“Give me some genuine emotion. Challenge yourself to be honest instead of merely clever.” I read Wise Young Fool for the first time months and months ago. I have read many and many books since now and then. And yet. And yet Wise Young Fool has stuck with me through all that. And yet Wise Young Fool is…
“What kids need and deserve is to feel respected – not just by their classmates, but also by teachers and school leaders who ought to have faith in young people’s ability to read, think, and decide.” – Meg Medina Yesterday, I wrote a short review of Meg Medina’s Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass…
It all starts with a buzz that high school student Piddy shrugs off – “Yaqui Delgado wants to kick your ass!” She doesn’t even know Yaqui so why would she want to fight with Piddy? It’s probably a case of mistaken identity or no big deal. And, anyway, what’s the worst this total stranger could do? This is the…
What, exactly, is the ever-elusive “middle-grade” novel? Oh sure, that seems like an easy question, doesn’t it? It’s a novel written for middle-school audiences. But middle-school isn’t even the same everywhere. In my community, middle-school is seventh and eighth grade only. This is a great example of the larger question: where does “middle grade” fiction begin anyhow? …
Welcome to 2012!! The blog lives! Sorry for the absence – I just went through one of those periods when I couldn’t quite get a blog to come out the way I wanted. I was still reading and tweeting away, but blog just wasn’t happening. One of the things I love the most about my…
First things first! The Las Conchas fire is 50% contained and the evacuation has been lifted, meaning I’m back at home and the library is back to business as usual. They lifted the evacuation two Saturdays ago and we re-opened with normal hours and programs on Tuesday the 5th. It was a truly crazy and…
Cole is a nice guy. And Alex is lucky to have him for a boyfriend. He’s a sports star and charming and likable; he encourages Alex’s poetry and thinks she’s special and he’s not afraid to pursue her or embarrassed to let her know how much he likes being with her. Loves being with her,…
I use fiction as a way to interpret my life and survive my hurts I was going to try to get to that, like, eventually. I was going to make a bunch of big grand allusions and metaphors and then, ta-dah, I would reveal it all cryptic-like. Ooooh, everyone would marvel I see what she…
Flash Burnout by L.K. Madigan won the 2010 Morris Award. As most of you reading this blog probably already know, the Morris Award is, and always will be, dearly close to my heart, as I just finished my first ever selection committee work on the 2011 Morris Award Committee. I heard, first-hand, the way the…
The DUFF: the designated ugly fat friend. The one girl in a group that’s just not “as pretty” as the others. DUFF: it’s a “real” thing, you know. You can look it up on Urban Dictionary, where it’s been an entry since 2003. The DUFF, the girl in any group who’s just not as pretty,…
