1. Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, Karen Kingston
2. Craft, Inc., Meg Mateo Ilasco
3. Indigara, Tanith Lee
4. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
5. Jessie’s Mountain, Kerry Madden
6. Finding Serenity, Jane Espenson and Glenn Yeffeth, ed.
7. Valiant, Holly Black [Audio CD]
8. The Twelve Kingdoms - Volume 1: Sea of Shadow, Fuyumi Ono
9. The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
10. Fearless, Tim Lott
11. Erec Rex: The Dragon’s Eye, Kaza Kingsley
12. Bronx Masquerade, Nikki Grimes
13. Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman
14. It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff, Peter Walsh
15. The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Two: Ghost Roads, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder

I'm not sure where I came across this link - probably in the Publisher's Weekly newsletter.

Slate.com asks "...do you really want the Hulk teaching your kid to read?"

There's more text in the accompanying slide show than in the page itself; the page sounds rather alarmist but the slideshow is far more reasonable.

What is your answer to their question?

I do want the Hulk teaching my kid to read, though I'd rather have a child with great affection for Spiderman or the X-Men, as those are my heroes of choice.  (In fact, considering my choice of a lifemate, I'd say the kid will be genetically predisposed to like Spiderman and the X-Men.)  I want anyone my kid will enjoy reading about to teach my kid to read.  A kid who is reading anything is, in my opinion, better than a kid who is reading nothing.  Bring on the reductio ad absurdum, three year olds learning to read from bodice-rippers or somesuch.  I'll stand by my feelings.

The slideshow raises a good point though: the easy readers based on some of the films aren't actually very friendly to early readers, lacking in clear visual cues in the illustrations, and containing obscure vocabulary (gamma radiation, anyone?) that kids might not recognize right away.  The solution, in my mind, isn't to banish comic book and movie characters from our children's books.  It's for concerned parties to find a way to coach the writers of these movie tie-ins in the things a good easy reader requires.  Familiar vocabulary.  Words that can be sounded out.  Simple illustrations that clearly indicate what's going on, while at the same time provide a jumping-off point for readers to create their own stories.

Is all literature created equal?  I know that in terms of quality, some writing is stronger than others.  But does it have any inherent moral value, wherein a child reading comic books is somehow less good than a child reading classics?  I don't think so.  

What do you think?

by Betty Comden and Adolph Green

I have a place where dreams are born,
And time is never planned.
It's not on any chart,
You must find it with your heart.
Never Never Land.

It might be miles beyond the moon,
Or right there where you stand.
Just keep an open mind,
And then suddenly you'll find
Never Never Land.

So apparently on my birthday, a little over a week ago, the Kidlitosphere exploded with people having identity crises and struggling to keep up with their blogs.  Jen Robinson summed it up nicely in this post, and then added her own thoughts on the matter here. 

It’s heavy stuff.  I have a personal, friends only LiveJournal, a craft/design blog, this blog, and I recently added a new blog to chronicle my own personal Happiness Project.  I have tried in the past to give myself schedules, so that I will post more regularly, because I’d like to really develop an audience.  I want to keep people coming back to my blogs, and when I have a month-long hiatus like I just did, that doesn’t really happen.  At the same time, there’s almost always a lot going on in my life.  I have a very demanding job in terms of energy if not always time.  (I work rather efficiently, so I often leave school before other teachers do.  I feel guilty, leaving only half an hour after our official off-the-clock time.)  Writing is a creative task.  Other blogs are updated frequently, and I like to read them, but I get overwhelmed.  And so with each of the blogs I write, I have to keep my mission for that particular blog in mind.

Here, the mission is to record my reactions to books, and book-related things.  When I started the blog, I reviewed every book I read, and focused on YA.  Now, I’m realizing that no one is asking me to do that except myself.  So I will post reviews here only of particularly noteworthy books, or publish reviews over at The Edge of the Forest when I’ve agreed to do that.  I’ll keep any commitments I make to things like the blog tours, and I’ll post responses to interesting things I see in my reading.  And anything else book-related that comes to my attention.

And that’s it.  That will be all.  And that way, this will stay fun for me.

Here’s the thing that keeps me from worrying I’ll lose readers: aggregators.  Things like Google Reader, or the LJ friends page with a feed on it.  If people want to read me, they can subscribe.  Then, when I have a month-long gap, they won’t miss a thing.

So, it's been almost a month.  Most of which I've spent unpacking, preparing for a play, doing the play, then recovering from the play with more unpacking.

And, I'm back.

I've got three or four books on the go right now.  I'm reading Erec Rex 2 (can't recall the proper title) to review for Edge of the Forest, Ghost Roads from the Gatekeeper Trilogy (yay Buffy!), and Soon I Will Be Invincible.

One of the things I've discovered while unpacking is that I have too many books to fit them in my house attractively.  So I'm going to create a to-read box, I think, and take all the books from my shelves that I might want to release once I'm done with them, put them in that box, and move on through them.  After that, I will ask myself the questions posed in this post at Unclutterer.  If after asking those questions I decide to keep the book, it will go back on the shelf.  If not, I will use one of the ways in this post at Zen Habits to get it out of my house.

How do you deal with your book habit?

1. Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, Karen Kingston
   2. Craft, Inc., Meg Mateo Ilasco
   3. Indigara, Tanith Lee
   4. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
   5. Jessie’s Mountain, Kerry Madden
   6. Finding Serenity, Jane Espenson and Glenn Yeffeth, ed.
   7. Valiant, Holly Black [Audio CD] 
   8. The Twelve Kingdoms - Volume 1: Sea of Shadow, Fuyumi Ono
   9. The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
   10. Fearless, Tim Lott
   11. Erec Rex: The Dragon’s Eye, Kaza Kingsley 

I'm plugging it everywhere today: my friend Joanna's new blog, Library Pendragon.  Joanna is a media specialist (which always reads to my mind as "school librarian" but I know they do much more than just deal with books) and is going to write about organizing your home and/or library.  She has already revolutionized my life with her spice storage tips, and I'm delighted to say as well that she has put up a summer reading post and recommended to many adults who probably wouldn't see them otherwise a list of notable children's and YA novels.  (You've probably read them all, but I think it's exciting that she's posting about them anyway.)

Before we get to the poetry, first:
1. I have a review in the new issue of The Edge of the Forest.
2. This quiz result makes me very happy:
Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 75% Supergirl 75% Superman 70% Wonder Woman 70% Green Lantern 65% Robin 55% Batman 45% Hulk 45% Iron Man 45% Catwoman 40% The Flash 35%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

 
Click here to take the “Which Superhero am I?” quiz… 
 
And now, poetry.  This week I am in Baltimore, which was the home of Edgar Allan Poe for many years.  I love Edgar Allan Poe.  Unfortunately, I will be visiting neither his grave nor his house here, because of other plans and my brother’s distaste for visiting graves.

I’m here with my sister, whose name is Mary Elisabeth.  This poem by Poe, dedicated to his cousin Elizabeth and presumed to  be written in the Baltimore Poe House, reminds me of her:


Would’st thou be loved? then let thy heart
From its present pathway part not —
Be every thing which now thou art
And nothing which thou art not:

So with the world thy gentle ways,
And unassuming beauty
Shall be a constant theme of praise,
And love — a duty.

The associations our brain makes are funny things.  I went looking for a poem about sisters, because I love mine.  Instead I found The Mermaid in the Hospital which did make me think of my sister, because it's 2 years tomorrow since I went to the hospital to have my gall bladder removed and she was with me for a long time there, and while there I found some shell-shaped hair clips and some glittery lip stuff in my purse, and I put them all on and insisted that I was a mermaid.  So you see, I myself was The Mermaid in the Hospital.

The Mermaid in the Hospital

It occurred to me just now that reading and writing are so very intertwined, that you can’t really tease out just one from the other, if you do both. So I’m probably just going to let

 lie fallow, and post here about writing when I have thoughts about it.

Kerry Madden (  ) wrote a beautiful post about all the different places she’s paid the rent. Each place had stories to go with it, and each of them made me think of my own stories. As a reader of primarily fantasy and science fiction, I tend to forget that even the wildest of stories have to come from a place within ourselves, and that the things that happen to us in real life, whether or not they seem extraordinary, are what our stories are made of. I remember this every once in a while, and use it to write something with some emotional truth. I feel like most recently (i. e. in the past 5 years) this has been in my Firefly fanfiction, where I use the sibling relationship of Simon and River to explore the emotional truth behind what I think has been and hope always will be the most important relationship in my life: my relationship with my sister. Sibling stories speak to me more than any other stories, more even than love stories. Not because romantic love isn’t an important part of my life, but because my sister has been with me since she was born and I was 4 years 6 months 4 days and 30 minutes old. So those stories will always be older and I think the things that happen to you as a kid shape more of the stories that speak to you.

Kerry Madden is one of my writing heroes. She loves the classic Southern authors like Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty, both of whom touched me the most of any American authors I read in school. Her stories are about home and family and little things that don’t necessarily seem like stories when they happen to you, but later you realize that is what stories are. 

I hope when I write, I will write things that are as real and right to other people as Kerry’s stories are to me.

Update: This post is about reading programs for summer 2008.  If it's helpful, you might also enjoy my post about summer reading in 2009.

The school year is officially finished for me, and I am all signed up and ready to go for my local library's reading program: Catch the Reading Bug, which it turns out is part of the larger Collaborative Summer Library Program.  My goal for the summer is to read 22 books, which would catch me up by the end of August on my 4-a-month plan which I made in December.  Right now I've read less than 2 books a month; sad but true.  If you include magazines that ups my count by quite a bit, or books with recipes in them that I didn't read.  I don't feel comfortable listing those because I didn't really read the whole book, you know?

 If your library's reading program is lacking or if you just love to pile it on when it comes to reading, the internet is full of options for you.

 Reading Is Fundamental has a Summer Reading Guide.  You'll find crafts, booklists, and more.

 Harper Collins is sponsoring the Reading Warriors Summer Reading Challenge.  This challenge is targeted at 8 - 12 year olds and challenges them to read at least 10 books this summer.  The website is rich with content.  This challenge includes a rewards program.  For adults, there's a whole section on the site on being a reading mentor.  Promotional material like posters and bookmarks abound.  There's plenty there to explore!

 Over at Scholastic, they've got the Summer Reading Challenge going on.  Readers can register to log their reading and "feed the reader meter."  Much like at the Reading Warriors challenge, there's plenty of supplemental content for adults who want to encourage kids to read.

 If you're looking for specific recommendations of books to read, the web has a host of lists.

Little Willow is my favorite recommender of books.  You can find her summer reading list here.  Parents Magazine has a list here; Education World has one here.

 For tips on helping kids read this summer, see these articles:
Summer Reading Tips @ The Children's Book Review [via Jen Robinson's Book Page ]
Summer Reading @ The Post and Courier [via Jen Robinson's Book Page ]
How to Raise a Book Lover @ Parents [via The Children's Book Review ]
Hot Tips From Cool Authors @ Becky's Book Reviews

 What are your goals and plans for summer reading?  I'm going to catch up on old readergirlz issues and read some Buffy novels.

As I haven't collected any links this week, I don't have much for you today.

First: J. K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement My favorite thing about this speech is how many times she makes reference to her college Classics major, and the variety of quotes she uses from classical sources.  I was so fond of this, I sent it to my Latin teacher colleague, who has added it to her course website so her students can read it next year.  Our school did an event called May Fever, where 64 authors competed to be the school's favorite.  Students and faculty made predictions and voted; the championship was between J. K. Rowling and Shakespeare - a Classicist and a Latin teacher.  Yay!  (Shakespeare won, against my prediction but to my delight.)

Next: I'm a big fan of etsy, a site which enables artists to sell their handmade goods online rather easily.  So I popped in the search term "literary" and here are my favorites of the items it turned up:


 My severest critic hand embroidered tote bag, $27 from shinyprettythings

This bag immediately made me think of Lisa Yee.








 Leather Shakespeare Memento Bookmarks, $5.50 each by immortallongings If you can't get over to Shakespeare's Globe, you can at least have a souvenir.  immortallongings creates original artwork based on Shakespeare and is one of my favorite etsy sellers.  All of the art is in a vaguely Art Nouveau style.












 And of course, I would be remiss without mentioning this shirt from the kidlitosphere's own Leila of bookshelvesofdoom.  $19









That's all for today!

This question is for school and youth services librarians.

How much and in what ways do you get to interact with students/kids?

If you aren't a librarian yourself but you know one, I'd love for you to point them this way if they're willing to answer my question.

Thanks!

Go read Lee Wind’s post about his experience attempting to donate GLBTQ books to a junior high library, and then come back.  I’ll wait. 

Lee’s post got me thinking about the stigmas I fear, and the one I fear the most is the stigma on mental illness.  It was this part of his post that really spoke to me:

The choice is whether to be honest about how you feel inside.

But how you feel inside is your Identity.

How you feel inside, of course, includes if you are happy or sad, drained or energetic, hopeless, etc.  I don’t mean to diminish Lee’s point by pointing to these emotions; but mental illness - depression, bipolar disorder, and others - this is a part of your identity, I think.  And it can be scary to talk to people about it, because what will they say?  Will they call you crazy?  Will they be scared of you?  And then, what about any changes that may come from you trying to FIX the mental illness?  What if your meds make you gain weight?  And then people are calling you crazy AND fat.  Or if you used to be creative, and then when you got on meds maybe you didn’t want to kill yourself anymore, but you also couldn’t create anything?  Then people might think you’re dull, slow, stupid.

Talking about mental illness is not, I imagine, nearly as difficult as talking about sexuality.  (I don’t know for sure because I’ve never really had to talk about sexuality.)  And I would guess that donating books with main characters who have a mental illness - books like The Phoenix Dance, for example - would not present a problem at all like Lee found when he tried to donate the GLBTQ books.

But basically, Lee’s post made me think about how important it is for readers to see themselves in books, to know they are not alone.  Because what is a better moment than when you are reading a book and you say, “YES!  Someone understands me!"  

And every reader, every child, teenager, and adult, should be able to have that experience - readily available.

Guys Lit Wire is live!

Here's a blurb from the site:

Guys Lit Wire exists solely to bring literary news and reviews to the attention of teenage boys and the people who care about them. We are more than happy to welcome female readers - but our main goal is to bring the attention of good books to guys who might have missed them. The titles will be new or old and on every subject imaginable. We guarantee new posts every Monday through Friday and have a list of twenty-three individual scheduled contributors plus several additional occasional posters all of whom have different literary likes and dislikes. We hope to provide something for everyone and will strive to accomplish that goal.

I am one of the aforementioned "occasional posters."  I'm hoping to interview some of my educational colleagues and perhaps get some reviews from my students.

 

Where have I been? Where am I going?

Life gets in the way. Work makes me tired, and various projects capture my imagination at different times. And every once in a while, a book tricks me into thinking I don’t like reading.

So, my enthusiasm for the kid lit world has actually been dampened by attempt to keep a commitment to it. You see, I read this one book for The Edge of the Forest, and now owe Kelly a review, and I really liked that book. The book took me a while to get into, but after a little while I was really invested. So I thought, okay, I will move on to the next one of the books she sent me to review a year ago. (I am all kinds of slacker.)

Well, I’m on p. 130something, and I am just finding the book so dull. It’s not bad exactly; I just don’t care what happens to the characters. I thought, “Well I’ll get through and review it anyway,” but I thought, “What will I say about this book?” And quite honestly, were I to write a review it would go like this:

I thought this book was boring. I didn’t care what happened to the characters. I was never drawn into the world. I can’t even provide a reasonable explanation of what was wrong with it, as it was well-written enough. It wasn’t bad or anything. It just bored me.

I thought that wouldn’t be a very useful review; with books I don’t love I still try and figure out who would like them, for whom they’d be suited. But the fact of the matter is, if anyone was going to like this book, it was going to be me. It’s a fantasy set in the Dungeons and Dragons universe. (Dragonlance, for those of you familiar with the series.) It’s about sisters, and the sisterly dynamic is a big part of the book. But it just can’t hold my attention.

So I said, “Self,” I said to myself, “you need to try a different book, and see if you like it better.”

So I picked up Tim Lott’s _Fearless, and that is a book I got into right away, and I will review it here at lectitans when I am done with it.

Thank goodness I still like reading.

Monday, May 19th
Adam Rex at Fuse #8
David Almond at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
R.L. LaFevers at Finding Wonderland
Dave Schwartz at Shaken & Stirred
Elizabeth Scott at Bookshelves of Doom
Laurie Halse Anderson at Writing & Ruminating
Susan Beth Pfeffer at Interactive Reader

Tuesday, May 20th
Ben Towle at Chasing Ray
Sean Qualls at Fuse #8
Susane Colasanti at Bildungsroman
Robin Brande at HipWriterMama
Susan Beth Pfeffer at The YA YA YAs
Debby Garfinkle at A Chair, a Fireplace and a Tea Cozy
Jennifer Lynn Barnes at Writing & Ruminating

Wednesday, May 21st
Delia Sherman at Chasing Ray
Ingrid Law at Fuse #8
Polly Dunbar at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Tera Lynn Childs at Bildungsroman
Siena Cherson Siegel at Miss Erin
Barry Lyga at A Chair, a Fireplace and a Tea Cozy

Thursday, May 22nd
Elisha Cooper at Chasing Ray
Dar Williams at Fuse #8
Jennifer Bradbury at Bildungsroman
E. Lockhart at The YA YA YAs
Mary Hooper at Miss Erin
Charles R. Smith, Jr. at Writing & Ruminating
Mary E. Pearson at A Chair, a Fireplace and a Tea Cozy

Friday, May 23rd
Varian Johnson at Finding Wonderland
Jincy Willet at Shaken & Stirred
John Grandits at Writing & Ruminating
Meg Burden at Bookshelves of Doom
Gary D. Schmidt at Miss Erin
Javaka Steptoe at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Adam Rex at Fuse #8
David Almond at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
R.L. LaFevers at Finding Wonderland
Dave Schwartz at Shaken & Stirred
Elizabeth Scott at Bookshelves of Doom
Laurie Halse Anderson at Writing & Ruminating
Susan Beth Pfeffer at Interactive Reader 

It’s that time of year again - time for the Summer Blog Blast Tour!  I’m not interviewing anyone this time around, but I’ll be posting links here daily.  To whet your appetite, here’s a list of planned interviews:

Monday

Adam Rex at Fuse Number 8
David Almond at 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast
R.L. Lafevers at Finding Wonderland
Dave Schwartz at Shaken & Stirred
Elizabeth Scott at Bookshelves of Doom
Laurie Halse Anderson at Writing & Ruminating
Susan Beth Pfeffer at Interactive Reader

Tuesday

Ben Towle at Chasing Ray
Sean Qualls at Fuse Number 8
Susane Colasanti at Bildungsroman
Robin Brande at Hip Writer Mama
Susan Beth Pfeffer at The YA YA YAs
Debby Garfinkle at A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy

Wednesday

Delia Sherman at Chasing Ray
Ingrid Law at Fuse Number 8
Polly Dunbar at 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Tera Lynn Childs at Bildungsroman
Siena Cherson Siegel at Miss Erin
Barry Lyga at At Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

Thursday

Elisha Cooper at Chasing Ray
Dar Williams at Fuse Number 8
Jennifer Bradbury at Bildungsroman
E. Lockhart at The YA YA YAs
Mary Hooper at Miss Erin

Friday

Varian Johnson at Finding Wonderland
Jincy Willet at Shaken & Stirred
John Grandits at Writing & Ruminating
Meg Burden at Bookshelves of Doom
Gary D. Schmidt at Miss Erin

 

Vergil’s Aeneid, Book I, Lines 8 - 11

LATIN (from The Latin Library):
Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso,
quidve dolens, regina deum tot volvere casus
insignem pietate virum, tot adire labores               10
impulerit. Tantaene animis caelestibus irae?  

ENGLISH (from Me!):
Muse, remind me of the reasons, by what slight to her divinity,
or grieving what thing, the queen of the gods drove a man 
distinguished by his piety to undergo so many misfortunes,
to undertake so many labors.  Is there such great anger in heavenly hearts?

Other Vergil posts:
Aeneid I.1-7
Aeneid I.12-18

April is National Poetry Month, and during this time many bloggers celebrate NaPoWriMo: National Poetry Writing Month.

I, however, will be doing NaPoTraMo - National Poetry Translation Month.  I will be giving you an excerpt from Vergil’s Aeneid each day throughout the month of April.  First I’ll post the Latin (from The Latin Library) and then give you my English. 

LATIN:
 Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit
litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto
vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram;
multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem,               5
inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum,
Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae.

ENGLISH:
I sing of arms and a man, who first from the shores of Troy
came, exiled by fate, to Italy and the Lavinian
shores, that man much tossed about on both earth and sea
by the force of the gods on account of the remembering anger of savage Juno;
having suffered much also even in war, until he could found the city,
and bring his gods into Latium, from whence came the Latin race,
the Alban fathers, and the walls of lofty Rome. 

(, this should look familiar; they are lyrics in "Spring Awakening.")

Other Vergil posts:
Aeneid I.8-11
Aeneid I.12-18

Let's say I wanted to gain expertise in a certain area of children's/YA lit.  Say, I don't know, modern books about the ancient world - especially Greece and Rome.  Mythology and history both.  How would I go about staying abreast of new releases that would fall into my area of expertise?  Catalogs?  Reviews in the Horn Book?  Something else?  All suggestions are welcome!  Also suggestions of older books that fall into this domain are GREATLY appreciated.  (Already know Percy Jackson etc, plus Nobody's Princess and related books.  Oh, and Iris, Messenger.)

I just finished reading The Lightning Thief.  I won’t be reviewing it here, as I’m saving it for my new project in media res (more to come on that later), but I love it.  Rick Riordan is my hero.  I want to write books like THAT.  Also, I think I maybe would like to work with middle school students.

I knew I would love The Lightning Thief, because of the premise, and then because of the first page, but I really truly loved it on page 2, when Percy Jackson declared his Latin teacher cool and confessed that Latin was the only class in which he could stay awake.  As a “cool” Latin teacher of students with ADHD, I was so there.

Also, I like to pretend I’m a descendant of Athena.

Also also, it made me immensely happy that Rick Riordan’s description of Hades sounded just like my boyfriend, except  with long hair.

So, yeah.  That is my PERSONAL response to The Lightning Thief.  You can expect my professional response mid-July, when I launch in media res.  At that point I’m hoping to have some lesson ideas - not full on plans, but ideas - related to the book, as well as my in depth “How useful is this for teaching kids ancient culture?” review.