Reading Spaces

What many of us have been saying at least since the NEA 2004 report: Young People Are Reading More Than You by Hannah Withers and Lauren Ross, in McSweeney's

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/young-people-are-reading-more-than-you

Patrick Ness wins Carnegie Medal for Monsters of Men

The Chaos Walking series by expat American YA author, Patrick Ness, is among my favourites. I don't have time right now to give all the reasons why I highly recommend it, and I'm still mulling over the conclusion, but I'm happy to see the books receive this kind of recognition. The writing is at times, truly, breath-taking. He can certainly turn a very nice phrase. The Carnegie medal is awarded by a committee of librarians, and Ness gives a quote-worthy defense of libraries in his acceptance speech. To read more about the Carnegie, library cuts and Patrick Ness see this article in the Bookseller, this BBC article, or this Guardian article.

Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel wins CLA Children's and YA Book Awards

The author reports on his double award on his blog. Half Brother is an excellent book -- challenging, interesting, timely, beautifully written and suitable for all ages. I loved it. But, I can't decide how I feel about the same title being granted both awards. The cons for me: 1) it makes it seem as though the field of production is so small, that we need to double up awards, 2) it takes away the uniqueness of the young adult field if books that are suitable for all ages can be nominated and win the YA award. For what it's worth, Half Brother for me, is solidly in the YA camp, but that wouldn't stop me from recommending it to strong younger readers. The pros: 1) really good books float to the top, regardless of age category, 2) the resistance of age categories suggests the kind of wiliness that is such a big part of reading -- you just can't pin readers down.

ReachOut Reads

I just read about Reach Out Reads over at Boing Boing where Cory Doctorow tells readers that it is a YALSA endorsed project that recommends YA fiction to help young adults who are experiencing "hard personal problems and mental health issues". May is Mental Health Month (Mental Health Week in Canada is 1-7 May 2011) and many public libraries make displays to support it -- this is in another way to do that without the hard work of selecting suitable books yourself. Also, Reach Out Reads supports live chats with a number of authors over the course of the month.

Breaking News: And Tango Makes Three is the most challenged book in US, again

No surprise there, but I was (kinda) surprised to see Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian on the list. Of course, super popular books like Twilight and The Hunger Games are on the top 10. In fact, 7 of the top 10 most challenged books are YA novels, and when you add Parnell and Richardson's books, that makes 8 for books for young people. But, perhaps, the oddest addition this year is Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed. As this Associated Press release tells us,

"One curious addition was Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich's non-fiction work about how difficult it is to live as a waitress, maid or Walmart worker. The book is cited for offensive language, drugs and as "inaccurate."

I just finished reading Ehrenreich's Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Undermines America, I wonder if it will be challenged too? To my mind, it's potentially more controversial than Nickel and Dimed. I highly recommend both titles.

Over at I'm Here, I'm Queer. What the Hell Do I Read, Lee Wind has issued a reading challenge to his readers -- Read the Top 10 and protest these challenges! I've already read 7 of the 10 but have added Lush, What My Mother Doesn't Know (ok -- I read half of it) and Revolutionary Voices to the pile of things to be read.

Review: Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love

This 2010 DC Comics (Vertigo) publication, riffs off of the original Fables series created by Bill Willingham. The cast of creators for Cinderella: Chris Roberson (writer), Shawn McManus (artist), Lee Loughridge (colorist), Todd Klein (letterer). As a reader, I find this series deeply satisfying and wholly suspend disbelief to engage with parallel Fable worlds with all of the intrigues and power struggles as various Fables attempt to assert dominance or to protect the autonomy of their kind. In this stand alone bio of Cinderella were learn more of her origins and learn that she's certainly more than her current persona as "globe-trotting gadabout" -- she's Fabletown's greatest secret agent. And in this story, she's on assignment in Dubai, where she meets another spy-assassin, Aladdin, representative of the Arabian homeworld. Together, they seek to stem the tide of magical items disappearing from their worlds, worried about what the effects would be if these items made it into mundy (i.e., human) hands.

Recommended to those who like fairytales with a twist. And with 5 more Cinderella titles on the slate, there's lots more where this came from!

 

"New South African Writers are Giving the Middle Finger to the Old Literary Circles"

"Young adult fiction is also raising the bar. Adeline Radloff’s Side-Kick is a smart fantasy novel about a teenage girl who faces the dual problems associated with being a teenager while at the same being the sidekick of a super hero. The novel won gold at the Sanlam Prize for Youth Literature 2009."

via www.popmatters.com

See the article at PopMatters for more on young adult South African fiction as well some new genre fiction.

New article on book trailers: ALAN Revew

ALAN Review Fall 2010: feature article on booktrailers: from the ALAN blog:

"The first featured article “Not so innocent: Book trailers as promotional texts and anticipatory stories”, written by Denise Davila, was published in the Fall 2010 issue of The ALAN Review.  In her article, Davila proposes that book trailers, produced as part of the official promotion of a published YA book, “can be viewed as a texts and cultural artifacts” in and of themselves.  Her article also includes the findings of three different research studies in which college undergraduates respond to promotional book trailers."

 

Book Trailers Go Viral

From The Daily Beast: A fun article on the elusive viral book trailer. Emily Romero, vice president of marketing for Penguin Young Readers Group, on trying to reach the teen audience for the new paranormal romance series Nightshade by Andrea Cremer:

"Teens are savvy, they can tell when they’re being marketed to,” Romero says. “We wanted to create something that was more meaningful for our audience. Sure, a print ad, a banner ad campaign, a TV spot, those are pretty traditional ways to market a book, but we just wanted to try something completely different. We wanted something that spanned multiple platforms since that is how this target audience consumes their media.” What they created was a six-week, interactive campaign that kicked off September 1 with webisodes and a robust Facebook presence for one of Nightshade’s main characters, Shay Doran."

Book Trailers Go Viral.

James Franco and Michael Cunningham on YA Lit

An interesting 3 minute conversation between James Franco and Michael Cunningham (from biblioklept):