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  • STACKED
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    • Audiobooks
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      • Debut YA Novels
      • Get Genrefied
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I Live in Toyota’s 2021 Holiday Commercial Town

December 6, 2021 |

If you’re wondering what a Toyota commercial has to do with books and reading, I promise you, there’s a connection. This year’s new holiday Toyota commercial is a cute one, following the story of a used bookstore that suffers a fire and the young girl who goes around her small town to collect books from residents. Those books are then given to the elderly bookstore owner, Sam, as a holiday present, presumably so his shop can be back up in the new year.

The cute town where the commercial takes place is fictional, but it was filmed in the town where I live. This isn’t the first commercial or even first car commercial filmed here. Bill Murray reprised his Groundhog Day role in a Jeep commercial for the Super Bowl in 2020, a film that was filmed here as well. In addition to those, my town’s been home to the filming of the Sissy Spacek Amazon joint, Light Years, and to scenes from the classic Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Familiar with Jordan Peele’s Lovecraft Country adaptation? Filmed here. The upcoming Amazon Paper Girls adaptation? Parts of it were also filmed locally.

I don’t live in Hollywood nor even a mid-size city. I’m in a semi-suburban area, right on the skirts of farm country. It’s easy to laugh about a town of 25,000 having so many shows, films, and commercials filmed here, but it’s much funnier once you realize that this is a small town, where people know people, people talk to people, and everyone has something to say or share about the goings on.

Imagine the surprise, then, of the Toyota commercial.

It’s the end of September, and I’m rolling up to teach yoga on a Tuesday night. My town is home to Read Between the Lynes, a few doors down from the yoga studio. As I park by car, I notice this:

 

 

There are signs about parking being inaccessible over the next couple of days, but since Light Years is filming and has been filming sporadically, these signs weren’t noteworthy. But otherwise, all that I could see was the facade for Sam’s bookstore, located right across the square from Read Between the Lynes. I sat in my car absolutely perplexed, wondering why another bookstore would move into our small town and why it’d even consider doing so right across from our beloved indie.

I went up to the yoga studio and everyone was talking: it was some kind of commercial being filmed and not an actual bookstore. The commercial’s subject wasn’t known, nor was the company for which it was being made. But some of the students talked about them being approached by the company producing the commercial, as they were soliciting local residences for filming. There was apparently decent money involved for the rights to use and film the outside of their homes.

You’ll see in the commercial what this means: the little girl rings the doorbells at a number of gorgeous Victorian homes in our town, all of which have a nice door, visible porches, and other aesthetically-pleasing features. It’s neat to see some of the best architecture in your community showcased like that, without any alterations or any set built to accomplish what it is that already sets this town apart.

There’s a beautiful shot of the town’s opera house, too, the same one which Bill Murray jumps from in Groundhog Day.

It was surprising, given the fact that all of the locations filmed were locations in town that they didn’t approach our own bookstore to do the commercial with their facade. They chose another building instead, one with a more modern exterior, even though the rest of the scenery and feel of the commercial is nostalgic.

After teaching, I went with one of my friends to check out Sam’s Books . . . as did many other people in town because again: small town. We had some fun peeping which books were in the store and the levels to which they were destroyed by the fire. We didn’t know the premise of the commercial or the company, but we easily figured out the fire aspect as the smoke damage and tape on the glass made it clear.

 

The store in which this was set up is a small children’s boutique, and if you peep through to the back of the interior, you might be able to see their goods behind it. That might be a little more evident in the following photos, all of which are shots of the window front bookshelves. See if you, too, can figure out what some of the books are.

(Yes, it’s been pointed out that this bookstore is selling ARCs, which was just one more questionable bit of the reality of the entire premise).

 

 

The week the commercial was filming in town, my in-laws came to visit, and we took them to eat at one of the outdoor dining restaurants up the square. We finished and took a walk by Sam’s Books, which by that point — Thursday — had been disassembled. They’d been in the final stages of removing the last of the books.

We took them over to Lynes then, where we had to pause to cross the street and where we had to get permission from the commercial team to enter the store. They were filming in front of the door. I stood inside the door with my mother in law while my husband and his dad were waiting to get the all-clear to enter because, as it turns out, businesses in town weren’t told about how the commercial would be filmed, how it would impact their hours or access to their facilities, or that the commercial would take priority to everyday activity.

Perhaps most frustrating, though, was that in our small town, people took to Facebook asking about what was being filmed (not a shock) and when they learned about the fake bookstore, wondered why we didn’t have a real one in town because we deserve it (we have one! We’ve had one for a long time! It’s right downtown!).

It’s funny to watch the commercial back, too, knowing that it was filmed at the end of September. We had a warm early fall, plenty of flora was still emerging, and yet, the commercial was set during the holidays. You can see when the girl is walking around town that there’s not snow on the ground and that the trees are showcasing their early fall colors. Then when you get to the scene where the girl presents the books to the book seller, there’s suddenly snow.

They’d filmed fake snow on the streets and on some of the greenery, but in other scenes, it’s really clear where they didn’t and where it’s obvious this was not a cold season. The girl is wearing a winter coat, mittens, and a hat as she’s going door to door, but the grass is very green behind her.

Here are some other fun little facts and insights from the commercial vs. real life:

  • At about 6 seconds in, you see a generic sign for a bakery and a realtor on the exterior of the buildings in the background. They are actually a bakery — with the best cinnamon rolls you can imagine — and a real estate office.

 

  • If you squint  at 28 seconds, that’s where the bookstore’s located — immediately next to the building with the black awning that curves around the corner.

 

  • There are not evergreen trees in the town square, as seen at 39 seconds. They’re big, mature trees, but they’re not THOSE big, mature trees. You can see that in my first photo above, as well as at the five second mark, as that is the perspective in the background from this scene in the commercial.

 

  • This is more Toyotas than I’ve ever seen in the square before — apparently, too, the crew asked around to nice looking Toyota owners if they could use their cars in background scenes.

Filed Under: reading

Mental Health in YA Lit and Serving Teen Readers

November 4, 2019 |

At the YALSA Young Adult Services Symposium in Memphis this last weekend, I had the honor of moderating a panel of contributors to my anthology (Don’t) Call Me Crazy. Our goal was to highlight some of the best when it comes to mental health and illness in YA lit, as well as how to be an effective advocate when it comes to working with teens and these topics. To take this beyond that panel, I wanted to pull together a resource guide to mental health in YA books, as well as some of the key highlights of our discussion. The below book lists are those with titles vetted by the panelists, including myself, Hannah Bae, Christine Heppermann, S. Jae Jones, and Shaun David Hutchinson.

Mental health in YA lit and serving teen readers. A resource guide for teachers, librarians, and other teen advocates.   ya books | ya lit | mental health | ya mental health books | mental illness | mental illness and teens

Great YA Books About Mental Health: Titles and Resources

  • Over on School Library Journal, a guide to nuanced and thoughtful approaches to mental health in YA lit. I put together this piece as a tool for helping find high quality, inclusive, and intersectional mental health experiences.

 

  • In honor of World Mental Health Day in 2018, (Don’t) Call Me Crazy contributors talked about the most important mental health books they’ve read, along with what they’ve written about the subject.

 

  • 50 must-read YA books about mental illness.

 

  • Powerful teen books about depression.

 

  • This is a reality so many teens experience, but it’s not explored quite as much as it should be. But here’s a start! YA books about social anxiety.

 

  • I find reading to be a challenge sometimes, when I’m dealing with anxiety and depression. I pulled together some of the tips and tricks that have helped me while reading with mental health challenges.

 

Mental Health, Mental Illness, and Teen Readers: Topics Worth Discussing

Whether or not you heard the panel discussion, there are a number of things we discussed that are worth thinking about or discussing within your own libraries. Here are some vital mental health related topics to consider:

  • Why is it vulnerable to discuss mental health? Whether or not you experience mental illness, mental health is in and of itself still often taboo. What holds you back from discussing it and how does it make you feel when you do? If you’ve been at the receiving end of someone discussing their mental health — particularly teens — how does it make you feel? Why? In what ways do you navigate those conversations?

 

  • What makes for a “good” depiction of mental illness in YA? I wrote a bit about the idea of “getting it right” over on To Write Love On Her Arms that’s worth thinking about, since there’s a lot to chew on when it comes to the idea of a “right” depiction of mental illness. 

 

  • #OwnVoices stories– books about a particular experience or background written by an author who shares it — are especially powerful when it comes to mental illness stories and this is particularly true when it comes to intersectional explorations of mental illness. When it comes to talking about mental illness, though, it can be tricky to know whether or not a book is #OwnVoices if the writer doesn’t disclose that in the book itself or openly on the website/social media. How can you as a librarian take this into consideration in your collection development decisions? What about in your reader’s advisory decisions? How and where might it be appropriate to connect teen readers with authors who are open about their mental health?

 

  • Are there YA books or depictions of mental illness in the pop culture that teens consume that are actively harmful? What makes them so? 

 

  • While we’ve certainly seen an increase in mental illness representation in YA, we can all agree there are holes. What’s lacking? What do you hope to see more of as more writers share stories that explore mental health? What are you seeing with teens that deserves more representation in the books written with them in mind? 

 

  • How can librarians use books that explore mental health with teens? What are some resources beyond the books for librarians to know in order to be the best advocates for their teens possible? Kelly talked on panel about developing a book display with compassion and care after a teen suicide rocked her community, written about here, as well as about her experience being part of Port Washington, Wisconsin’s project to have a community read of (Don’t) Call Me Crazy, 

 

 

Filed Under: big issues, readers advisory, reading, ya, ya fiction, Young Adult, young adult fiction, young adult non-fiction

Bookish Things In My Life Right Now (That Aren’t Reading)

August 13, 2018 |

I’ve been reading more this summer than I have in many summers. I definitely feel some pressure with more responsibilities in talking about YA for work to do that. I want to keep up, as well as continue to focus on reading backlist. . . but backlist has kind of taken an unfortunate back seat to newer titles this summer. I generally like dedicating a month to reading back list, but it just didn’t happen this year. At least not yet. I still plan on getting through Anne of Green Gables before the year wraps up. It just might not happen before the summer ends in September.

Where it would be easy to feel like I’ve worked too much when it comes to my reading life, I don’t think I have. Instead, some of the most fulfilling moments of my reading life have come from the moments where I’m not reading. I’ve had the chance to go to and to do some cool bookish things, though not all of them were about the books being read in my hammock with a drink in my hand (I did get to do that and still have plenty of time to enjoy that!).

I write this to remind those readers out there who maybe didn’t reach their goals that a well-rounded reading life isn’t about the tally of titles at the end of a specified time frame. It’s about how you feel knowing what you’re reading and what you’re doing in the bigger picture. If you’re happy, if you’re exploring, if you’re challenging yourself, then you’re growing a damn good reading life, no matter what number of books you rack up.

Here are some of the awesome bookish things I’ve done in my life recently and that have made this summer a solid one so far!

Attended A Harry Potter Festival

Last summer, I finally read all of Harry Potter. This summer? I grabbed myself a Slytherin tank top and enjoyed the amazing “Wizarding World” event my local community put together for the second year in a row. Though it ended up being dampened by rain, it was so cool to see both young and old dressed up in their favorite Potter-themed gear.

The highlight for me at the event? I got to meet some owls. I met an eagle owl, a screech owl, a barred owl, and a great horned owl at a program put on by a local raptor sanctuary.

 

Worked on a Proposal for a New Book

I have a book coming out in October, and after that’s out in the world, I don’t have anything planned. At least, theoretically. This summer, I’ve been chipping away at plans for another book and my agent and I have been going back and forth as to how to make the proposal as strong as possible. I’m really excited about it.

And as exciting? I’ve been also working on a novel. I got some great motivation at ALA.

Also? I had another idea pop into my head for another potential nonfiction idea. So there are three things cooking in my head at once. That’s a lot of balls to juggle mentally, but I enjoy the ideas of each and have been slowing poking away at the hows and wheres of each.

 

 

Completed My Library’s Summer Reading Program

You know what the best prize to get for adult summer reading at the library is? Money off your fines. My library’s approach to the summer reading program for adults is brilliant and simple: for each book you read and drop a review of in their online system, you earn $.25 off fines that are good through December.

The system allows you to set a goal, and in June, fresh-eyed, I set one knowing I could beat it a bit. But I ended up beating it by quite a bit, which was a nice boost. But more than the number, it was nice to see how wide-ranging the titles were I read. I picked up a little of everything: middle grade and YA fiction, as well as YA and adult nonfiction. I even got a little bit of literary adult fiction into the mix, too.

At one point during the program, I had a pretty big fine going on because, well, each time I go to the library, I check out too many things (the best kind of problem to have). It was nice to cash in my reading time for fine forgiveness . . . which meant I could check out too many more books, then repeat the process.

In the end, I read 30 titles between the beginning of June and end of July.

 

Bookstore Hopped in Chicago

My friend Rachel and I headed to Chicago a couple weekends ago to attend a pop-up art/interactive exhibit and I realized when we were driving down that we’d have plenty of time to make a stop or two beforehand. I suggested we take the Blue Line to Damon and go visit Myopic Books. She hadn’t been, but I have, and not only did we have a fun time wandering, I managed to snag a title I’ve been looking for. I’m trying to collect all of Megan Abbott’s noir reads — her very early stuff — and they’re surprisingly hard to find. But I got one!

After we did what we’d set out to do in the city, we went back to the area of Myopic and visited both Volumes Book Cafe (which we’d both been to before) and then I took her over to Quimby’s.

While I’d been to all three before, I always love stopping there and exploring. It’s such a cool area of Chicago and the fact there are so many bookshops within a couple of blocks fills me with delight. I only walked away with three books, which felt like a real victory.

If you’re ever in the city and want a bookish place to roam, you can’t go wrong with visiting those three stops. You get your used books, your new books, and your indie-focused, small press books.

 

 

 

Produced a Podcast Episode of Recommended

Have you listened to Recommended? This Book Riot podcast interviews interesting people about their favorite books. I volunteered to produce an episode for the next season, which launches in September. Producing meant finding two fabulous guests to interview and editing their interviews to fit into the timeframe of the show. It was a total change from how I’ve been doing podcasts with Eric for Hey YA — we keep an agenda and kind of free wheel within it, readily ignoring the fact our show is 40 minutes long (we regularly hit that hour mark).

My episode won’t air until late September, but I had the total joy of interviewing two amazing women: Gretchen Rubin and Cynthia Leitich Smith. I can’t wait to share this with you when it’s available.

I also, at the same time I was doing this, set up a monster interview with a legend of children’s literature. I’m excited to see that writer’s responses and share it in the YA newsletter very soon.

 

 

Tell me about how you’ve stayed engaged in your reading life this summer (or this year!). I’d love to hear about your adventures beyond the printed page.

Filed Under: reading, reading habits, reading life

Falling In Love With Audiobooks Again

March 12, 2018 |

 

In the early days of STACKED, I was a big audiobook listener. I had an hour-long commute each way between home and work, and I could sail through audiobooks pretty quickly. An hour each way is about a disc each way, meaning I could get through a decent-length audiobook in a little over a work week. I worked my way through a number of adult fiction titles, some award-winning YA titles (I’d found that it was often easier to get those titles on audiobook rather than wait on the holds list for print), and nonfiction. And pretty quickly, I discovered that nonfiction on audiobook really worked for me.

But then I got a new job at a new library that was in my town. My commute went from an hour each way to a mere five minutes total. I tried audiobooks but they didn’t work for me. There wasn’t enough time to sink into them, and more, the job took a lot out of me, and I cherished the silence I got in that short commute.

Keep in mind, too, that this was in the days before digital audiobooks were ubiquitous. To listen to an audiobook meant getting a CD set or hoping you could score a Play Away. There wasn’t a convenient way to listen to audiobooks that weren’t in the car at this point, so listening during free time or during tasks at home meant a lot of work to get CDs to a device.

While I like technology, I much prefer laziness when it comes to things like that.

I left that job and worked from home for about a year before getting a job with a thirty minute commute each way. But, having gotten out of the habit of listening to audiobooks, I couldn’t motivate myself to do it.

But now, eight or so years later, working entirely from home and having done so now for four years, I have become obsessed with audiobooks again.

It began, though, with podcasts.

Gretchen Rubin, whose habit-forming book Better Than Before did not resonate particularly well for me, has a podcast with her sister Elizabeth I really enjoy. And it was there I figured out exactly why it is audiobooks are working for me again: the concept of the blank slate. It is with a hard reset or change in your life where you’re most likely to make change.

That hard reset, it turns out, was moving.

When I had to clean and pack the home we’d lived in for eight years, I started using Audible to buy an audiobook every month — this was a job perk, and I decided to take advantage of it. As it turns out, listening to an engaging audiobook while you’re scrubbing baseboards or emptying cupboards makes the time and tasks much more enjoyable. Being able to tote those audiobooks digitally in my literal back pocket made it easy to move room-to-room without cords.

I packed and cleaned and listened to audiobook after audiobook. I moved those items from our home in one state, across the border to another, and listened to an audiobook in the car as I drove. An hour each way, on top of the hours of packing and cleaning, meant blowing through book after book.

And then, the habit continued.

I’m not moving now. Most of my stuff has been unpacked. But I’m still picking up audiobooks and listening, adding additional credits to my account each month and splurging on daily deals for titles which sound interesting and ring in at just a couple of bucks.

I listen every day when I am getting ready in the morning. Twenty minutes here and there adds up. Pair those minutes up with spending ten or twenty minutes at the beginning and/or at the end of the day laying in bed and listening, and eventually, it’s close to an hour of listening each day. For audiobooks ringing in at 10 or 15 hours, it only takes a couple of weeks of listening here and there to finish a book. Particularly good audiobooks are motivation to get errands done out of the house, too: I can listen to forty minutes of audiobook if I choose to go to one of the bigger grocery stores in the next town. And each week, when I make the trek to teach yoga an hour away, I can blow through two more hours of listening.

Those little pockets of time add up. But more than add up numerically, they’ve added such a nice change of pace to my day and created a companion to the quiet that I otherwise find myself in. I’m a quiet person and keep a quiet home, but going all day without much noise or companionship because of my work setup can get overwhelming. Audiobooks give a sense of not only company, but it’s company that I get to control. When I need the silence to think, I can have it. When I need a story to let my mind wander, I can have it.

This blank slate of moving — this reset on my life — has given me the opportunity to fall back in love with audiobooks.

I’m excited to dig into the collection of audiobooks available at my new library, as Libby is now an option for borrowing and downloading easily.  I’ve relied on Audible for the time being because I’ve got enough books available to me there that one credit a month has been sufficient — though I cannot recommend digging into Janssen’s guide to Audible for anyone curious about it or curious how to save money using it (those daily deals are GOOD).

I can’t wait for the weather to finally turn and I can resume a daily habit of walking outside. I can only imagine how many more audiobooks I’ll be enjoying while creating new paths and adventures in this new place.

Filed Under: audiobooks, reading, reading habits

A Month Of Nonfiction for #NonFictionNov: An Instagram Book Challenge Round-up

December 11, 2017 |

 

Earlier this year, I ran Book Riot’s first ever Instagram photo challenge. We dubbed it #RiotGrams, and after a successful event in February, I ran it again in June and October. The challenge involved creating a prompt for each day of the month and encouraging readers to take photos of their books relating to their interpretation of the theme (or not!), and then having them tag those images. It was a way to build community, as well as a way to get a whole boatload of amazing book recommendations from die-hard readers.

Despite having created a challenge myself, I’ve never participated in one all the way through. So when I saw the information about this year’s #nonficnov challenge, I decided it would be the one I did. As someone who is continually talking about nonfiction, continually advocating for seeing more of it (particularly in the youth lit world), and writing it, I knew it was the perfect opportunity to have fun, to stretch myself, and to grow my to-read list. I only wish I’d spent more time going through the other posts from participants to be more engaged. But the beauty of a hashtag challenge like this is that those posts will be there for the long haul, so I can peruse and use them from here on out.

And I even managed to remember to take photos in advance to post when I was out of town for a week. It would have been easy to fall behind, but I’m glad I stayed on top of it. I also love how you can tell which cat spends a lot of time in my office.

Here’s a round-up of all my posts from the month, which I hope provides a lot of interesting book recommendations for you all. Many are aimed at adults but are perfectly fine for teen readers. But there are also a lot of YA nonfiction titles scattered throughout, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Non-Fiction, nonfiction, reading, reading life, young adult non-fiction

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