Recently at Book Riot

Written by: Kelly on July 17, 2015.

Even though we’ve been on a vacation here at STACKED, I’ve been writing quite a bit over at Book Riot. We’ll be back to our regular programming here on Monday, but in the mean time, you can catch up with everything over there:

In honor of Harper Lee day, I wrote about how and why To Kill A Mockingbird isn’t a “YA” book, with some grappling about what the definition of “YA” is at all.

How we can — and why we should — combat fat phobia in YA books. I talk quite a bit here, too, about graphic novels for teens that are depicting fat characters in great ways.

Two “3 On A YA Theme” posts: first love in YA and YA books with ice cream on the cover.

Written by: Kelly on July 18, 2014.

Since I’ve changed up the biweekly “Links of Note” posts into something a little different, I haven’t been linking to some of the stuff I’ve been writing at Book Riot back over here at Stacked. Since I’ve been writing a little more over there — and soon will be adding a new regular feature I’m really excited about (I’ll get to that in a second) — I thought I’d do a roundup of what I’ve been talking about at the Riot.

Reading Pathways: Blake Nelson — if you’ve wanted to read any of Nelson’s work but don’t know where to begin, I’ve created a pathway into his books. These are good starting places with an idea for what he’s writing about and why you might want to pick it up.

66 YA books publishing between July and September to get on your radar — I put together a YA preview at the beginning of the year and wanted to tackle the second half of the year. It got so long, though, I have to split it into two.

The Library is Not a “Netflix” for Books — I think the title says it all. It’s a false comparison that bothers me because it reduces all that a library is and does.

In His Own Words: Walter Dean Myers — I pulled together some of Myers’s talks, articles, and passionate pleas for books, diversity, and reading with kids in a tribute. Included is Myers’s talk at SLJ’s Day of Dialog from 2012, when he was a keynote speaker.

My Grandpa, The Non-Reader — I don’t like to blog a lot of personal stuff, but I was doing some shelf rearranging in my house a few weeks ago and stumbled across my unopened copy of Marley and Me and decided it was time to talk about why that book is important to me.

LEGO Stories: Your New Favorite Tumblr — Do you know about the LEGO Stories tumblr? It’s a blast. I pulled out some of my favorite LEGO stories they’ve put together.

The Perfectly Shaped Treat: Literary Cookie Cutters — I went down an Etsy hole one afternoon and pulled out some bookish cookie cutters. I’m pretty positive I’m going to follow this one up with some bookish dishes at some point. I think I could build an entire literary kitchen.

Book Fetish

I’ve been doing the Book Fetish feature for a few months, sharing responsibility with another Rioter. But now that she’s settled back into her routine, I’m giving it back over to her fully. No worries though: I still plan on writing about neat bookish things, and I’ve been asked to create my own weekly feature to take the place of doing this one. I’ll be putting together a weekly “Three on a Theme” series, featuring three YA books or YA book-related things each week that center around a single theme. It’s my hope it’ll delve into lesser-known YA, into backlist, and into fun YA stuff that isn’t what you’re already seeing everywhere. This will be in addition to the “Beyond the Bestsellers” series, which I’m still putting together semi-regularly. The series will kick off (fingers crossed) July 23 and run on Wednesdays.

Here are the last few Book Fetish posts I’ve done. Rather thank link you to the words, you can just click on the image and get to the post because it’s more fun that way:

There are some other really exciting things on the horizon with what I’ll be doing at Book Riot, and I can’t wait to begin sharing that stuff as it comes down the pike.