tama Gold, lead in the school play (for which K.J. acts as stage manager). Tama is beautiful, popular, and never afraid to tell a geek to beat it or a beautiful boy to come closer. And she's going to teach K.J. everything she knows.

Strong characters and a serious subplot made this book more than the fluffy, predictable meringue I was expecting. One thing I noticed straight off was that the geeks were really, really annoying. It went beyond the surface trappings of geekdom and into truly teeth-gritting. This made K.J's frustration perfectly understandable, while their basically good hearts made me sympathize with her reluctance to hurt their feelings. (Although I would have made an exception for the one who stared at her boobs all the time. I mean, really. Honey, you're gonna have those things all your life; take control of it now.)

Of course, we all know what Tama is right from the get-go, but the neat thing about this book is that she actually does help K.J. stand up for herself. While Tama's tutelage leads her pretty deep into the bitch side of the Force, she and the people in her life need that.

K.J.'s problem with the geeks clearly stems from her experiences with her father, whose alcoholism and uncertain temper have the whole family cowering. K.J.'s newfound bravery at school crosses over into her home life. For awhile, there's a surfeit of losing-control and lid-flipping scenes, but it worked for me. Sure, she was pushing it a little, but given how passive she was at the beginning of the novel, it made sense that there was an awful lot of pressure building up inside that had to be let loose before K.J. could begin to understand how to be strong without being nasty.

Overall, this was a fun, funny book, with some darker notes, about a girl learning to take control of her life.

Reading Roundup August 2009

By the Numbers
Teen: 17
Tween: 13
Children: 12

Standouts
Teen: Marcelo in the Real World by Franscisco X. Stork
Tween: The Reminder by Rune Michaels
Children: Alvin Ho: Allergic to Camping, Hiking, and Other Natural Disasters by Lenore Look

Because I Want To Awards
Most Fun to Play Spot the Allusion: The Juliet Club by Suzanne Harper
More Than I Expected: Geek Magnet by Kieran Scott (review coming soon!)
Most Melancholy: Robot Dreams by Sara Varon
Most Heartwarming: That Book Woman by Heather Henson

Cybils Ahoy!

The noms don't start for the Cybils until October 1, but you can put in your name to be a judge right now. From the Cybils blog, the requirements:

• blog about some aspect of children's or teen books on at least a somewhat consistent basis;
• or contribute regularly to a group blog about same;
• know a thing or two about what kids/teens are reading these days;
• are planning to be reading obsessively over the next few months anyway

Sound like you? Check the rest of the post for more info. Make sure you know what you're getting into! I've done this for the past two years. It is great fun, but also a lot of work. But if you're up to it, let the organizers know!

Are You Signed Up for KidlitCon 09?

Admit it, you were just thinking, "Gosh, I'm not doing anything on Saturday, October 17. Whatever can I find to fill up the time?" I know. It's spooky how I read minds like that.

Well, wonder no more! Head on over to Kidlitosphere Central and sign yourself up for the Third Annual (Third! Annual! I know!!) Kidlitosphere Conference, taking place this year in Washington, D.C. We're having sessions on reviewing, the publishing biz, giving back, plus a meet-the-authors session. And that's not all--there'll be social-type fun on Friday and Sunday both.

Seriously, I've been to the last two and I loved them. It's so much fun to meet the people you've been reading, to jabber about kids books and blogging and all sorts of other topics. Both years, it refreshed and energized and empassionated (it's a word, because I said so) me to get back to my blog.

Yargh

Sigh. A Google Map of book challenges for the years 2007-9. I love that we're outraged enough to make a collection like this, but depressed that it's necessary. If you click the little flags, you can find out details of the challenge in question.

Thanks to Bookshelves of Doom for the link.

Comic Strip and Library Glee

• The New York Times recently ran an article on some recent book challenges at the Brooklyn Public Library, and their classy-but-firm responses. Don't miss the actual challenges and responses, linked in the sidebar. Thanks to John Green, whose Looking for Alaska was among those challenged.
• This comic strip cracked me up, further proof that I have a heart of stone. Thanks to Janni Lee Simner for the link.
  
• The main character of the comic strip Luann has been volunteering at her local library for some time now. This week, she talks to a visiting Aussie about why American libraries are awesome. Which they totally are. This was my favorite:
  

Two for the Show

Over at Booklights, Susan posed a question that's always in vogue amongst book lovers: Which book would you love to read for the first time again? She posted the answers today.

Some books I'd love to read for the first time again. Harry Potters 1-7 spring to mind, alongside The Hunger Games, and I'm sure there's others. Then I thought, What about the second time around?

I don't often re-read, or want to, unless the book is just yowza amazing. I recently re-read The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner. The first time, it grabbed me and wouldn't let go. The twists and turns of Eugenides' crafty mind, the ups that you thought were downs, the downs you thought were ups, and that kiss after the attack . . . hooo . . .

Wait, where was I?

Oh, yeah. My point here is that I still enjoyed all those elements the second time, but I also noticed the second major theme of the book, which was Eugenides' youth, his homesickness, his uncertainty, his reluctance to truly take on the mantle of kingship. Quite a trick when you consider that Turner never once used his point of view. It's a quieter theme, one that's easy to lose in the rollercoaster of the first time around, but one that gives depth and resonance to all the twists and turns. With this addition, it becomes almost another book.

Another book that often gives me this experience is Pride and Prejudice, which many of you know is my desert island/nuclear bunker/oh shit the library's closed book. I've read it at least once a year for the past ten years. I've read books about first impressions, self-deception, about family, about the claustrophobia of small towns, about money and rank and self-respect versus worldly admiration. These books all happened to have the same plot and the same two main characters.

Susan touches on this in her discussion, saying of Harry Potter:

But as much as I loved that thrilling, spine tingling first time, it was in the re-reading where I discovered the true magic. Rowling planned out all seven books before the first one was even accepted for publication. All the books are full of subtle, deftly hidden clues and wonderful misdirection that are a delight to discover.

For me, book like this are the ones with grit and guts and staying power. These are the ones you remember, not for the experience of your first time reading it, but because every time you read it there's something more.

Which books have you re-read and found more the second time?

Book Review: Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork

Book: Marcelo in the Real World
Author: Francisco X. Stork
Published: 2009

Marcelo likes his life just the way it is, thank you. He has his routine all set. He's going to spend the summer training the therapy ponies. Then he's going to spend his senior year as he has his last eleven--at Paterson, his special private school that understands and works with him on his Asperger's-like condition.

Then his father throws all his plans for a loop. Marcelo is not going to train therapy ponies. Instead, he is going to spend the summer in the mail room at his father's law firm--and if he doesn't fulfill expectations, he's going to spend his senior year at the local public high school. His father isn't trying to be cruel. He's trying to educate Marcelo in the ways of the real world, the world he's been able to hide from for the past seventeen years.

But the real world is full of traps and pitfalls even for the people who spend all their time in it. Before the summer is out, Marcelo will discover that the good and evil exist together in ways that all his religious studying has never prepared him for, and that the only way to find the right path is by discovering where his own faltering steps lead him.

Although Marcelo is on the very high-functioning end of the autism spectrum, there's no doubt he's on that spectrum. He is a baby chick, newly hatched from the egg, but a chick who is painfully aware of how much he doesn't know. He has very little natural sense of others' emotions, deception, or other such ulterior motivation. Rather than using it to make him naive and bumbling, Stork has Marcelo aware of that deficit and consciously attempting to work out what other people are thinking and feeling. Some things, such as Jasmine's resentment over Marcelo's presence, are obvious to us but take a great deal of sussing out on his part. Others, such as Wendell's hidden motivations, are less clear to anybody. As a reader, it forced me to look at everyone more carefully. What were they hiding? What were they lying about?

Overall, this is a novel about moral choices, and how difficult it can be when the right choice may hurt people you love. Marcelo struggles most with the revelation that his father has made and continues to make morally suspect choices, and yet he's not a villain.

The Holmeses are almost cartoonishly bad, but they do have real power that can be wielded against the people Marcelo cares about, and in a novel where simply distinguishing good from evil is a skill to be learned along the way, more complexity in the overt villains might have muddied the waters.

One element that I loved is that Marcelo and his family are Latino, but that is simply the way they are. The question of ethnicity comes up in one discussion with the pompous Wendell Holmes, and the family background is touched on every now and then, but it's not central to the novel. Nobody's trying to either suppress or get in touch with their heritage in this novel, and it's not about the Nice Brown People vs. the Evil White People. Stork reflects a world more complex than that.

I didn't feel as if the second half of the book was quite as strong as the first, but overall this was at least as good as advertised, if not better. For a novel with such a unique protagonist, Marcelo in the Real World illuminates a painfully familiar experience for everyone.

This review is part of Color Online's Color Me Brown challenge.

Book Blogger Appreciation Week reminder!

Just a note to remind everyone that nominations for Book Blogger Appreciation Week are due today! So get out there and share your favorite blogs!

More Tuesday Twitterbits

It's another installment of Tuesday Twitterbits, from me to you!

• @RobinBrande pointed me at this article about how J.K. Rowling's life and experiences informed HP. For those who dismiss fantasy as unrelated to the real world, it's good to show how things translate.
• Don't forget to blog with integrity. Thanks, @LizB.
• According to @ScottWesterfeld and i09, Borders is responding to the burgeoning interest in YA literature and expanding their teen sections. Woohoo!
• And, courtesy of @realjohngreen--How Twilight Should Have Ended. Bwaha!
  

All right, that's enough of that. Who are you following this week?

The Vampire's Assistant Trailer

EarlyWord showed me this one: a trailer for October's "The Vampire's Assistant," based on the first three Cirque Du Freak novels. Wonder why they did that? Didn't work out so well for the Lemony "Another Excuse for Jim Carrey to Monopolize an Entire Movie" Snicket adaptation. Ahem.



I'll admit, though, that I'm hardly the person to judge--I couldn't finish the first Cirque du Freak novel because it freaked me right out. Good job, Darren Shan. So far, the movie bids fair to fulfill that requirement, and I might even see it as long as all the lights are on.

Okay, anyone who's read the whole series and can recite large-ish chunks of dialogue. What do you think of the trailer?

Best. Adaptations. Ever.

I got this link off the Child_Lit list: Best movies adapted from children's books

Not sure I agree with all of them (I like the Johnny Depp Wonka better than the Gene Wilder one, and frankly Snow White would have improved that whole movie 1000% if she'd just jumped in the dumb wishing well) but it's something to think about. I do agree with most of the honorable mentions.

What are some of your favorite adaptations?

Book Review: Perfect by Natasha Friend

Book: Perfect
Author: Natasha Friend
Published: 2004

Isabelle Lee's favorite word is "fine." She tells everyone she's fine when they ask how she's doing after her father's death a year and a half before. She tells her little sister, April, that she's fine when she catches her throwing up in the bathroom. She tells the therapy group that she's fine and she doesn't need to be there.

That's before Ashley Barnum joins the group. Perfect Ashley Barnum, with the oodles of popularity and the stacks of friends and the pre-teen model looks and the rich family. To Isabelle's amazement, Ashley Barnum does the same thing she does--stuffs herself to fill the emptiness inside, then pukes it all up.

As Isabelle and Ashley create their own little binge-and-purge club, Isabelle slowly becomes aware that no matter how many times she says it, everything isn't fine. The only question now is how she's going to handle it.

One of the things I liked best about this novel was how it treated the roots of Isabelle's eating disorder. While Ashley's predicament--overbearing expectations and a hollow mockery of a family life--is more in line with what we expect from eating-disorder novels, Isabelle's stems not from her father's death but how the family that's left behind is handling it, or rather, not handling it. Isabelle's mother is deeply depressed and Isabelle herself denies the pain, and both of them dodge April's attempts to talk about their father. While body image is certainly a huge problem, more often it's a stand-in for deeper emotional holes.

Oddly enough, I felt as if this were a lighter treatment of bulimia. Not lighter as in not taking it seriously as a problem or not showing the really disgusting bits. Friend doesn't back off on those. But Isabelle has just started her slide into bulimia, and it hasn't gotten to the extent that it does in many other novels. Although she's still purging sometimes by the end of the novel, you feel strongly that she's going to be okay.

Eating disorders are often considered the territory of teen problem novels, but Perfect shows how they can (and often do) start years beforehand.

The Squeaky Wheel

. . . has gotten greased, as they say. (Do they? Aw, now I'm picturing wheels in leather and heels singing "You're the One That I Want" and yes, it has been a long day, how could you tell?)

ANYWAY. Remember how the whole entire internet (or least the portion of it that I frequent) was up in arms over the Liar cover?

Bloomsbury got the hint. Behold!

Before:













After:













I love this new cover--not just because it's much more representative of Micah as Justine has described her, but because it recreates what was right with the first cover while fixing what was wrong. The first cover design was a great thought--the wide, scared eyes, the mouth covered up. What is she lying about? Why is she so freaked? Curious-making!

Both of those have been retained, and now you feel as if it might really show Micah there--with the addition that she is clearly covering up her own mouth, instead of someone possibly covering it for her. (Yes, I do have a nasty little mind.)

Not to mention that where the girl on the first cover looked about thirteen or fourteen, this one looks about sixteen or seventeen. I don't know how old Micah is, but the book is described as a twisty thriller, so I'm thinking it might skew older.

Plus, she's beautiful. Seriously. Really eye-catching.

But this wasn't just about one book. Liar was the tip of this iceberg issue, which was really the perception that people won't buy books with black people (or Asian, or Latino) on the cover. As Justine herself notes:

I also hope we can prove (again) that it’s simply not true that a YA cover with a black face on the cover won’t sell. But let’s also put it to the test with books written by people of color. You don’t have to wait to grab your copy of Coe Booth’s Kendra or any of the many fabulous books recommended by Color Online etc.

Swapping, Mooching, and Buying

Put on your crash helmets, pumpkins, here's another rambling post about the contents of my brain.

I'm a member of both PaperbackSwap.com and BookMooch.com (Hello, fellow Swappers and Moochers!). About twenty percent of my books are obtained in this way. The remaining eighty percent are library copies. (Every so often an ARC sneaks in there, but not so much anymore.)

Recently, the owner of BookMooch.com posted this on their blog: Mooch Before You Buy. In short, he proposes this: authors to post copies of their books on BookMooch, Moochers to do what they do best. If they don't like the book, just pass it on. If they liked it, give a little donation to the author. The size of the donation would depend on the amount they liked the book.

This is somewhat similar to LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, although that one trafficks in reviews and ARCs instead. It's also not that different from publishers and authors sending books to bloggers, although with both those the book-givers are aiming for publicity rather than straight-up dollars and cents. But doesn't it boil down to the same thing in the end? Hmmm.

Authors reading, would you do this? Non-authors reading, do you think that authors doing this would improve their overall sales?

This Blog Has Two Birthdays

Happy blogday to me, happy blogday to me . . .

As the title says, my blog is a little unusual in that it has two birthdays. I posted my first-ever blog post on August 24, 2002, about four months before leaving for England on a study-abroad semester. I wanted to keep friends and family up-to-date on my adventures in Europe, post pictures, make snarky remarks, and generally make a nuisance of myself online. At the time, it was called Diary of a Bloody Yank--hence the strange URL.

The reason you're reading this on August 2 (or thereabouts) is because after coming back to the States in spring 2003, I let it lapse. Who needed to read about my travails as a Kelly girl, after all? (Yes, I really was a temp for about a year. No, I do not recommend it.)

Right around the time I entered library school, I re-started blogging on August 2, 2004 under the new name Confessions of a Bibliovore, which it remains. So I guess this is my five-year blogiversary. Yay me!

The reason it became Confessions of a Bibliovore was because my favorite part of the Bloody Yank blog was my Book of the Day. Whether I was talking about rude Americans in Spain or my visit to the Tower of London, I always added a little something about a recent fabulous book. I was just starting to read children's and YA books, after about ten years of chock-a-block romance novels, and my book of the day was just as likely to be a Madeleine L'Engle classic as it was to be a vintage Laura Kinsale.

When I decided to start the blog again, it was with the idea that I would simply record what I was reading, watching, or otherwise consuming. My first post was about a Nora Roberts favorite and a Marx Brothers movie. Of course, children's and YA books were there from the beginning, and I found myself writing about those more and more often. To my surprise, other people were writing about it too. And they were cool. And they read my blog too.

I found myself in an online world of people very much like me. I've become known in my professional life as someone with a freakish level of knowledge about children's and YA books, and I attribute that directly to the Kidlitosphere--to the blogs I read, to the connections I've made.

This blog has always been about what I love. I love books, I love people who love books, I love libraries and reading and kids and of course, snarky remarks. Here's to five more years, at least.

Reading Roundup: July 2009

By the Numbers
Teen: 29
Tween: 16
Children: 15

Standouts
Teen: TIE Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson and The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner
Tween: Miss Spitfire by Sarah Miller
Children: The Gollywhopper Games by Jody Feldman

Because I Want To Awards
Rang Recognition Bells Long and Loud: Swim the Fly by Don Calame (I swam competitively but not well for years, and all I have to say is Don Calame must have too.)
Best Heroine: Jacky Faber from Mississippi Jack by L.A. Meyer
Way Better Than I Thought It Would Be: School Spirit by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel
Attention Future Vets!: Animal Faces by Akira Satoh
Spent the Entire Time Giggling: I'm Being Stalked by a Moonshadow by Doug McLeod. (I really want to start that "Rude gestures!" "Rude gestures to you!" business with somebody.)

Tuesday Twitterbits

Given that I'm getting an estimated seventy-eleven percent of my news from Twitter these days, I thought I'd start doing a roundup post instead of letting half of them expire of old age in my favorites column.

I'd like to add something that a co-worker recently pointed out--you don't actually have to have a TwitterID to use the service. You can drop by the web interface and search for any hashtag or topic you like, and follow what people are saying that way. Of course, you can't put in your own two cents, and everyone knows that's what's the most fun.

• The Right Honorable Gregory K. Pincus (Esq.) has started co-hosting (with Bonnie Adamson) a Kidlit chat via Twitter at 9 o'clock eastern time (6 Pacific) on Tuesday evenings. This goes along with his poetry chats on Thursdays at the same time. I bet if you hurry, you can get over there before they start dancing on tables. The hashtags are #kidlitchat and #poetrychat, respectively. Just plug the appropriate one into the search box and keep refreshing.
  
• Lisa McMann retweeted this from Simon and Schuster: You can read Cassandra Clare's City of Bones online for free. That's right. You do have to sign up for LivingSocial or Facebook's Visual Bookshelf, but it's still free. You heard it here . . . uh . . . third.
  
• And this made me shriek aloud. Thanks, @interactiver. Thanks a lot.
  

That's it for now. Who are you following this week?

Book Blogger Appreciation Week is coming up!

Given that we all do this for free, I love the idea of BBAW. Add yourself to the grand list of bloggers and vote for your favorites! Nominations are open until August 15.

Pants on Fire

The latest kerfuffle in the kidlitosphere centers around Justine Larbalestier's novel, Liar. Or more accurately, around the cover. Have a gander at the cover to your right.

Now read the description of the main character that the author herself gives on her blog:

Micah is black with nappy hair which she wears natural and short.

Now look at the cover again. Erm . . . that's what you might call a fundamental disconnect.

There have been kerfuffles before, but this time even PW caught wind of it. They went asking around and got this shriek-worthy quote:

“The entire premise of this book is about a compulsive liar,” said Melanie Cecka, publishing director of Bloomsbury Children’s Books USA and Walker Books for Young Readers, who worked on Liar. “Of all the things you’re going to choose to believe of her, you’re going to choose to believe she was telling the truth about race?”

In a word? YES. There are unreliable narrators and then there's just a big ol' mess where nothing hangs together. What makes unreliable narrators so tricky for readers is that there's truth and lies all mixed together. If you make it all lies, then, well, let Justine tell you:

One of the most upsetting impacts of the cover is that it’s led readers to question everything about Micah: If she doesn’t look anything like the girl on the cover maybe nothing she says is true. At which point the entire book, and all my hard work, crumbles.

She goes on to position this misstep in a long history of white-washing covers and ghettoizing black fiction because "black fiction doesn't sell," and just why that perception doesn't hang together.

If you want to explore this even deeper, check out Jen Robinson's roundup or this post at BoingBoing, more particularly the comments. There's one comment that examines and deconstructs all those prior like a debate captain at a kindergarten roundup.

Book Review: Audrey Wait! by Robin Benway

Book: Audrey, Wait!
Author: Robin Benway
Published: 2008

When Audrey broke up with Evan, she thought that was the end of it. But then he wrote a song about it. And then it got picked up by local radio stations. Then national. Then international. Then he's a bona fide celebrity, and to Audrey's dismay, so is she.

Audrey just wanted a normal life, hanging out with her best friend, going to awesome concerts, and building a new relationship with the adorkable James. But fame is hungry, and Audrey can only hide from it for so long before it devours her--if she lets it.

You're probably nodding along and going, "Yeah, yeah, everybody's talked about this book already. What can you tell me new about it?" Not much, admittedly. This was last year's Red Hot of the Red Hots. I can only tell you what I loved about it, which is what this blog is all about anyway.

This book is the furthest extension of the worst kind of breakup, where everyone's on your ex's side, and you just want to move on with your life but oh, my god, nobody will stop talking about it. Audrey is cast as the villainess and the slut by celebrity-culture America, when we know that it takes two to make or break a relationship.

Audrey and her friends are smart and sarcastic, but not brittle. They care about each other, even when they screw up--and in their own ways, everyone screws up at least once.

I loved Audrey, Wait!, and I'm sending Benway good vibes for her next one. Give this book to music lovers, breakup survivors, and anybody who likes a smart, funny story about kids who break up, mess up, and get up again.

Book Review: Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve

Book: Here Lies Arthur
Author: Philip Reeve
Published: 2008

The first time Gwyna sees Arthur, King of the Britons, Dux Bellorum, he's just ravaged her home and burnt it to the ground. She escapes by diving into a frozen stream, but it's just her luck that the person who fishes her out is none other than Myrddin, Arthur's bard, teller of stories and worker of magics. He recruits Gwyna to play lady of the lake for him, and so another legend is born.

When this role is done, Myrddin transforms Gwyna into Gwyn, his servant, and together they follow Arthur around Britain. In the process, Gwyna sees both the man Arthur, a mere dime-a-dozen warlord, and the legend Myrddin is spinning in order to turn him into King of the Britons, and how far apart they lie.

Every so often, an author's preoccupations are laid right out there on the page, and that's the case with Here Lies Arthur. If we're lucky, they've got the chops to make an absorbing story out of it. In this novel, Reeve thoroughly explores the power of storytelling to seduce and create. He makes it clear that Arthur is hardly the stuff of legend as he is, and that it's largely Myrrdin's stories that made him into the mighty, benevolent king. Yet this is no cynical political wheeling-dealing, or at least not totally. Myrddin truly believes that Arthur has the power to unite the mess of scrabbling fiefdoms against the Saxons, and he uses his stories as a tool. The stories themselves become succor for the Britons, for Arthur's men, even for Arthur himself. In spite of her cynicism, Gwyna herself begins spinning tales for herself and others by the end.

One of the more subtle but no less interesting themes is the way that Gwyna and another character, Peredur, slide in between gender roles. In a way, it's just another story--they encounter times and places when being male is too dangerous or simply doesn't fit, and so they become female, or vice versa. Just as Gwyna is ever aware of the human man at the center of the legend, she retains her identity no matter what clothes she wears.

If you enjoy Arthurian tales already, it's fun to play spot-the-roots. Reeve includes a note at the end that mentions a few of the harder connections, but sharp-eyed readers will see the seeds that become the Round Table and other enduring tales.

Horrible, Horrible Glee

This week, I'm cementing my position in at least the fourth circle of hell.

• I can't take credit for this list, but I wish I could: 50 Reasons No One Wants to Publish Your First Book, from Bookgasm. Especially numbers 6, 25 and 45. And 4, 5, and 50 deserve special mention as well. Mark this one with a star and hide it away to read at home, because it's so very, very NSFW. Tweeted by SmartBitches.
• You've heard of the Bulwer-Lytton award for bad writing, right? Seems they left out the Children's category this year. Fie upon you, gentlemen and ladies. Fie, I say! But never fear. From Cheryl Klein (by way of a Tweet from Gregory K. Pincus) comes this challenge to cook up your own awful children's writing. Can you compete with the utterly delicious submissions already in the comments?
• Well, okay, this one probably won't send me to hell, unless you believe that anything Harry-Potter-related consigns one to the flames. The blog Cake Wrecks marked the release of the Half-Blood Prince movie with a magical Sunday Sweets. I'm told there's some acrimony in the comments, but I just drooled over the cakes.
  
• Oh, lord, I almost forgot the TwiLOL. How did I survive before this existed in my life? (Answer: prty well akshuly.)
  

Grownups Who Read YA

Well, blow me down--an article about adults reading YA fiction that's actually respectful of the people and the genre. Actually, it's not an article, but an answer in an advice column. Cynthia Crossen of the Wall Street Journal recommends YA novels for an 80-year-old woman who's lost her taste for adult fiction.

Crossen gives the "kiddie books" appellation a miss in favor of sentences like this one:

Good YA is not dumbed-down adult fare; it’s literature that doesn’t waste a breath.

Later on, she staunchly defends YA against allegations of being minor-league. Cynthia, don't take this the wrong way, but I think I love you.

And folks, don't miss the comments.

Wizards vs. Vampires in Wall Street Journal

Someone on the Child_Lit list pointed me at this one--an article in the Wall Street Journal comparing Harry Potter and Twilight, and examining the competing popularity of both franchises.

Mostly they focus on the movies. Both studios are very careful not to step on each others' toes while acknowledging the prominence of the other. It's all very polite.

Rather hilariously, WSJ claims that the Twilight adaptation was an overnight success when it hit theaters last November. Either someone is unclear on the exact definition of "overnight success" or they're ignoring the raging popularity of the novel that led it to be adapted in the first place. Um, right, guys.

Wisely, the article doesn't attempt a literary comparison of the two series, probably because they didn't want sixty-seven pages of comments reading, "OMG AVADA KEDAVRA!" or "I'm biting you right now."

Garth Williams Article

Remember Garth "Charlotte's Web/Little House/Stuart Little Illustrator" Williams? Well, now you do. This article talks about all those books and more, including the exhaustive research and work Williams put into his illustration.

Williams then embarked on a long, ten day driving expedition along the same trail that the Ingalls family had taken, and eventually re-located the place on the prairie where the Ingalls house had once stood. The trip culminated in a search along the riverbank along Plum Creek where the family had built their sod house home, so long ago.

Zowie. I'm kind of intimidated now.

Bloggers and the FTC

If ever you need to get ahold of MotherReader, just look for her on the ball, cuz that's where she is at all times. Bloggers should check out this post from her regarding the FTC's attention to tactics of "word of mouth" companies, and how this could be stretched to include book bloggers.

Now, none of us in the kidlitosphere are here to make money. But we do get review copies from publishers and authors--some of us more than others. We do pursue relationships with publishers and authors--again, some of us more than others. Certain books have been reviewed all over the kidlitosphere thanks mostly to incredibly energetic publicity.

Of course, we can and do post negative reviews. But as author Shannon Hale recently pointed out, even negative reviews are better than nothing, in terms of publicity.

There's a grey area there, one that we should probably try to define before somebody starts to define it for us. What are your thoughts?

Book Review: Wherever Nina Lies by Lynn Weingarten

Book: Wherever Nina Lies
Author: Lynn Weingarten
Published: 2009

Nina was the kind of girl who captivated everyone, especially her own younger sister. Ever since her sister disappeared, Ellie has floated through life, clinging to the belief that one day she will know what happened. But now, two years later, everyone but Ellie has stopped believing that Nina will ever return.

When Ellie finds one of her sister's sketches in a box of junk at a second-hand shop, nobody believes her that this is The Clue--the one that will eventually lead to Nina, to how and why. The only one willing to help her is a boy she's just met. Together, they set off cross-country, following a tenuous trail of clues in a quest for answers--even the answers Ellie might not want to hear.

Okay, I admit it. I read the end, so I knew the great twist. (You think I'm going to tell you? Pft!) But I have to say that knowing it didn't weaken the story, except that I read a number of things differently. It'll be a great read both times.

A great deal of the plot hinges on unlikely coincidences--Ellie happening to look at the right ad on a lamppost while recalling the right memory, for instance. For me, this contributed hugely to the charm of the book. There's something quixotic about their tenuous trail through tattoo parlors and underground indie concerts. But if you need to be able to bounce a quarter off your plots, this may not be the book for you.

It may seem like a contradiction in terms that the process of following the trail of an overshadowing sibling will teach a young woman exactly who she is, but that's just what happens in Wherever Nina Lies, with captivating results.

BBYA Goes Bye-Bye?

(I'm going to pre-emptively apologize for any inaccuracies or oversights made in this post. The first thing I did this morning was remove a Bugzilla from the children's area, and the day kinda went from there. But I wanted to post my thoughts on this hot topic.)

Currently, there's a bit of a kerfuffle around the news that YALSA may be moving away from their longtime Best Books for Young Adults list (picked by YALSA members) and toward a more reader's-choice model.

Hmmmmm.

Truly, I fear that the first four books on the list will be the Twilight series. This is not more of my good-natured Twilight bashing. I have nothing against kids reading these books; really, I don't. It's the very point that every-damn-one is reading them that gives me pause.

Surely the purpose of these Best Books lists is to expose librarians and teachers (and through them, the kids) to the really excellent books they might not be aware of. Nobody's unaware of the popular books. That's the whole point of being popular. Alix Flinn posts a wonderful discussion of popularity contests in publishing and the pitfalls of same in today's glutted YA market.

Now, the YALSA memo that Flinn linked to doesn't mention doing away with the current BBYA totally, although it does state that YALSA members aren't satisfied with the list as it is. They cite issues of list currency and workload for the BBYA deciders--both concerns I can get behind. Even I'm a little floored by the amount of work that BBYA folks have to put in. It also doesn't say that the contributors to the readers' choice list will be thrown wide open--only to YALSA members. People who presumably work around a lot of teen books and a lot of teens every day.

Still a lot of folks in the kidlit arena are pretty concerned.

May I suggest? The Cybils works in a readers' choice/judging format and the results for the past three years have been pretty spiffy. Perhaps a combination would work best. What do you think?

Quitting is for the Weak

Over at YAnnabe, Kelly posts 7 Tips for Quitting a Book. Yes, my children. Quitting. It's okay.

When it comes to books, a lot of people seem to feel that it reflects on them morally if they don't finish every book they start. As if they're Bad People because they couldn't make it through a book. As if books, unlike movies and TV shows and webpages, don't vary wildly in their quality and content. No, you must Finish the Book. Otherwise you are weak. Weak! They tell their kids the same thing, and what's the result? Reading is a chore. Moooo-ooom, don't make me reeeeeeead. It goes hand in hand with the idea that books are Good For You, like broccoli.

I quit eating broccoli a long time ago.

Meg Cabot occasionally reiterates her own personal motto that quitters actually do win, because they've tried it, discovered that it wasn't for them, and gone on to something better. Awesome.

I recently computerized my TBR list on LibraryThing and was amazed that I have over 1500 books on my list that I want to read. Granted, many of them are picture books, and I read fast, but . . . 1500?! And with the number of blogs I read, more gets added than subtracted. I've had a fifty-page rule for years, but it's only been recently that I even started weeding my TBR list, glancing at plot summaries and reviews to decide whether I really want to spend my reading time on this book, I mean really.

I've quit a book for all sorts of reasons--"who really talks like that?" dialogue, "as you know, Bob" infodumps, plots with all the twistiness of a block of wood. A few months back, I quit a book because the romantic interest was too damn perfect. (Author, please. He's a teenage boy. He can make a fart joke or something. It's allowed.)

What's your personal tipping point?

Newsweek, I'm Gonna Kick Your Butt

So last week, Newsweek did a gathering of nine authors' favorite books in their own genre. I was nodding along--Melissa Gilbert on Hollywood memoirs, Bob Woodward on political scandal, Jenna Bush on children's books--

*sound of needle screeching across record*

Jenna Bush?

Undoubtedly they were going for a little star power, a recognizable name. We all know Bob Woodward knows his political scandals, after all. But Jenna Bush? Granted, she's not a totally moronic choice. She did write a nonfiction YA book (more on the fundamental difference between kids and YA later) and is currently a sixth-grade teacher. So presumably she has a waving acquaintance with children's lit. But seriously, Newsweek, with all the amazing children's authors out there, this was the best you could do?

The list itself is perfectly serviceable, hard to disagree with, but the kind of thing you would find on any summer required-reading list.

Who would you have picked instead? And if they'd picked you, what would your list have looked like?

Chaos Walking Prequel Story!

Bless his little heart, Patrick Ness wrote a prequel story to The Knife of Never Letting Go and posted on the Booktrust website for all of us. You can read it without having read the book first--it spoils only a very little bit. But I'd still read Knife first.

Thanks to the adbooks listserv for the link.

Book Review: Fact of Life #31 by Denise Vega

Book: Fact of Life #31
Author: Denise Vega
Published: 2008

Kat Flynn is sick of her job in a home-birth midwife's office. Her boss, Abra, never listens to a word she says and delivers improving lectures constantly. After a disastrous episode at a birth, Kat's not even being allowed to think about helping out at deliveries anymore. She's got to quit. Too bad her boss is also her mom.

Then Kat finds out that the most popular girl in school is pregnant. Now Libby Giles is hanging around constantly, bonding with Abra in a way Kat's never been able to manage. To Kat's surprise and resentment, she finds that she can't exactly hate Libby. Under the popular gloss, there's a girl who's just as confused and confusing as Kat herself.

In fact, she's realizing that a lot of her peers, girl and boy, popular and pitiful, are more than they seem. But the one person whose outer shell she can't seem to pierce is her own mother. As Libby gets closer and closer to delivery, the gulf between Kat and Abra widens until it seems impossible that they'll ever understand each other.

From the description, I thought this was going to be a much fluffier book. It's fun, but underneath there were more serious themes of Kat growing into herself and her own abilities, as well as coming to understand the complexities of other people underneath their labels.

What I loved about this book was the way that Denise Vega told the whole story. In places where other authors would have stopped (the adorable crush finally asks pining girl out, jerky boyfriend is roundly dumped for being, y'know, a jerk, daughter finally tells her mother what she thinks), Vega went on, taking us through overlapping series of character and relationship arcs that wind up telling a much more complete story.

Also, Kat is quirky, but not in that, "Look at me, I am sooooo quirky!" way. She does yoga in the halls and genuinely doesn't take offense at the way people snicker and mock. At the same time, she's not the Amazing Zen Girl. She gets mad and scared and confused about her feelings. You can see how much she is like her mom, and how unlike, so that their constant battles ring true as the normal push-pull of a mother and her teenage daughter.

Try this one for a novel about a young woman finding her way into her own skin.

Varigated Glee

It's Friday again, which means that we need more glee!

• Jen Robinson Tweeted this one: You Know You're a Book Blogger When . . . Um. Guilty.
• Doubtless you've heard of the uproar over Francesca Lia Block's Baby Be-Bop and one Wisconsin group's determination to see it burn. A teen reacts, most marvelously. Thanks to Liz Burns for the informative Tweet.
• And it just wouldn't be a Friday Glee post without some manner of Twilight bashing. But this . . . is just fantabulous.

Reading Roundup June 2009

By the Numbers
Teen: 24
Tween: 18
Children: 11

Standouts
Teen: TIE: The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness AND Unwind by Neal Shusterman
Tween: Lucky by Rachel Vail
Children: Crazy Hair by Neil Gaiman

Because I Want To Awards
Most Constant Laughs: Diary of a Chav/Diva Without a Cause by Grace Dent
Most Thought-Provoking: Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve
Sorry About the Cover, Author: A Difficult Boy by M.P. Barker
Great Kickstart: Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Worthy Successor: Hate That Cat by Sharon Creech
Most Old-Fashioned: When the Sergeant Came Marching Home by Don Lemna