Parenthetical

I got myself up at 7:45 to watch the ALA Youth Media Awards webcast. (Why do they do this so early, again?) I lost video at the announcement of the Printz winner, but fortunately I could still hear all of it. Congratulations to the middle grade & YA winners! (Here’s the complete list.) John Newbery [...]

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Why do we often find it so hard to criticize the stories we love? Why do we feel we have to deny their flaws in order to love them? (*cough*Twilight*cough*) I just read an excellent article by Mitali Perkins in the April School Library Journal, “Straight Talk on Race”. She designates five questions to consider [...]

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I wanted to link to John Green’s recent post about genre because I think this thought is so damn neat: The main reason books are organized the way they are is that it makes it easier to sell them at bookstores and circulate them at libraries. As acquiring (and reading) books become less physical experiences, [...]

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Nobody can shut up about vampires these days. What do they represent? How have they changed from Dracula to Lestat to Spike to Edward? People usually reach for the sexual symbolism. But I just read this post from Slacktivist, one of my favorite political bloggers, about vampires as a reminder that “any of us can [...]

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Some personal stuff intervened last week*, but I still have many, many thoughts about the Simmons conference to post. The theme was “Crimes & Misdemeanors,” and most of the authors stuck remarkably well to it. A few smart thoughts from smart people, lifted from my notes: Many people argued that crimes (for a sufficiently loose [...]

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Nobody can shut up about vampires these days. What do they represent? How have they changed from Dracula to Lestat to Spike to Edward? People usually reach for the sexual symbolism. But this morning one of the full-time teachers at the GED center where I tutor was talking with a couple of kids about vampire [...]

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In the immortal words of Jeremy Piven in Grosse Pointe Blank: “Ten years! Ten years! Ten! Years!” Yes, believe it or not, I have owned this domain for an entire decade. It’s been home to everything from passive-aggressive collegiate angst to stories of my travel adventures to this YA lit blog. I had big plans [...]

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I have a love-hate relationship with the New York Times Style section. Their articles seem to come in two forms: “Hey, two of my friends tip cows ironically / wear elaborately carved and shellacked pumpkins on their heads / eat nothing but mangos! It must be a trend!” or “People have been doing x for [...]

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I just finished a wonderful book called Graceling, by Kristin Cashore. I’ll wait on the review, because the book doesn’t come out until October, and I don’t want you to forget about it because you can’t read it right now. (I don’t have a lending copy, unfortunately.) But I was talking with Rebecca (who lent [...]

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Some friends and I went to see Prince Caspian last night, the second in the series of Narnia movies. First of all, let me say that it was way better than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. LWW was awfully clean and shiny for a story that’s basically about a big war (I blame [...]

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