Parenthetical

Good morning, 2010! The Cybils elves were hard at work over New Year’s, and we now have a list of the 2009 finalists! The YA Fantasy and Science Fiction finalists are: Candor, by Pam Bachorz The Demon’s Lexicon, by Sarah Rees Brennan The Dust of 100 Dogs, by A. S. King Fire, by Kristin Cashore [...]

[Read more →]

Sixth grader Miranda walks home with her best friend every day, helps her mom study for her $20,000 Pyramid debut, and reads A Wrinkle in Time over and over again. But suddenly her life is full of odd characters: the crazy man under the mailbox on her street, and the kid who punches her best [...]

[Read more →]

The premise is pretty cool: unicorns are vicious killers which were wiped out several generations ago… but now they seem to be back, attacking people in the modern world. Our heroine joins up with a group of… Slayers, basically, who all have a Great Destiny (blech) to send the unicorns back to extinction. In the [...]

[Read more →]

Here’s the Science Fiction & Fantasy list — damn, that’s a lot of books! I’m glad I’m not on the Round I panel! …Er, I mean, what a fabulous list. I’m so sorry I won’t be reading all of them. :) Good luck, Round I team! Comment here

[Read more →]

Good news: because what I need in life is another responsibility because I heart books and having opinions about them, I’m rocking the Cybils awards again this year! The Cybils are the Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards, and, as the name would imply, they are handed out by panels of bloggers like me [...]

[Read more →]

…If you are Rapunzel’s Revenge (Graphic Novel: Elementary/Middle Grade) or Emiko Superstar (GN: Young Adult), that is! I’m super-excited about both of these: they were two of my personal favorites. (I even gave Rapunzel’s Revenge to my friend Kate Diamond as part of her wedding present, a bad-ass redhead for a bad-ass redhead.) Congratulations to [...]

[Read more →]

Quickie backlog Cybils review: Beautifully detailed line drawings and a wordless story featuring young Ivy “and her gifted Korgi cub, Sprout.” The Characters page in the back describes Korgis as “loyal, fox-like creatures with big ears and large smiles.” Do they look an awful lot like Welsh corgis? Gosh, they do! Does the author perchance [...]

[Read more →]

Guess what, everyone? The Cybils finalists have been posted! The fruits of my personal labor are here: Graphic Novels Finalists. There’s some truly fabulous stuff in there for all ages and tastes. I also can’t wait to read the Fantasy & Science Fiction, YA, and Middle Grade lists — and then start foisting them on [...]

[Read more →]

Boyfriend E, video game fan extraordinaire, caught sight of this lying on my coffee table and cracked up. He played the original game as a kid, of course (if someone wants to fix that Wikipedia page, by the way, it could apparently use some fixing), and expected from the cover that this would be based [...]

[Read more →]

(The full title, for the record, is Salt Water Taffy: the Seaside Adventures of Jack and Benny, v. 1: The Legend of Old Salty.) Ok, get a load of this plot summary: Jack, Benny, and their parents go to a small coastal Maine town to spend the summer. Upon arrival, they meet a crusty old [...]

[Read more →]