Books
2011 GGNFT Nominations Updated
The list of official nominations for the 2011 Great Graphic Novels for Teens list from YALSA has just been updated!
I’m lucky enough to be on the committee this year, but you don’t have to be on the committee or even a librarian to nominate a title. Please help us discover great new books! To [...]
Patterson, James: The Angel Experiment (2005)
Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment
By James Patterson
Adventure, Science Fiction, Teen
Time Warner, 2005
Paperback $6.99
978-0446617796
Since I work as a teen librarian, I often check out books of dubious entertainment value because I want to stay stay up-to-date with what’s popular in teen literature. This is not always the best starting point for reading a book: there’s so [...]
Kyogoku, Natsuhiko: The Summer of the Ubume (1994, 2009 tr.)
The Summer of the Ubume
By Natsuhiko Kyogoku
Translated by Alexander O. Smith with Elye J. Alexander
Mystery/Horror
Vertical, 2009
Originally published in Japanese as Ubume no natsu by Kodansha, 1994
Paperback $16.95
978-1-934287-25-5
When Sekiguchi, a hack writer, becomes embroiled in a bizarre dead-end mystery, he turns to an old school friend, Akihiko “Kyogokudo” Chuzenji, for assistance. Kyogokudo is a proprietor of [...]
Avasthi, Swati: Split (2010)
Split
By Swati Avasthi
Young Adult Fiction
Knopf, 2010
Hardcover $16.99
978-0-375-86340-0
When Jace Witherspoon is kicked out of the house by his abusive father, he hits the road and drives until he finds himself on the doorstep of his brother Christian’s apartment. Jace hasn’t seen or heard from Christian in five years, since Christian made his own escape from their [...]
Adventures in ebooks
When it comes to technological innovation, I am generally in the early adopter or early majority categories. (Which one usually depends on how expensive the innovation in question is, as I am also quite cheap.) After all, I am easily tempted by shiny new things, and I am friends with many early adopters, all of [...]
Jo Walton on Lois McMaster Bujold over at Tor.com
Swing by the official Tor blogs when you get a chance, because novelist Jo Walton has been writing a series of posts on Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series. The post on Memory is especially worth reading. It really expresses a lot of my own feelings toward that book. An excerpt:
Memory (1998) is in my opinion [...]
Youth media awards
ALA announced its youth media award winners today at the midwinter conference in Denver. I really enjoyed The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, so I was very happy to see that it had won the Newbery Medal. Of course, Gaiman has posted about how he learned the big news in a hilarious fashion over at [...]
Young at heart
I was an enthusiastic reader as a child, but I still managed to miss out on a lot of excellent children’s books when I was in their actual target age group. Fortunately, I’ve never been of the opinion that books for young people are only for young people, so I’ve kept reading them even as [...]
CLA and books for younger teens
Earlier this month I attended one day of the California Library Association annual conference. The panels that I attended were sort of hit-or-miss, which will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever attended a professional conference. My favorite panel of the day was presented by librarians from the County of Los Angeles Library; [...]
Mother knows best
Like many precocious readers, I began reading adult fiction long before I was actually in its target audience. This is partly because I grew up surrounded by my mother’s book collection, and it was only natural for me to pick up and attempt to read the ones that she liked best. I didn’t get my [...]
One more Lion Hunters book!
Via Sherwood Smith, here’s an interview with YA fantasy writer Elizabeth E. Wein. She has a lot of interesting comments on her creative process and the inspiration for her books. Best of all, there’s an excerpt from the next book in her Lion Hunters series. I’ve raved about Wein’s series on this blog before, and [...]
L. M. Montgomery, depression, and stigma
Anyone who works in a library or bookstore could probably tell you that L. M. Montgomery’s stories and novels for young people continue to be beloved today. At my library, the Anne of Green Gables books are still fairly popular, though I don’ t see much interest in Montgomery’s other works. These books about rural [...]
Novel series-in-progress
I am one of those readers who is reluctant to start reading unfinished book series, just because I hate having to wait to read the whole thing. But I end up reading my share of series in progress anyway, usually because I’ve heard good things about them from reliable sources.
So here are five series that [...]
Link roundup 2008-02-11
Bryan Lee O’Malley of Scott Pilgrim fame shares the cover he drew for the March 2008 issue of Shojo Beat. Along the way, he plugs two Shojo Beat titles, Nana and Beauty Pop. I’m a big fan of the former but unfamiliar with the latter; I’ll have to add it to my to-read list. [Via [...]
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