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| Isn’t this “Little House on the Prairie” cake great? |
The last two weeks have been a whirlwind. I got back from the Connecticut Library Association conference to have a small number of days to get my head together and start work for Book Riot, and then I flew out to Virginia to learn more about my Book Riot work. I got back from that trip to a solid week — this past one — to settle into a nice routine, catch up on reading, and take care of personal stuff before I go on another trip starting Monday (this one a vacation for me). It’s been such a blast, but my reading the internet has dipped a bit, so this links roundup is a little skimpy.
Have you read anything great lately around the web I should know about? Let me know in the comments! And also, I’d be remiss not to mention the new and fantastic Book Riot News, which is a reddit-style site for sharing book related news. If you want to share or get caught up on book-related news from around the web, you should check it out.
- Did you know May is Mental Health Awareness Month? Stephanie Kuehn put together an excellent reading list of YA novels that delve into various mental health issues over on YA Highway.
- I haven’t had the chance to play with this a whole lot, so I’ve got no idea how deep it goes, but this database is all about genre fiction by women.
- Hannah Gomez wrote this really thought-provoking post over on the Lee & Low blog asking where all of the people of color in dystopian novels have gone.
- This post by Molly Backes begging for people to stop complaining about Harry Potter — and by extension, children’s and young adult literature more broadly — is excellent.
- It is the 9th annual 48 Hour Book Challenge hosted by Mother Reader, and you should sign up to participate. It’s the first weekend in June, and this year, the focus is on diversity. I can’t sign up to participate officially, but I do plan on spending plenty of time that weekend reading.
- The Book Smugglers are going to start publishing short stories. What an awesome idea.
- “Men Act, Women Appear” is a great read.
- Over at YA Series Insiders, Stacked was selected as blog of the month, and Kimberly did this really nice interview about when we started and how we do what we do here.
- This piece over at Forbes looking at the meta analysis Common Sense Media did that claimed teens aren’t reading like they used to is pretty good. I especially enjoyed the part at the end, digging into gendered reading.
- Can you believe it’s the eighth year for Kid Lit Con? This year, it’s going to be in Sacramento in early October and the focus is on diversity and what bloggers and kid lit enthusiasts can do to make a difference. Here are the early details. I am pretty positive I’ll be able to make it again this year and hope if you’re in the area or are able to, you can, too.
- Audiobook fan? Don’t miss the kick off of this summer’s Sync program, where you can download free audiobooks of classics *and* current YA titles every single week. This is such a neat program.
- I talked about the new Judy Blume covers (I can’t get enough of the middle grade cover for Are You There God).
- These kid lit inspired cakes are so cool.
- I’m a big fan of the Charlotte’s Web shower curtain you can pick up in Book Fetish.
- My “Beyond the Bestsellers” series looks at what you should read next or hand to fans of Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.