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Monthly archives for June, 2012

Review: KEEP HOLDING ON by Susane Colasanti

Jun 26, 2012 1 Comment ~ Written by E. Kristin Anderson
Review: KEEP HOLDING ON by Susane Colasanti

I was only five pages into this book when it broke my heart. This is more than a story of the underdog sticking it to the man. It’s more than overcoming poverty, more than dealing with tough parents or a broken home. It’s more than mean girls and social status and getting over it and moving on. KEEP HOLDING ON by Susane Colasanti is a book about bullying. And as much as it’s about bullying, it’s about social change.

Noelle is a kid who has had it pretty rough. And the kids at her high school aren’t making it much easier. Every single day she dodges blows — physical and verbal — from girls and guys who make it their mission to make her miserable. They make fun of her sandwiches, which due to her mother’s neglect sometimes only contain lettuce and mustard. They corner her in the hallways. Even her sort-of boyfriend won’t let her tell anyone that they make out during studyhall in their secret spot.

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Posted in books, reading, reviews, YA - Tagged , ,

Review: THE GIRLS’ GHOSTHUNTING GUIDE by Stacey Graham

Jun 25, 2012 Leave a Comment ~ Written by E. Kristin Anderson
Review: THE GIRLS’ GHOSTHUNTING GUIDE by Stacey Graham

Ghost hunting might not be every tween girl’s idea of a perfect sleepover activity. But for the chicks who are into all things bump-in-the-night, THE GIRLS’ GHOST HUNTING GUIDE is a sure fit for summer fun. Written by a legit ghost hunter, and adorably organized into bite-sized chapters, Stacey Graham’s book is nothing if not super fun.

Okay, it’s also spooky. But the girls who watch Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures on their DVRs are probably aching to get out and do a little ghost hunting themselves. THE GIRLS’ GHOST HUNTING GUIDE provides tips and activities to try for a fun, safe ghost hunt, sections on urban legends and party tricks, and interviews with bonafide ghost hunters and psychics with a clue in on the other side.

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Posted in books, middle grade, nonfiction, reading, reviews, YA - Tagged , ,

Pride Week Guest Post from Steve Brezenoff: Love Doesn’t Know Gender

Jun 22, 2012 Leave a Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
Pride Week Guest Post from Steve Brezenoff: Love Doesn’t Know Gender

I came upon writing LGBTQ fiction quite by accident. BROOKLYN, BURNING, generally considered an LGBTQ novel–which I’m okay with, obviously, if you’ve read the author’s note or are familiar with the cast of secondary characters, all of whom identify as LGBTQ–started as something of a feminist rant. It turned out that the idea I had about veiling gender in two central characters made a much larger and stronger statement than I initially thought it would.

I was at work on a first draft of BROOKLYN, BURNING—maybe a few thousand words in—and I still wasn’t certain I’d keep the genders of the burgeoning couple hidden. (The hidden genders were a happy accident at first, a symptom of writing in an epistolary style, rather than the epistolary style being a handy tool meant to hide genders.) At the same time, I got involved in a short-lived debate on a listserve about dress codes—specifically, requiring dresses for girls at a high school graduation ceremony. I was shocked that some people were okay with this antiquated thinking. That’s when I decided once and for all never to reveal the genders of Kid and Scout.

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Posted in books, brooklyn, culture, guest post, lgbtq, reading, writing, YA - Tagged , ,

Pride Week Guest Post from Lesléa Newman: Honoring Matthew Shepard

Jun 21, 2012 1 Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
Pride Week Guest Post from Lesléa Newman: Honoring Matthew Shepard

I remember Thursday, October 8, 1998 as though it were yesterday. I was sitting at our round, oak kitchen table when the phone rang. It was a crisp-as-a-Granny-Smith-apple New England evening. Something delicious was simmering on the stove. Mary, my beloved spouse, was in the living room, waiting to be called to supper. I picked up the phone.

“Hey Lesléa, it’s Jim.”

Jim was Jim Osborn, head of the University of Wyoming’s LGBT Association. He had called me months ago to ask me to be the keynote speaker for Gay Awareness Week which would begin the following Monday. I was to give a presentation on my book, Heather Has Two Mommies. All our plans were set. I wondered if something had changed.

The whole world had changed, but I didn’t know that yet.

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Posted in books, community, culture, guest post, lgbtq, literature, poetry, reading, writing, YA - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pride Week Guest Post from Tom Ryan: Bigger than Coming Out Stories

Jun 20, 2012 Leave a Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
Pride Week Guest Post from Tom Ryan: Bigger than Coming Out Stories

When my debut YA novel, WAY TO GO, was released in April, I was as nervous and excited as then next newbie author about the reality of having an honesttogawd BOOK out there in the world! People were reading something that I wrote and that was cuh-razy!

Something that I didn’t really anticipate was how much attention would end up being paid to the “coming out” aspect of the story. Almost every review (good and bad, thankfully more good than bad) referred to the book as a “coming out” story, as if that summed everything up in a neat little box. Like many first novels, my debut, WAY TO GO, is (very loosely) based on some experiences from my youth. I grew up in a beautiful but remote little town in Nova Scotia. In many ways it was a great place to be a teenager, but there were also some pretty significant negatives. In high school I was beginning to realize that I was gay, which can be a really isolating experience, particularly in a small town, and so I ended up hiding who I really was for a long time. When I started to write WTG, it was clear that part of the story would deal with the MC Danny’s struggle to come to terms with being gay.

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Posted in books, community, culture, guest post, lgbtq, reading, writing, YA - Tagged ,

Pride Week Guest Post from Ke-Yana Drake: What is a “Gay Writer?”

Jun 18, 2012 Leave a Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
Pride Week Guest Post from Ke-Yana Drake: What is a “Gay Writer?”

People have asked me if I’m a “gay writer.” I never quite know how to respond to this question. Is the person asking if I’m gay and a writer? Or are they asking if I write about characters which happen to be gay? And further, define “gay?” I actually quite dislike the word “gay.” It’s like the new buzz word that generates hate and noise where ever it goes. Because of these questions I’m often tempted to just say no to the original question and walk away altogether to avoid drama and misunderstanding.

My sexuality has very little to do with what stories I write. It doesn’t make my writing any different to anyone else’s stories or change the genre simply because I may or may not be “straight.” Yes, I have some characters with same-sex love interests, but that’s like the frosting on the cake of my novel. I don’t write books focused on the sexual relationships of the characters. I write books about action, survival, the little guy sticking it to the Man, and the discovery of one’s self and potential in certain situations. Just because one of my two protagonists is in a relationship with another man doesn’t mean it has any bearing on the story itself. That would be like saying because he’s wearing a suit for most of the book it must be a “suit novel.” (Which is obviously ridiculous.)

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Posted in books, community, culture, grown-up books, guest post, lgbtq, reading, writing - Tagged

Guest Post from Shana Burg on her new book LAUGH WITH THE MOON

Jun 14, 2012 Leave a Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger

The seeds for Laugh with the Moon were planted many years ago. I was in graduate school for public policy, and a professor who needed some international research help asked, “Would you be willing to go to Malawi?”

“Sure!” I said. Then I promptly left her office and ran to the library to find out where in the world Malawi is. Turns out Malawi is a tiny landlocked country in Central Africa.

The professor was studying the primary education system there, and she needed someone to visit some of the rural schools to see if the students had access to learning materials, like pens and paper and pencils. “Do you really think I can do this?” I asked her. After all, I had no special training in Malawi education to speak of.

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Posted in austin, culture, guest post, middle grade, writing - Tagged , ,

Review: ZOE LETTING GO by Nora Price

Jun 13, 2012 Leave a Comment ~ Written by E. Kristin Anderson
Review: ZOE LETTING GO by Nora Price

Zoe doesn’t know why she’s at Twin Birch. Her mother woke her up one morning and drove her here. The place isn’t like a hospital — not like most of them, anyway. It’s a fancy house with dorms and cooking classes and supervised eating. That’s the hardest part.

Still, Zoe doesn’t know why she’s there. She keeps writing letters to her best friend, Elise. Elise doesn’t ever answer, but Zoe knows there must be a good reason — a last minute vacation or a busy summer or something. Meanwhile, Zoe is left to deal with her super creepy room mate Caroline, and Brooke with her terrifying rage. Victoria might not be so bad, but she’s so tiny. She’s not like Zoe, the biggest girl there. It’s not hard to figure out what Twin Birch thinks she’s there for. What her therapist thinks she’s supposed to be dealing with. But Elise can’t –or maybe won’t — see how she’s like the other girls.

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Posted in books, reading, reviews, YA - Tagged , ,

EKA

E. Kristin Anderson grew up in Westbrook, Maine and is a graduate of Connecticut College. She has a fancy diploma that says “B.A. in Classics,” which makes her sound smart but has not helped her get any jobs in Ancient Rome. Ms. Anderson is the co-editor of Dear Teen Me, an anthology based on the popular website. Her poetry has been published worldwide in many magazines and she is an assistant YA and Children’s editor at Hunger Mountain. Once upon a time she worked at The New Yorker. Look out for Ms. Anderson's work in the forthcoming anthology Coin Opera II, a collection of poems about video games from Sidekick Books and Futuredaze, an anthology of YA SciFi from Underwords. She now lives in Austin, TX and blogs at EKristinAnderson.com and MetreMaids.com. She is represented by Christina Hogrebe at the Jane Rotrosen Agency.

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