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Links of Note, 1/12/13

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Are we still celebrating the new year? Either way, this is the first links of note post for 2013, and rather than stick solely to book-related stuff (there is plenty of that, don’t worry), I’m going to expand these posts to include other things I’ve read over the last couple weeks I found interesting or thought-provoking. Without further ado.

via postsecret
  • I’ve been thinking a lot about how we reward reading lately, and these two blog posts have resonated with me. First, a culture of reading without pizza or prizes. This school has been working toward removing prizes associated with reading, and I love the idea. Reading should be reading for the sake of enjoyment, not some trinket at the end. Why is this important? Well, the second article on this made me pause: the kid who wants a book buck for his achievement. We should celebrate reading, sure, but the physical prizes associated with it bother me.
  • Speaking of being unapologetic, this post on xojane about Lena Dunham and her body confidence is out of this world good. Feel what you want to about Dunham, but her confidence in herself and in her body is absolutely admirable. 
  • Flavorwire offers up 20 books every woman in her 20s should read. These are a little bit meatier than the books on a lot of other 20 books for 20-something lists. I’ve only read a couple of these, and I just returned the Portable Dorothy Parker to my workplace (unread). Intentions are good things though.
  • We’ve all read the books that were noted as the “best of” last year. But what were the best selling titles? PW has that for you.
  • This set of stories got me going this week. Douglas County Libraries in Colorado signed an agreement with Smashwords, which allows writers to self-publish and sell their work. This agreement would allow for DCL to lend 10,000 of Smashwords’s titles to readers and the contract was in very good terms for both sides. Cheap for a ton of material for DCL and good money and distribution for Smashwords. Here’s the story about the agreement. While it sounds good in theory, I couldn’t help but wonder what the collection policy would be — how would the library know what it was getting? “Best selling” in the self-publishing world is not as reliable a measure as it is in the traditional print world, due to a number of factors. So then this article about how they were selecting titles popped up, explaining it. And it kind of made me dislike the whole thing even more. They’re judging by covers? By some math equation developed through Smashwords. This is problematic because the responsibility of collection management has shifted from the librarians to instead, a mathematical equation developed by Smashwords. So then I want to know how the librarians even know what they’re getting? How do they do reader’s advisory on these things? What if they get crummy products? I guess they will know when the ball drops. 
  • I’ve started getting angsty about all of the 2013 books you NEED to read lists already popping up, but this one over at The Millions was a worthwhile read. Related to this is that I am definitely going to be ordering the newly covered edition of Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s because it is gorgeous. 
  • So, this library got rid of all their books and it is apparently “thriving.” Note that the story discusses how these students now have to depend on their local libraries for books, that they still prefer print to digital reading and oh yes, they’re looking for a new librarian for a recent vacancy now. I think it’s important to incorporate digital initiatives into libraries but NOT NOT NOT at the expense of books. Why does it have to be one or the other? There is room for both. The parallels between this story and the one about Douglas County Libraries/Smashwords rub me as devaluing the human elements of librarianship. 
  • I don’t usually share library programming blog posts in these posts, but I thought this might prove some really great fodder for bloggers or librarians looking to “think differently” about their collections. Anne over at so tomorrow shares some library programming ideas based on the Dewey Decimal ranges. How useful is thinking in broad categories like this in terms of thinking about, oh, anything we’re stuck on? Or when we’re looking for some sort of new inspiration? Yep. It’s so simple and yet utterly brilliant. Whenever I’m thinking of book lists I’d like to write, I think in broad categories (see: Island settings, road trip books, and so forth). Look at the way the Dewey categories work and see how well that’d work for blog inspiration — books featuring bloggers or zine creators! Books featuring the zodiac! War stories! And so forth. 
  • Ever watched Twin Peaks? Yeah, me either. But I am going to, and I’m doing it live with Leila. Join us starting this Sunday at 8 pm Eastern Time. She has all of the details here. 
I’ve been asked by a number of people for an update about the book I’m writing for VOYA. After spending significant time angsting about how I was ever going to do it (which is part of my process, as I’ve come to understand), I’ve really put fingers to keys in the last couple of months. I’m nearing 100 pages of content and I have a long way to go. It took me a while to think of a way to tie together everything I wanted to bring into it, but the more I read and the more I think about what it is I really want to say, the clearer it becomes. So where it took me a long time to get going, I’m still considering it progress since I did a lot of reading of books, blog posts, and journal articles to think through the sticking points. I’m really excited about how it’s playing out. But ask me again in a month and I’m sure I’ll have a different answer.

Another update: we’re bringing back So You Want to Read YA? in March. Last week, I got in touch with a wealth of people, ranging from bloggers to librarians to teachers to authors to editors and more, and the response was amazing. We’ll have 20 guest posts starting the first Monday in March. I know I am beyond excited to see what it is everyone thinks are the essentials for a new (or seasoned!) YA reader. 

The Night She Disappeared by April Henry

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A book like April Henry’s The Night She Disappeared is great at crystallizing my reading tastes. It’s good for what it is – but that “what it is” is not really to my taste. I’ll have to get spoilery to fully explain, but I’ll warn you ahead of time so you can avoid the spoilers if you like.

Kayla, a pizza delivery girl for Pete’s Pizza, has been abducted while on what seemed to be a routine delivery. It turns out the address to which she was supposed to deliver was fake, and the man who called in the order gave a fake name, too. 
This is horrifying for the entire town and for Kayla’s co-workers, but it’s particularly horrifying for Gabie, who also works at the pizza place. You see, the man who called in the fake order asked if the girl who drove the mini cooper was working that day – and Gabie is that girl. It was bad luck for Kayla that she had swapped shifts with Gabie for that day, otherwise Gabie may have been the missing girl, and not Kayla. 
This thought haunts Gabie, and she’s determined to help find Kayla before the abductor realizes the mistake he’s made and comes after her, too. She recruits co-worker and possible love interest Drew to assist.
Perspectives switch frequently. We get bits and pieces of the story from Kayla, the kidnapper, and a couple of teenagers who stumble upon some evidence, but the reader is mostly taken through the story via Gabie’s and Drew’s eyes. Gabie and Drew are our amateur sleuths, particularly Gabie, who persists in believing that Kayla is still alive despite the detectives’ insistence otherwise. Naturally, they find themselves in trouble, coming face to face with the culprit at the end of the book.
And here’s where things get spoilery. You’ve been warned.
I would classify this as a thriller much more than a mystery, since there really isn’t much mystery as to who took Kayla. It’s not someone we’ve met in the story; it’s just a random guy who frequented the pizza place. There is no pool of suspects, no hidden identities, no big reveal at the end. The tension in the story comes from wondering whether Kayla, Gabie, and Drew will reach the end of the book alive, not in determining whodunnit. (And it’s not exactly a spoiler to say that they all survive.)
While this is fine for many readers, it’s not what I like in a story. For me, the fun in a mystery comes from trying to figure out the culprit of some crime before the sleuths do, from being surprised or proven right at the end. So this was a disappointing read for me. And I saw it coming, too: Henry reveals a lot about the culprit in his perspective’s chapters, and it rules out anyone else in the story. Still, I kept reading, hoping she’d pull the rug out from under me and truly surprise me. Alas, it didn’t happen.
But for readers who don’t crave the whodunnit aspect, who instead enjoy the thrill of the chase, this may be right up their alley. Henry creates a good amount of suspense, and there’s not a lot of time to get bored: chapters are short, perspectives switch frequently, and she includes a piece of “evidence” every few chapters (police reports, newspaper articles, tv talk show transcripts), which is a nice touch. I just wish there was more of an element of, well, mystery to the story.
Book borrowed from my local library.

Display This: What’s Your Number?

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I’ve been thinking a lot about titles lately. I’ve got a couple things specifically I’ve been pondering, and I just did a display at my workplace called “Boys and Girls of Teen Fiction,” pulling together a pile of books that feature either the word “Boy” or “Girl” in the title. As I was scanning the shelves for it, and as I perused the books coming out in 2013, I saw an interesting trend: numbers in the title. Not spelled out, but actual numerals in the title as part of the title. Sometimes they’re ages and sometimes they represent bigger points in the plot. Whatever their purpose, it’s a title trend worth noting, especially because this is one that continues to become more common (at least it’s catching my attention a lot more). 

I looked through the books published between 2010 and today using Goodreads compiled lists, and it wasn’t until 2012 this trend really took hold — in fact, it appears there were only two numeral-bearing titles in 2011 (Human.4 and Are u 4 Real?). Four appeared in 2010 (13 to Life, 7 Souls, Sweet 15, and The Absolute Value of -1), though that’s still much fewer than those recently released. 

This trend continues strong in 2013. 

Here’s a slice of titles with numbers in them, with the caveat these aren’t ordinal numbers (so, no Fifth Wave, for example). If you can think of others published recently, drop them in the comments. I’ve stuck to traditionally published titles. All descriptions come from Goodreads.

Human .4 by Mike A. Lancaster: Twenty-first century fourteen-year-old Kyle was hypnotized when humanity was upgraded to 1.0 and he, incompatible with the new technology, exposes its terrifying impact in a tape-recording found by the superhumans of the future.

13 to Life by Shannon Delany: Jessica Gillmansen, a high school junior, is hiding information about her mother’s death when she meets Pietr Rusakova, a new student with a family secret of his own, and the two bond as she investigates local news stories about werewolves and the Russian mafia.

17 & Gone by Nova Ren Suma (March 2013): Seventeen-year-old Lauren has visions of girls her own age who are gone without a trace, but while she tries to understand why they are speaking to her and whether she is next, Lauren has a brush with death and a shocking truth emerges, changing everything.

172 Hours on the Moon by Johan Harstad: Three teenagers are going on the trip of a lifetime. Only one is coming back. It’s been more than forty years since NASA sent the first men to the moon, and to grab some much-needed funding and attention, they decide to launch an historic international lottery in which three lucky teenagers can win a week-long trip to moon base DARLAH 2-a place that no one but top government officials even knew existed until now. The three winners, Antoine, Midori, and Mia, come from all over the world. But just before the scheduled launch, the teenagers each experience strange, inexplicable events. Little do they know that there was a reason NASA never sent anyone back there until now-a sinister reason. But the countdown has already begun…

7 Souls by Barnabus Miller and Jordan Orlando: Inexplicable things have been happening to Manhattan socialite Mary since she awoke on her seventeenth birthday, and by the end of the day she has been killed, inhabited the bodies of seven people close to her, and faced some ugly truths about herself.

7 Clues to Winning You by Kristin Walker: Ridiculed at school after a humiliating photograph of her goes viral, Blythe teams up with Luke to win the Senior Scramble scavenger hunt and salvage her reputation, a partnership that blossoms into romance until their madcap antics spiral out of control.

52 Reasons to Hate My Father by Jessica Brody: On her eighteenth birthday, spoiled party girl Lexington Larrabee learns that her days of making tabloid headlines may be at an end when her ever-absent father decides she must learn some values by working a different, low-wage job every week for a year or forfeit her multimillion-dollar trust fund.

45 Pounds (More or Less) by K. A. Barson (2013): When Ann decides that she is going to lose 45 pounds in time for her aunt’s wedding, she discovers that what she looks like is not all that matters.

The 39 Deaths of Adam Strand by Gregory Galloway (2013): Adam Strand isn’t depressed. He’s just bored. Disaffected. So he kills himself—39 times. No matter the method, Adam can’t seem to stay dead; he wakes after each suicide alive and physically unharmed, more determined to succeed and undeterred by others’ concerns. But when his self-contained, self-absorbed path is diverted, Adam is struck by the reality that life is an ever-expanding web of impact and forged connections, and that nothing—not even death—can sever those bonds. 

34 Pieces of You by Carmen Rodrigues: After Ellie dies of a drug overdose, her brother, her best friend, and her best friend’s sister face painful secrets of their own when they try to uncover the truth about Ellie’s death.

The Absolute Value of -1 by Steve Brezenoff: Three teenagers relate their experiences as they try to cope with problems in school and at home by smoking, drinking, using drugs, and running track.

Mila 2.0 by Debra Driza (2013): Sixteen-year-old Mila discovers she is not who–or what–she thought she was, which causes her to run from both the CIA and a rogue intelligence group. 

Are u 4 Real? by Sara Kadefors: After meeting “online” in an Internet chat room and helping each other deal with family problems, Kyla and Alex, two very different sixteen year olds, decide to meet in person.

Period 8 by Chris Crutcher (2013): Period 8 has always been a safe haven and high school senior Paulie “The Bomb” Baum a constant attendee, but as Paulie, Hannah, their friends, and a sympathetic teacher try to unravel the mystery of a missing classmate, the ultimate bully takes aim at the school.

Article 5 by Kristen Simmons: Seventeen-year-old Ember Miller has perfected the art of keeping a low profile in a future society in which Moral Statutes have replaced the Bill of Rights and offenses carry stiff penalties, but when Chase, the only boy she has ever loved, arrests her rebellious mother, Ember must take action.

Pretty Girl-13 by Liz Coley (2013): Sixteen-year-old Angie finds herself in her neighborhood with no recollection of her abduction or the three years that have passed since, until alternate personalities start telling her their stories through letters and recordings.

Boy21 by Matthew Quick: Finley, an unnaturally quiet boy who is the only white player on his high school’s varsity basketball team, lives in a dismal Pennsylvania town that is ruled by the Irish mob, and when his coach asks him to mentor a troubled African American student who has transferred there from an elite private school in California, he finds that they have a lot in common in spite of their apparent differences.

Revolution 19 by Gregg Rosenblum (2013): Twenty years after robots designed to fight wars abandoned the battlefields and turned their weapons against humans, siblings Nick, Kevin, and Cass must risk everything when the wilderness community where they have spent their lives in hiding is discovered by the bots. 

Level 2 by Lenore Appelhans (2013): Seventeen-year-old Felicia Ward is dead and spending her time in the hive reliving her happy memories–but when Julian, a dark memory from her past, breaks into the hive and demands that she come with him, she discovers that even the afterlife is more complicated and dangerous then she dreamed.

Sweet 15 by Emily Adler and Alex Echevarria: Shortly before her fifteenth birthday, Destiny Lozada’s traditional Puerto Rican mother and feminist older sister hijack her quinceañera, each pushing her own agenda and ignoring the possibility that Destiny, a skateboarding tomboy, might have her own ideas about the coming-of-age ritual she is about to participate in. 

Monument 14 by Emmy Laybourne: Trapped inside a chain superstore by an apocalyptic sequence of natural and human disasters, six high school kids from various popular and unpopular social groups struggle for survival while protecting a group of younger children.

3:59 by Gretchen McNeil (no cover, 2013 release): There’s not a WorldCat description, but you can see the lengthy one over at Goodreads.

Bonus! I’m including a pile of titles that have numbers in their title but where the number is spelled out. I’m not adding the descriptions but rather offering it up as a gallery. Some of these are available now and some will become available throughout the year. 

 

You see what I did there at the end, right?

Best of 2012 & Preview of 2013 on Circulating Ideas

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Remember last year when Steve had Liz Burns and I on his podcast Circulating Ideas? He invited us back, this time to talk about our favorite 2012 books. So we did that and we offered a preview into this year’s books we’re most excited about. Bonus: it’s not just us! This is a two-part podcast, with favorite discussions from a number of librarians talking through a number of genres.

Check out part one — with Liz and myself, as well as a handful of other awesome librarians — here.

Our Printz Predictions for 2013

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Kimberly and I like to do a mid-year Printz and Morris award prediction post, and then we like to follow it up before the actual Youth Media Awards to take a stab at what we think the winners and honorees could be. Since we know the Morris shortlist already, at least we have a 1 in 5 shot of guessing correctly.

Kelly’s Predictions


Morris Award





I already talked at length about Seraphina and the Morris Award, and even though it’s one of the titles I haven’t read yet, I put my bets on it. Seraphina earned six starred reviews, and the reviews of it outside the trades were glowing. It combines literary merit with reader appeal. As much as I loved Laura Buzo’s Love and Other Perishable Items, I think it may lack in the literary department at the end of the day. That’s not to say it’s not literary or well written — it is — but I think Seraphina will edge the other titles out.

Printz Award


I’ve been horrible about keeping up with commenting over at the Someday My Printz blog, but I have kept a close eye on it. I’ve also been spending a little time over at Crossreferencing, too, because there’s been a lot of good discussion of Printz titles there. Between those two blogs, my own reading, and other review reading, I’ve got a few titles that are standing out to me as potential Printz picks.

A number of these titles are ones I was thinking about at the mid-way point of 2012. I don’t want to say last year was a bad year for YA fiction, but it might have been a weaker year for literary, Printz-y fiction.

Let me start with my dark horse title. I saw this pop up over at Crossreferencing as a dark horse title, and the more I think about it, the more I think there just may be something to this title that could give it an honor.

Anna Jarzab’s The Opposite of Hallelujah has much to unpack. There’s not only spirituality and religion, but there’s family dynamics, there’s PTSD, there’s disordered eating, there’s romance, and then there’s science and art and so much more. The writing is great, the pacing is strong, and even if it’s not a perfect book, I do think it has a lot of the qualities of a Printz title.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the reviews of Jarzab’s title on Goodreads, and I’m surprised and baffled by the fact there are only 56 reviews. The book came out in early October, so it hasn’t been around a super long time, but that still seems like a very low number of reviews. A number of bloggers who I read have read and reviewed this one to similarly strong positive opinions as mine. I’d love to see this title get more attention, and I think it’s possible the Printz committee could look favorably upon so many elements of the story.

Both Kat Rosenfield’s Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone and Adam Rapp’s The Children and the Wolves were titles on my mid-year list, and I still stand by them both. Rosenfield’s book didn’t make any of the “best of” lists this year, which was a shocker to me. The writing, the dual perspectives, and the mystery woven throughout were compelling. This book is literary without trying too hard to be so. As for Rapp’s title, I think it’s the way he tackles such a horrid story that makes it stand out. The writing is strong, the three voices are distinct, and the way he manages to make these kids so middle school, despite their awful situations, is noteworthy.

I think Martine Leavitt’s My Book of Life by Angel has a good shot, too, and this hasn’t gotten a whole lot of talk, either. It’s a realistic title, set in the late 80s (or maybe early 90s) and it’s told in verse. This is a story about a girl caught up in childhood prostitution in Vancouver. It’s a painful, dark read and its writing is strong. Leavitt’s been a National Book Award finalist before, so she’s got the writing chops.

I don’t need to say much more about AS King’s Ask the Passengers which hasn’t already been addressed by Kim and my’s joint review.

I haven’t read Elizabeth Fama’s Monstrous Beauty, but Kimberly has. From the reviews, it sounds like it has the literary chops of Printz-muster. Even though I wasn’t enamored with Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity the way many others were, I do think there’s something to be said about not only the number of starred reviews it earned, but the number of times it appeared on last year’s “best of” lists. In my own reading, I see what’s working here and I see how it has the traits to take it to Printz contender.

I think Matthew Quick’s Boy21 might be another dark horse title, but it’s one that I think has the potential. It’s well-written, tackles race and fitting in and does so without ever becoming an issue book, and it has that something to it that feels classic. I’ve also already spent significant time talking about why Antonia Michaelis’s The Storyteller feels like a Printz to me. It’s dark. It’s a fairy tale. It’s got so much literary depth to it. It reminds me, like I’ve mentioned before, of Janne Teller’s Nothing.

My last Printz prediction — and I know I’ve offered up more than 5 by this point — is Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina, for all of the reasons I listed about as to why it’s the most likely Morris winner. Do I think this year can see a debut on the Printz list as well as the Morris list, like last year? I do.

I lied. A couple other title contenders include The Wicked and the Just (another title overlooked on the “best of” lists) and Margo Lanagan’s The Brides of Rollrock Island. I wonder, too, about Jodi Anderson’s Tiger Lily.

Note I still don’t include John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars here. I think the title has too much baggage attached to it for people to read it without seeing the actual problems which may exist in it. I haven’t read it personally, but, there is something to be said about how many lists it made and how much people just expect it to be a Printz. I still stand by the statement that I don’t think it will make the cut.

Kimberly’s Predictions


I agree almost completely with Kelly’s picks. Since this year was a pretty slim reading year for me, I don’t have any to add. I did want to highlight Code Name Verity, Ask the Passengers, and The Wicked and the Just as having particular Printz possibility, though. It should come as no shock to you that I’m rooting for Code Name Verity. Historical fiction books are often awards darlings (such as the Newbery last year), and this book was so well-crafted. (I don’t think any other book deserves the term “well-crafted” as much as this one.) The other two are great books, too, with The Wicked and the Just being a bit of a dark horse. Like the folks at Someday My Printz Will Come, I felt the chapters from Gwenhwyfar’s perspective were a bit weaker, but the book overall is original, well-researched, and integrates the two girls’ character arcs with the historical setting very, very well.

Still, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the winner turned out to be a book that flew completely under the radar, that I didn’t even think to consider, but that, after some thought, I should have included. That’s how these things generally seem to go, and it always makes the award ceremony exciting. (That said, I would shed not a single tear if Code Name Verity won, thereby proving me right after all…)