kelly’s book

We’re going to take the next week off blogging, since there’s the double punch of Memorial Day and BEA. I’ll likely link to a couple of Book Riot pieces that I’ve written, but otherwise, no new content will pop up. We’ll be back to our regular plans for posting on Monday, June 2.

In the mean time, I thought it might be worth talking about something near and dear to my heart: my book!

This week, I was traveling to see a friend and when I was on the bus, I caught a tweet from VOYA with the title of my book in it. I clicked and discovered my book had a cover.

And I LOVE it.

I’ve had a few details about it for a while, but I wanted to save sharing them until I had a cover to show off. So without further ado!

As you may have noticed, the title of my book changed from what it was originally. My publisher, when he went to input the book, noted that there were a lot of books with the title “The Real Deal,” and suggested a change. I was clueless about what might work, so I put it up in the Book Riot forum. I loved what Liberty suggested, so all of the thanks goes to her for It Happens. I think it’s perfect.

While I don’t have an official description from my publisher yet, I happened upon this one from an online retailer which gets to the flavor of the book:

Kelly Jensen has a passion for realistic fiction and believes every book has a reader. It Happens: A Guide to Contemporary Realistic Fiction for the YA Reader is a comprehensive guide to matching a teen reader with the right book. As a lifetime reader and young adult librarian, Jensen has read contemporary realistic fiction extensively. Her experience blogging about books and serving on a selection committee taught her how to discuss and consider books critically and how to make connections with other titles. It Happens does all of that and more. Part I gives the reader advisor real tools to understand young adult literature, genres, how to find books, and awards. Part II explores titles in ten different subgenres of realistic fiction, complete with a plot description, a list of appeal factors, and suggested read alikes for each title. Part III has real conversation starters on tough real topics with titles that will challenge readers. Jensen closes with the proposal that we all advocate for teens and their books.

There are three parts to the book. Part one tackles the big stuff and digs deep into defining contemporary/realistic fiction, where and how to find those books that aren’t the biggest and most well-known, and how to be a great reader’s advisor. Part two includes 10 separate book lists, each with 15 titles fleshed out with summaries, read alikes, and appeal factors. Each of those 10 lists have additional titles, too, in a concluding book list. Part three is about guiding readers through a series of discussion topics, including sex and sexual assault, bullying, and more. I pulled together a handful of key titles on those topics and offered ways to talking about those texts with those big ideas in mind. I finished the book up with how to be the best advocate for contemporary realistic fiction, as well as for readers who want these books.

While the book is geared toward librarians and teachers, I wrote it with readers in mind. That means that it’s not jargon-heavy. If you read Stacked and take something away from it, it’s in the same tone and from the same point of reference. I think non-librarians/educators will especially find the book lists to be useful, particularly when it comes to answering “I liked x-book by y-author, what do I read next?” It’s in the same vein as the “Beyond the Bestsellers” series I do at Book Riot.

And for the other dirty details: I can’t find a way of preordering the title yet, but as soon as I do, I’ll pass that along. The ISBN for the book is 978-1-61751-031-1, and it will be $50 for the 278 page book. For those who aren’t familiar with the library/educational publishing landscape, that’s on the low end for price. If you’re a subscriber to either VOYA or Teacher Librarian, you do get a 20% discount off list price. It will be available for purchase through all major online retailers, through VOYA’s website, as well as through all major book distributors (Ingram, Baker and Taylor, etc).

The “official” publication date is early August, but it will be available at ALA Annual, if you happen to be going (…and if you happen to be going and want to send me a picture, you would be my Favorite). It will likely be available to purchase before the pub date, which is more of a placeholder than it is a hard and fast date.

I don’t believe I’ve talked about one of my favorite parts of the book yet, which is something that I thought about immediately when writing the proposal for it back in 2012 (!). To kick off each chapter of the book — and there are 22 — I asked some of my favorite librarians, teachers, and contemporary/realistic authors to weigh in on why they care about, talk about, and write contemporary YA. Their answers are amazing, and they added such fantastic context to what I hoped to convey. There’s one in particular that every single time I read it, I welled up a bit because it was so perfect and captured the spirit of why I love and care so much about realistic fiction.

A few weeks ago, I did a podcast with Steve Thomas for Circulating Ideas about the book and we talked at length about diversity, about book talking, and about the value of reaching readers with the right books. It’s not live yet, but when it is, I’ll share it — it was a fantastic conversation.

Beyond that, I’ll post when I have preorder information, as well as when I have Real Actual Copies in my possession. You can expect a few giveaways down the road, as well.

This is a book I am exceptionally proud of and hope is of value to those who work with readers or who are enthusiastic to learn more about contemporary/realistic fiction.

It’s surreal to see a cover of a book with my name on it, let alone a cover that is also easy on the eyes. I can’t wait to share this.

To wrap up Contemporary YA Week here at STACKED, I wanted to send a huge thank you both to our guest contributors, as well as to our readers who keep asking for more posts about contemporary YA. In fact, I’ve already received some suggestions for what to consider next year, and I’m compiling a list of those topics so that I can try to make it happen.

If there’s ever a topic that interests you as a reader, I’d love to know. Or if there are things you’ve thought about this week you’d like to read more about, leave those things in the comments. I can’t always follow up or through, but I do always think about them. And I hope the booklists, as well as the rerunning of some older content was valuable, too.

So please, feel free to give us feedback or suggestions or ideas for future contemporary week features — as well as ideas for posts about contemporary realistic fiction outside of this series — because it’s helpful to us to know what’s of interest.

Just because it’s fitting — and because I’m about to dig into revising — I thought it’d be worthwhile to talk a little bit more about my book about contemporary YA too.

The Real Deal: A VOYA Guide to Contemporary Fiction for Young Adult Readers should be out sometime next year, and you can add it to your Goodreads shelf if you want to. As it stands, I’ve not added a short description because the description of the book’s fairly evident from the title.

My book has three distinct parts that all build upon one another. The first part talks about how we define contemporary YA, how reader’s advisory for contemporary YA works, how to be effective and innovative in your reader’s advisory and book recommendations, and gives you the raw tools for working with YA readers and contemporary YA fiction.

The second part contains 10 thematic book lists, each with 15 annotations that can be used not only as book descriptions, but as book talks. They also include read alikes and appeal factors for making connections between and among different books beyond those within the thematic list itself (in other words, while the book list might be about health and well-being, the appeal factors might hit on the fact the book has a great family element to it, making it connect with some of the books in the relationships book list). At the end of each of those thematic book lists is a long list of other books, too. Here’s a sample of one of the annotations:

Finally, the third part of the book might be my favorite: conversation starters. I’ve pulled from the book lists and pooled together five or more books on a big and heavy topic and developed a series of questions and discussion fodder for them. Some of the topics include sex and sexual assault, military service, body image, and more. Essentially, this portion of the book puts the things in part one together with the things in part two and offers a way into talking about tough or touchy subjects with readers. This was the most fun and most challenging to write, but it’s also the part I think will offer the most value. I hope, at least!

Nearly every chapter in the book — and there are 22 — begins with insight from a variety of contemporary YA authors, as well as teachers and other librarians, about what contemporary YA has influenced them or how it is they implement contemporary YA into their own work. I thought it was really important to incorporate some other voices into the book, and I’m really pleased not only with what those contributors had to offer, but how well those contributions played into the things I was talking about in my book.

There’s really not much more to report at this stage in the process. The book’s been with my editor and the publisher now for a few months, and it’s in line for the design process, meaning there will be something that looks like a book-shaped thing very soon. In the mean time, I’m writing an index (yes, writing my own index) and going through the manuscript itself to clarify, tighten, and reword some of the things I haven’t looked at since I turned it in. I’m hoping to sneak in a few more titles into my book lists, as well, since I’ve read quite a bit in the interim.

I’m excited about this book and pleased with how it all came together. I think it’ll be really useful for those who love contemporary YA and those who work with YA readers in particular. And of course, when I know more — publication date, cover, so forth — I’ll share. But I believe this update pretty much covers what to expect content wise.

Perhaps the best part is at this point, I still love contemporary YA and I think that maybe I like it even more now that I’ve spent so much time thinking about it. In fact, I feel like after writing it, I could write even more books on some of the things I hit on within it. Maybe some day!