Using Our Powers for Good

Sheila over at Wands and Worlds has posted a call to authors and illustrators to donate to a charity auction in memory of a young Arkansas girl killed in a February tornado.

She's gotten Erin Hunter, of the Warriors series, involved. The funds raised will benefit a number of different causes, including literacy.

The whole story is pretty long, so I'll direct you to the post.

Spread the word!

Let Me Go On Record with a Gigantic "YES!!"

At Comic-Con this weekend, Perry Moore (author of Hero), and Stan Lee (oh, please, you know who Stan Lee is) have announced a partnership.

Honestly, people, I would be more excited if I could figure out what this partnership is supposed to entail. It's all very vague.

But the thing that really makes me happy? The article mentions that Hero is the first in a series.

Happy dance activate!

If This Does Not Make You Smile . . .

. . . then you are a troll.


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

From NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Pedestals and Landfills

I have for you today a couple of neat posts from Guys Lit Wire.

The first one is about the private identity crisis of children's and YA librarians, also known as "Do the awards we spend most of the year arguing about actually matter to the kids?"

As a former child, I feel qualified to comment. I rarely noticed whether a book had an award or not, especially when it was something like the Tri-County Stan Handford Award for Achievement in Excellence. They serve mostly as a tip-off to grownups that this is likely be a quality book, but even that comes with caveats. Some of the older Newberys have not aged well.

This is not to say that awards are crap. Recognition is good, and we shouldn't discount the grown-ups' need for a little help in picking books for their kids. Some of my old favorites were winners (The Blue Sword, for instance, may actually be buried with me. Ditto A Wrinkle in Time.) But that has more to do with the content of the stories and my own personal tastes than the fact that they were award winners. I have never gotten a child saying to me, "I want an award-winning book." They usually say something like, "I want a good book." Their definition of a good book (much like an award committee's) is subject to all sorts of personal quirks and preferences.

Okay, from one extreme to the other. The second post concerned that most historically reviled genre of kid's lit, comic books. It's only been in the past decade or so that libraries have begun to add graphic novels to their collections, and even so, it's done in a sort of appease-the-masses spirit. If they come in for Spider-Man, they may trip over Dosteyevsky on the way out, and then we have them MUAHAHAHAHA . . . ahem.

But Kristopher talks about what reading comics taught him about literature. He points out that comics readers rarely close the book without an opinion, or the desire to share that opinion with his or her fellow readers.

They’ll dissect plot arcs, character developments, and the internal logic of a comic, changes in costume and changes in tone, all the basic building blocks of a narrative. They will cite back issues as precedent.

You guys, I had that experience. It was called Literary Theory 101. And I have to tell you, it takes some wicked quality writing to support that kind of analysis.

So what do these two posts mean? Comic books good, award winners bad? Up is down? Bad is good? Black is white?

No. Black is still black, and white is still white. But literature, and people, exist in shades of grey. I am not arguing that books (and comic books) have no intrinsic value. They sure do. There's some real crap out there, people.

But the other half of the equation is the reader. And that, of course, is why we're all here.

Book Review: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Book: Little Brother
Author: Cory Doctorow
Published: 2008

Simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus Yallow and his friends have been rounded up, imprisoned, and ruthlessly interrogated. Are they in Singapore? The Middle East?

No. They’re in the United States of America.

Caught in the aftermath of a terrorist attack, Marcus survives five days of "detainment" before he's let go. But the world he walks back into is more of a fascist state than a democratic nation. Everyone is monitored, everywhere, with the police pulling anyone with a slightly abnormal behavioral pattern in for questioning. Worse, civilians have given up personal freedoms willingly, in order to feel more safe.

Not Marcus. Within a day, he’s hacking an Xbox and setting up an underground Internet called the Xnet, spurring others to action in the name of retaking the freedoms they’ve lost to the War on Terror. But as the movement he’s created slips out of his control, he must constantly reevaluate his self-imposed mission. Where is the line between patriotism and terrorism? And who exactly is crossing it?

This is one of those books that you hear about all over place for months before it actually hits shelves. The back cover is crowded with blurbs from people who know what they’re talking about, all praising it to high heaven. Lucky for us, Doctorow really is that good. He even makes his periodic mini-lectures on hacking, computer tech, and civil disobedience history interesting.

Marcus is the kind of kid I’d be way intimidated by if I were in high school with him, both brilliant and independent. But taking the ride with him showed me the vulnerabilities as well as the strengths--the loss of friends, the betrayals of trust both public and personal, the fear, the self-doubt, the almost impossible uphill battle against the monolith, and finally, the inner core of love for his country that enables him to fight on.

This book should be required reading for every high school civics class, preferably in October or so. It’s a fast-paced, ferocious, terribly human tale about the rights, and more importantly, the responsibilities, of being an American.

Filled With Glee

I was just reminded about Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and now I'm passing that on to you. What does this have to do with children's and YA lit?

Uh, well, it's helmed by Joss Whedon, whose iconic Buffy the Vampire Slayer was all about the experience of being a teenager and growing up . . . and, um, it's on the internet, and these kids today, they like this internet thing . . . and uh, it's a subversive pastiche of comic book paradigms and . . . and . . .

Oh, the heck with it. I don't even know what "pastiche" means (or "paradigms" for that matter). You guys, it's a supervillain musical written by Joss Whedon.

Let's go over that again.

Supervillain.

Musical.

Joss Whedon.

You can go now. But quick, because it's only up until July 20th. Me, I'm gonna go sing "Brand New Day" for sixteenth time.

Rant Ahoy!

Sarah over at the Reading Zone has published a scathing rant about schools, summer reading lists, and the fact that they haven't changed in decades. (The schools or the lists.)

Amen! I love Maniac Magee, but for God's sake, school, it's been on your list for the past ten years. Switch it out! Get a little crazy! Do a little dance!

And pack away the tissues. It's summer. Not every book has to deal with Deep Themes like Death and War and the unbearable woe of existence. You'd be surprised how many humorous novels also have Deep Themes.

To all this, I'd like to add, "Schools, when you put at the bottom of the paper, 'Check the public library for these titles,' how about a leeetle heads-up to that self-same public library? Just a teeny one?" I'm reduced to snatching the lists from bewildered seventh-graders' hands, dashing away to make a quick copy, and giving my library supplier a call begging them to rush me several copies of each title, because my itty-bitty library is responsible for basically an entire school district.

Thanks to a number of bloggers for the link.

Because God Knows There's Nothing to Watch on TV

Seriously, you guys, this made me want to become an astronaut.



There are various discussions on book trailers on various lists. Do they work, don't they, what are the components of a good book trailer, are they even worth the time. I like this one, although not having read Kitty, Kitty yet (sob!) I can't say yet whether it has much to do with the book in question.

ETA: because I'm a dork and didn't notice that the HTML for the videos was strangely truncated.

Grab Bag

If you've read these confessions for awhile, you know that I keep track of my To Be Read books in a blue journal. (It's always blue. Don't ask me why.) Given the disparate rates of my book-reading and my recommendation-accepting, the thing is almost on its third co-existing volume. Being an anal librarian (bit redundant there), I have to proceed through it in order (except for the exceptions).

I often forget what the book is about, so when it finally makes the top spot, I sometimes look at it and go, "Why did I want to read this?"

Sometimes the answer is in the author. (Well, duh, it's Sharon Creech. Of course I wanted to read it.) Or the title. (Zombie Blondes? Shoot, I rushed to put that in the blue journal so fast I think I pulled something.) But most of the time, I took a recommendation from some webpage, blogger, or even library patron--I forget who--and I'm sticking my hand in the grab bag by putting the request in the library system.

I flip through my blue journal and ponder the pages upon pages of titles and authors. Sometimes there's a publication date, but no more information than this. Is this book a picture book? An affecting tale of parental alcoholism? A book in verse? A madcap adventure? I'll never know until the request comes through and the book lands in my hot little hands.

From that point, they have the same chance as every other book--novels get fifty pages to grab me (or 25, if they're short), and picture books are flipped through on the reference desk.

The result is that I have a ridiculously sprawling sampling of books in both my blue Journal and my LibraryThing account (the latter status reserved for those books that survived the fifty page rule). I'm glad I'm a librarian, because there are only a few professions that reward such broad literary experience.

Reading Roundup June 2008

This seems to have been the month of reading series and sequels right in a row. This was also the month of MotherReader's 48-hour Book Challenge. Finally, this was the month that I started the Summer Reading Program at work. Yikes. It's been a busy month.

By the Numbers
Total Number Read: 62
Teen: 26
Tween: 6
Children: 15
Preschool: 23

Standouts
Teen: Jump the Cracks by Stacy DeKeyser
Tween: Cassie Was Here by Caroline Hickey
Children: We Are the Ship by Kadir Nelson
Preschool: Monster Hug! by David Ezra Stein

Because I Want To Awards
How Did I Miss This When I Was a Kid?: The Boy/Girl Battle Series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Uncomfortably Possible: The Declaration by Gemma Malley
Holy Schnikes, I'm Still Not Recovered: Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside by Holly Black
Prompted the Happy Dance in the Middle of ALA: Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Writing Thank-You Notes by Peggy Gifford
Perfect Timing: The Plain Janes and Janes In Love by Cecil Castelluci (explanation: I got the ARC of the second at BEA just as the first book came up for reading on my TBR list. This was about a one-in-a-million chance, given my Byzantine methods of working through my TBR list.)
Swept Me Away: Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier
Totally Lived Up to My Internal Hype: Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale

Book Review: Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier

Book: Wildwood Dancing
Author: Juliet Marillier
Published: 2008

Five sisters live a quiet life with their merchant father in Transylvania. Tati is the beauty, Jena the sensible one, Paula the scholar, Iulia the butterfly, and Stela the cosseted baby of the family. But these sisters have a secret. Every full moon, they escape not only their father's house, but the entire mundane world, stepping into the world of faerie for an all-night ball with magical creatures.

Jena thinks that nothing can disturb their secure world, but things start to fall apart when their father travels abroad for his health. All of a sudden, her male cousin Cezar is forcibly taking control of her responsibilities and initiating witch hunts for the faerie creatures that cross over into their own world. As if that's not bad enough, Tati has fallen in love with Sorrow, one of the Night People that even the denizens of faerie fear. But things can always get worse . . .

As Jena fights for herself and her sisters, long-buried secrets will come to the surface, and the fallout will affect not only the five sisters, but their entire valley.

Upon closing this book, I literally clutched it to my bosom and heaved a deep sigh. This book owes more than a few storylines to the fairy-tale tradition. The villain is deliciously hateable and the touches of magic and mysticism aren't overdone. Meanwhile, sensible, courageous Jena anchors everything in reality and humanity.

I was actually quite glad that Marillier added a second love story to that of Tati and Sorrow, who were sweet in a Romeo and Juliet kind of way, but not enough to get my emotions involved. Maybe I'm an evil troll, but I don't believe in love at first sight. Jena and her beloved (psh, like I'm gonna tell you who it is! Read the book!) have to fight their own demons to win each other.

Marillier weaves multiple fairy tales and fairy-tale traditions together in a lush tale of secrets and lies conquered by the truest thing of all, love.

PS I just found out there's a sequel, Cybele's Secret, which will be available in the States in September '08. It features Jena's scholarly younger sister, Paula. Eee!

Who Wears the Shining Armor?

Leila at Bookshelves of Doom alerted me to a scintillating conversation over at Guys Lit Wire about the meaning of heroism for boys in YA novels--specifically as heroism applies to gender roles.

That sounds pretty high-falutin', doesn't it? Apparently the spark that set off this particular discussion was a Glenn Beck interview with Ted Bell, author of Nick of Time. In the interview, Beck and Bell both lament the lack of heroic boys these days, asserting that it's been too long since boys acted like boys in a book--which seemed to boil down to rescuing the girl instead of being rescued.

Yep. There's a logic problem there.

Aside from the overgeneralization and the staggering ignorance of current YA lit, since when is heroism dependent on your chromosomes? Since when do you need to be surrounded by weak women to be a strong man--or conversely, weak men to be a strong woman? A theme in much of YA and children's lit is about finding the inner hero--not the hero as compared to someone else, whatever their gender or yours.

The discussion, by the way, is not about the book itself. The book sounds like a lot of fun. It's the points made in the video about boys and girls and who should do the saving and who should wait to be saved. It's only a couple of lines, but the implications are sobering.

In the comments, Colleen herself points out that

waiting for a hero is not a way to survive; it's often a way to get dead. So how helpful is it to present literature where the boy comes in to save the girl as what authors (and readers) should aspire to? It's beyond fantasy - it's something that has never been true or helpful in any regard.

Boys need books with brave characters and so do girls. What a wonderful world we would be in if they could learn to see the value in each gender.

Incidentally, I was watching this video embedded in Guys Lit Wire. Right next to it, on the sidebar, was a blurb for Alan Gratz's marvelous Hamlet/noir mashup Something Rotten: a story about a young man trying to fight the villain, save his (male) friend from insanity, and generally pursuing justice in the best way he knew how. It just sort of underlined the hollowness of their assertions about the emasculating nature of literature for teen boys these days.

I Concur

. . . as I usually do with the Unshelved Book Club strips that concern books I've read. Today's is about everybody's favorite walking, talking, magical skeleton with a snarkalicious preteen sidekick, Skulduggery Pleasant, and the book thereof.

I know it seems like that's a pretty small category, but seriously, there are more of those than you'd think.

Attention LiveJournal Readers . . .

. . . you can now add Confessions of a Bibliovore to your friends page by going to this link. Share with your friends, share with your enemies, share with the crazy cat lady next door.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled reading.

Laurie Halse Anderson Chats!

If you loved her books (Speak, Twisted, Catalyst), make it your business to drop by the Readergirlz website on Thursday the 19th at 9 PM EST (6 on the West Coast) to virtually meet Laurie Halse Anderson and chatter about her book Prom.

Thanks to the Kidlitosphere yahoo group for the heads up!

Book Review: Looking for JJ by Anne Cassidy

Book: Looking for JJ
Author: Anne Cassidy
Published: 2007

The most notorious child killer in Britain’s history is out of jail. Everyone is slavering for details, a story, even a photo. But Jennifer Jones, the girl who killed her best friend seven years ago, seems to have disappeared. One of the few who knows her real whereabouts is Alice Tully, the girl who used to be Jennifer Jones.

Released secretly six months before the media was informed, Alice has been working to build a life for herself: a job, friends, a flat, a boyfriend, even plans to study history at university. But as the media gets ever closer, this lovely new life seems as fragile as a soap bubble. Probation officers and social workers scramble to plug leaks, but Alice is the only one who can deal with her own guilt and memories. Is it possible to run away from what she did forever? And does she even want to?

The amazing thing about this book is that Jennifer did it. She really did it. Cassidy doesn’t try to fake us out with a monster in the shadows, even another child. Jennifer killed her friend when both were ten years old, and she has to live with the consequences of her actions for the rest of her life. Neither Cassidy nor Alice attempt to excuse or explain, yet Jennifer’s memories make the event plausible, even understandable.

Cassidy juxtaposes pre-murder memories of Jennifer’s life with her vain, neglectful mother and present-day scenes of Alice’s carefully built life crumbling around her. The actual murder isn’t shown until about three-quarters of the way through. Much of what pulls you through the book is morbid curiousity about what she did and how she did it, and then if she can possibly save the life that she’s worked so hard to build.

The ending is both disappointing and hopeful, if such a thing is possible. Read this book for a thought-provoking story of consequences and how close we all are to being monsters, if only for a moment.

Another Game to Make You Smile

After spending close to 50 dollars to fill up my itty-bitty car, this game made me happy.

Happy-Making!

I have awake since about 4 am, a combination of stomach upset and stress from a work situation, both of which are enormous amounts of fun, I can assure you.

Since I was up anyway, I decided to watch all the links and videos on my Bloglines that I can't watch at work because a) the library computers don't have flash and b) for some reason people don't respect a librarian who is giggling like an idiot at the reference desk. Yeah, I don't get it either.

Anyway, here's a few happy-making things.

1. This book. Eeee!

2. Gallagher Girls 3 has a release date. True, it's in 2009 (June 9, to be exact), but it's only 363 days away!

3. You know you want to spend most of your morning playing this. You're welcome.

48-hour Challenge Wrap-Up

Started: Saturday, 7:20 am
Finished: Monday, 12:16 am

Total Books Completed: 11
Total Books Given Up On: 1
Total Pages: 2843 (2793 if you don’t count the fifty pages I put in before I could put that one book down)

Oof, you guys. I’m tired. I feel like if I tilt my head too far all the words will run out my ears and splash on the ground. I’m need some mindless TV, like, stat. Suggestions?

Hey MotherReader, we should totally do this for charity next year.

ETA: Click here for all my reviews.

Book Review: All We Know of Love by Nora Raleigh Baskin

48 Hour Challenge Book 11
Started: Sunday, 11:04 pm
Finished: Monday, 12:16 am

Book: All We Know of Love
Author: Nora Raleigh Baskin
Published: August 26, 2008

Four years, four months, and fifteen days ago, Natalie’s mother stopped speaking midsentence and walked out the door. Today, Natty is on a journey to find her, hoping she can answer all the questions she left behind.

Along the way, she’ll meet several other people--her seatmate, a girl in a bus station, a waitress at a roadside diner--and we’ll get to hear a snippet of their stories that shows Natalie’s not the only one searching for answers.

On picking up this book, I didn’t mean to finish it all in one go. I trust Baskin to give good book, but I was tired, I’d decided this would be my last book of the Book Challenge, I wasn’t even sure if I would finish it or go back some other time. But even as I practically had to break out the toothpicks to keep my eyes open, Natalie’s story caught me. From the ins and outs of her mother’s departure to the soul-sucking relationship (seriously, you’ll want to smack Adam several times) that Natalie must understand in order to escape, Baskin weaves a compelling narrative about the need for understanding and love. The snippet stories of love lost, found, unrequited, returned, twisted, and redeemed will reassure readers that the search for love in all its forms is a universal one.