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Kid Lit Con 2011

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If you’ll remember with me, I talked about attending last year’s KidLitCon in Minneapolis, and I talked about how this conference, unlike any ALA or BEA event, is much more about interacting with and getting to know other names in the kidlit world than it is about the books. It was at KidLitCon where I got to meet and hang out with Alea, where I had the chance to hear Maggie Stiefvater talk about why blogging rocks, where I got to meet and hang out with authors whose books I’d read and adored, and where I finally was able to put a face to the names of the blogs I’d read and found as invaluable resources to me, both as a reader and as a librarian. It was also here I learned about the vast amount of resources available for kidlit bloggers that I may not have otherwise discovered.

Well, KidLitCon 2011 planning is well underway. It’s being held September 16 and 17 in Seattle and co-organized by Colleen of Chasing Ray and Jackie of Interactive Reader.

This year’s keynote speaker is none other than Scott Westerfeld, and the event’s being held in the Hotel Monaco, which boasts fish (yes fish!) you can have in your room during the course of your stay. Not to mention how beautiful it looks, nor that it’s right in the heart of downtown Seattle.

Registration and a call for proposals for the event are open now, and there is a discount for registering before August 1. Anyone in the kidlit world can attend the event, as well as propose a panel topic that will interest bloggers.

Even though it’s a bit of a costly event, this is one conference worth attending. It’s conveniently held on a Friday night and all day on Saturday, so it’s one that requires little or no time off work. I think of all the conferences and events I’ve gone to, KidLitCon has been one of the most memorable, if for no other reason than the intimacy that the event allows and the inspiration it breeds. It’s easy to connect with people who are passionate about the same things you are. For me, the cost is entirely worthwhile, as I think it’s one of the events that can’t be replicated elsewhere. This conference isn’t about the free books. It’s about the community. And that’s the kind of thing that could never be replicated at an event like BEA or ALA.

For more information about the conference, check out this link and make sure you follow the updates about the conference via KidLitCon’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. Man, I love that image of the Space Needle, don’t you?

If you’re teetering on whether or not to go, I strongly suggest doing it. It should be an exciting, fun, and engaging weekend and one that will leave you walking away with a lot to think about.

Level Up by Gene Luen Yang

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I am always so charmed by everything Gene Luen Yang writes, and his newest graphic novel, Level Up, is no exception.  His latest centers on Dennis Ouyang, a high school student whose parents desperately want him to become a doctor.  Dennis, on the other hand, would much rather play video games – maybe even professionally one day.  Dennis makes it into a good college, but when his dad – the person who exerted the most parental pressure on him – dies, he slacks off, staying at the arcade until all hours, skipping school, and failing his classes.  He’s placed on academic probation and eventually kicked out of college.
That’s when three angels show up and begin exerting that same pressure – plus a healthy dose of guilt – to become a doctor on Dennis.  They’re able to convince the dean to reinstate Dennis, and they also convince Dennis that he should make it his goal to work hard, get into medical school, and become a gastroenterologist (a poop doctor).  They tell him this is his destiny.  
Just as in the two previous works I’ve read by Yang (American Born Chinese and The Eternal Smile), things are not what they seem.  All is revealed at the end, and of course I can’t say anything more because that would spoil things.  But the reveal is a good one, giving the reader insight into the characters of both Dennis and his father.  It’s also heartwarming and a little weepy.
Like any good story, there’s more than one theme at work here.  We learn a lot about Dennis’ relationship with his father, which is certainly the primary aim, but we also see the development of Dennis’ friendships with his classmates in medical school and see how a teenager strikes out on his own to become an adult (something rarely seen in books – so few are about 20-somethings!).  Typical for Yang, there’s also a good dose of humor.
The art is done by relative newcomer Thien Pham.  It’s nothing hugely remarkable – cute without being childish, with a lot of soft colors that emphasize how adorable the angels are.  It’s nice to look at and he clearly has talent, I just tend to prefer bolder colors and firmer lines.
This is such a great book for 20-somethings (like me). Dennis starts out as a teenager but grows into an adult in medical school, making him around my age near the end.  Beyond the age equivalency, though, is the inclusion of the videogames: the front of the book is an old-school gameboy, and Dennis talks about playing the original Nintendo Entertainment System frequently, both of which my generation is very familiar with.  Today’s teens are a little too young to have grown up with these (relative) pioneers in gaming.  While there are no references to Duck Hunt or blowing on game consoles, Dennis does play Pac-Man and other arcade and NES games extensively.  Despite its YA designation, I feel like Level Up was written more with my age group in mind.
Copy borrowed from my local library.

Stupid Fast by Geoff Herbach

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I had a conversation with my book club kids a couple weeks ago about the power of one summer. We’d just finished reading Siobhan Vivian’s Same Difference and I was curious whether they believed one person could change radically over the course of one season. I’m a believer in the notion that people can, given the right situations and right circumstances, and I was pleased to hear my teens thought the same thing. In fact, they believe people can change completely, even in just a couple of weeks.

The reason I bring up this idea is because it’s the big thing at play in Geoff Herbach’s debut novel Stupid Fast. This book might easily be at the top of my 2011 favorites list, with its fantastic story line, strong voice, well-played themes, and for its incredible appeal for both guys and girls.

Felton Reinstein is a loser. I mean, the kind of guy who loser movies and books are written about. He’s never been the biggest nor the strongest and he’s even earned himself the nickname of squirrel nuts (for reasons I hope I don’t need to explain). Fortunately, Felton’s got about the best friend he can have in Gus — that is, until Gus’s family takes a summer away in Venezuela and things tumble inexplicable out of control.

But in a good way.

Suddenly, Felton’s no longer the scrawny guy. He’s no longer the guy that people pick on. He’s become, in his own terms, stupid fast. He’s become a jock extraordinaire, and he takes his talents out to the football field, where he suddenly becomes the MVP. For real — this guy can outrun and outplay anyone, and now there’s even the possibility of being scouted by big name university football coaches.

And lucky for Felton, despite his best friend moving away from the summer, he’ll be making a new friend. But not the kind of friend Gus was. No, this time he’ll be making a girlfriend in Aleah, the girl who, along with her family, is renting Gus’s house for the summer. And maybe, just maybe, Felton might fall in love for the first time.

Stupid Fast is the kind of story I love, as it tackles the challenges of growing up in such a realistic, funny, and honest way. But more than that, this story delves into some really heavy issues, including interracial dating and social class. Herbach’s story takes place in a small town in western Wisconsin (which, by all my bets and knowledge of western Wisconsin, is modeled after Platteville). It reminded me a lot of one of my all-time favorite books, Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s The Dairy Queen, incidentally also set in small town Wisconsin.

Let me start by digging into the structure of this novel. It’s told in a diary format. The thing is, since it’s told through the “diary” entry of a guy, it’s nothing like a typical diary. Instead, it’s much more candid and much less reliant on what Felton was feeling. It’s, if you will, a play-by-play of the events that led up to the moment he started writing. The entire diary is the set up for the story, and the entry is written over only the course of one night. But the book itself chronicles more than one night — it chronicles the entire summer before (and then some). Felton’s at a turning point in his life, and he knows it. That turning point is one he knows he has to face head on, and the only way he can do it is by reflecting upon the events that helped turn him from the class joke to the class jock. Herbach gets this sort of epiphany perfectly, and it’s entirely suited to who Felton is as a character. We learn with him as we reflect with him, and we’re able to appreciate the entire journey of his summer with him step by step. But the thing is, we’re not handed the story through Felton, either: we know there is something incredibly heart breaking that he is trying to figure out and understand as it relates to his family, and we’re not entirely privy to it. We have to work along with Felton to put the pieces together and come to understand why this reflection is necessary.

Felton as a character is one of the best male leads I’ve read in a while. Never does he sway into being too emotional and never does he sway into becoming too much of a joker. One of my biggest pet peeves in a story that’s male-voice driven is that it can too easily go one way or the other; often, I think authors rely too much on making their males too funny and too stereotypically “guy.” Felton isn’t. Felton has a good sense of humor but it’s never over-the-top, and he’s got the right balance of seriousness with emotional insight. We understand how Felton feels when it comes to romance, to his best friend, and to his staggering physical changes, and we understand why he feels so out of place in his family. It’s well paced and well developed. He’s a typical guy’s guy, and the things he goes through are, without doubt, relatable to the vast majority of guy readers. Moreover, though, this is the kind of male voice that appeals to female readers, too, since it’s not overly macho and not overly immature. Herbach strikes just the right balance.

Moreover, the character growth in Felton is enjoyable to watch. Although he’s fixated on the physical changes — which are naturally the most easy to see for him — as readers, we experience first hand the emotional changes, too. And this brings me back to a point I brought up earlier: what this book does so well is integrate huge issues into the story without making them Huge Issues.

Felton falls in love in this story. He meets Aleah, a girl who is a piano prodigy and who is spending the summer in this small town while her father takes a visiting faculty position at the local college. But Aleah is so different from himself. For starters, she’s African American. Not only that, but she’s in an entirely different social class than he is. Felton’s nervous to not only be attracted to someone so different from him and so different from everything he’s been exposed to in his life, but he’s also making himself more nervous by actually following his heart and getting to know Aleah better. Before that summer, Felton wouldn’t have had the nerve to do it. He would have let the opportunity pass him. But this summer? He goes all out for love, and in the process, learns that the things he thinks are hurdles to overcome are nothing but mental set backs he uses as excuses not to put himself out there and try new things.

The romance in this book is incredibly sweet and a little heartbreaking, too. It’s a very guy romance, as well, and I don’t think guys will have a problem reading it. I loved Aleah as a character, and I feel like she’s really the balance Felton needed. The setting, too, is pitch perfect for both the romance and for the transformative growth Felton experiences.

There is so much more I could talk about in this book, including the powerful family story that occurs, but I won’t because this is a book you need to read and unravel yourself. This is a richly layered story with huge reader appeal. It’s well paced, funny, and it will appeal to fans of realistic coming-of-age stories. It’s fairly clean, meaning that this is the kind of book I’d feel comfortable giving to readers 12 and up, and it’s one that I think would make an excellent book club choice for teen readers. It reminded me a lot of Murdock’s Dairy Queen series, both because of setting and because of the use of sports and family as a vehicle of growth. This book is one that I sure hope gets some Morris consideration this year, as it’s a debut of note.

Bonus: this is an original paperback release title, too, meaning it’s budget friendly.

Finished copy picked up at Book Blogger Convention. That means it’s available now!

What I’m Reading Now

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I haven’t done an honest Twitter-style “What I’m Reading Now” lately, but now is the perfect time for it since I’ve been such a reading machine these past couple of weeks.  Here’s what’s been on my bedside table lately, in 140 characters or fewer. I’ll review a few of these in more depth a bit later.

Shelter by Harlan Coben
Another adult author tackles YA – but succeeds! Tight plotting, suspense, a wry male voice & interesting (albeit cliched) supporting chars.

The Lost Heiress by Catherine Fisher
Sequel to The Dark City. The writing is merely serviceable and the plot ho-hum, but it’s just barely interesting enough to keep me reading.

Level Up by Gene Luen Yang
Cute story with Yang’s signature “nothing is what it seems” twist at the end. Good choice for the 20-something set who grew up with (S)NES.

Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier
Interesting time-travel premise but frustrating due to it only being half a story – clearly written for sequels and not executed well.

Forgotten by Cat Patrick
Plot hole-ridden but enjoyable debut about a girl who can’t remember her past but can see her future. Cute romance & a suspenseful mystery.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (audiobook)
In his own voice, Gladwell relates what makes people successful – turns out we don’t have a lot of control over it. Discouraging? A little.

All These Things I’ve Done by Gabrielle Zevin
In a future where chocolate is illegal, the daughter of a dead chocolate mobster must protect her family (& fall in love). Good, not great.

AudioSynced, July Edition

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Welcome to another edition of AudioSynced, the monthly roundup of audiobook news and reviews from around the blogosphere hosted by Abby (the) Librarian and us here at STACKED. Apologies for the slight delay in this month’s edition, but it’s been busy! June is Audiobook Month, and there have been a ton of wonderful submissions of reviews, posts, and more all about audiobooks.

If you’ve posted an audiobook review or otherwise blogged about audiobooks in June, leave a comment in the links and we’ll add your link to the post.

Audiobook News & Fun

  • Here’s a quick overview from Beyond Her Book (A Publisher’s Weekly blog) about June is Audiobook Month, how it started, and why it matters.
  • For the second year in a row, Sync, the Young Adult Audiobook Community, is offering up free downloadable audiobooks of a current popular YA title and a classic title. Each week, they share a new title, through August 17. This week, they’re offering Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother and Franz Kafka’s The Trial. The schedule of downloads is available here, and you can get the books by clicking here.
  • The Audio Publishers Association posted their 2011 Audie Award Winners. You can even listen to clips of the winning titles.
  • Booklist named their Voice of Choice this year, and it’s Katherine Kellgren. Check out the links about her career and why she’s such an in demand audio narrator.
  • This is probably one of the most fun things I’ve seen in a while! Becky at RA for All and the earlier-linked Beyond Her Book blog both shared a link from acclaimed audiobook narrator Scott Brick, who has been tweeting how audiobooks are created. And they filmed the tweets. Check it all out. Talk about an inside look at audioobook creation.
  • I admit to not blinking an eye about the drama surrounding the children’s book meant for adults Go the Bleep to Sleep, but when I heard it was being narrated by Samuel L Jackson? Yep, I downloaded it. It’s available for free download, if you’re as curious as I was.
  • Nicole at Linus’s Blanket shared her rules for audiobook listening, following audiobook week. Helpful hints and ideas for both the new listeners and seasoned listeners. I don’t know about you, but I love reading about people’s reading/listening experiences.

Celebrating Audiobook Week

Tons of bloggers took advantage of the week of June 11-18 to celebrate Audiobook week, and it’s worth your time to check out these links!

  • Jen, host of Audiobook Week at Devourer of Books, shared an interview with Susan, audiobook guru and co-founder of Audiobook Jukebox. This is a fantastic audiobook resource!
  • Check out the midweek meme to see what bloggers are enjoying in their audiobook listening.
  • I’m a little ashamed how little I’ve listened to, but with no more commute in my life, it’s been hard to fit it in. Perhaps I should revisit some of the Audiobook Week posts from last year and try some of those techniques.

Audiobook Reviews

Since so many reviewers shared their links during Audiobook week, it’s likely I’ll miss a link or two. I’m trying to spice this up with new names, too, so if you’re a new audiobook reviewer, don’t be shy! Just drop a line in the comments and I’ll add it to the list.

  • “I also really appreciated that the book was tailored to the listener, not the reader. By this I mean that whenever the text read “If you’re reading this,” it was changed to “If you’re listening to this.” It’s a nice touch that iced the experience for me,” says Kim in her review of Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything.
  • “Narrator Stephen Briggs, who has also narrated a number of Terry Pratchett’s other books, was an ideal choice for this production. His deep commanding voice perfectly agreed with the heavy themes of faith, gods, and survival that Nation covers, and, in fact, it often seemed like he was issuing an edict from on high,” says Jen in her review of Terry Pratchett’s Nation.
  • “I appreciated Cristin Milioti’s somewhat husky voice that’s different from the typical teen girl voice that a lot of narrators use in YA audiobooks. She does a nice job of keeping characters separate, although she does make some odd choices as far as accents,” says Abby in her review of Kathy Reichs’s Virals.
  • This is a new blog to me, and there are a ton of wonderful audiobook resources linked on the right side (add them to your reader!). But, The Guided Earlobe says of Buried Secrets by Joseph Finder that, “Holter Graham has a great voice for narration and he uses it well here. Graham captures the character of Nick Heller perfectly, giving him a bit of snark when needed, as well as allowing us to hear the pressures of the case piling on his shoulders.”