The Sassy Librarian

2011: 334 Books or A Reader's Year in Review

2012-01-24T09:31:00.000-08:00

As a reader, 2011 was the year I totally rocked Goodreads. A social network comprised of readers, Goodreads provides one stop shopping for customized lists based on my tastes (their suggestion algorithm is better than Amazon.com for me), for reliable reader reviews, and for accurate lists of series, including the prequels and interbook novellas that need to be read in the right order. Yes, you can have friends and network just like any other social network, but for me it's more important to have the above key needs met when I'm choosing what to read next. Oh. One other thing. Did I mention the data?

*Cue Hallelujah chorus here!!*

That's right - DATA. Librarians live for data. Did you know know that? Did you think we were all cat's eyeglasses-wearing, shushy frowners in cardigans? You are sadly mistaken. Librarians are information professionals and we heart data in all its forms, particularly when it informs us of our patron's needs and helps us understand our libraries better.

I find my love affair with data is part of my personal life as well. Because of my profession, I follow numerous blogs, read several professional journals a week, and get alerts to the new publications of authors I trust. This results in a continual bombardment of books that I need to read just to keep up with my profession, to say nothing of those books that I simply WANT to read (a list overwhelming on its own). Then I want to keep track of the books after I've read them, either by remembering my rating or review and maybe keeping an overall idea of my statistics. I'm curious about the numbers!

Goodreads not only helps me keep track of the long, long list of books I want to read, but also allows me to organize that information in a valuable way. One of my biggest issues has always been when I think of a book, where do I find it? Is it on my shelf waiting for me? In electronic form on my iPad? Did I buy it for the library, so I'd find it there? Was a friend talking to me about it and she has a copy I can borrow?

The screenshot here shows the "shelves" available on my Goodreads account. The first three, Read, Currently Reading, and To-read are default settings for everyone's Goodreads account, but you can add your own customized shelves. You can see that my shelves are mainly about location and mirror the questions I ask myself in the previous paragraph about where I can locate the book. The-latest is a shelf that mirrors my widget for this Blogger account which displays the titles I've read recently. Now when I want to choose a book from the to-read pile, I can easily skim my shelf and see at a glance where to find the book as well as the summary and the reviews I need to remind myself what it was that drew me to this book in the first place.

Once I've read them, I change the main shelf from to-read to read and add in the date I finished the book. (This date read piece is actually my major pet peeve with the iPad Goodreads application - you can change the shelf easily on any book but it doesn't have a place for you to put in the date read. So frustrating for me to have to log on to the site on Monday and change all my weekend reading to the right date.)

Here you can see how Goodreads displays your year's statistics. Your total books displayed across the bar at the top with your longest book highlighted in a box on the side. (Outlander by Diana Gabaldon for me, although with deference to those people who love that series, I really didn't like it.) I do like the little book covers displayed and love that my books are all separated out by my star rating. This has actually made it much easier for me in choosing blog-worthy books or series to write about.

Things I would wish for? I would love to be able to pull reports from my shelves - customizing the year, star levels, etc. Sorting by genre (paranormal, romance, mystery, historical fiction, etc.) would be a great help for when I want to recommend something to a reader or look for themed lists for my library website. Being able to see how many books I've read by month would also be nice (and not have to use Goodreads app in Facebook to put my titles in the Facebook Timeline feature). I suspect I'm more productive over the summer, but then there are weeks where I think that's not true. Customized numbers by shelf would be a help, too. A woman can dream, right?

So 334 books later, I'm happy that I met my goal of reading 300 books for 2011, particularly because I only committed to that number in March and felt REALLY pressured during December vacation to read, read, read! Probably about 15 of those books are short stories or novellas read in ebook form, but the number does NOT include my rereads (which would bring the number to over 400 but I was only counting new books read). My romance novel kick made reaching this number easy since fiction has always been quicker for me to read than nonfiction (which I also love). I would really love to set goals for myself in different genres, but without the ability to easily access the data (ahem, Goodreads!) I think that's creating a lot of work for myself.

My goal for next year? To read 366 books - essentially one for each day during our leap year - which I don't think should be a problem. With Goodreads at my side, heavyweight reading is practically effortless.

Book Review: The Queen of the Love Triangles, or Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare

2011-12-14T08:04:00.000-08:00

I checked my Goodreads account for verification, and my instincts were right that I've had Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare on my "to-read" shelf since the cover debuted back in September. I've been teetering on a razor's edge since then in anticipation, since I am head over heels in love with the Infernal Devices series (I love it much more than Mortal Instruments, but more on that later).

My December 2nd (my half-birthday, FYI) was characterized by my driving home, leaping out of the car before it came to a full stop, grabbing the Amazon box insouciantly leaning against the door with its smile/arrow, and racing inside for a full-fledged cardboard frenzy. My husband looked on indulgently, wisely not trying to talk to me during this episode, only to perk up as I was squealing at the cover (it is even more AWESOME in person than what you see on screen). His response was along the lines of "Wait, isn't that the next one in that series? When do I get to read...." *voice fading as I run upstairs to hide book from him*. Sorry, sweetheart. Librarians first.

I decided to reread Clockwork Angel first, since I remembered that, as with all Cassandra Clare novels, it was an intricately plotted work with a decent amount of characters (nothing a reader can't handle) and lots of Victorian England references. I wanted it all fresh in my mind for when I tackled the next book in the series.

It was a good thing I did (husband is re-reading it as we speak in preparation for Clockwork Prince). Not only did I enjoy it tremendously, but it reminded me how much I liked and admired Tessa as a protagonist who is trying to find out - literally - who and what she is. Kidnapped in a nefarious plan involving her brother who has moved from New York to London ahead of her, Tessa finds herself in the custody of two horrifying women and forced to regularly shape-shift, a talent she didn't know she possessed.

Saved by Shadowhunters, Tessa is brought to their home, known as the London Institute, quickly becoming a part of their lives because she is a Downworlder, or supernatural creature, although what kind of Downworlder no one really knows. At first she is kept with them out of kindness and the fact that she obviously holds the key to understanding a potential threat, but relationships begin to form. While searching for her missing brother, Nathaniel, she finds herself having feelings of friendship toward the gentle and handsome James Carstairs while his best friend William Herondale stirs up more tumultuous emotions. Diving deep into the parts of London where the occult overlaps the mundane world, Tessa is faced with the forbidding knowledge that someone knows more about her than she does about herself - and that they want her at any price.

In Clockwork Prince, Tessa is still a hot property, pursued by the "Magister" who continues to develop frightening clockwork automatons to serve his evil intentions. Her brother continues to be at large and seems to have an insider from the Institute working with him. Will is possessed by the desperate need to push Tessa away while secretly enlisting the help of warlock Magnus Bane (who is a fabulous character that only gets better with a better acquaintance) to determine the origins of his "curse." Will's family situation is revealed with startling results, but his alienation of Tessa has unforseen consequences as she and Jem (James) become closer, igniting feelings in Tessa which begin to compete with her turbulent feelings for Will. Political machinations in the Shadowhunter world add dimension and layers to a fabulous story.

Tessa vs. Clary. I think a big reason I love Tessa as a protagonist (versus Clary who really gets on my nerves - a lot, see mini-rant below*) is not only due to her love of literature and poetry, a love she shares with Will, but the fact that she wants to find answers to her questions - questions about herself, her family, about Jem's addiction and Will's family problems, about what the Magister is really up to and about what the Shadowhunter world is doing to the people she cares about at the Institute. Tessa is curious, in the best possible way because she wants to use her knowledge to help the people she cares about. She makes Clary seem like an intellectual lightweight. I'd love to see a Clary/Tessa cage match. Clary might be a Shadowhunter, but Tessa has real grit and the shape-changing thing.

It's Gaslight not Steampunk. Here's an interesting tidbit. The unbelievably talented Meljean Brook, author of The Iron Duke (a favorite steampunk reread of mine) and Heart of Steel as well as some great novellas, has an equally as arresting blog and she published the following image which blew my mind. In past blog posts, I had categorized the Infernal Devices series as steampunk because of the clockwork automatons. Was I wrong! It turns out that steampunk with acknowledged supernatural elements (like the vampires, werewolves, and warlocks of Clare's Shadowhunter world) make the book fall into the gaslight genre. I love this name (it sounds so much more romantic, doesn't it?) and I would say that with my love of paranormal, I would probably rank my love of gaslight above my love of steampunk.

Queen of Love Triangles...and Love Scenes. I honestly wish that Clare wrote adult books because her ability to write love scenes that sizzle is BAR NONE. Clare even says, "All my books are, in some sense or another, love stories. And complicated, passionate, maybe-it-will-work-out-maybe-it-won't romance is my favorite kind." I read plenty of adult romance and the ability to truly capture yearning and sexual tension is actually very hard to do. Passion, yes. The physicality of who is touching what when, you bet - plenty of authors do a terrific job of doing just that. But yearning, aching, heart-stopping, breath-stealing yearning is very rare and extremely special.

A big piece of why she is so good at this is her concept of who romantic characters should be.

There is little sexier than watching someone excel at something they do extraordinarily well — the difference between a bad boy is that they know they do it really well and that it’s turning you on; the good boys don’t. And there should be a dash of vulnerability. Your boy doesn’t have to be tormented but the girl or boy who he loves has to be able to get under his skin and pierce that armor, or it’s no fun. (Cassandra Clare from Malinda Lo's interview with her.)

Combine this piece with her propensity for compelling gay/bi characters and Clare becomes an author who understands love and passion in all its forms. I adored Magnus Bane in the Mortal Instruments series (its wonderful to watch the progression of his relationship with Alec and his patient understanding waiting for Alec to come out to his parents has my total devotion) and the friendship and assistance he offers to Will in this series continues to develop his complex character.

*Mini-rant* After rereading the first three of the Mortal Instruments series in preparation for reading the fourth book, City of Fallen Angels, I had to actually put the book down and not finish it. I want to go on record as saying I unequivocally admire Cassandra Clare and love her writing, but she does something that really bothers me as a reader. She tortures her characters.

I'm totally serious about this. It often feels like no one is allowed to just be happy and this makes me crazy. I'm not saying anyone would enjoy reading about happy people, but I think it's perfectly reasonable to have characters who can actually be happy in a relationship while tumultuous, horrifying things (like armies of scary clockwork automatons after you, for example) are happening to you and the person you love. I am not trying to infer that I don't enjoy a juicy love triangle with the best of them, but I find myself emotionally wrung out after reading them. Mortal Instruments gave me nightmares and I ended up really getting cranky with Clary, although I know it's not her fault the poor thing isn't given a moment's peace. I'm absolutely going to pick up the book again and read it, but now I'm annoyed that I have to be in a more patient mood to do it. *end mini-rant*

Cassandra Clare is a fantastic author who ranks high on my list of all-time fantasy/action/gaslight greats. A wonderful bonus to those who admire her is the fact that she is also an author who regularly reflects on the writing process and her craft (in addition to feeding us terrific tidbits about upcoming books and ideas). Her blog is one I always enjoy reading in my Google Reader as a result of this outlook. Other great sources of information about Clare's work is her Twitter account since she posts regularly, and her Facebook page. Pick the source of information that best fits your fandom.

There are plenty of great future books we can look forward to:

May 2012 - City of Lost Souls (Mortal Instruments series)
September 2013 - City of Heavenly Fire (last in the Mortal Instruments series) and Clockwork Princess (the last in the Infernal Devices series)

Clare has spoken of a future series, The Dark Artifices, set five years after the last Mortal Instruments book (so around 2018) which would be set in the Los Angeles Institute (Clare lived in L.A. when she was an entertainment writer). Since Mortal Instruments characters would presumably be in their twenties, she has said she could envision them doing cameo appearances so we can see how they are doing.

Suffice it to say, my Goodreads account is always going to include Clare's books on my to-read list, subsequent cardboard frenzy guaranteed.

Create Great Library Usage Reports from Google Calendar

2011-11-16T06:42:00.000-08:00

Every librarian should love data. LOVE it. Data is our life's blood because it allows us to keep track of what direction (intentional or unintentional) our program takes. Not only is data beneficial for us, but is the unfortunate case that many an administrator responds better to seeing actual numbers associated with key talking points as we go over programmatic highlights.

In my library, a big piece of our data tracking is our shared Google calendar which records all our classroom usage (we have three classrooms in our space and we also sometimes schedule classes on the library floor). We moved away from our shared Outlook calendar because we kept getting frustrated that if our computer crashed, the formatting and some of the data would be lost, which made us crazy. As early Google adopters, Google calendar (which my fellow Upper School librarian and I were using personally) seemed like an obvious substitute.

We can see each other's personal calendar (to remember doctor's appointments, etc.) and decided that we would set up each classroom with its own calendar, largely because we can control the color coding and see usage at a glance when teachers want to set up an appointment to come to the library.

But there has always been one annoying part when it comes time to collate the data. We have had to input the data from each class (teacher, class name, number of students, collaboration level, skills taught, laptop usage) into a Filemaker database in order to generate usage reports. Gah! So tedious to do, especially since we do it at the end of each semester, when we are usually exhausted.

We started off our day this morning kvetching about needing to crunch the data and wondering if there was an easy way to get the reports in Google Docs rather than using the class by class input technique. Now, I'm sure there are plenty of librarians reading this going "duh," but in my end of trimester haze, I had the brainwave of doing a search on extracting data from Google calendar and discovered (for FREE!!!) GTimeReport.com.

It couldn't be simpler to use. You just have your calendar/Google docs open and give GTimeReport permission to access your Google account. You get this snazzy window (you can see all my various calendars in each different colors) and you can simply choose the time/date parameters for your report. Here's what you get:

Give it a few seconds and POP! It opens up Google Docs and we get the above beautiful report. You can see how we can sort by date, time, duration, the bell, and you can even see our occasional listing of skills taught. Now that I realize how it formats the report, I think we will use the "where" field (which we can ignore since our "where" is taken care of by the calendar name) for indicating the number of students or our collaboration levels (L1 = students are in library without teacher and no joint instruction, L2 = teacher is with student but no collaborative instruction is taking place, and L3 = teacher and librarian instruct students together and assess lesson's efficacy throughout project).

Anything that gives quick and easy (and FREE!!!) data is a boon to any librarian's heart and if you are already using Google calendar, then this might be a helpful addition to your repertoire. Next up for us - enabling the appointment feature so teachers can book themselves. :-)

How to Have a Library When Your School Is Evacuated

2011-09-28T07:51:00.000-07:00

Market St. Bridge between Kingston and Wilkes-Barre

I'll be honest. I don't actually think about the fact that my school's campus is about a mile from the Susquehanna River unless I am actually driving over one of bridges. But that is undoubtedly due to the fact that I am not a native of the Wyoming Valley, or even originally from northeast Pennsylvania.

Downtown Wilkes-Barre during the Agnes Flood of 1972

Because those natives are scarred from the many devastating floods that this area has regularly experienced. With the campus devastation from the Agnes Flood of 1972 fresh in their mind, many of the school's senior teachers and administrators do not take the threat of the river reaching flood level lightly. After the Agnes Flood, there was a concerted effort to bring in a massive levee system to protect towns from this economic and emotional devastation in the future. Some of the towns, because a gigantic concrete hill would obscure the views to the river, voted to not build one, with unfortunate results.

The Wyoming Seminary campus

As the news outlets began to make predictations of the river reaching flood stage, Wyoming Seminary College Preparatory School realized that it had to evacuate our campus. We are a boarding/day school, so while our day students were evacuating with their parents if they were in the floodplain, or just kicking back in their house, elated school was canceled if they were high and dry in the surrounding mountains, almost 200 boarders and residential faculty kicked into high gear, moving furniture and paperwork to the second floor of all buildings and packing their belongings.

It's a testimony to our community that day students immediately opened their homes to boarders, with over half of them being quickly brought into day student houses for a three to four day stay. The rest of them (largely newer students only at school for a couple of weeks and therefore with a smaller friend network) were taken with residential faculty to the beautiful facilities of Camp Orchard Hill. A skateboarding park, climbing tower, lake facilities, beach volleyball court and air conditioned cabins make this location a veritable paradise for evacuated teens! Especially considering that a large percentage of the students were new to the school, the bonding that took place probably gave these kids a better start to the school year than simply being in class would have.

Another great benefit of Camp Orchard Hill's location was purely a selfish one. It happens to be two-tenths of a mile from the house my husband and I purchased three years ago when we moved out of the boys dorm. Commuting to work could not have been easier!

We got the text that school was closed Wednesday night and an email from the Dean of the Upper School that all on campus faculty and any off campus faculty who could make it (roads were beginning to close) should come to a meeting in our main auditorium to get further instructions on how best to help. Buses were coming at 2:30 that day to take everyone on campus up to Camp Orchard Hill since Kingston was subject to a mandatory evacuation no later than 4 pm, with anyone lingering risking arrest.

Faculty and students were busy moving furniture and files up (all of admissions was spread around the 2nd floor library). Since the heavy lifting was well in hand, I began to think: what were students going to do for three to four days in the middle of a camp in the country? We weren't sure about wifi access at the time, so reading material was a necessity. How could I create a library on the move?

Kirby Library has a great supply of board games, so naturally all those went into my car trunk, as did the library's Wii and four color-coded controllers. I pulled about 30 popular magazines off the magazine wall - all the fashion, news, music and entertainment, sports, and a smattering of science and literary magazines (I was thinking about the faculty). The bigger challenge was the books. What to choose when the clock was ticking?

It felt almost like those game shows they had where contestants were given a shopping cart and told to dash through a supermarket, throwing items into a cart to achieve a certain dollar amount.

Linger and Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Impossible by Nancy Werlin
Generation Dead and Kiss of Life by Daniel Waters

Rucker Park Setup and Rikers High by Volponi
It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
Snitch by Allison Van Diepen
The Book Thief by Zusak
The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
American Wife and Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
The first five books of the Georgia Nicholson series by Louise Rennisen
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
Trickster's Choice and Trickster's Queen by Tamora Pierce
Fight Club and Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

Keeping Faith and The Pact by Jodi Picoult
Dairy Queen trilogy by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Shooter, Crystal and Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers
Seth Baumgartner's Love Manifesto by Eric Luper
The Wicked Lovely series by Melissa Marr
The Season by Sarah MacLean
Vegan, Virgin, Valentine by Carolyn Mackler
Misery and It by Stephen King
Lady MacBeth's Daughter and Ophelia by Lisa Klein
Sister Wife by Shelley Hrdlitschka
The Physik Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe

For someone quickly pulling books off shelves, I think I must have been aiming for a good mix that would appeal to adults (the faculty supervising the students) and the kids themselves. In retrospect, I could kick myself for not including graphic novels since the boarding population is very international (over 20 countries are represented at Wyoming Seminary) and our Asian population in particular love manga.

I created a user "Evacuation Flood" in the software and checked out all the books to that account. Kids were told that they could take whatever they wanted back to their cabins, they would just be responsible for returning anything to the library (which they did). I picked up everything on the morning they headed back to campus and packed it in my trunk (unloading it on Monday morning).

There was a little lounge cabin that I spread all the materials out in (as well as bringing 72 fresh baked chocolate chip cookies from the house). They were used and rummaged through, and I certainly saw kids laying on benches and reading library books.

While it was a minor contribution, I felt really great thinking that the library went with the students on the evacuation - I always like to say that "library isn't a place, not a state of mind" and I think I lived up to that motto.

Throwing Down the Gauntlet...or Don't Tell Me Catholic School Girls Aren't in Rock Songs

2011-09-15T19:45:00.000-07:00

This morning, I was listening in the car to the Billy Joel classic, "Only the Good Die Young," and it struck me, what are the songs that have Catholic School girls in them? There must be a decent number, because any girl (like me) who has actually been a teenager walking around in a Catholic school uniform can relate how many obscene statements men and boys make toward you. The myth of the "wild" Catholic school girl is embedded in the American heterosexual male psyche, much to our dismay.

Because it was about music, I said something to my husband, Icarus P. Anybody, who had just written a post about all his favorite songs that are about the radio, and he had the audacity to SCOFF at me saying he couldn't think of any references to Catholic school girls besides the Billy Joel song. I hate it when he scoffs, so I decided to do a little research to see if I was entirely deluded. Plus, I had my reputation of a Catholic school survivor, the last four years all-girls at Immaculate Conception High School in Lodi, New Jersey, to defend.

I suppose it's nice to know that the idea is inspirational for artists, even if we are just talking about musicians and writers of a certain film genre. Billy Joel definitely counts as an artist who I can admire (at least for his work, I don't know him well-enough personally), and he clearly had the hots for a Catholic school girl at some point. Take a look at some of the lyrics of "Only the Good Die Young" which came off his 1977 album, The Stranger.

Come out Virginia, don't let me wait
You Catholic girls start much too late
aw But sooner or later it comes down to fate
I might as well be the one

well, They showed you a statue, told you to pray
They built you a temple and locked you away
Aw, but they never told you the price that you pay
For things that you might have done.....

I'm guessing that the choice of "Virginia" for her name works at the syllable level as well as the symbolic one since we're all clear on what he's looking for (shame on you, Billy!). The only aspect of the song that worries me is trying to figure out how old Virginia is. I mean, read them yourself.

You got a nice white dress and a party on your confirmation
You got a brand new soul
mmmm, And a cross of gold
But Virginia they didn't give you quite enough information
You didn't count on me
When you were counting on your rosary
(oh woah woah)

They say there's a heaven for those who will wait
Some say it's better but I say it ain't
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints
the sinners are much more fun...

Was the confirmation recent?! That happens in middle school. Let's hope he's referring to a few years before his relentless courtship of poor Virginia. I'd feel a lot more comfortable if she was at least a junior, after all.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are another group fascinated with the sexuality of the girl in a plaid skirt. Their song, "Catholic School Girls Rule" of the Freaky Styley album (1985) is extremely risque. Some of the tamer lyrics (which still manage to convey the gist of the song) are:

From the cross she's raised her head
This is what the sister said
Give no love until you're wed
Live no life until you're dead

The good books says we must suppress
The good books says we must confess
But who cares what the good books says
Cause now she's taking off her dress

Is she taking off her dress? Really Chili Peppers? In your fantasies, possibly, but it sounds a little like you're complaining about religion thwarting your adolescent desires if you don't mind my saying so. There is no way that I'm linking to the video - it manages to be both bad and obscene simultaneously and no one needs that mental image.

Frank Zappa, also not known for his highbrow culture or finesse although respected by many as a musician, published his Catholic school girl tribute "Catholic Girls" on his compilation album, You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 6, which is a two-disc set of live performances recorded between 1970 and 1988. Here's is the least raunchy stanza in the whole song:

In a little white dress
Catholic girls
They never confess
Catholic girls
I got one for a cousin
I love how they go
So send me a dozen
Catholic girls
Ooooooh!
Catholic girls
Ooooooh!

I can't speak for who is in heaven, but I guarantee you that whereever Frank Zappa is, he is not accompanied by a dozen Catholic girls right now. Let's hope he grew out of this particular fetish.

One of my favorite videos featuring a Catholic school girl (which I've always thought of as quite romantic) is the 80s power ballad, "Sister Christian," by the band Night Ranger. Originally published on their 1984 album, Midnight Madness, the song was actually written by drummer Kelly Keagy for his sister, which is probably why it's actually lovely and not obscene. "Sister Christian" has actually been named one of the top 100 songs of the 1980s by VH1 and it's theme about making choices when you are young is universal. It holds up well today.

Sister Christian
Oh the time has come
And you know that you're the only one
To say O.K.
Where you going
What you looking for
You know those boys
Don't want to play no more with you
It's true

While the lyrics don't mention Catholic school girls explicitly, no one can forget the video of the Bon Jovi classic, "Runaway," from their debut album Bon Jovi released in 1984. I think the choice of having the protagonist of the song come from a Catholic school background was clearly to contrast with her present situation, namely drugs and prostitution, which is inferred by the lyrics and her nightmare dream sequence. Warning: the hair is REALLY big in this video and I am sadly not just talking about the actress/model playing the runaway.

I think it's interesting that people have commented on the fact that the school uniforms in "Sister Christian" and "Runaway" are actually authentically long, not the tarted up miniskirts (that would have gotten me a smack and instant penance from the nuns) that say "Catholic uniform" to most video producers. The Bon Jovi video still makes the actress soaking wet, for no apparent reason other than to turn her blouse see-through, so I'm not saying that it's high art, but I think it's worth noting.

A well-known video featuring Catholic school girls (although not in the lyrics) is in the early 1990s "Crazy" by Aerosmith video. One of the reasons it's so well-known is because it stars two later famous actresses, Alicia Silverstone (of Clueless and Batgirl fame) and Liv Tyler (LOTR, anyone?), who happens to be Steve Tyler's daughter (which wasn't known to the casting director when he asked her to do the video). One again, the uniform seems to be more to confirm the stereotype of wild Catholic girls, while offering contrast to their girls naughty choices along their journey. Tsk, tsk, ladies.

While it's not necessary identified as a Catholic school, most younger people today would probably remember the famous Brittany Spears video, "...Baby, One More Time" as embodying the sex appeal of the school uniform. With neither nuns or teachers to enforce the dress code in this video, it's hardly shocking that all the students have taken liberties with their uniforms, tying off shirts and wearing skirts waaaayyyy too high (do you know how uncomfortable that is sitting on cold chair in the winter?). This is from 1998, but I find myself shocked at how unbelievably young Spears looks. I want to give her a hug and a long talk about doing her homework.

Get More: Britney Spears, Music, More Music Videos

With the exception of "Baby, One More Time" all of the songs and videos on this list came out during my middle school/high school/college years, so I guess it's only right I would have been a little more aware than the average person about the role Catholic school girls play in the rock scene. It's been quite a little trip down memory lane.

Thanks, Icarus P. Anybody, and BTW, you might want to not throw down a gauntlet to your librarian wife next time. The research thing comes pretty easy, after all. *kisses*

Victorian Deliciousnesses With a Dash of Steampunk: The Parasol Protectorate Series by Gail Carriger

2011-07-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

Knowing that Gail Carriger's latest novel in the Parasol Protectorate series was due out this week (Heartless), I decided to make a point of reading all her books in the month of June to gear up for the release. I had a feeling these books were going to jibe with my recent steampunk foray and I was right.

But I ended up getting so...much...more.

I'll confess it took me a good 60 pages to get into the first book, Soulless, not because the world was so hard to understand, but because there is a distinctive rhythm to the main character's thoughts and it is her voice which predominates.

Alexia Tarabotti is a fine young Englishwoman, genteel and proper. Unfortunately, her intelligence and her appearance (a darker complexion inherited from an Italian father combined with an, ahem, ample figure) render her decidedly unfashionable. In a steampunk world in which mechanicals abound, Alexia's England also has a unique feature - the acceptance of supernaturals. Vampires and werewolves (ghosts abound as well, but they are really second class citizens) are in the upper echelons of society, with carefully drawn lines around their respective boundaries according to etiquette of the time. The individuals who become vampires and werewolves - who survive the death to become immortal - have an excess of soul and therefore have enough soul lingering after their death to inhabit their new immortal bodies. Alexia herself is the ultra-rare preternatural, or a person born without a soul. This makes her especially dangerous in the eyes of supernaturals bent on showing their power as her very touch makes them mortal and vulnerable to killing.

Alexia's curiosity, combined with an unfortunate and unprecedented vampire attack at a party, throws her in the path of Lord Conall Maccon, the Earl of Woolsey, a major player in Queen Victoria's government (the supernatural investigative kind) and the Alpha male of the Woolsey pack of werewolves. They are both attracted and slightly baffled by one another, but as their case progresses, they not only uncover a conspiracy of scientists, but realize their love for one another.

The second book, Changeless, is one that caused a tremendous brohaha upon publication (it has one hell of a cliffhanger and I would have been LIVID if I had read it when it first came out). Alexia is married to Lord Maccon and trying to find her feet in her marriage and newfound position amidst her love match. During all this, a large part of London is affected by a baffling mystery - the supernatural creatures in it cannot go about their usual business because they have become mortal (and the ghosts have all been oddly exorcised). It's as if Alexia's preternatural power is everywhere, but she has nothing to do with it. When her husband has to head north to Scotland to investigate a similar situation with his former pack (who he left under difficult circumstances), Alexia hops the nearest dirigible and follows him to help. Several murder attempts later, she does end up solving the mystery, but is given a major blow with some news that impacts her marriage to Lord Maccon. Hence the sucky cliffhanger.

Lucky for us, the next book has been out for a while. (Thank heavens.) Blameless (The Parasol Protectorate) picks up right where Changeless left off, with Alexia's marriage in the scandal sheets. She becomes the target of even more murder attempts than usual, which prompts her to surround herself with friends and flee to Italy where she thinks she will find the answers she needs (or at least good food). She does find answers, but also a seriously demented version of the Knights Templar who consider her, as someone born without a soul, to be an abomination, but one they are willing to exploit to their purposes in order to harness her power. The revelation that her father also had dealings with the Templars puts her a little closer to unraveling the mystery surrounding him, but only so far. As Lord Maccon comes to his senses and follows her to Europe, Alexia's pragmatism and fashion sense help her see what is really going on, even if she can't necessarily fix it.

In the most recent book, Heartless, Alexia is still being hunted by vampires, visited by demented ghosts, and having to decorate a new London townhouse to survive the occasional werewolf change, all while eight months pregnant. So vexing. She is so distracted by having to eat and empty her bladder all the time that it's a challenge to figure out what the cryptic messages mean about the "queen" and "danger". Add to this some disturbing behavior by a good friend and Alexia has to solve the mystery, pregnancy or no pregnancy.

The fun in the parasol protectorate series is the rompy, witty style of the writing. It's true that Carriger occasionally gets a little bogged down in the Victorian detail, and there is the scene or plot point that could have been rendered shorter (we can say that for almost every author out there, were we honest about it), but for steampunk enthusiasts, this is a super fun series worthy of consideration. Alexia's character and that of her husband's are well-drawn and lovable (if occasionally frustrating in their pig-headedness). I love several of the minor characters, particularly the fabulous and independent vampire, Lord Akeldama, as well as the scientist/milliner Madame Lefoux. It's a fascinating feature of steampunk that gay characters not only abound, but are accepted in the alternate steampunk universe without too much startled eyelash batting. I haven't decided if it's an author connection linking modernity in machines to sexual tolerance or if, in this case, if you acknowledge vampires and werewolves and what they do in the privacy of their homes, who really cares about the gay issue? It's a shame we can't take that philosophy to Washington to forward the cause of the gay movement. I bet the religious right would have a much bigger problem with vampires. MUCH bigger problem.

Author Gail Carriger (who has an extremely witty blog as part of her author website) is the pen name of Tofa Borregaard, an archeologist/anthropologist (which explains all that attention to cultural detail). Her website has TONS of interview questions that she answers in a thorough and funny manner, so any detail about her writing would be more than answered using the resources on her website. Readers new to the steampunk genre will find Carriger's introduction to be a good one (and her novels are excellent crossover books for librarians interested in hooking the romance or historical fiction reader into something a little more fantasy). I was especially appreciative of her outstanding costuming resources listed - be prepared to spend a good hour noodling around these sites and thinking of your next Halloween costume!

It's safe to say that in the many steampunk books I've read, humor - really fun, playful humor - is in short supply. Thankfully we have Gail Carriger to help us see that steampunk is not just an interesting, sexy mashup genre for the intellectual fantasy/historical fiction reader, but downright funny as well.

From Regency to Victoriana: The Agency Series by Y. S. Lee

2011-07-01T17:03:00.000-07:00

Having been on my Regency binge recently, I was a little reluctant to switch to a Victorian time period. You know, stuffy rules, supercilious morality, and the crinolines! Don't get me started on the crinolines.

But you all know about my Steampunk fetish, and truth be told, a lot of the fun of that is the juxtaposition of all that tightlaced etiquette set against adventure. The Agency series by Canadian author Y. S. Lee is no exception to this proven formula. The book jacket tantalizes with a description of a poor, savvy orphan, sentenced to death at the age of 12 for theft, who is saved by women who run an astonishingly empowering school for girls. When Mary reaches the age of 17, she confesses to being dissatisfied at the options available to her, only to have those same women smile and let her in on a secret. They run "The Agency."

Which is, in fact, a secret agency that contracts out to the government. The bureaucrats in charge just know it's a spy ring with a great deal of success, but the reason is simple. The teachers at the school know that women are ignored and overlooked, so the intelligent girls they recruit to educate can masquerade as governesses and lady's companions, gathering valuable data in their wake. Taught to defend themselves, adopt disguises, pick locks, and write in code, Mary and the other operatives end up with an arsenal that allows them to enter any situation and figure out what is going on.

In the first book, The Agency: A Spy in the House, Mary is given her first assignment as a lady's companion in a house of a wealthy merchant suspected of large scale shipping fraud. Tunneling into the dysfunctional depths of the home's relationships takes perseverance and patience, all amid the odiferous backdrop of what became known in London as "the big stink" or the heat wave that caused the Thames to smell so horrible that it produced a succession of reforms in the treatment of sewage for the city.

Mary has difficulty getting to the bottom of her "employer's" finances, until she meets up with James Easton, a well-born engineer whose brother happens to be courting the daughter of the house. James has heard rumors that the family finances are suspect and wants to ferret out the reality before an undesirable connection is made. James is infuriated and fascinated by Mary, and the feeling is quite mutual, but as the mystery comes to a close, the feelings between them are left by the wayside as they both know James is moving to India for an engineering contract and won't be back for years.

The second book, The Agency: The Body in the Tower, brings us almost a year and half later in Mary's life. She's an established and more experienced operative with a dangerous new mission. She must live as a young boy apprentice, working at a construction site of St. Stephen's Tower, a.k.a. Big Ben where a worker has "fallen" from the tower. The work is dangerous and forces Mary to remember her childhood when she would adopt the dress and mannerisms of a boy to avoid abuse, but she manages to push through her discomfort and peel back the layers of deceit. A major complication arises when James Easton, back prematurely from India and suffering from acute malaria, takes on a small commission to determine the safety conditions of the site. He recognizes Mary immediately and they are once more a team, who realize their growing feelings and the danger they pose.

A feature that pleasantly startled me was the overarching story arc regarding Mary's origins. She is confronted in each book by an aspect of her childhood she tries to painfully deny and chooses to face that fear and delve deeper rather than ignore it. Her courage and pluck - and her knowledge that as attracted as she is to James, there is much of her that he would consider unsuitable - makes her the intelligent yet vulnerable heroine we can all love and root for.

The writing is outstanding, made all the richer by author Lee's background (she has a Ph.D. in Victorian Literature and Culture and it shows in the details). The first Agency book was originally an adult mystery, but when her agent mentioned that it was a great coming of age story, Lee tweaked the character ages and shaped it as just that. Perhaps because of it's origins, the writing never talks down to the reader, having a seriousness of purpose that transmits the harsh reality of Mary's background, no matter how ladylike she behaves in the given moment.

We are lucky that there are two more books to come (thank goodness!), with the next one, The Agency: The Traitor and the Tunnel due out in 2012 for the U.S. (and August 4, 2011 for the U.K.). I've already pre-ordered my copy from amazon.co.uk (I am NOT waiting for this sequel). Lee also just announced the approval for a fourth book, tentatively titled Rivals in the City. YAY!!

I've decided to not be snobby about the Victorian period, no matter how much I love Regency, particularly when I am in good hands like that of Y. S. Lee and writers like her.

But I don't have to like crinolines.

Regency Romance for the YA Audience: Historical Romance Reader's Advisory for Teens

2011-06-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

I have been reading a LOT of Regency Romance recently and began wondering about the younger teen who might be interested in this type of book. The early Stephanie Laurens romance novels, what she terms her Regencies, would be great for them (only the later Cynster, Bastion Club and Black Cobra series are sexually explicit - the early seven or eight novels are quite light and very tasteful in terms of alluding to the physical intimacy) but what else is out there?

Irish author Cora Harrison published a fun, well-researched novel, I Was Jane Austen's Best Friend, published by Delacorte Press in 2010 that would be ideal for an audience interested in romance but minus the more explicit content. Harrison took the documented knowledge that Jane Austen's cousin, Jane Cooper, attended the same boarding school and lived with the Austen family for a time, later marrying a wealthy sea captain, and created a novel that brings the Austen family to life. Changing her name to Jenny (a nickname for Jane during the period) and making her a few years younger was a device that allowed Jenny to be a little closer to Jane, offering the reader more opportunities to see Jane as her letters and other first-hand accounts depict her as a teen. The romance between Jenny and Captain Harrison is extremely well-done. It's a light, sweet novel that would be a nice read for any fan of Jane. Harrison followed it up with a UK second book (not apparently published in the US, but you can buy it used), Jane Austen Stole My Boyfriend, in which Jane and her cousin go to Bath after Jenny becomes engaged and have adventures. I'm not a fan of how the title uses a modern colloquialism (it seems pretty flippant to me and actually more like one of the modern reinterpretations of her work, like Prom and Prejudice), so we'll see if I read it. This one was just great on its own.

But the real gem (and an author I plan on pursuing further) is The Season by Sarah MacLean. Alex, Ella, and Vivi are well-born daughters of the ton and about to have their debut, an event they are approaching with some trepidation. But fiery Alex, surrounded by her handsome older brothers, has learned to not live life by other people's rules, and when it seems like neighbor and friend Gavin, Earl of Blackmoor, is a target for a traitor, she gets involved. Gavin takes one look at Alex's new dresses and upswept hair and realizes that his feelings are no longer brotherly, and he doesn't want Alex placing herself in danger.

MacLean crafted a good little mystery here which provides a wonderful backdrop for her deft writing about the period and about the lives of these three girls, all of whom read as bold three-dimensional characters yet seem at home in their time period. Her Regency chops are excellent, with lots of accuracy and appropriate language use, and there is serious heat between Gavin and Alex (which doesn't go beyond kissing and hugging for the YA audience). Lack of more sexual intimacy aside, this book still feels like a true Regency romance, with a little less focus on the male lead than you might have in one of those books. It would be a terrific introduction for any middle school or younger high school girl ready to enter the world of romance.

Sarah MacLean is definitely an author to watch. I've ordered her adult Regency romances, Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake, Ten Ways to Be Adored When Landing a Lord, and Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke's Heart (just published in May 2011). Her website is FABULOUS (I have a serious pet peeve with difficult author websites, although I'm empathetic that so many obviously have to figure it out themselves) and clearly reflects her background in public relations, which she thankfully left to pursue a romance novel career. Thank you for your personal choices, Sarah!! She seems to be a great and witty interview based on her blog interviews (Writing and Ruminating Blog, Romance Bandits, and The Romance Dish). (Be sure to look at her author recommendations - this is a woman who knows her romance authors and isn't afraid to share her knowledge!)

So let's not leave those young newbies to the Regency romance novel to flounder, but introduce them to the delights of the genre. It's the start of a long, and utterly delightful, road on which they will not lack for enthusiastic company.

One of the Best Romance Novel Series: The Cynster Saga by Stephanie Laurens

2011-06-26T20:46:00.000-07:00

Cynster novel #1 - Devil Cynster

Some of the first books for "grownups" I read were romance novels. My mother had a select group she enjoyed, collected from the 70s and 80s offerings, on a special bookcase that hung over the back of her bedroom door. (I can still remember my very first, which I later hunted down in a used bookstore, Bride of the MacHugh, instilling a love of all things Scottish) Working hard at the beck and call of lawyers and executives as a secretary, her escape were the costume dramas of Masterpiece Theatre and historical romance novels.

Cynster novel #2 - Vane Cynster

I loved them once initiated - the dresses, the rakes and rogues, the political intrigue keeping the lovers apart only to overcome all obstacles. Later I realized the ridiculous devices demanded of the industry - the women were more like girls because they were so young and naturally they were all virgins. The language describing the sex was, in retrospect, hilarious with "throbbing manhoods" and other euphemisms that more confused than enlightened - but like any good genre fiction, the basic formula was a good one.

Because all genre fiction is formulaic. Mysteries often have an interesting and complex protagonist, set in a time period or with a specialty, who has helpful sidekicks who assist him/her in ferreting out the "who dun it" effectively. Historical romance, pardon me, good historical romance owes a lot of its appeal to its cross over tendencies. It's hopefully good and well-researched historical fiction, so its references and social history are accurate. Usually there is a mystery or political intrigue to satisfy those tendencies, and there is, without question, two protagonists who we care enough about to want to root them to live happily ever after.

Cynster Novel #3 - Scandal Cynster

So why are people so stuck up about romance novels? I know men who read literally any Tom Clancy-esque political thriller (slap a hammer and sickle on it, a handsome but capable ex-Marine, and a love interest who admires herself naked in a mirror in the first 100 pages and they are on it) but have nothing but derision toward women who read romance. Is it the ridiculous covers? The torrid prose on the back of the book jacket? Folks, those are all the publisher's doing (and rapidly becoming less common, thank heavens) and no more indicator of what's inside that book than the paper wrapper on your Big Mac means the sandwich inside is from a tree.

Probably the best modern author who epitomizes the skillful historical romance novel is Australian writer Stephanie Laurens, author of over 45 books, many of which have taken a turn on the New York Times Bestseller list. Her best-loved series is known as the Cynster novels, a grouping of 15 plus books based on one family, the proud and tightly knit noble Cynsters led by the head of the family, the Duke of St. Ives, known as Devil to his family and friends.

Cynster novel #4 - Demon Cynster

Devil has one brother and four cousins (each with equally as disconcerting nicknames) similar in age and temperament and all six of them served together in France fighting Napoleon where they earned the moniker of "invincible" since they all returned without a scratch. Close friends all and with similar rakish tendencies towards the ladies, they are known by the ton as the "Bar Cynster."

Laurens makes no bones about the fact that her attraction to the Regency era comes from the fact that it was a time of social flux, with enough leeway for the behavior of men and women (although there were naturally established rules in place to protect the virtue of well-born ladies) that interesting situations could occur that naturally would not in the later Victorian era. Men of privilege were bold and demanding masters of their universe and women had not yet been beaten into submission so totally that they couldn't occasionally stand up for themselves, questioning the inevitability of marriage. Laurens herself describes her style. "It’s very much in the vein of Errol Flynn meets Jane Austen—lots of dashing derring-do grounded by a healthy dose of feminine common sense."

Cynster novel #5 - Gabriel Cynster

It's this inevitability that the characters fight, both male and female. Laurens is a godsend in that she believes in older characters (the ladies are usually in their mid to late twenties) and isn't unwilling to have the occasional female protagonist who isn't a virgin. The women are strong and stubborn in their way, seeing no reason to be coaxed into a loveless marriage of convenience. Her men, as she states in informational interviews in some of the supplemental material for her books, fall "in lust" at first with the woman in question, their possessive instincts to help and protect stirred. The female protagonist, while attracted to the man, has no wish to surrender her independence, making her that much more of a challenge and prize to be won. In the course of trying to win her body, the male gets to know her and she him, with the result being they fall in love.

Cynster novel #6 - Lucifer Cynster

The Cynster family motto is "To Have and To Hold" (love that!) and it is interpreted by the author as pertaining to both a passionate love of the land and of family. With so many romance novel heroes being cold and calculating, the humanity and warmth demonstrated by the Cynster family's love and affection for one another - these men are friends as well as relatives - is one of the reasons this series stands out from the typical historical romance offering. Readers fall in love not just with the two protagonists, but with the whole family, caring deeply about what happens to the characters not just in the book focused on them, but in subsequent books as well.


Cynster novel #6 - Gyles Rawling

Laurens uses a deft hand at interweaving the books and keeping continuity (check out her chronology placing all her books from this and other series, in order by year of event). One of the tried and true formulas of her books is that she establishes the two major protagonists and the reason they are drawn together (a conflict or mystery to be solved with the characters helping one another as they fall in love). About two-thirds through the book, the Cynster calvalry is called in, with the previous characters and family members introduced to help solve the problem and offer backup. The object of Cynster affection then sees the affection between family members and further knows that this is a family they can trust and be part of, further sealing the deal.

Cynster novel #7 - Sebastian and Helena Prequel

While there certainly is intrigue and occasionally crime to propel the plot, the obstacles to the future of the characters are largely emotional. The woman does not want to give up her independence; the man hesitates to admit to the weakness of "love." A quality I love about Laurens writing is that she uses her fiery sex scenes to reveal the emotional progress of her characters. She understands how the physical act of love can unlock emotions and reveal the truth of feelings long-buried.

Cynster novel #8 - Amanda Cynster

It's not just the main characters which are well-drawn. The minor characters in these novels are incredibly complex and three-dimensional, doing an excellent job furthering the plot and giving depth to the scene. Lady Osbaldstone, the blunt and all-seeing grand dame of the ton, is a recurring character in most of the books who is a personal favorite. The younger siblings of many of the love interests (or young Cynsters) are written so well that they are able to be easily fleshed out in later novels as they reach an age of falling in love which seems like great planning and writing to me.

Cynster novel #9 - Amelia Cynster

In addition to well-drawn characters, it's a profound pleasure to read Laurens books because of the level of historical accuracy she attains. Laurens admits that this was of necessity initially in her career as her original contract for Regency romances were published by a British firm that insisted on the utmost accuracy (I gather those British readers, surrounded by Regency settings, are real sticklers for historical details).

In addition to the obvious historical references (this is a great way for someone to be introduced to the controversy surrounding the Corn Laws in early 19th century history), the language (including colloquialisms and idiom) are correct. The horse references and ton etiquette are a fabulous bonus for someone interested in this period. Laurens admits the only area she takes license with in her desire to bump up the introduction of buttons, particularly for male shirts. It's hard to get your male protagonist out of his clothes fast enough without those darn buttons!

Cynster novel #10 - Simon Cynster

The first ten books deal with actual Cynsters, all of whom you meet in the first 50 pages of the first book. By the time we get to books 8, 9, and 10 we are learning about characters who were lanky teens in the first book but are coming into their Cynster legacy with abandon. Books 11 through 15 are the "in-laws", the younger brothers of Cynster brides now searching for their own perfect mates. (Don't worry, Laurens is nice enough to give us a genealogy chart to keep track of all the matches and their children.)

Having seen video interviews with Stephanie Laurens, it was a jolt to discover that's not her actual name. Theonne Anne De Kretser took her pseudonym from the names of her two daughters, Stephanie and Lauren when she decided to begin writing romance novels. Like other great romance novelists (like Diana Gabaldon of Outlander fame), De Kretser comes from a strong scientific background, possessing a Ph.D. in Biochemistry. Running a laboratory during the day, she found her relaxation and escape in the form of romance novels. When she realized she had read all the regency romances currently in print, she decided she would write one for herself. When she finished, she realized it was good enough that she could approach a publisher, and the rest was history.

Cynster novel #16 - Heather Cynster

Profuse thanks to that publisher for realizing they had found a good author! It's certainly worth mentioning that the excellent Bastion Club series takes place during much of the Cynster saga, containing a certain amount of cross-over. Both the Bastion and Cynster series have characters that crossover to Laurens most recent works, the Black Cobra Quartet, which Laurens has been most recently occupied producing. So it's extremely exciting that in the next 8 months we can expect three additions to the Cynster saga, dealing with original Cynster girls who are now all grown up and ready for love. In a trilogy, Heather, Eliza and Angelica Cynster will each have their own book although an overarching storyline will unite all three books. I was ecstatic to find out that each book will have the main body of action take place in Scotland, guaranteeing a cameo appearance of Scandal and Catriona and their twins. Yay! Also in the plus category is that the first book will star Viscount Breckinridge, a fabulous minor character in The Ideal Bride (Cynster book #11 with Honoria's brother Michael romancing the widow of a diplomat). Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue will be out August 30th, followed by In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster on September 27th 2011 and The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae on January 31st 2012. With Laurens consistency and great writing, I cannot wait for these to be published!

So don't dismiss historical romance, any more than you would any other genre. If you decide to try it, pick up a Cynster novel by Stephanie Laurens and see what you think. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Upcoming additions to the series

More Lovely Steampunk Books for the Action Enthusiast: Book Review of The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross

2011-06-16T13:07:00.000-07:00

Still feeling the steampunk vibe, and even more so when I caught a look at this cover - isn't it fabulous? Welcome to The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross.

The author describes the book as a cross between X-Men and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and this action-packed yarn lives up to that billing, holding appeal to both male and female readers (although with this cover, the male reader might be a tough sell).

Our protagonist, Finley Jayne, comes from a home made up of her seamstress mother and caring bookseller stepfather. Not wanting to be a financial burden to her family she looks for domestic work, which usually doesn't last long, because Finley has a secret.

She feels that she is two people, the first the good girl who wants to work hard (she is amazingly strong with tremendous endurance) and the second, a girl for whom anger or rage can unleash a dark side capable of doing serious damage, and it does.

When Lord Felix, the son of her employer and a recent addition to the pierced aristocrats emulating underworld king, Jack Dandy, tries to rape and beat her, Finley not only stops him but almost kills him in the process. Fleeing the scene she literally runs right into Griffin King, the young Duke of Greystone, who himself harbors a secret (one inherited from his parents who may have provided a little inspiration for another steampunk classic, Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne). Griffin has surrounded himself with an eclectic group of people blessed with some particular strength or genius and he realizes more quickly than Finley what is happening to her and how to help. The fact that she is strikingly pretty and intelligent also doesn't factor into his helping her, although it might have something to do with the feelings stirring inside him. It doesn't do it justice, but you might want to take a look at the book trailer.

I greatly enjoyed this book and applaud the author's deft but not hokey nod to the classic work The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (a story that features more prominently as the plot progresses). As Finley becomes part of the team Griffin has assembled, not only does she find a way to use and integrate the dark part of herself to fight the evil among them, but she finds friendship and acceptance for who she is, a friendship most welcome as she discovers her family and Griffin's to have been allies for longer than either can imagine.

This novel is also deliciously steampunk, more so than a lot of other books which try and live up to the moniker. Automatons and fascinating energy sources abound and diminutive, Irish Emily is a veritable genius with them (she is the one who makes Finley's famed corset), much to the dismay of another member of the team, the strong and conflicted Sam. Young American cowboy Jasper seems to have a mysterious past but brings his own set of skills into play, and the antihero of Jack Dandy forms an intriguing love-triangle as his interest in Finley is all too clear, inspiring Griffin's jealousy.

Kady Cross was kind enough to give us her .5 novella, The Strange Case of Finley Jayne, available as a free download. This prequel tells us the growing origin of Finley's conflicted self (and her desire to help and goodness) through the story of her previous domestic position prior to her story beginning in
The Girl in the Steel Corset.

Finley has disastrously left her previous domestic position after punching the lights out of a cruel governess and finds herself back at home with no reference. She is shocked when an aristocratic lady lands on her doorstep wanting to hire Finley as a companion to her daughter, based on hearing that previous account of her work. The Lady's daughter is recently engaged to a much older man and there are suspicions as to his intentions. Very well-grounded suspicions.

This time Mary Shelley's Frankenstein provides the comparison and is done in as equally as deft a manner as the previous book. The reader is left with a better impression of what Finley was like prior to her dark side asserting itself even more and the near-misses of her possible encounters with Griffin are a nice touch. A really well done novella!

It's nice to note that author Kady Cross is actually a pseudonym for successful romance novelist Kathryn Smith, although librarians can be assured that the content of this novel (soon to be series since it's entitled The Steampunk Chronicles) is totally appropriate for even younger YA audiences but has enough punch and depth to entertain adult steampunk readers. I was bound to enjoy the writing of someone who lists Richelle Mead, Melissa Marr and Meg Cabot as some of her favorite YA writers, and I am really appreciative that Cross/Smith has done a great job collating terrific steampunk links on her Kady Cross website.

I've added her to my Google Reader as I think the incarnation of Kady Cross will be a good author to watch. I know I can't wait for the next book in the series, particularly given the intriguing situation she set up at the end of The Girl in a Steel Corset!

A Not-So-Minor Rant Against Trilogies that Shouldn't Be Trilogies: Book Review of Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier

2011-06-14T16:58:00.000-07:00

This is a MAJOR peeve of mine that honestly seems exacerbated more each year. Some books should not be trilogies.

There, I said it, and I see many of you nodding your heads along with me (except you - fine, suffer while waiting for the next book, you're obviously a masochist). How many times have we started what seems like a perfectly nice book, got emotionally involved with the characters, reveled in the setting, only to have that sickening lurch in our collective stomach when we realize the pages clutched in our left hand are significantly larger than the ones in our right....and there are still some major questions to be answered?!

That's when you know you've been trilogized, a word I've decided means "verb (Canadian origin): to be attacked by a publisher who wants you to pay the hardcover price three times versus once". It's painful and the lingering resentment that combines with the elation of getting the next book in our hand leaves a bad taste in the mouth, doesn't it? And heaven forbid the writer has lost momentum or their plot gets a little wonky (*cough* Melissa de la Cruz *cough*), because then we just resentfully eat our M&Ms (hey, you eat your snack, and I'll eat mine, okay?) thinking that if they had just written the whole damn thing into one book, we wouldn't be suffering right now.

The trilogy is particularly hard to stomach in the case of the book I am reviewing here (yes, this is a review, I'm getting to it), Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier. After reading the CIP and realizing that this book was a translation, I guessed (correctly) that the sequels were already out in German. Annoyingly, I was right, as the German Wikipedia page on the author reveals Ruby Red came out in 2009 and the two sequels in 2010. So why the h-e-double hockey sticks aren't all three out in English?

Anyway... the book. Ever since A Wrinkle in Time and more recently, The Time Traveler's Wife, I've loved the idea of time travel as a fiction plot. So many possibilities and you usually end up with a really cool historical fiction/fantasy crossover novel in the process that you can market well as a librarian. This cover is gorgeous and makes for an easy sell on the superficial standpoint (but, hey, every little bit helps) - beautiful girl, embossed jewels, all lovely.

Our protagonist, Gwenyth (Gwen), has been brought up in a loving but eccentric wealthy family in a London mansion. Because she's been ignored by most of the relatives in favor of her cousin, Charlotte, she is a down to earth, movie fiend who spends her time laughing with her best friend about the boys in their high school.

Charlotte is the family favorite because everyone believes she carries their family's gene for time travel, so her whole life has been given to foreign language fluency, riding and fencing lessons, etc. Whoopsie...it turns out that Gwen is the one who has the gene, which no one suspected because the time traveler was supposed to be born on a certain day and Gwen's mother lied about her birthday, claiming to want a normal life for her daughter.

But there is more to the lie as Gwen begins to realize. She is introduced to the intimidating Guardians and their offices at the Temple and most of all, introduced to her fellow time-traveler, haughty and handsome Gideon who is two years older and expecting Charlotte to be his companion. Their adventures begin with some rather alarming complications thrown into the mix, and while attracted to one another, there is also a growing mistrust as the adults in their lives (past and present) seem to be hiding something, using Gideon and Gwen for their own purposes.

My main problem here is that if you have to have a trilogy, the first book needs to answer some questions!!!!! This one poses more questions than it answers, which has driven me up a wall, particularly because there are other good qualities for me to recommend to readers. I like the writing and the characterization, although Gwen feels a lot younger to me and I get the feeling the publisher and the writer are aiming for a middle school audience, which seems at odds with the protagonist's age of sixteen and the fact that there is obviously meant to be a strong romance plot. Doubt me? Take a look at the official book trailer:

Doesn't even the voice sound young? I'm not saying Gwen isn't lighthearted (it's why we like her so much) and the historical pieces are well-done, but there is an audience piece that feels off to me. The beginning Prologue is so obvious (really...I'm almost tempted to just say it because my golden retriever even figured out who these two people were right away) yet I'm supposed to believe that no one else has suspected that relationships are not as they seem? Puh-leese.

Gwen is obviously smart and pretty, but aside from some snogging comments she seems strangely innocent for someone her age who watches as many R and PG-13 films as she's named. Not being in Gideon's head also leaves us at a loss as to the development of his attraction to Gwen and I'm not sure I'm totally convinced of that either.

Overall, this is a book that I would have liked to have seen encompass all three volumes in one (are you listening, Henry Holt Publishing???!) since I think it would make the actual writing and plot stronger. Yes, I will get the other books (curse you) but I'm not going to be happy about it. So there.

Anti-Corporate Pageant Satire Is the Best: Book Review of Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

2011-06-12T15:54:00.000-07:00

Libba Bray is a genius as anyone who has bothered reading her blog would know. But for those people who read Going Bovine and still might be on the fence (seriously...after that?) then the final nail in the coffin of your conjecture will be a good read of Beauty Queens.

That is, if you like satire. I do although it's rare that I get to read it in a book geared toward young adults. I would say, on the satire spectrum, that Beauty Queens is somewhere between Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock and The Simpsons. Probably a shade closer to The Simpsons actually, because a) they are funny and b) for other stuff that will become evident as I write this blog post.

Before I go into the plot blah blah, can we take a moment to admire the cover??? The smudged sash (there was a plane wreck, duh) and the bandolier of red and pink lipstick (which looks cool but I imagine is really unhygenic, put those caps on, girlie!) - is awesome and gripping (although a subset of reader will be attracted to the tanned blond in the bikini. Whatever. I can't live your life for you.)

Okay, to the actual novel. As we discover in Libba's introduction, in the not too distant future a group of contestants for the Miss Teen Dream pageant has had a plane wreck on an island in the middle of nowhere (but not as nowhere as we first believe). Only a handful of them survive, and despite believing that they will be imminently rescued, they spin their talent portion into figuring out the basics of food, safety, and shelter while sizing up the competition.

Amid all of this, in a world heavily run by "The Corporation" and rife with reality television shows (yes, more than now, which I realize is hard to believe), a group of non-government affiliated agents are inhabiting the island's volcano (I know...Libba Bray is a big James Bond fan, read the acknowledgments at the end of the book, it's like a bonus chapter) and determining how best to rid themselves of the girls so they can get on with their nefarious plot. No, I am not telling what that is. You have to read the book.

Not to sound hokey, but at the center of the humor, the girls discover who they are - this amazing group of young women wrestle more than the psycho gigantic snakes and hallucinogenic fruit to figure out what they like and don't like about their lives, making real friends in the process. All this amid an avalanche of funny. The self-esteem message is subtle enough to be cool and not after-school-special-ey, going down real easy while you're laughing at the snappy dialogue and funny commercials (yes, I said commercials. This book has commercials and they are hilarious.) Oh, and there are hot, oiled teen pirates. Enough said *wink, wink*!

Did you know there was a cool contest for readers ages 13 to 18? Yeah-huh! You need to enter before July 1, 2011 but you could win an Amex gift card or Sephora gift card for $250. She really knows her audience! Check out the video (remember, Libba makes great videos - don't you remember the Going Bovine video where she wore a cow costume, complete with a...rather prominent...udder?):

So grab your tiara (don't act like there's not one in the house, we can all see it RIGHT THERE) and a copy of the Beauty Queens and get ready for a special in-flight entertainment. (Disclaimer: the hardcover copy is not a flotation device.)

More Details about Vampire Academy Spin-off series, Bloodlines by Richelle Mead

2011-06-10T06:27:00.000-07:00

Sigh. I love Richelle Mead. I don't think she can write a bad book and her ability to maintain strength of plotline and character across a series is better than any writer I've seen. (Go, Richelle!) Needless to say, I wept salty tears when the Vampire Academy series ended because I had grown so attached to Rose and Dimitri.

Some salve to the wound was Mead's announcement that she was planning a spin-off series called Bloodlines (she had to throw all those Adrian fans something) with Sydney, the reluctant Alchemist, as the narrator. With Last Sacrifice having so effectively set up the political upheaval of the Moroi world (while neatly wrapping up Rose and Dimitri's storyline), you can see her skill as a writer coming into play.

So Sydney will be joined by Jill (aka Jailbait) in the human world (for reasons I will not give you in case you haven't read Last Sacrifice yet). Take a look at what our author has to say:

Exciting, yes? Please note the Bloodlines countdown widget installed in the upper right hand corner of this blog (until the book's release in August 2011) - you can download it for free and put it on your blog or Facebook account to wave your spin-off flag and alert your friends to what they will be doing on August 23rd!

More Dystopian Science Fiction: Book Review of Divergent by Veronica Roth

2011-06-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

I really feel for authors when their book is compared to another, incredibly successful book. Either people will buy it because of the other book's success as some kind of craving for something else (like when you try and eat the healthier dessert when you really want the calorie-laden "Death by Chocolate" one) or they will read your book and say they don't like it because it's not exactly like the one whose comparison prompted their purchase in the first place.

Reading ARC reviews of Divergent by Veronica Roth and seeing the endless comparisons The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (similar to how every post-Twilight vampire book had that immediate "Twilight fans will love this!" in every review) left me irritated on her behalf (although I'm happy for Roth since the book sales have been great).

I think the cover art had something to do with the comparison as well. The emblem in a circle does look rather reminiscent of the Mockingjay pin and I'm sure that's intentional on the publisher's part (I'll be interested to see the cover art for future editions in a few years - I pictured the two main characters maybe with a bruise or two set in front a dark, clearly decrepit city with the derelict elevated train riding overhead).

Take a look at the trailer:

This book is good dystopian fiction (I'm thinking readers who like the Uglies series, the City of Ember books, Matched by Ally Condie, etc.) and is well-written, particularly considering that author Veronica Roth signed her book deal prior to graduating from Northwestern University. Way to go, Veronica!! I'm glad we can look forward to more great books from you since you are a young writer. :-)

In a crumbling future Chicago, we see a future in which the turbulent past has resolved itself into a world in which people fit into five factions according to their personality type: Abnegation (the selfless), Amity (the peaceful), Candor (the honest), Erudite (the intellectuals), and Dauntless (the brave). At the age of 16, each person is given a test that shows their disposition so they know what society to choose at the ceremony their families attend as they enter adulthood.

Our protagonist, Beatrice, has been born into Abnegation but she struggles with the selflessness and invisibility she is supposed to embody. After disturbing results on her test in which the adult tester from Dauntless warns her she is "divergent" - showing no predilection to one society but instead to a few - she is instructed to never speak of this label again. Shaken, she goes to her ceremony and chooses Dauntless which is the faction she feels the most affinity for. Author Roth does an amazing job at explaining why young Tris (she renames herself upon joining the faction) is attracted to Dauntless. Not only are they visible and noisy, the qualities she has wanted to express all along, but their daring stems from the faction's philosophy ideally espoused by each member:

I believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.

Of course, things are not what they seem once she begins her initiation which is grueling and brutal, both mentally and physically. Through it all is her guide and instructor, Four, who she discovers has a mysterious past that somehow binds them together. As her layers are stripped away to reveal Tris' true self in her training, she discovers that Dauntless, and her whole society, are not what they seem and she and the other "Divergents" might be the only thing capable of stopping a war.

What was so compelling about this novel was that Tris wasn't the total badass female protagonist we've been reading elsewhere, but she's not a marshmallow either. She is a sometimes selfless, sometimes brave, always smart girl who is coming of age in a rite designed by her society for that purpose. Roth does an excellent job of building the foundation for the future books of the trilogy as we can see Tris' potential as a leader, the possibility of her romantic future, and her society's inevitable conflict. This is a series I am looking forward to reading. For their own sake.

Steampunk Romance Serves Up a Steamy Reputation: Book Review of The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook

2011-06-05T14:25:00.000-07:00

I think I'm not alone in the librarian world as being rather clueless about the subgenre of steampunk prior to Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan (and its sequel, Behemoth) coming on the scene. I liked these books very much, particularly for the middle school age reader, and I made a point of collecting a few anthologies that had this subgenre as their focus, but didn't pay more attention than that.

Big mistake. Upon further reflection, I have discovered I love steampunk.

My first revelation was when I read Cassandra Clare's Clockwork Angel (the prequel to the Mortal Instruments series). Excuse me? Automatons? Clockworks? Corsets? Conflicted female gender roles? Yes, it's fantasy, but it's also steampunk.

Wanting to be reflective in the hope that it will clue me into other readers who might enjoy this subgenre, I think the following observations are in order regarding the reader group I have observed who are really jonesing for these books:

Steampunk readers seem to be made up of adventurous readers, usually ones who enjoy historical fiction, alternate history, science fiction, fantasy, historical romance, or all of the above. They aren't the readers who bog down in one genre and stay there.
Steampunk readers (at least in my library) are largely female and seem to revel in the many strong female characters.
At the same time, those readers like the fact that there are some Victorian mores and REALLY enjoy the descriptions of the clothes. ("Steampunk is...the love child of Hot Topic and a BBC costume drama." - Gail Carriger, author of the steampunk The Parasol Protectorate series.)

What fascinates me is that this doesn't seem to be a type of book younger kids are that interested in (yes, Westerfeld's books are well read in among our younger readers, but they usually start their interest with his other science fiction books). Cassandra Clare certainly has a lot of adult readers who love her books (and are waiting with bated breath for her first movie adaptation to release) as does Gail Carringer, so it makes sense that there would be some rather...well....adult romance books with a steampunk focus.

Enter Meljean Brook and The Iron Duke. As the rippling abs of the cover model indicate, this book has a racy side (a very racy side). That said, it is a fascinating and well-written steampunk novel with highly developed characters and a carefully constructed alternate history.

I will confess to being confused for the first 50 pages or so (my "give it 80 pages" rule usually pulls me through most books). Brook gives a terrific explanation of the alternate history she's developed on her website (it's so fascinating that I imagine a lot of readers will be looking for books about some of the time periods involved) but I've developed a nutshell version that might help other readers struggling as I did for that first bit of the book.

Stretch back to your World Civilization class in high school and you'll remember the early relationship between Kublai Khan and western Europe, specifically how the Polo family traipsed East and established some valuable trade routes (okay, much of my memory comes from the 1982 miniseries Marco Polo and the subsequently released novel based on the screenplay. Whatever.) In Brook's books, rather than maintain a political strategy of isolationism (as China did for some time), the "Horde" uses their advanced Chinese technology to develop machines which roll into Europe a couple hundred years post-Polo, and conquer it, enslaving its citizens.

The people who can flee to the Americas since the Horde has never developed a navy, but the remaining citizens live in terror. Part of the Horde's strategy is to enslave and alter the people under them with technology. Europeans are infected with nanotechnology ("bugs") that can control their behavior if needed, and some laborers actually have tools grafted to their arms a la Star Trek's Borg (think coal miners with drills for arms). Even the most intimate details fall under Horde control - the working classes are forbidden to marry and the entire country is subject to periodic "Frenzies" where the Horde activates the nanotechnology to cause citizens to literally fall on one another in a massive heat, regardless of age, sexual orientation, or existing genetic relationship. The babies produced from this event are usually given to the Creche, a state-run orphanage.

England manages to throw off the Horde's control with the help of pirate Rhys Trahaearn, who destroys the tower that sends forth the signals which control the nanotechnology in each citizen, thus freeing the population. A grateful nation makes him the Duke of Anglesley, but he is shrouded in mystery and simultaneously loved and feared.

Enter our heroine, Detective Inspector Mina Wentworth, daughter of a countess who works (as many women do) but who constantly faces prejudice whereever she goes. Mina is the result of a particularly calculated "frenzy" as her mother was invited, along with the rest of British aristocracy, to a Horde-hosted ball when the frenzy instinct was activated. While her mother claims to remember nothing, Mina's black hair and Eurasian features remind everyone she encounters of their time under Horde control, subjecting her to a great deal of verbal and physical abuse.

But Mina is tough (and she has a fabulous sidekick who acts as a bodyguard as well as fellow investigator) and when she is dispatched to investigate a dead body found at the Iron Duke's London home, she attempts to simply work the case, but the instant attraction between them complicates an already puzzling investigation. The body has been frozen and dropped from an airship as some kind of message and together, Mina and the Duke need to figure out what really is going on, little realizing the physical and emotional countries this journey will take them through.

I loved this book not just as a steampunk novel but as a true romance novel. The relationship, while having a lot of steamy attraction, develops naturally and deals honestly with the barriers in its way. The emotional damage people suffer in the wake of the Horde's rule are everpresent and add an additional dimension to forming an intimate relationship.

And, hello, these are intimate! The intimacy scenes are "burst into flame in your hands" hot, but I wouldn't call them erotica since they are appropriate in the context of the book and actually further develop the characters. The description language is a little more ribald that many traditional historical romance readers would probably expect, but it seems right for both a pirate and for a country that has lived through its recent history. This book was so outstanding (and so detailed with the history and political machinations that I immediately ordered a used copy for my personal library so I can reread it at will) that checked to see when the next book was coming out (the cover is labeled "A Novel of the Iron Seas" so I felt that was a giveaway).

Score! While we have to wait for November 1st of this year for Heart of Steel to come out, I was thrilled to discover a companion novella, found in the anthology Burning Up, entitled "Here There Be Monsters". I purchased the Kindle version and downloaded this puppy right to my iPod touch for an immediate "shhh, shhh, don't bother me" read-through.

I was not disappointed - this novella is just as well-written as The Iron Duke and has several tie-ins, both in character and in overarching plotline, that anyone would enjoy. In a way it feels like a lighter book, simply because the two love interests, Captain Eben Machen (known as "Mad Machen") and Ivy Blacksmith, are less tortured than Mina and Rhys (but still have their own set of obstacles). I've no doubt in true romance series fashion that we will see them again and I cannot wait - they were terrific characters who met my expectations for passionate love scenes as well as what it means to sacrifice to be with someone you truly love.

Interested in exploring steampunk further? Check out the GoodReads list of "Best Steampunk Books" list for a place to start and enjoy!

Matched by Ally Condie: A New Giver for Older YA Readers

2011-05-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of hype about Matched by Ally Condie and, while I trust lots of bloggers out there, it's hard not to approach all the exclamation points with a certain jaded quality. Particularly considering how the success of The Hunger Games has caused a veritable avalanche of dystopian fiction, it would be easy to dismiss this book as merely part of that wave.

Don't.

At first I was merely struck with how the book was well-written and our protagonist, Cassia, (pronounced Cash-eah) was a sweet but rather bland individual who reflected her highly controlled society. The novel begins with her traveling with her family to her area's Match Banquet, a formal dinner where the region's seventeeen-year-old population gets to eat delicious food, wear beautiful clothing (that they aren't allowed to keep) and see the face of the person to whom they are matched. Cassia has a enormous surprise - her match is actually her best friend, Xander, with whom she traveled to the banquet. Her happiness (and that her family who does not have to watch her leave them to live in another area of the country) is tempered when she later sees on her match "card" another handsome face, also of a boy she knows, Ky.

The first few chapters seem as if the book is going to head in a direction of "which great guy", but author Condie's facile handling of Cassia's dystopian world has the reader quickly ponder the intricacies of her world. Everything is controlled in this world...EVERYTHING. The officials in society use severe knowledge limitation and statistics to control the populace and it seems as if it works most of the time in Cassia's little province. But with two boys in front of her and an official admitting there was a mistake, Cassia begins to see fissures in her society's seeming perfection, with a whole world opening up in front of her.

Because if society made a mistake with her match, what other mistakes exist? Cassia begins to question almost everything while at the same time getting to know Ky better and realizing that she is in love with him in a way her affection for Xander cannot match. Take a look at the book trailer.

I'm trying to figure out how best to describe this book and the word "quiet" keeps coming to mind. Cassia is not the strong female protagonist we've come to expect in a lot of dystopian fiction (think Katniss) but she's no shrinking wallflower either. She's an intelligent young woman who, faced with some big changes in her life (receiving her "match," the scheduled death of her grandfather, her future employment being determined), applies her ability to seeing all the flaws in the world around her, flaws her deep love for Ky further highlight as wrong. I really did get a The Giver vibe from this book, both in the elegance of some of the passages as well as the "wait....WHAT?!" moments as Cassia's officials went about their work (like her father's work in the library *shudder*). The romantic aspect certainly propels this book into a higher age bracket and the greater length allows for more exploration of certain themes, so this novel lands in a reader age group a little higher than Lois Lowry's classic.

As with so many books these days (seriously, does anyone just write a single book anymore?), Matched is part of a trilogy with the second book, Crossed, due out in November 2011. Considering how Condie left our protagonist, Cassia, it's not surprising that additional books would be necessary to continue the story. I was thrilled to hear in an interview with her (below, check it out for more hints) that this book was going to be from Ky's perspective. He is a character that I want to learn much more about!

Modern Gothic?: A Modern Retelling of Jane Eyre

2011-05-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be honest, I was REALLY worried when I heard Little Brown and Company were going to publish Jane by April Lindner, a modern retelling of Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is one of my lodestone books that I reread twice a year. I started reading it at a strangely early age (maybe 10?) and it's been one of those books that I've grown with. I think I first was taken with young Jane's rebelliousness at school as well as with her wicked Aunt and cousins, a fascination which morphed into an interest of the part of her book where she finds a job. Of course, my later teen years had me fascinated with the romance between Jane and Mr. Rochester and now my favorite part is the part on the moors as she considers a different future with St. John Rivers and realizes what a real family feels like. It's a dark, gothic novel with a tremendous sense of place and I love it.

So with this love fest, you can imagine my trepidation when Jane by April Lindner was published. I was so relieved to wholeheartedly enjoy the interpretation. It was gutsy to actually make the evil cousins of the original books her actual dissipated brother and selfish, beautiful sister, with all the sadness and cruelty contained in that relationship. Their parents die in a car accident and Jane, the youngest child habitually neglected by her distant parents, has to leave after one year of Sarah Lawrence College, because she can't afford to return. But what does a 19-year-old art and French major do for a living?

Become a nanny, of course. The nanny service quickly realize that this serious college student is not the usual pop culture junkie who comes their way, which immediately qualifies her for a plum position at rock star Nico Rathburn's home in Connecticut, Thornfield Park. She takes to his 5 year old daughter, Maddy, and the kind staff on the estate right away and is able to use the fields and outbuildings as wonderful fodder for her artwork. But enter Nico, and Jane's world is turned upside down.

I was fretting as I read about Jane being 19 and Nico being obviously older (probably in his mid-30s). Was this going to be creepy? But Lindner pulls it off, largely from writing Jane's character as a serious young woman with a deprived childhood which has aged her long past her real age. Combine that with Nico's extended adolescence and only recent membership in the adult club (right around the time he begins to pursue sobriety and fatherhood) and you've got two people pretty well matched in the maturity department.

I'm not going to put in any spoilers, but it's a wonderful writing job how she managed to handle the climax of the novel and I adored how she handled Jane's "wandering on the moors" part. Renaming St. John Rivers, Rivers St. John and making him a Yale Divinity School student bent on his upcoming Haitian mission who lives with his two charming sisters in a dilapidated apartment in New Haven is a stroke of genius. Jane's growth during this time felt very natural to me, as did the way she finds out about what happened to Nico after she left. It's a totally heartwarming ending, just like in the original. Total bliss.

I have a sense of appreciation for the author - she obviously spent a great deal of time and energy getting to understand Charlotte Bronte's work and Jane Eyre specifically. According to April Lindner's website, her next project is a retelling of Wuthering Heights, called Catherine, and set in punk scene of the East Village. I can totally picture Heathcliff as a punk rocker! I'll be interested to see if I like Cathy more in this context, because she really annoys me in the novel - we'll see if Lindner can work her magic on this one! The book is due out in 2012 and I will be sure to read it.

Vampire Academy Spin-Off Countdown plus a Contest to Win a Meeting with Stephenie Meyer...

2011-01-21T10:22:00.000-08:00

First things first, the countdown for Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy spin-off series, Bloodlines, has been announced and there's even a countdown website for the late August publication date.

At our library, we are waiting with bated breath for this series to come out. With Rose's story pretty much concluded, all the VA fans at our school are excited at the idea of Adrian's story continuing, with particular affection for Sydney as the narrator. Here's a video of Richelle Mead talking about the new series. Last Sacrifice was brilliantly written (it is the best ending to a series I've read in a while, and everyone knows how much I enjoyed Melissa Marr's ending to the Wicked Lovely series!) as it left enough of an opening for the future series. While our favorite characters may not be the protagonists any longer, the political and personal situation surrounding Lissa is so frought with tension and conflict that it's easy to see how Mead could continue that world in her usual page-turning way.

Has anyone ever read Stephenie Meyer's "blog"? It's deserving of quotes, because she clearly doesn't write it herself - it's merely a vehicle for her publicist to make unexciting announcements every three months or so. But every now and then you'll get a good tidbit of information, and this latest one is a jewel. Meyer is quoted in the release as saying that the thing she really misses is how on her first book tour for Twilight, prior to its phenomenon status (back when it was mostly *cough* cool librarians and booksellers promoting it to patrons) she would connect with 10 or 20 people in a bookstore and really get to know them.

Along those lines, and due to the release of the Meyer-endorsed, The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide, her publishers are offering a contest - to win a meeting with Stephenie Meyer (a total of seven people from all over the world)! You can enter at the official Twilight Saga website and one person will be chosen from the United States and one from Canada. Other lucky individuals will be selected from the contests based out of other countries publishing her book (like Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom). I've never jumped on the anti-Twilight backlash wagon because 1) I like the books because they are romance novels, people, 2) I didn't watch the movies because I know that these actors wouldn't pull it off, and 3) 99% of the people who say they "hate those books" actually have never read them. So I'll totally be entering to win - I have some very nice things to say to her and lots of questions to ask!

Book Review - Darkest Mercy by Melissa Marr is as Magical as her Faeries...

2011-01-19T09:09:00.000-08:00

You might remember that I spent an inordinate amount of space kvelling about Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely series - five amazing books about both mortal and faerie characters that are like nothing I've read before. Melissa Marr has the ability to draw out adult emotions and themes from her young characters (perhaps drawing upon their proximity to the ancient ages of her faeries for this process), so these books are mature for a teen audience and highly appealing to adults. Fantasy, romance, and action (there's a lot of great fighting) admirers will each find something to love about these books. Imagine my delight when Melissa Marr read my previous review and offered to include me on the list of a traveling ARC of the final book, Darkest Mercy! Color me there. I started shrieking in the library when it arrived and I decorated the envelope for the next person today with all kinds of colored markers, etc. It should be pretty on the outside when you get such a present, right?

Previously, the books focus on specific characters and their relationships to one another, with the first couple of books focusing on two mortal girls (who are also good friends) and their tangled lives with the faeries thrust in their path. In Darkest Mercy, the power balance between the various courts, the Summer Court, the Winter Court, the Dark Court and the High Court, is called into question as Bananach becomes more powerful, spreading war and violence in her wake.

It's hard to say "coming of age" novel when several of your main characters are hundreds of years old, but there was a quality like that in this wonderful series conclusion. Each character seems to find a away to understand and access their true power and as a result are able to affect the change they feel necessary to save their world. Each character has doubts about themselves, but they manage to overcome their fears to do what they think is right, no matter what the cost. While filled with battle and gore for the most bloodthirsty action reader, this book still insists on displaying the power of true love, not only for one individual but also for a people or a world.

Which brings me to the non-spoilery verdict - this book manages to tie up multiple storylines without giving you the feeling that Melissa Marr has wrapped all her plots and characters up with a tidy but unrealistic bow, something I think only a very talented writer can manage. You feel a sense of strong resolution at the end of the novel (yet the worlds and questions continue - I can definitely see room for a spin-off series, should she decide she can't stay away from her characters) but nothing feels contrived or forced. My only disappointment was not seeing Devlin or Ani, but it's natural they wouldn't be there since their destiny was fulfilled in the last book, Radiant Shadows.

This is a fabulous, fabulous conclusion to one of the best faerie series out there!! Great job, Melissa!!!

Programming Ideas: How to Get Your Gleek On

2011-01-10T09:24:00.000-08:00

Does anyone else have a school full of Glee fans? It's quite a prominent subculture at our school (we have a Performing Arts Institute in the summer and a strong arts program during the school year) and there has been many a library conversation relaying Brittany-isms or qvelling over how amazing a guest star Gwenyth Paltrow is.

So when my Library Advisory Board (LAB) came up with the idea of a Glee Party, I leapt all over it. But what to do? Since interdepartmental collaboration always equals a better program, I contacted our Student Activities guru (another Gleek) and asked her if she'd want to team up. A big "yes" and a look at the school calendar revealed an activities opening the first Friday back from the winter break, so we booked that Saturday night as the Gleek Party spot. Coordinating with other school staff is always a great idea, since you don't want to split your audience with another event. After all, it's the school's money, so we should get plenty of bang for its buck and serve our students the best. Being partners with other faculty helps make that happen.

Now that I had a date, what to do? The LAB discussion also centered around the library finally investing in a gaming system, and one of my kids deftly pointed out that the Glee Karaoke game is now available for several systems. After an exhaustive discussion with numerous students and lots of reading, we decided on a Wii. I also bought the Glee Karaoke game (which comes with a microphone and I bought another one from Game Stop since Best Buy didn't have extra microphones) and just hedging my bets for the future, I invested in three other controllers (and got them in pink, blue and black to differentiate them from the original white one that came with the Wii). Some iTunes gift cards for prizes (Best Costume, Karaoke winner, and Trivia Winner) and I was set with the programming.

But these are kids we are talking about, so food had to figure prominently. Student Activities guru and I brainstormed and (since she's amazing) came up with the idea of renting a snow cone machine (from her budget) so we could make slushies. For under $100, a lot of catering and party rental places can get you one of these beauties. The fee included three different flavors of syrup (Blue Raspberry, Cherry and Grape) and little pumps to dispense them. I bought three bags of ice at the gas station for $5 and found the machine totally simple to use - it's like a wood chipper for ice! In about 15 minutes, you can grind all the ice and just have this snow mountain in the machine ready to go - it seems to keep itself super cold and didn't seem to melt much at all.

We also added in tater tots (naturally) which we kept warm in a Crockpot and threw in pizza and soda for good measure (we got a bottle of Dr. Pepper in honor of Brittany and it was drunk with much giggling and swishing). I also made fresh baked chocolate chip cookies for dessert.

A few of my LAB members came early to help set everything up, along with my fabulous Student Activities guru and my husband (who works with me at the school and was in charge of pizza). We brought out a projector, screen, and speakers and hooked up the Wii in about 15 minutes. Kids began coming through the door 30 to 40 minutes early. We had about 22 kids sign up ahead of time, but I know my audience, and bought double the food, which was a good thing since 45 kids showed up. Since my school is 450 kids, this was 10% of my population, and I know that I had 12 additional kids who expressed interest but were away at sports games (girls' and boys' ice hockey and wrestling were all away) or at overnight activities, like our Mock Trial team which was in Pittsburgh (and got second in their tournament, thank you!).

The Glee Karaoke game was AMAZING and the kids LOVED it. Buying the two microphones was key because most of the kids sang duets. You have access to a good portion of the songs from Season 1 and can select different levels of difficulty and whether you want to do the song with other people or solo. Coolest is the fact that what is displayed while you are singing is the actual Glee episode performance of the song! Students were welcome to practice (they played for fun for about 45 minutes) and then had kids sign up for the actual Karaoke contest. A scorekeeper (my awesome husband again) wrote down each person or team's accuracy and overall points. Accuracy was the main thing for us to determine who won - an iTunes gift card was awarded with much cheering to the winner!

Glee trivia was another popular category, but be warned! My trivia is hard since we did have so many Glee experts (Gleeks) on board. Anyone who would like to make a copy on Google Docs is welcome to do so - I created both the trivia contest sheet (a handout, but you could easily make it into a Jeopardy game) and I also have a answers sheet for easy grading.

We watched an episode from Glee, Season 1 on DVD (which I bought for our DVD collection and checked it out at the end of the night). In promoting the event via poster and email, I had created a survey using surveymonkey.com and polled people for their favorite episode (which BTW, was "Preggers" featuring the very poignant Kurt coming out to his Dad storyline as well as the insanely wonderful scene of the whole football team doing the "Single Ladies" Beyonce number). We watched the episode together with much cheering and singing along and the trivia sheets were filled out during this portion of the night.

I had a display (above) of drama and musical related books along with the ALA Glee bookmarks. We had a TON of books checked out this night - some from the display but even more from kids wandering the stacks and talking about books.

I'm the pale, tired one in the center. The cute blonde is Student Activities guru and my husband is on my other side. I couldn't have done this without them! We also gave out three of the ALA Glee Read posters as giveaways for runners up in the contests.

Final verdict? This was a super example of using my LAB to tap into programming ideas that I can get enthusiastic about and that the kids love. The Wii is a great investment for future gaming activities in the library and brought in a ton of kids. I had several students who had never even seen the show before, but came because they heard the buzz from friends and stayed for the food and the Wii fun. I'd say it was Gleektastic overall and I look forward to thinking up similar events that my kids will enjoy!

Yet Another New Year's Resolutions Post...

2011-01-06T10:59:00.000-08:00

I think my problem with this blog is that I've been relying on it as largely a book review blog (not that there's anything wrong with that) but I do go through stretches that I 1) don't have time to read many books because I'm wading through my stacks of professional journals, 2) am busy with programming or projects in the library, or 3) really don't like any of the books I'm forcing myself to read.

Since I hold pretty strong opinions, I think it would be mean to write negative reviews (and when I'm cranky about something, my fingers become little vipers dancing across the keys), so I usually hold out for books I actually like. This can delay posting, particularly if I want to pack my entry with tons of links to author blogs and other info.

So my New Year's Resolution is that I'm going to enforce my 80 page rule and put aside any book that hasn't grabbed me by then and move on to the next (and maybe I'll do a brief post about the books that aren't grabbing me and explain politely why). And I am also going to participate in the YA Reads Book Review 2011 challenge, Level 3, which means I'm going to read 12 books in 2011 (I'll read a lot more, but I'll blog about at least 12, beyond my favorite authors).

I'm also going to take more pictures of my programming and write regular posts about what I'm doing with links to the Google Docs I'm using and informative how-to explanations that might be helpful to a beginning librarian. I'll also write the occasional (brief) response to buzzy topics on the web surrounding libraries, since I so dutifully put those in my Evernote account under my "Blog This!" list. Lastly, I plan on having a regular post about some of the professional work I do with YALSA or other organizations to hopefully encourage and inform other librarians interested in making a mark with their local or national professional organizations.

I think this sounds pretty reasonable! Let me know if you have another topic you'd like to read about. :-)

Author Rave: Diana Peterfreund

2010-12-12T20:14:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite things to do is to read well-done short story collections and find new authors to explore. So when a well-read and especially intelligent student recommended Zombies vs. Unicorns, edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier and featuring stories by heavy hitters like Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, and Scott Westerfeld (all authors I believe walk around with halos and choral groups singing their praises), I hadn't got to the third story before I ordered the book for my library. (Note to other librarians: Wrapping this book is a royal pain in the unicorn keister, but it's worth it. Really, publisher? Really? I bet it seemed cool in the meeting, but partial covers make librarians crazy. If you ever get some librarian going postal with an AK-47 in your office, and I hope it never happens, "creative cover design" is going to be the reason.)

When I got to the story by Diana Peterfreund, I paid extra close attention. I had subscribed to her blog sometime last year, simply because I was impressed by how well she wrote about her writing process, but I shamefully had put her on the back burner when it came to reading any of her books. I was intrigued by the world she painted in her short story, "The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn" in which a survivor of a unicorn attack actually rescues a newborn unicorn from a freak show and hides it in the woods behind her home, learning to communicate with it and teaching it to not attack humans. In Peterfreund's world, unicorns were once thought extinct, but instead had merely been in hiding from humans who had hunted them to near extinction. And how does one hunt highly magical and sometimes stunningly beautiful, powerful creatures? In a delightful twist (attention, classical history buffs), unicorn hunters are all young women descended from Alexander the Great whose famous white horse, Bucephalus, was, you guessed it, a unicorn. The short story focuses more on the female protagonist, Wen, whose parents are strong Christians and feel her affinity with the species is indicative of some type of "evil." Oh, silly parents.

After such a great short story, I was primed to finally take Rampant off my fiction shelves and bring it home (and I grabbed the sequel, which had just appeared in Barnes & Noble, processing it with the speed of light). I immediately loved the main character, Astrid. First of all, the name, obviously - Astrid bespeaks nordic power and has a distinctly kick-ass quality necessary for a unicorn hunter. She also generates sympathy from the get-go. Astrid's mother is a woman obsessed with the existence of unicorns and geneaology, whose various hobbies negate her ability to parent Astrid or hold down any kind of lucrative job. Astrid's life consists of living with her eccentric mother over her uncle' garage and limiting social engagements involving her mother lest the u-word crops up and ruins her reputation. A botched babysitting job ends up with watching her pushy (hanky-panky kind of pushy) boyfriend get gored by a unicorn, much to her surprise as Astrid had never believed in their existence. Her mother comes to her rescue using a family "remedy" to save her boyfriend's life, but rather than express concern over the near-fatal attack, her mother is ecstatic. Astrid has managed to attract a unicorn (unicorn hunter requirement #1), not lose her virginity to her pushy boyfriend (requirement #2), and now the mother has discovered online that an ancient convent of unicorn hunters is reopening in Rome (yes, in Italy) and the ticket is bought so Astrid can go live there and be trained. Funded by Gordian Pharmaceuticals who claim to want to understand the potential of the unicorn's healing powers, the girls' lives become increasingly at risk by both expected threats like the unicorns and ones they could not have anticipated.

Unwanted at home, Astrid ships off, quickly joined by her older cousin, Phil, who is appalled at her aunt's behavior and also seems to have the gene (and other requirements) for being a hunter. Other girls join them in the decaying convent, and with potential romantic entanglements, Astrid must hone her prodigious skill in hunting while reconciling her conflicted emotions about killing creatures that may deserve to live. Rampant's sequel, Ascendent, takes off right where the first book leaves off, and develops that internal conflict further. (BTW, Wen from the short story comes into this book with her little trained unicorn in tow, a nice touch.) More history of the unicorns and their hunters is revealed, helping Astrid understand how complicated her legacy truly is.

Astrid takes a job with the pharmaceutical company funding the "convent" as a unicorn wrangler for their resident herd, and ends up discovering more about the species than makes her comfortable. With additional layers revealed about whose interests are really being served by her work and their work of her fellow hunters, Astrid must face grave consequences if her choices do not conform to the expectations of the adults around her. Check out what Peterfreund has to say about the series:

Diana Peterfreund's personal biography is a diverse and interesting one, indicating a variety of jobs held after obtaining an Ivy League education. Along those lines, I'm interested to also try her well-received series for adults, started off with Secret Society Girl: An Ivy League Novel focusing on a college junior inducted into an exclusive secret society (what else?). I'm not sure that it will have quite the unique spin as this fantasy fiction series, but if it's half as well-written, I'm going to enjoy it!

Review: The Most Dangerous Book in the Library - Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

2010-09-26T13:46:00.000-07:00

It's only appropriate that with Banned Books Week having begun today, that I should be blogging about "dangerous" books. Banned Books Week, which always happens in late September, is a joint effort of the American Library Association and other concerned organizations, which come together to heighten public awareness of the regular efforts of some individuals to take books they don't like off the shelf of libraries and bookstores everywhere. Young adult and children's librarians get particularly hopped up about this as most objections, which when formally filed are known as challenges, are aimed at the removal of books marketed to young people. I think the majority of librarians, like myself, feel that parents are welcome to choose materials that reflect their families beliefs and values and restrict what their children read (even though we cringe a little when they do it), but that no person has the right to restrict what someone else's child can read.

We should all be thanking our lucky stars that more book banning parents haven't read Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, because they would undoubtedly have given birth to several litters of kittens by page 40. The novel centers on its hip protagonist, Marcus, who cuts school and circumvents the electronic barriers in his way in order to play games and engage in playful hacks with his equally savvy friends. But one afternoon as he gallivants around San Francisco with his buddies, disaster hits in the form of a terrorist explosion. In the ensuing panic Marcus and his friends are picked up by Homeland Security and taken to an undisclosed location to be questioned. The kids are treated as dangerous criminals with three of the four released under the threat that they will be watched and are not to tell anyone what transpired.

Each of kids, mourning the loss of their missing friend who they assume has died, deals with the event differently, but Marcus is absolutely enraged at being treated this way and decides to highlight to the world exactly how Homeland Security isn't making anyone safer by the measures imposed after the attack in San Francisco. Hacking his giveaway Xbox, Marcus creates Xnet, a secure community of savvy technology users who are happy to disseminate and share the information he publishes about how to undermine and get around the government's tracking devices and information gathering programs.

This book totally kicked my butt. The characters are well-drawn and the technology discussed in the most knowledgeable way (if we don't have it already, it's in the works, like ParanoidLinux). The novel is a manifesto to what can happen when a government abuses the freedom of its citizens, hence the title which makes a direct reference to the "Big Brother" in George Orwell's 1984. There is a ton of technology details however so that even avid readers of technology-centered nonfiction would find enough to keep them thinking, whether its Bayesian probability to explain arrest methodology or RFID hacking.

An unexpected but very welcome bonus to this excellent novel is the fountain of informative afterwords that follow the end of the text. Bruce Schneier, a security systems expert, and Andrew Huang, the guy who literally wrote the book on Hacking Your Xbox, both put in their two cents about the technology in the book and encourage readers to experiment with technology and challenge themselves. If you didn't know any better, you'd swear the book was a brilliant plant for engineering and computer science programs all over the country. Doctorow offers in his addendum a diverse collection of books, websites, and white papers that bring together many of themes in his book, including copyright and digital rights management issues. I was so happy to see FreeCulture.org and Creative Commons since those are both resources we push hard in our information literacy curriculum. Big surprise Doctorow is always being featured at library conventions. I used this section to some serious collection development work in my 000s and 600s. Thanks, Cory!

I guess I'm not that worried about the book banners. I think the majority of adults would shut the book when Marcus starts in about LARPing and lapses into techspeak while a bunch of other people would totally agree with his message. After all, Doctorow's message is the same as this year's Banned Books Week - Think for Yourself and Let Others Do the Same. I'm going to be checking out his other science fiction books. I think I found myself a new favorite author.

Professional Resource - Merchandising Made Simple by Jenny LaPerriere and Trish Christiansen

2010-08-18T08:03:00.000-07:00

Having crunched most of the data from my spring Recreational Reading survey of my Upper School students (based on the Carol Fitzgerald article I blogged about in the fall), I have a lot of data from kids on how the library could better market to them. The overwhelming consensus from the free responses is that kids want to be advertised and marketed to - there were so many poster/e-newsletter/flyer suggestions from kids that this is undoubtedly what we need to focus on.

Enter a fabulous book every librarian should read, Merchandising Made Simple: Using Standards and Dynamite Displays to Boost Circulation by Jenny LaPerriere and Trish Christiansen. To be totally honest - I had no idea what to expect from this book so when I finally opened it, I was floored at how readable it was. I whipped through this puppy in under two hours and at every other page turn had my mind blown. I always thought the idea of merchandising was a lot more complicated, but LaPerriere, a librarian in the Denver Public Library system, and Christiansen, who had worked in retail for years and years prior to being hired by the DPL to help merchandise their collection and teach the methods to the staff there, make it soooooo easy.

Merchandising, by its very definition, means displaying your product in a way that makes consumers want to "buy it" and take it home with them. You are creating a need that your customer maybe didn't know they had. Luckily for librarians, our product is so terrific that we can feel extremely enthusiastic about marketing to our patrons, particularly when the cost is something already covered by their taxes or, in my case, by their tuition.

So why do librarians break out in hives when we are encouraged to emulate the bookstore model? When I renovated my library a couple years ago, the students from my Library Advisory Board who met with the architect and interior designer described their ideal library this way, "If an Apple store and Barnes & Noble had a baby, that's we want our library to look like." Clean lines, modern, technology, but comfortable seating and books were all priorities in these visionary students' minds. I think you can see from the above picture that our space is extremely well used and it's all of those things (there are comfy armchairs along the sides of the space which aren't really visible in this photo, trust me). I'm not planning on abandoning the Dewey Decimal system (just because I feel my students are 99% college bound and need to learn to navigate a classification system so they feel comfortable in a college library - I like to delude myself that most of them do know there are print books you should read in addition to my terrific databases.)

The book is now my primer for marketing (combined with my survey results) and I plan on having this be a staff meeting right when school starts. We were in the process of doing a fiction weed and the face out space will be valuable real estate for promoting the collection, but I have so many other ideas from this book. Themed displays (the final chapter has some really terrific ideas and I want to try at least half of them) are obviously great, but the authors give direction in terms of getting inexpensive props, how to do an effective tiered display, how to use signage as a draw, etc. I had no idea of the "crescent" concept (think of a traditional stack and having the face outs on each shelf form a backwards C from top to bottom) and I also didn't know that when customers enter a space they naturally pull to the right, so that's where many stores have key displays when they want to push a product.

There are tons of pictures (which probably is why the reading time is so minimal with this book) but the content is information rich, and there are chapter bibliographies for further reading and a list of questions to ask yourself (or your staff) to see if you fully market your collection. Two pieces I'm taking to heart (after the themed ideas which I think is great) - to use a calendar (in my case, not just the usual holidays but also coinciding with known extracurriculars like International Food Night or research projects) and also to have a display map, so all staff know what endcaps and windowsills have got which type of books on them.

Two other books which I haven't read but also seem like they would have great information are Great Displays for Your Library Step by Step by Susan Phillips and Look, It's Books!: Marketing Your Library With Displays and Promotionsby Gayle Skaggs which look like they might also have good ideas to absorb. I think display and promotion is one of those topics never taught in library school that really should be (why not teach merchandising concepts?) and one of the main reasons librarians like doing best practice visits to other spaces. In case you can't leave home for a library road trip to see how the other guy is marketing their materials, pick up this great professional resource and feel truly inspired.

The Dear America series rides again!

2010-08-14T11:29:00.000-07:00

I was elated when I heard that Scholastic was reviving the Dear America series of books. I only discovered them in library school and remember tearing through the whole lot of them thinking the whole while that I would have loved to have had something like them when I was a young reader, since my genre of choice was historical fiction. Dear America was my first introduction to such great children's/YA authors as Kathryn Lasky and Walter Dean Myers, and as someone who studied history in college, I have always been impressed with the level of scholarship Scholastic puts behind each book in the series.

But the series had taken a hiatus for a while, much to the chagrin of librarians everywhere who enjoyed having a new one to promote. Luckily, with the latest addition, The Fences Between Us: The Diary of Piper Davis, Seattle, Washington, 1941 by Kirby Larson, we can honestly say the series is back and better than ever. Librarians know the quality of Kirby Larson's work, as she is the author of the renowned, Hattie Big Sky,which won the Newbery Award in 2007 and was inspired by the experience of Larson's great-grandmother (teachers and librarians should definitely check out Larson's companion website for this novel which has wonderful supplemental information and links).

The Fences Between Us is the story of Piper Davis, an 8th grader and the youngest daughter of a minister who has a congregation in the Japanese American neighborhood of Seattle. Piper's life is a modest one because of her father's profession. Her mother died years ago and she is close to her older sister who is studying chemistry in college, and her older brother, the family extrovert. You can imagine with the time and location that the whole family's life changes drastically with the occasion of Pearl Harbor, particularly because the older brother, Hank, had joined the navy a few months earlier and was stationed on the U.S.S. Arizona.

As America enters the war, Piper watches her sister leave school to work at the local Boeing factory and her father struggle with gas rationing and parishoners in need, all the while worrying about Hank, who survived Pearl Harbor and was now fighting in the South Pacific. But Piper doesn't see coming what her father finds inevitable - the incarceration of the Japanese American families who live in their neighborhood, go to Piper's school, and make up their entire parish. Because of her life being so entirely enmeshed with these friends, she is shocked and horrified at people's lack of understanding, particularly when it comes from lifelong friends and love interests. But even her loyalty is put to test when her father makes the ultimate decision - to take Piper and move to the incarceration camp in Montana his parish has been sent to in order to continue to minister to their needs.

This novel provides a much needed addition to the oeuvre of Japanese internment novels for young people. While previous books in the Dear America series dealt with this issue from the perspective of Japanese American children, Piper's story allows the reader to see not only the conditions inside the camp but the treatment of Piper and her father by the many prejudiced people who truly believed these fellow Americans posed a threat.

Perhaps most heartening is the fact that Larson actually based this story on the family of a real individual, Pastor Emery "Andy" Andrews, pastor of the Japanese Baptist Church, who actually did move his entire family to the location of one of the internment camps in Idaho in order to minister to his parishioners. This is a painful but heartfelt topic and one excellently executed by a talented author.

A Journey in Screencasting: Comparing Different Screencasting Platforms

2010-08-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

My history with screencasting has been a frustrating one. A couple years ago I really wanted to have accompanying screencasts archived to the library page that went over the skills we taught in classes. Obviously students can't remember everything you've just talked about when they are still reeling from the reality of having a large scale project (my dialogue: "The importance of keywords in database searching cannot be overstated..."/simultaneous student thoughts: "How many pages is this paper? Eleven? I don't even read eleven pages in one sitting, how am I going to....").

But I was doomed. I paid for a well-reviewed screencast software and then couldn't get it to be large enough that I could use the image (kind of a problem when you are showing all the little details of a database) and I prefer to not clutter up my applications folder. Then I tried Jing, which was okay, but still suffered from a smallish display. I never felt like this would actually be helpful, and the fact that I had to upload my screencast to their website and use that as the link was kind of frustrating. I don't inherently mind it, but the website was slow to load on our school network and since almost half my student population are student boarders living on campus, this was impractical.

So when the much-appreciated Richard Byrnes, author of the Free Technology for Teachers blog (one of my favorites), presented several screencasting tools that educators could use, I thought I'd use the waning days of my summer to see if I could grab the Holy Grail and find a screencasting platform that would work well for my instruction support needs.

First up was Screencastle, which is one of a new breed of screencasting sites which needs no downloading (it uses a little Java code). There is nothing to their website - it's one page with a big start button and a series of boxes showing you all the various links and code you'll get when you're done. I pressed the button, gave Firefox permission to accept the Java script and in less than a minute, a little bar was at the bottom of my screen with a button that said "Start recording". I opened an extra window, pulled up my library page, and began a rough overview of using the library catalog, specifically my Aquabrowser overlay.

When I was finished, I just pressed the "stop recording" button. A "Preview this Screencast" button appeared on the bar now, as well as a "Save this Screencast". I previewed it (nice and big, yay!) and while I thought I sounded a little faint, I checked my systems preferences and discovered my mic setting was at the middle point, so that's my fault, not Screencastle's. Smooth audio and nice clear image and I was super happy. It took no time at all (versus the hours of staying up until 2 am frustrated with my Jing screencast) and as soon as I hit "Save" I got the above embed code and/or a links to previews or a full screencast. You obviously would have to copy all this down for yourself since with no user registration, it would be hard to retrieve it from Screencastle.

The other screencasting tool recommended was Screenr. Designed as a screencast tool to be used with Twitter, you actually sign in with your Twitter account (so you are registered, versus Screencastle's no registration policy). The site is pretty with more support to make a newer screencaster feel comfortable. Your finished screencast is iPhone and YouTube compatible and you're prompted at the end to enter your tweet (with less than the 140 character maximum because Screenr saves room for it's abbreviated url for your screencast). There is a five minute limit on recording, but that would be fine for most information literacy skills, particularly because we often break them down into chunks anyway during instruction.

After signing in with my Twitter account (handle: SassyLibr), I loaded the screen recorder (I had an error the first time, but the second time it loaded like that *snap*). A ghost frame pops up which you can stretch to cover exactly what you want to show on your screencast, or you can use the window presets available down in the dropdown menu of the screencasting bar which is in the lower left corner of your computer. This bar is nicer than the Screencastle one in that it shows a coundown timer (remember that 5 minute limit) and also has a sound tool so you can see how sensitive your microphone is before beginning recording. A "Done" button allows you to indicate when you're finished, but there is a pause button in case you needed to stop and open up something else before resuming recording.

I decided to focus on Noodletools for this screencast, since a couple of our lower school students were getting nervous about its annual revalidation feature and because I am so utterly psyched about the new features it's rolled out (which you can see in the screencast - I mean, Google docs integration?? *geek fist pump*). When I finished recording, it prompted me to add my Twitter length description, but there was a check box for me to indicate that I didn't want to Tweet it right then (remember since you've got a log on for Screenr, all your screencasts are accessible in one place). The publishing time took a while - it hung up for about 6 minutes - and then I unsurprisingly got an error message. The good news is that nothing was lost; I could go back to the publishing page and try again, which I did and it published in about 3 and half minutes. I was given the option of publishing to YouTube (which I will consider since we do have a Kirby Library account and that could be a good way of reaching students) as well as the link and embed text (used above.) If you found yourself using Screenr a lot (and I think it would become a frequently used tool to demonstrate skills and sites to students and faculty), there is actually a bookmarklet that you can embed in your browser, so you can just click and start recording. Pretty convenient.

Last up is Screenjelly, also meant to be integrated with Twitter and Facebook, but a few differences exist. First, the limit here is 3 minutes (versus Screenr's 5 minutes), and that could make a difference if you're demonstrating something more complicated or with several steps. I did like that Screenjelly has a check box where you can indicate that you want your screencast to be private, so if you need to include passwords for electronic resources and don't want to have to change them (like I'll need to after my Noodletools screencast above), this could be a good option. Once again, it's just press an onscreen button and go - no software install or download necessary. Weirdly, ScreenJelly has a "Help" button on its site, but if you click on it it tells you that feature no longer exists. Not comforting.

Since I realized poking around it that ScreenJelly was owned by the same company that owns ScreenToaster, another recommended screencasting platform, I decided to use ScreenToaster since I wanted to next compare Ning with my Canvas account (also a Richard Byrnes recommendation) and it was bound to take longer than 3 minutes. No help button here either and you do register in order to archive your screencasts (you can record without registering). When I watched the demo video the audio kept cutting out, which I found disturbing, but I still plowed along. I did enable the beta version which said it was going to produce higher quality video (but that there might be problems), so please keep that in mind.

Similar to our other screencasts, you have to approve an applet to enable the program, and like Screenr, it uses a frame which you can put over what you wish to record. There is a time counter, but not an audio display, so you are unaware of your level of audio input. I recorded for a little over 7 minutes and then watched the preview. I gave up after a while, because of all the buffering, but was a little dismayed - my recording seemed to be oddly letterboxed (which makes me feel like I'm showing The Magnificent Seven on TMC, rather than a screencast) and the print looked REALLY small, which gave me shuddering Jing flashbacks. After 17 minutes of upload (and 22 indicated to go), I gave up. No screencast of this length should take that long to upload (my five minute one on Screenr took less than four minutes and was a good quality) and I had been unhappy enough with the other features that I didn't need to torture myself.

So I think the winner for me is Screenr - it was a little more featured than the others and I like the interface. I can develop the library's YouTube channel and promote that to students and link off the library page. Having ready access to an easy screencaster will also be useful for capturing computer bugs and showing our IT office so they don't have to necessarily poke around as much to try and figure out the issue, and teaching kids how to do it (perhaps under the guise of recording gaming prowess) would be a good technology literacy and writing skill (to say nothing of public speaking). I think we'd be hitting several ISTE and AASL standards with that one!

A Libba Bray Worship Moment

2010-08-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Folks, if you don't already know of my writer-crush on Libba Bray (yes, I am, as far as I know it, inventing this term of "writer-crush": (n) when you are insanely in love with the writing of a given author and obsessed with making other people see their genius), you will after this post. I was pretty smug when Going Bovine won the Printz award because I had been yakking about it for months as I boasted in this blog, so you can imagine how much I was looking forward to watching her speech. Sadly, I couldn't stay at ALA Annual 2010 for the Printz Award dinner, but I knew my trusty and technologically savvy YALSA wouldn't let me down (hello, AASL? Why don't we see video of the NSLMPY winners? Hint, hint).

So I was ready with the popcorn when I saw that YALSA had posted the link to the blip.tv video of her accepting her award. Be warned: it is long and it is funny and poignant, a lot like reading Going Bovine, so if you're a crier like me (acid test, do you do a lot sniffing at the new iPhone 4 commercials?) you will need tissues. Also of note, but not quite as spectacular as hearing Libba, is the excellent School Library Journal article on her, published in the latest issue. Enjoy!

Can't Get Enough Sexy Fairies? Try These Two Books by Maggie Stiefvater

2010-08-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

I already think highly of Maggie Stiefvater who has a wonderful writing style I fell in love with when I read her novel, Shiver, (reviewed earlier this year), so when I was looking for more fun summer reading, I decided to go to authors I can depend on. I had two of her books in my reading pile, Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception and Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie, but for some reason I had forgotten about them. In my annual August cleanout, I thankfully uncovered their presence and sat down to see if I was going to like them. I don't know why I doubted Maggie - I loved them, and in fact read both in about 7 hours, savoring every word. This author nails romance - real, honest love - and shows how love can not only look different than what you expect, but that true love causes both people to grow as individuals, becoming better people in the process. Just as with Shiver, Stiefvater's prose can be lyrical at times and particularly in these two novels, her music background comes to the forefront, adding a wonderful dimension.

But let's get down to brass tacks re: the plot. Here's how the publisher describes Lament:

Sixteen-year-old Deirdre Monaghan is a painfully shy but prodigiously gifted musician. She's about to find out she's also a cloverhand—one who can see faeries. Deirdre finds herself infatuated with a mysterious boy who enters her ordinary suburban life, seemingly out of thin air. Trouble is, the enigmatic and gorgeous Luke turns out to be a gallowglass—a soulless faerie assassin. An equally hunky—and equally dangerous—dark faerie soldier named Aodhan is also stalking Deirdre. Sworn enemies, Luke and Aodhan each have a deadly assignment from the Faerie Queen. Namely, kill Deirdre before her music captures the attention of the Fae and threatens the Queen's sovereignty. Caught in the crossfire with Deirdre is James, her wisecracking but loyal best friend. Deirdre had been wishing her life weren't so dull, but getting trapped in the middle of a centuries-old faerie war isn't exactly what she had in mind . . .

Deirdre reminds me of a lot of teens I've known, incredibly talented but with overbearing parents attempting to run their lives. Luckily Deirdre has James, her bagpiping best friend (she's a harpist), but she knows that her anxiety and worry causes her to miss a lot in life. At a music competition, Luke appears from seemingly nowhere, and when he encourages her to explore her potential and not play if safe she does just that with wonderful results. But she is a cloverhand, and Luke realizes that he's fallen in love with her, quashing his ability to murder her on behalf of the fairy queen. He must help her realize the power that has been latent within her while also protecting her from the fairies attracted to her and her music.

All characters are well-drawn and I'm beginning to think no one does paranormal romance quite like Maggie Stiefvater (that's right, Stephenie Meyer, you heard me - I still heart Twilight, and I really wish you didn't sell the film rights). That breathless physical contact between two people in love discovering true passion, purrrrr, she manages to get your heart thumping! The music portion of the book, so often an afterthought for many writers as a way of making their character seem well-rounded, is the central focus here and Stiefvater has the chops to add serious depth. For those of you who enjoy reading her blog as I do, you know that she has an incredibly strong musical and artistic background and is actually a harpist. The page on her website devoted to Lament actually has several original songs by her that you can listen to, and I'd strongly recommend it as it helps set the tone of the book.

The "sequel" to Lament is Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie which actually focuses on James. He and Deirdre are at Thornking-Ash School of Music, a boarding school that caters to the incredibly talented (and, in turns out, the musicians most likely to draw faerie attention). I was so glad when I realized that this story would be told from James' point of view - he was a smart, mouthy, loving character in the first book that I wanted to get to know better and that part of me was very satisfied by this novel. My hat is definitely off to Stiefvater in the characterization department - the two books are totally different in feel as the author truly inhabits her characters. Here's the publisher teaser:

James Morgan has an almost unearthly gift for music. And it has attracted Nuala, a soul-snatching faerie muse who fosters and then feeds on the creative energies of exceptional humans until they die. James has plenty of reasons to fear the faeries, but as he and Nuala collaborate on an achingly beautiful musical composition, James finds his feelings towards Nuala deepening. But the rest of the fairies are not as harmless. As Halloween—the day of the dead—draws near, James will have to battle the Faerie Queen and the horned king of the dead to save Nuala's life and his soul.

Nuala is the second main character of the book and she can certainly hold her own with the bundle of personality that is James. In alternating chapters, their story unfolds as Nuala is attracted to James' music and he, unlike any other mark she has known, rejects her offer of divine inspiration as he has more than enough acquaintance with the trouble fairies can bring to one's life. The more time she spends with him, the more she falls for him, and he for her when he realizes what a bleak and doomed life she has. Nuala must enter the Halloween bonfire every sixteen years, burning herself in order to be reborn from the ashes, but with no memory of her former lives except the names she has born. She is an outcast among the other faeries and an easy victim of their cruelty as they consider her, a leanan sidhe, too contaminated by the humans with whom she must associate in order to survive.

Deirdre is a minor character in this novel, although central to the plot, and we see her only through James and Nuala's eyes and the occasional unsent text to James. If there is any criticism of the book, it's that Deirdre feels a little flat to me, but I could imagine that being from the differing perspectives and the fact that she is devastated by the loss of Luke from her life. Her grief causes her to be both troubled and selfish, but her absence from James' life turns out to have benefits for him as he begins to heal from his love for her and find his true destiny.

Both books are must-reads for anyone interested in fairy lore, and I put Maggie Stiefvater completely parallel with my other favorite fairy author, Melissa Marr (they are high-fiving each other on tandem clouds) in their commitment to Gaelic folklore and the great combination of sexy menace they give their fairy characters. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of Linger, the sequel to Shiver, and enjoy this author's unbelievable talent one more time.

Promoting Teen Reading with Web 2.0 Tools - Part IVA: Book Trailers

2010-08-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

I know, I know. How long was this *&%@! YALSA preconference, you ask? Don't you remember me saying it should have been a whole day and not an afternoon? If not, you aren't paying attention. And I think you'll enjoy this post and the next couple ones rounding out the preconference series. The last part of the preconference was a "speed dating" segment in which librarian experts went around to different tables and spoke about their work with various strategies using tools that promoted teen reading. First up for me was Tiffany (who likes to be called "Tiff") Emerick, librarian at Lansdale Catholic High School, who decided to make book trailers a collaborative project (the link is to her Glog which collated all the support materials) with a receptive English teacher. Tiff has a wonderful Google Doc of the project and tips for librarians or English teachers who might want to emulate it.

Her goals were to have the kids get excited and to feel that they had choices in the way they choice to create their trailer. They watched both publisher and amateur videos, talking about the pros and cons of them, and reviewed Tiff's rubric. The students received two grades, one from her and one from the English teacher. In her explanation to us, she said one of the best parts was the opportunity to explain copyright since the students would be using photos and links, and this enabled her to really go to town explaining and promoting Creative Commons, which many students had never heard of. She used Photostory (a Windows product) with the 11th graders and also taught them folksonomy tagging concepts with the Creative Commons material search. Obviously you could also use iMovie or even Animoto, since it added the new feature of being able to keep the order of your images under control.

The book trailers that passed muster with her (and she said that was most of them) she embedded into the library catalog, so if a student searching for reading brought up a specific record, the book trailer would be a link that could be clicked on and played. Great idea, right? I was floored by the quality of the trailers (do yourself a favor and check out the Beautiful Creatures trailer, it's amazing) and Tiff had a great energy and enthusiasm so it's easy to see how she brings out the best in her students.

I'm really impressed with many of the sources Tiff found to promote this idea (book trailers are something I've toyed with for a long time). This one above for Give Up the Ghost by Megan Crewe came from bookscreening.com, which bills itself a clearinghouse for publishers and authors to put up their booktrailers and promote their latest publication. You get the sense that they used to accept amateur video, but now are sticking to the slicker stuff from publishing houses. Which is fine, since the quality seems to be quite good, and a good trailer means more people are going to read it, right?

Review: Virals by Kathy Reichs

2010-08-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

I got a few good ARCs from the exhibit hall at ALA Annual in Washington, D.C. and Virals by Kathy Reichs, the new YA tie-in novel to her Temperance Brennan series due to be published on November 2nd, was among my swag. Needing bath reading tonight, and knowing the latest issue of Country Living magazine wasn't going to last the requisite amount of time, I brought the book in just in case. Two and half hours and a serious case of prune feet later, I was finished.

I'll admit I was a little nervous. The first 30-40 pages felt like Reichs was struggling to find the voice of her protagonist but by page 70 or so (I use the 80 page rule for my book reading - if I don't find myself into it by page 80, I put it aside and move on), enough science had kicked in that it all clicked, because let's face it, that's what Reichs does incredibly well.

From a librarian standpoint, Reichs is a good sell to teen readers, many of whom who are vigilant watchers of Bones and other crime lab dramas involving forensic anthropology. Most high schools and public libraries know that she is a proven author with her Temperance Brennan series (which begins with Deja Dead, a book that became a New York Times bestseller upon its debut in 1997 and won numerous awards). Here's the promotion copy for Virals, as shown on Amazon.com (the book isn't up yet on the Penguin/Razorbill website yet):

Tory Brennan, niece of acclaimed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan (of the Bones novels and hit TV show), is the leader of a ragtag band of teenage "sci-philes" who live on a secluded island off the coast of South Carolina. When the group rescues a dog caged for medical testing on a nearby island, they are exposed to an experimental strain of canine parvovirus that changes their lives forever.

As the friends discover their heightened senses and animal-quick reflexes, they must combine their scientific curiosity with their newfound physical gifts to solve a cold-case murder that has suddenly become very hot - if they can stay alive long enough to catch the killer's scent.

Fortunately, they are now more than friends - they're a pack. They are Virals.

Chilling copy, eh? Tory is a young protagonist but brilliant. She's fourteen but, when we meet her at the end of her freshman year of high school, she's busy taking AP Biology and AP British Literature. Her three closest friends, all boys, live in the same isolated area of Morris Island, off Charleston, South Carolina where families associated with the University of Charleston get housing near the old Civil War forts. This group of friends commutes by ferry to a very elite and pricey private school where they are seen as charity cases since they don't have to pay full-tuition as university faculty kids. Add to this popularity blow their high I.Q. and you can see that the four of them jumped pretty quickly from outsider to pariah.

As mentioned, the text seemed to suffer in the beginning of the book. It was rather staccato in nature so it felt a little herky-jerky to me and the level of teen snark was rather high. The reader is introduced to Tory from a first person point of view and we quickly learn that her hard working mother died in a car accident only six months ago and she has been sent to live with her father, who she didn't know and if fact was unaware of her existence, Dr. Kit Howard. Kit happens to be Temperance Brennan's nephew, hence the tie-in to Kathy Reichs' other books, and there are plenty of references to Tempe for readers who've enjoyed the series. Both father and daughter are struggling with the adjustment to one another, and Dr. Howard, a marine biologist, is occupied with his research on a nearby island. Tory and her friends are fascinated with that island too, and when a wolf-dog puppy they named Cooper goes missing, they won't rest until they get to the bottom of what's going on.

The friends are pretty well-drawn and the writing improves as soon as Tory's fascination with science comes into the picture. The bad guys are for the most part just shy of cartoon villains but the book is strong in describing the sense of isolation and awkwardness a rather pretty Tory feels from her peers, both due to her intelligence and her socioeconomic status compared to the other students at school. The bond she feels to the wolf-dog pup is extremely strong and the enthusiasm and intensity of her interest in science and her worship of Temperance Brennan comes across as very genuine. The slight paranormal twist of the virus altering the kids' DNA is a great plot device since so many questions arise from it - what else will they discover they can do? Are they in danger from it? Will they be discovered? Are they in danger? Will their families find out? A sequel is due out Summer 2011 to begin to answer some of those questions. The reader ends up suspending disbelief on more than one occasion (okay, a lot of occasions) but it's an page turning adventure once you're 70 pages in and probably very appropriate for the middle school age group who finds themselves fascinated with forensic anthropology topics.

Professional Resource - Risky Business: Taking and Managing Risks in Library Services for Teens

2010-08-02T12:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it's great to read a professional book and realize you don't need it. It's not to say that I didn't get plenty out of my recent read of Risky Business: Taking and Managing Risks in Library Services for Teens by Linda W. Braun, Hillias J. Martin, and Connie Urquhart, but I also spent a lot of time thanking my lucky stars that I work at a school that supports libraries and understands the role they play in the lives of teens.

I wish I could say I understood what people where so afraid of - I've often sat next to another librarian on the Gale bus at ALA Midwinter or Annual and when you get around to the "so, what kind of library do you work in?" one in a dozen will be some academic or reference librarian working with a more mature population who gasps upon the news that I work primarily with teens, "Oh! I could NEVER do that. I can barely handle one at home!"

My first thought is what fly wing-pulling, future serial killer do they have at home? It's rare I meet a teenager that I can't talk to or be willing to at least be in the same room assisting them for an extended period of time. Most of them I truly love and I want to create collections, give instruction, and do programming that makes them happy and healthy and more successful at what they try and do each day. But for those librarians who find there is a difference between what they know they should be doing versus what they are currently doing, this book will definitely help with strategies and ideas to align those two concepts together.

Covering a nice spectrum, chapters include general ones about risk taking and teens in general, collection development, author perspectives on risk (one of my favorite chapters), programming, technology, dealing with administrators and colleagues, career advice, and teen risky behavior (with a terrific focus on the SADD study from 2004 and positive risk taking). These chapters are written in a forthright, comfortable style and unlike so many professional books where you feel you might be give a pop quiz later because they are so academic and dense, I whipped through this volume in a couple of hours and enjoyed every minute.

Can I also give a shout out to the long neglected and never appreciated appendix? I find some of my favorite professional books are the ones where I drool a little over the supplemental material, whether it's a beefy bibliography or some great additional essay and Risky Business does not disappoint. The bibliography is good, but the real value added comes from the two questionnaires librarians can use to determine their library's risk history and also to figure out if a certain risk might be worth taking. My hands-down favorite section though was undoubtedly Appendix F which has the collection of YALSA white papers. Where have these been hiding? There are some really great manifestos on various topics, from YA Literature to LIS education, that have really got my brain cogs turning.

Last but not least, we can wallow in the credentials of our authors. Linda Braun, technology goddess and YALSA-past president, actually came and did a wonderful training at my high school despite cranky weather gods and I've always enjoyed many of her books - Teens, Technology, and Literacy; Or, Why Bad Grammar Isn't Always Bad, Introducing the Internet to Young Learners: Ready-To-Go Activities and Lesson Plans, Hooking Teens With the Net, and Listen Up! Podcasting for Schools and Libraries.

Hillias J. Martin, an adjunct professor at Queens College and Pratt Institute, wrote a recent "must-read" for every librarian - Serving Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning Teens: A How-to-Do-It Manual for Libraries. Obviously many librarians are in a position of feeling that promoting GLBTQ literature (which make great endcap displays - I'm just saying) is a road to a parent challenge or administrator heart attack so the chapter on collection development and risk taking might give a few much-needed strategies in this area. Librarians are currently dealing with the aftermath of the the librarian in New Jersey who ordered the removal of a queer youth anthology after calling it "porn". It's a good reminder for me that librarians aren't all the same in terms of our progressive and vigilant attitude toward serving all our patrons but that we are often as different in belief and perspective as the rest of America. It's doesn't make me less disappointed and angry, but it's quite a wake-up call. Kudos to the many teens and adults who have been vocal in their objection to this face slap to teen librarians everywhere who recognize that censorship is often the symptom of the disease of discrimination and should be fought whenever possible.

Connie Urquhart, teen services coordinator for the Fresno County Public Library System, is known to many active members of YALSA since she's been on lots of committees and crops up with happy regularity as an author on the YALSA blog. This is her first book, but hopefully not her last.

Any criticisms of the book? The only thing I wish I had seen (maybe in another wonderful appendix!) would have been a bibliography of more general books on risk, both from a psychological and a business perspective. I often think that as librarians we don't tap into literature from other disciplines that would help inform us of different lenses through which we can view (and hopefully solve) our challenges. But that's pretty nitpicky. I would recommend this book to any teen librarian and definitely for inclusion in the library science curricula - let's get the conversation about risk started BEFORE librarians have to face it!!

Promoting Teen Reading with Web 2.0 Tools - Part III: The Future of Reading With John Green and David Levithan

2010-08-01T19:26:00.000-07:00

Just when I thought the first half of my YALSA Preconference was worth its weight in gold (the academic research presentation and then the author panel on using 2.0 tools), we have a snack break and I get this - an amazing brownie and cookie with free sodas and water. Hello! I didn't know we were going to get food to say nothing of kick ass food (thanks, Embassy Suites hotel). This was extremely well timed considering I had come to the preconference 2 hours early so I could get a front row seat, specifically for this part of the preconference, because I was just so totally psyched to be in the same room as John Green and David Levithan, authors of the recent book, Will Grayson, Will Grayson which I enjoyed tremendously!! This meant forgoing lunch and simply eating a slightly stale trail mix packet from the hotel gift shop but it was worth it to be up front. Life does play these funny little tricks on you - I was now in the position of trying to eat oh-so-ladylike my gihugic brownie (it can be a word if I want it to) and every now and then I would wedge too big a piece in my mouth, sort of choke a little and have chocolate crumbs all over my face - which of course my two heroes sitting up front could witness all to easily because I was sitting 10 feet from both of them.

Also new to me on the stalker radar was the delicate art of talking someone's picture (that's my water bottle cap in the front of the picture) so you can text it to a few of your closest teenagers so they can text-shriek, "I'M SO JEALOUS!! HOW CLOSE??!!" back to you. So I now I had chocolate crumbs and a smug expression on my face; I'm sure it was super attractive. But it turns out that despite my unbelievably high expectations of my two fave authors, they actually exceeded them. Their part of the preconference was entitled "The Future of Reading" (John Green's recent School Library Journal article had the same title) and it turns out that these two individuals were more than capable of tackling such a weighty topic.

Both authors just plunged into the topic, demonstrating a comfort with each other while showing the idea of how teens are reading is something they have both mulled over on more than one occasion. John used David's project of 39 Clues as something revolutionary in the world of reading, albeit for a slightly younger age group. For those of you without a tween in the house, 39 Clues is a multiplatform reading experience that engages readers and gamers by intertwining book reading and online gaming. Kids have to read the book to research how to play the game and players are rewarded by seeking out extra information on their own. The story is essentially no longer limited to a 200 page book, but instead presents thousands of pages of reading to young kids and they swallow it whole. It is obviously working since the site, sponsored by Scholastic, has over 1 million registered users. Both John and David emphasized that it was a false distinction to separate readers and gamers, but that's exactly what so many educators have attempted to do. The negatives are obviously that this is a very expensive project for the publisher and also demanding on authors. John Green felt that the amount of collaborative writing necessary for this project also makes people uncomfortable as so many readers enjoy buying into the romantic notion of one person writing a fabulous novel by candlelight in a basement, but if it helps kids read and is a compelling story, than obviously we should go for it!

The dynamic shifted into the two men asking each other questions (they were both excellent interviewers). David asked John to talk about his philosophy of using the web since he's done so much with his social network, Nerdfighters Made of Awesome, and his website which is home to his extremely popular video blog. Prompted by David, John spoke about how he always though his job was to intellectually engage his viewers and that video was such an accessible medium for anyone and fit his mantra, "Go Where the Readers Are." John wrote a novella "This Is Not Tom" which combines video clues online and reading in order for searchers to find the next part of the story. He said that teamwork was an absolute must to solving the story and a goal of his was to inspire collaborative problem solving. When David asked John if he was ever tempted to do a book combining video and a story since he was so facile in both mediums, John said that he wasn't, simply because he was highly satisfied with the novel as a comfortable and accessible medium for readers. Both men agreed that paper will be a continued option for some time, but that lots of other options will become available and be highly appealing for readers.

Now the format shifted into them answering audience questions. Here are my notes about the questions and their answers. Obviously I'm not a court reporter so my notes might not be totally complete but this is the gist of what they said!

Q: What do you think of fan fiction?

JG: I like it because those writers are readers and it's inherently non-monetized.
DL: And I've never met an author who had a problem with it. Publishers have occasionally had a problem, but not authors.
JG: It deepens "fandom" within that community, so there are a lot of good outcomes from it.

Q: What do you think the significance of the recent publisher ebook battle with Amazon.com versus the iBookstore from Apple?

DL: I'm going to have to sit on the fence for this one since I work for a publisher but a lot of the debate reminds me of a crazy Christmas price war on a toy everyone wants. Books aren't toothpaste.
JG: Ebooks have a lot of advantages, a big problem for publishers is the remainder system with all these books that have been printed and not sold.
DL: Publishers are really still figuring it out. Ebooks can save costs but there are other costs involved with producing them.
JG: I think we're sitting among an audience who knows the cost of getting books to kids, particularly for libraries and schools. (*smattered applause and head nodding from audience*)

Q: Do you see a time when libraries will be largely electronic?

JG: Digital divide issues will always be an issue; where does the money come from for the readers and computers kids would need for that? I think we're pretty far off before we are in that place.

Q: How do you use the internet to lure readers?

DL: Social networks are the life's blood of authors and publishers since they can energize communities prior to publication. It used to be that publishers did some promotion prior to a book but it was inherently limited. Now you can have millions of people pumped up before a book is released.
JG: I stole this technique from Lauren Conrad from The Hills who had trumped up interest in her books. (*audience laughter*) We live in a personality driven world.

Q: Are you planning on doing a spin off starring Tiny Cooper? (Note: Tiny is a very memorable character in Will Grayson, Will Grayson)

JG: (smiling) Possibly.
DL: (also smiling) There obviously a musical that needs to be written there.

Q: Do either of you envision something similar to 39 Clues for the YA market?

DL: It would be exponentially harder since the choices are infinite. 39 Clues is largely successful because of the educational buy in from educators and parents - this wouldn't be the case with a YA product.
JG: I can't emphasize enough how insanely expensive this process is. For someone with an established market - Stephenie Meyer, for example - it could work. Maybe I should call her?

Q: We are curious about how you co-write a book like Will Grayson, Will Grayson. Did you send chapters via email or use a special software?

JG: We didn't use anything more comfortable than reading the chapters over the phone to each other and occasionally a piece in email.
DL: Collaborative fiction is so much more popular now since 2.0 tools can make this easier. We didn't really use any of them, though.

If this is the future of reading, I'm buying. Thanks, guys!

The Lure of Team Written Books: Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

2010-07-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

Note: Not the movie version cover

I hugely enjoy team written books. It's possible the first one that really registered off the scale on my YA literature radar was Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn. These two writers refined the idea of using alternating chapters with different points of view (in this case, the two protagonists, one male, one female) to push a story along in the most compelling way. The book is sweet, funny, poignant and sexy and in one night, two characters grow more than they did in the months preceding. I've actually given it as presents to kids who have found it life-altering. Full confession: I couldn't bring myself to watch the movie. (I have an issue with books into movies - I believe the motion picture industry, in a vain attempt to avoid original work, attempts to find excellent books and then ruin them onscreen. Nicholas Sparks is the exception to this rule; his books are "neh" but the movies are usually much better.) I think a book with so much internal monologue is destined for disaster on the movie screen since either you do voice over and it's cheesy, or you leave out all the vulnerable internal stuff and the characters look snarky (which happened here based on my watching trailer clips and interviewing kids who actually watched it and were terribly disappointed). I also hate it when the sad, pathetic friend with a drinking problem is the comic relief - there is plenty that is incredibly funny about the book, but alcoholism isn't part of it.

David and Rachel followed it up with another good effort (although not as earth-shattering as Nick and Nora's) Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List, about two best friends who have to come to terms with their feelings when a boy comes between them and causes them to confront truths about their relationship. In a similar vein, I was excited to see that they have a new project due to come out this fall, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares, so I'll be buying a couple copies for the library very soon. So we know David Levithan is a genius cowriter when he's got Rachel Cohn in his back pocket, but what about someone else? Enter John Green, genius, Printz award winner, cofounder of Nerdfighters Made of Awesome, and premier video blogger. The perfect collaborator for a very special book. Anyone who can turn out amazing books like Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines (my all-time John Green favorite) and Paper Towns deserves to wear a sparkly crown and have people bow to his every whim.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson is definitely a good union of these two author's styles. I was actually surprised at how dark the David Levithan portion was, but let me explain the premise first in case you haven't heard anything about the book. Here's the description from the Penguin.com website:

One cold night, in a most unlikely corner of Chicago, two teens—both named Will Grayson—are about to cross paths. As their worlds collide and intertwine, the Will Graysons find their lives going in new and unexpected directions, building toward romantic turns-of-heart and the epic production of history’s most fabulous high school musical.

Hilarious, poignant, and deeply insightful, John Green and David Levithan’s collaborative novel is brimming with a double helping of the heart and humor that have won both them legions of faithful fans.

Readers familiar with Levithan and Green's individual books will easily tell who wrote which chapters. David Levithan's Will Grayson is a dark, depressed individual struggling to come to terms with his family life and his sexuality and the tone of these pages reminded me a lot of Levithan's book about 9-11, Love is the Higher Law. John Green's style is obvious with his usual trademarks in evidence - a vulnerable, funny Will Grayson placed in often absurd situations who happens to have a vibrant sidekick, in this case the over-the-top, football playing, musical writing, very out of the closet, Tiny Cooper. At a recent YALSA session featuring John Green, a librarian asked when we could expect Tiny Cooper on Broadway and the whole room burst into excited applause (no musical is planned as of yet). There were times that the Chicago area setting felt a little like an homage to John Hughes' films - I could even hear the uber cool playlist in the background. Will Grayson, Will Grayson is a great addition to each authors collection and it's great to see two such different writer merge styles into such a successful project.

In thinking about highly successful collaborative writing projects, I have to plug a project that did not get enough press when it came out. Let It Snow is a fantastic project John Green wrote with Maureen Johnson (known for her Scarlet books) and Lauren Myracle (of ttyl fame). Also written in alternating chapters starring different characters, a Christmas blizzard intertwines the lives of these teens as they find romance and friendship, sometimes where they least expect it during an often extremely surreal holiday. John Green seems to have two partners in his often bizarre and laugh out loud sense of humor so anyone who has enjoyed his books would do well to pick this one up, whether or not it's Christmas or just Christmas in July.

Promoting Teen Reading with Web 2.0 Tools - Part II: Author Madness

2010-07-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm still thinking about the terrific YALSA Preconference I attended a month ago. (I take time to percolate on things - whatever.) This half day event (which should have been an entire day) started off by having some wonderful academics speak about recent research in the area of teens and reading, but I've already blogged about that part. After hearing about the research, it was great to have the next chunk of the preconference be about online reading and the art of interacting with readers. Did I mention who the experts were? Just amazing AUTHORS who happen to excel at this art of connection. Cha-ching.

Done in panel form (the world of YA literature seems to be small enough that all authors seem to get along really well or at least have some kind of special handshake that makes them instantly like each other), our experts consisted of Melissa Walker, Malinda Lo, and Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. Melissa Walker, author of the Violet series, came from a unique background of fashion magazine editorship and said that she felt so many magazine really did not address the aspect of teen reading to the extent she would have liked. Rather than sit around kvetching, she not only became an author herself, but became a blog editor for Readergirlz, an incredibly popular blog covering YA literature and known for good author interviews and online chats. Readergirlz chooses books with strong female characters and has the unique angle of its featured authors writing 10 questions for readers to consider when thinking about their books (bring, bring - dialing librarians...instant book discussion fodder here). Readers are encouraged to create playlists that they feel fit the book's tone (also a great book discussion club idea) and just engage in general with the authors who they get to chat live. On her personal blog, Melissa said she took the reader engagement seriously by asking her readers for ideas. In a recent book, her editor suggested that she take the known bands referenced in the novel and substitute fake band names to keep the book from getting dated. Melissa turned around and asked her readership for band name suggestions and the material she got back was so terrific she used several. In the area of continued empowerment, Melissa is also a founder of the Before You Were Hot blog, in which people submit shockingly embarrassing photos of their young selves. She said that no follow up "hot photos" are required of submitters because the blog authors allow people to define their own hotness.

Malinda Lo was the next author in the panel and anyone who has not yet read her book, Ash, a retelling of the Cinderella story, needs to get off their duff and hop to it. Malinda started out as an entertainment reporter and realized the importance of authors having coherent websites and contact information since she experienced several with neither quality. She spoke about how she actually spent so much time working on her website that it became overwhelming and she realized (with the help of her editor) that she needed to back off and focus on her writing. She simplified and streamlined her website after this revelation and said that, while her blog entries are less frequent, they are far more relevant and meaningful. She maintains a strong professional boundary between herself and her audience and because of the GLBTQ content of Ash, she said that she often gets some very heartfelt and revelatory emails from young men and women in the midst of dealing with issues surrounding their sexuality. Working in a school, I am used to listening to kids reveal inner thoughts and feelings (and knowing when to call in advisors and school counselors so we could work as a team to make sure these students were healthy and supported) but Malinda's concerns seemed to inspire a lot of head nodding from the public librarians who are obviously in a tough position when it comes to privacy and helping teens yet maintaining an awareness of boundaries.

Last up was the team of Margaret Stohl (who asked us to call her Margie, that's a hard "g" thank you) and Kami Garcia. They are the team that made buzz history with the response to their novel, Beautiful Creatures, a book that was written on a dare from Margaret's teenage daughter. Margie and Kami were joking about how they should write a book together (Kami was a longtime friend and an English teacher) and Margie's daughter taunted them with the idea that they would never finish the project if they tried to write a novel. Twelve weeks later, she was eating her words! Kami and Margie said that for them it was like writing a "bedtime story" to a very specific audience. The daughter and her friends became a focus group for the author duo and they discovered that these young women (and occasionally a young man) wanted a more powerful female protagonist than what they were reading, specifically one that didn't have to be rescued, and they enjoyed a strong sense of place, particularly a highly regional one with magical overtones. Enter Beautiful Creatures, which has been termed a Southern Gothic paranormal romance, and not just by me in my blog entry about it.

Kami and Margie, while using focus groups (Margie came from a video gaming industry background and said that soliciting feedback in this way seemed very natural for her), never lost sight of the fact that they felt their readership was a global one, a wise consideration since the book has been translated into a few dozen languages and been a best seller across the globe. They have a Facebook page for the Caster Chronicles series (and their individual Facebook pages are open ones to the public and therefore maintained by them in a professional manner), Kami is on Twitter and in fact says she is happy to respond to questions via that format. They each have their own blogs and promote some pretty great fan pages (check out Caster Girls & Boys), have contests, support their publisher websites and have a YouTube Channel. I'm exhausted just listening to them. Even the other authors began cracking jokes about how they needed to step up!

At this point, the moderators opened up the panel to questions from the audience and you could hear the cogs turning in librarian minds about how we can apply all this information to help our teens recreationally read in the most energizing and fun way possible. One librarian was rather tongue in cheek, asking the authors if they felt that their personal website for their blog or book was better than the official publisher one, but the authors didn't take the bait (one or two waived to their editor who was in the audience with a cheeky smile) and they said that it was always a good addition. Margie Stohl mentioned that the "cult of personality" is big among teens so the more personal the connection to the author, the more likely teens are to read and be engaged. There was quite a happy and enthusiastic discussion about Skype among the authors, who said that they wished they could get out to libraries more to connect with teens and that Skype was a method they were comfortable using. They mentioned the great "skype an author" website set up for this purpose of connecting authors and readers, and they all said they would never charge a library for skyping them (*heart you, authors!!!*). Interestingly enough, they also said that in their experience, students are MORE engaged and revelatory in Skype sessions since the medium kept them from being tongue-tied around authors.

The session concluded with the authors telling us about their upcoming books. Of course, Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl have their sequel to Beautiful Creatures, Beautiful Darkness, coming out in October. (Side note: as with all YALSA things the giveaways are awesome and we received a tote bag with a few ARCs, including Beautiful Darkness!) Kami and Margie said that the sequel is darker than the first book and that they believe that fans will be very satisfied. Melissa Walker said she is working on her next book, Small Town Sinners, due out in 2011 about Hell Houses. Does everyone know what those are? In case you don't, Hell Houses are kind of like the haunted houses you can visit around Halloween, but instead of Frankenstein and chainsaw-wielding maniacs, evangelical Christians act out the horror and consequences of major sins in the hope that onlookers will become born again Christians or be confirmed of their already existing beliefs if they already are one. Melissa said she was interested in a female protagonist who, through her participation in a Hell House and through the lives of her friends, begins to question her beliefs and wonder if life isn't more complex than she was brought up to believe. Malinda Lo said that she is working on a companion novel to Ash called The Huntress. The Huntress is set in the same world as Ash but is more of an origins story several hundred years prior to the Ash's world. Since Ash's world deals with some rather major conflicts around religion, I know I'm riveted in my seat if I get to find out more about how those tensions began. It's due out in April 2011. I can't wait for all of them!

A Series That Thrills Me...The Wicked Lovely Books by Melissa Marr

2010-07-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

I'm really enjoying the recent books published dealing with the fairy realm. It's just a wild guess, but I think the popular response to all the vampire books has given authors and publishers permission to take a walk on the wild side and go a little darker when it comes to fairies. This has placed stories out of the Tinkerbell genre and right where they belong from a literature and myth perspective - in very dangerous territory.

I don't know why I haven't blogged before on fairy books that I've loved, but suffice it to say that I'm fixing this now. Melissa Marr leads the pack (in my heart) in this respect of all things fairy - her books are dark and sexy with great characters and a subculture that knocks your socks off. With the latest installment of the Wicked Lovely series here in the form of the book Radiant Shadows, readers have gotten an even more compelling novel that will leave them craving more. HarperCollins has been a great publisher for her since I love the way they don't hesitate to plug their video booktrailers. Hopefully they realize they hit the jackpot with Melissa since she is such a social network maven with her great blog and Twitter posts that brighten everyone's day. Check out the Radiant Shadows booktrailer to get a sense of what I mean.

So what is the Wicked Lovely series, exactly? (We all know booktrailers leave a great deal unsaid.) Wicked Lovely was the first book in the series (and I'd recommend reading them in order just to catch all the character development) which introduced us to an unnamed gritty city in which Aislinn, a young teenage girl, lives with her grandmother and desperately tries to have a normal existence. Rather a challenge, considering that she can see fairies. I gather this is quite a talent considering that no human is supposed to see a fairy unless that individual fairy wants to be seen. She catches the eye of Keenan, the Summer King, who has been trying to find a queen for his court for centuries, a development that does not thrill Seth, Aislinn's edgy boyfriend. Keenan is not without emotional baggage either, and his former girlfriend, Donia, not only still loves him but might be the heir to the Winter Court, which would mean she would be set in polar opposition to him in the fairy power play.

And so starts the series, which basically hovers around the conflict and complications of the interaction between the fairy realm and the human world. The second book, Ink Exchange, while still showing us the lives of the previous book's characters, is much darker. It deals with Aislinn's friend, Leslie, who has suffered at the hands of her brother's drug dealing friends. She decides to get a tattoo from local artist, Rabbit, and ends up bonded to the king of the Dark Court, Irial. This places her in another kind of hell as she physically needs him to live (and he needs to use her as a conduit to give dark human feelings and emotions to the fairies of his court so they don't go out and try and make them happen on their own). Through sheer chutzpah and the help of some sympathetic fairies, she manages to forge a new life for herself, although the fairy players in this game do not remain unaltered by their experience with her.

Just when you thought the first two books were exceptionally well-written and things couldn't get better, the third book, Fragile Eternity, knocks your socks off. Focusing on Seth, who is still in love with Aislinn despite her recent ascent to Summer Queen, this novel explores the bargains intelligent mortals are willing to make for love. Taking him to the fairy realm, Seth follows his heart and causes some rather important players in the fairy world to feel tied to his cause. The price he has to pay is a large one, but he might actually cause a shift of power to take place as important fairies decide to back him and give him access to what he most desires - Aislinn. But things aren't so simple as Aislinn doesn't know anything except the mortal love of her life has disappeared and her Summer King is willing to help her believe that Seth may have abandoned her cause in the hope that she will turn to him for solace.

So now we come to Radiant Shadows, the second to last book in the series (don't you love that the trailer drops "penultimate" on you? Way to keep it classy, HarperCollins!). We are introduced to two of the best characters in the series (who knew?) Ani, tattoo artist Rabbit's sister, and Devlin, the brother and assassin to the High Queen. Devlin has only disobeyed his sister once, when she ordered him to kill Ani and her sister as children, and now the girl he thought was human has turned out to be the half-fey daughter of Gabriel, leader of the Hounds. While Ani wrestles with her fairy and mortal desires, Devlin must wrestle with his desire for her and the knowledge that something more important is taking place as Ani attracts some powerful attention. What is her significance in the fairy world and how can the two of them help restore order to a world threatening to come apart?

The final book, Darkest Mercy, is due out in 2011 (*frustration*) and promises to bring all these characters and plot lines together. With another writer I might be nervous about their ability to thread all these strong individuals together coherently, but not Melissa Marr. I have a feeling she will not disappoint!

Why Do People Shy Away from Books About Autism?

2010-07-27T14:28:00.000-07:00

It's a good question to ask because I've done it. Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork had been on my reading list for most of the school year but I kept putting it off - surely there was another vampire book, werewolf-zombie love triangle book, book about talking grasshoppers, etc. I should be reading rather than a book that sounded like a tough sell to my kids? We have students that land on the autism spectrum in our school and they are wonderful, unique students, so why do I hesitate to read about them?

My best guess is that I know that these kids live in a hard world, one that was not designed to understand them or play to their strengths, and since I notice I tend to avoid books about other hard subjects, I'm going to chalk my hesitancy to the same impulse that sends me out of the room to get a glass of water or vacuum the bedroom when something tense or sad is happening on the Law & Order episode I'm watching. I'm not proud of it, but there you go.

I'm an idiot for putting off Marcelo in the Real World, however, because it's one of the best books I've read all year. Not only is the main character of Marcelo Sandoval so incredibly well-written that you want to begin hanging out with him (and understand more about autism) but the supporting characters are fully developed human beings. The location of the Boston area is accurately depicted (natives will recognize many neighborhoods and landmarks) as should be expected from Francisco Stork who both studied at Harvard University and now lives and works as an attorney in the area. Before I get ahead of myself, let's take a look at how the publisher describes the book:

Marcelo Sandoval hears music no one else can hear--part of the autism-like impairment no doctor has been able to identify--and he's always attended a special school where his differences have been protected. But the summer after his junior year, his father demands that Marcelo work in his law firm's mailroom in order to experience "the real world." There Marcelo meets Jasmine, his beautiful and surprising coworker, and Wendell, the son of another partner in the firm. He learns about competition and jealousy, anger and desire. But it's a picture he finds in a file -- a picture of a girl with half a face -- that truly connects him with the real world: its suffering, its injustice, and what he can do to fight. Reminiscent of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" in the intensity and purity of its voice, this extraordinary novel is a love story, a legal drama, and a celebration of the music each of us hears inside. (from Scholastic's website)

I suppose you can't get around the comparison to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time since it was also a successful and acclaimed book starring an autistic protagonist, and let's not forget the recent movie, Temple Grandin, of the writer and scholar of that same name who made her autism a defined asset in her academic work with animals. These books, now accompanied by Marcelo, are offering insight into the different ways that brains work when autism is added into the equation and the result is nothing short of fascinating. In addition to the information and perspective of autism, however, I was floored by the inclusion of a couple other themes in Stork's novel. While this is undoubtedly a coming-of-age tale as Marcelo is pushed out of the comfort zone of his school for special needs students, he must also confront not only the human interaction that sometimes challenges him, but other issues of race and class. His nemesis Wendell (also the son of one of the law partners) casts up the ethnicity of Marcelo's father, inferring that Mr. Sandoval's more modest background and legal achievements were somehow a result of affirmative action (versus Wendell's WASP background and his father's old boy network). Wendell's pursuit of Jasmine, which is certainly more carnal than romantic, also has class overtones as he assumes she would be an easy sexual mark because of her working class Vermont background. The Latina background of the young girl victim and the hard working Hispanic lawyer who is trying to get her justice also is another wonderful layer to this story.

Another surprise for me was the religion theme in this book. While modern young adult literature often wrestles with ethics, and therefore moral codes explicit or not, many authors seem to shy away from more in depth discussions of religion in the lives of their protagonists unless it is vital to his or her identity or the plot. Marcelo has religion as his "special interest", the term he uses to describe the intense focus on a particular topic sometimes experienced by people on the autism spectrum. His mother wisely introduced him early on to a wonderful female rabbi who has become one of Marcelo's close friends and who helps him deal with some of the cruel realities Marcelo faces as his father places him in the "real world". The sweetness of the deepening friendship between Marcelo and Jasmine and the potential it possesses to become something more is a valuable romantic perspective. When so many recent YA novels have been about obsessive, passionate, all-consuming love, it is nice to remember that sometimes love is gentle and just sneaks up on you. This novel does a lovely job showing how that kind of love can be just as enthralling as the "jump off a cliff if I can't be with you" variety.

From the standpoint of a librarian, we have got to stay on top of the wave of information about autism, not only for the students in our lives dealing with this issue but also because so many of our non-autistic students have family members also coping with this issue. Add to that our commitment to librarians to all types of diversity and our obligation becomes an imperative. A recent School Library Journal article offers a host of information and good links and can be an excellent starting point for educating ourselves. Love the Marcelo in the Real World, too, but uncertain of how to promote it? Scholastic Books had renowned booktalker, Joni Bodart, write out a booktalking script for the novel that would be a great starting point. Author Francisco X. Stork's website has great discussion questions for getting a book group rolling on these topics and themes, and a great author interview can be found at teenreads.com (a website which never disappoints to encourage recreational reading).

Promoting Teen Reading with Web 2.0 Tools aka BEST Preconference EVER!!! - Part I: Kick-ass Academics

2010-06-25T19:18:00.000-07:00

I'm going to have to split my blog entries of this preconference into more than a few sections because, for one measly afternoon, the organizers packed in two days worth of information!

I sweltered through the three block walk from the Convention Center to the Embassy Suites hotel ("walking distance of Convention Center" really needs to be revised in 90 degree DC weather) arriving with a rather healthy glow. Two bottles of water and some trail mix later, I settled into a comfy chair outside the ballroom to spread my conference program and exhibit hall in order to map out my swag attack (more on this philosophy in a different entry). I was REALLY early so I got to see the committee members, headed by the ebullient Wendy Stephens from Buckthorn High School in Alabama bustle around reading everything in preparation for their many guest speakers and panelists.

The agenda itself was impressive but no more so that the quality of presenter that followed. I'm going to focus for now on the first segment which was what I like to call the "academic" portion, namely two excellent speakers focusing on the research and data we have surrounding the changing landscape of the adolescent reader and the implications this knowledge has for our targeting them for recreational reading promotion.

Dr. Eliza Dresang from the University of Washington, Seattle was the first up to speak about her theories of Radical Change, aptly explained in her 1999 book Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age. It's a credit to the quality of her theories in this book that, despite resource types and the information age evolving exponentially since its publication, her theories hold up extremely well and are as applicable as when this book originally debuted.

She highlighted three major digital age principles for Radical Change, namely the presence of interactivity (dynamic, nonlinear, non-sequential learning behavior and resources), connectivity (construction of social worlds, communities, and the expanded self-perception that comes from these associations), and finally access (which breaks the long-standing information barriers and opens up worlds to users). No librarian in the room was about to argue the existence of these three factors in the lives of the kids we serve, and I appreciated that she cited the technological futurists attempting to help us understand where our world was evolving, like Gordon Moore (of Moore's Law fame) and Henry Jenkins (professor at MIT), author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.

Dr. Dresang made a point of bringing in the significance of recent research to enhance our understanding of the far-reaching impact of her theories and how they affect our vision of "library resources". Teens are reading (duh, we knew that, didn't we?) and their brains are changing through their regular interaction with technology, which is literally shaping the areas of the brain accessed during this type of activity. They prefer "digitally designed" resources and also prefer situations that allow for the three conditions listed above - interactivity, connectivity, and access. This sounds a lot like the "what should our classrooms and teaching look like?" discussions I've had with teachers and administrators.

But she also cautions us by indicating the research which shows that teens preferences do not equate to them possessing the skills to process and dominate these technologies that they prefer. Gary Smalls, a University of California scientist has conducted brain research showing the negative effects of brain function of teens using technology and multitasking their way out of deeper understanding, much of which is summarized in his book, iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. Other scholars, some critical of the larger benefit to be had by adolescent use of technology, include Mark Prensky, author of Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering for Real Learning, Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn by Larry Rosen, and Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf. Dr. Dresang indicates that these authors come from various academic disciplines and, while she may be occasionally skeptical of their approach at times, they all provide valuable and important arguments for our critical understanding of teen use of technology. Collectively it seems all researchers agree that children need to be taught to use technology critically and wisely, exploiting the best it has to offer while also understanding the weaknesses it possess to true personal development.

Moral of the story? Teens are positive about technology and are attracted to the ways in which it satisfies their developmental need to develop an individualized persona while collaborating and sharing in various communities, but they lack they technology and literacy skills to fully wring the best our of information they find. Luckily for them, they have librarians to help, eh?

Following Dr. Dresang was the erudite and informative Kristen Purcell, Associate Director for Research for the Pew Internet & American Life Project. She blew the crowd away with the data she presented from a few recently published studies - "Teens and Mobile Phones" and "Social Media and Young Adults" - both of which she combined to give us a comprehensive picture which she called "Teens, the Internet and Communication Technology". The reason that this data is so vital is that the Pew Foundation has been following these trends for long enough that they were able to take the collected data and compare it to 2004 data, giving us a snapshot of the various trends society has experienced over the last several years. In technology years (which are kind of like dog years), these time span is equivalent to a century and the results are fascinating to say the least.

I liked Kristen's approach, namely that the researchers wanted to take the commonly held myths about teens - all teens use the internet, every teen has a cell phone and texts all day long, teens have been supplanted by adults on social networks, teens love Twitter, and teens are active creators of content online - and really peel back the surface to see what lay underneath.

What Pew discovered (see the great slides embedded above from Kristen's presentation) was interesting. People who make sweeping generalizations about adolescent technology use are apt to forget the socioeconomic factors that make up the digital divide. While I was impressed with how many households now have access to the internet, I was reminded (and appalled) at the number of homes still laboring under dial up connections (10% of reporting households). When combined with the number of households with no computer (8%) and families with a computer but no internet connection (4%) that's a whopping 22% of American households with no access to the rich 2.0 environment preferred by teens. The trend that the Pew Foundation has conjectured is that their data shows teens from homes with low income levels use their cell phones for primary access to the internet, causing the researchers to predict that the major trend for future years will be that "all internet access for teens will be from mobile internet devices". Take a look at the data. I believe her!

Developers seek to link iPad with education

2010-04-13T07:04:00.000-07:00

Developers seek to link iPad with education

Anyone who is a friend on Facebook knows all too well how I have been jonesing for an iPad since watching the announcement. This isn't simply my usual fascination with Apple gadgetry, it's also my thinking as an educator. For twenty years, teachers have been thinking about the role of technology in the classroom and the idea of multifunctional devices with extreme portability has always been a factor of our ideal visions of the future. As a librarian, the idea of a device that can offer a more natural approach to reading (see page flip using your finger for books) and a larger, color screen (children's books anyone?) but still allow for the highlighting and annotation needed by high school and college students was intoxicating and urgently desired.

Do I think the iPad is perfect? Of course not, NO technological device ever is. But is it a big step forward for education. You betcha.

Going Bovine by Libba Bray Is the Next Cult Classic

2010-02-10T21:09:00.000-08:00

I don't know if you're aware of this, but I am astonishingly psychic when it comes to predicting highly successful books. I got a copy of Twilight when it was still an ARC and raved about it to everyone who would politely sit still to hear me. At the next library conference I actually forced myself to cry hysterically in order to get two (count 'em TWO) copies of New Moon and the Little, Brown representative was so horrified that she reached under the draped table and thrust them into my arms in a vain attempt to stop me from scaring the other librarians. I knew Stephenie Meyer was going to bathe in money long before the other mere mortals (Stephen King's petty snipping notwithstanding - really Stephen! People think your books are not exactly high literature, either. Brrrring...pot calling kettle?).

When I heard about Going Bovine, I had no idea that it was going to be in my psychic category of fabulous books that I, Courtney, would know instantly was destined for success. I had enjoyed Libba Bray's A Great and Terrible Beauty trilogy and knew just the kind of fantasy-meets-historical novel-slash-romance reader who would love them. So when I heard of Libba's project about mad cow disease and physics I was more than a little skeptical. Could she do this? I had suspicions that she could for one reason only - Libba wears awesome boots.

That sounds nuts, I realize, but I always see her in interviews perched insouciantly on some dais wearing a pencil skirt, her cool person glasses, and these high calf, usually glossy, stiletto boots - I'm talking the kind of boots that your mother told you good girls don't wear, or the kind that Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes are built around. Like a large, face-framing hat, boots like this take a certain amount of personality to pull off, and Libba has it IN SPADES. So when I thought about the boots, I realized, you know, she could really pull off a weird sounding book like this. I'll cling to my small feathered thing with wings and cross fingers.

I should have never doubted the boots. When I first saw the trailer in which Libba wears a cow costume, replete with jutting udder, to talk about Going Bovine, I laughed myself silly. But the book still kept getting shunted to the bottom of my end table pile because I didn't know what kind of mood I was supposed to be in to read it and appreciate it. Now I know that this is the kind of book that ruins your enjoyment of the next two books that come after it because it was so earth-shattering. Be warned.

Going Bovine gets a "wha???" response when you try and describe it, because you automatically sound lame. "It's a funny but dark book about a stoner guy who gets mad cow disease and goes on this journey because an angel with Doc Martens told him to defeat a nihilistic mad scientist using Quantam physics to destroy the world. Oh, and there's a lawn gnome who's really a Norse god. He's the best!"

Books that have a lot going on are hard to describe, and therefore sell to readers (I have to think like a librarian, here) and I honestly cannot think of another book that compares to this one to do my patented, "Well, honey, you like fill in the blank, so you'll love this!" But while I was reading this complex, swirling masterpiece, I realized that Libba Bray was joining the ranks of those super-smart, very sneaky, young adult authors who parallel existing books or plots to lend insight into their own story. Think how girls suddenly got into Wuthering Heights because of Twilight, or fans of Gordon Korman's books like Son of the Mob (inspiration Romeo and Juliet) or Jake, Reinvented (inspiration The Great Gatsby). Full disclosure: I totally Jones for these kinds of books.

Libba, that cheeky little monkey, does it with Going Bovine in that it parallels the story of Don Quixote to which she alludes rather early on in the book when our protagonist, Cameron, is stuck reading it in his interdisciplinary English literature/Spanish language class (okay, maybe she's not so sneaky since she mentions it). Don Quixote, one of the most trailblazing works of literature in its time period, is a picaresque novel, which is a literary form very popular in Spanish literature, featuring an often satirical story often revolving around the adventures of an anti-hero. My excellent Novels for Students series (see our library's reference section) defines a picaresque by saying "this type of narration chronicles the humorous adventure of a rogue...while on the road, often traveling a long distance." Literary critic Diane Andrews Henningfeld says that the picaresque is often seen as being "metafiction" which means that the authors "asks readers to recognize that what they are reading is fiction in order to explore the relationship between fiction and reality."

So here's the coherent (it's from the publisher, Random House) plot summary:

Can Cameron find what he's looking for? All 16-year-old Cameron wants is to get through high school—and life in general—with a minimum of effort. It's not a lot to ask. But that's before he's given some bad news: he's sick and he's going to die. Which totally sucks. Hope arrives in the winged form of Dulcie, a loopy punk angel/possible hallucination with a bad sugar habit. She tells Cam there is a cure—if he's willing to go in search of it. With the help of a death-obsessed, video-gaming dwarf and a yard gnome, Cam sets off on the mother of all road trips through a twisted America into the heart of what matters most.

The parts I love the most are how Libba parallels the themes of Don Quixote - the theme of love being paramount. Not only is Cameron interested in and eventually falls for Dulcie the angel, but he also comes to terms with his love for his dysfunctional family as he travels on his adventure, deep down realizing that he may very well be in the hospital room dying, being read to by his parents or his overachieving twin sister. The way his adventure not only confronts the "save the world" mission statement he's adopted but also resolves his unsettled family issues feeds into the theme of a strong desire for peace, which is also a hallmark of Cervantes' work. Like the literary critic quoted above, Libba Bray asks us the same question that Cervantes asks his reader - namely, what is better, the reality we truly live in, or our created version of reality? Cameron's story is a deeply meaningful, funny, insightful adventure in which he and all his cohorts grow as people and find love. Who could ask for more than that?

Consider exploring the companion website for the novel (which still has some expanding to do but has a great interface and good resources). Since Going Bovine won the Printz award (which is for excellence in young adult literature and you should read about Libba's reaction to getting it), I feel my psychic streak is PRETTY GOOD (to borrow a Curb Your Enthusiasm phrase) and I could be possibly insufferable to the students and friends to whom I've blabbed about this book for the last two months. The only thing that makes my world better after having read that last page of Going Bovine over again? The news that Libba Bray has been signed to write a "supernatural fantasy" series based in the 1920s focusing on the characters of Dorothy Parker and Zelda Fitzgerald!!!! I bet she'll wear the boots to write it.

The Sassy Librarian

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