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National Poetry Month: Terra Elan McVoy: Being In Love with Poetry

Apr 12, 2013 Leave a Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
National Poetry Month: Terra Elan McVoy: Being In Love with Poetry

I’d like to say, with me and poetry, it was love at first sight, but when I started reading and writing it in middle school, it was probably just infatuation on my part. Sure, I wrote poems from my pals, and even got a few published in the 8th grade yearbook (lots of “Friend/end, cry/goodbye” going on in there), but I didn’t really understand poetry. We hadn’t yet had a meeting of the minds.

In 10th grade though, thanks in part to my English teacher (aka matchmaker), poetry and I really got it going on. After a few glances across my literature textbook, I wanted to eat, sleep, and breathe poetry. I kind of wanted to be it.

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Review: DEATH OF A KLEPTOMANIAC by Kristen Tracy

Mar 01, 2013 Leave a Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
Review: DEATH OF A KLEPTOMANIAC by Kristen Tracy

Reminiscent of HEAVEN LOOKS A LOT LIKE THE MALL by Wendy Mass, the latest YA novel from Kristen Tracy takes a look at a near-death experience from the point of view of a girl stuck in between this world in the next. With a hearty sense of humor, and a sweet protagonist, DEATH OF A KLEPTOMANIAC is a smart, fun read that makes me feel all squishy inside.

Molly is the girl who has worked her butt off to have it all — the right seat in the cafeteria, the right image, and the right boy. Finally, it’s looking like things are going her way, until an accent leaves her facing the afterworld, with just a few chances to experience life. Given the limited opportunity to revisit her favorite moments as a living, breathing person, Molly has choices to make. Choices she’s not ready for.

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Review: TEETH by Hannah Moskowitz

Feb 22, 2013 2 Comments ~ Written by E. Kristin Anderson
Review: TEETH by Hannah Moskowitz

I have read several books by Hannah Moskowitz, but TEETH is by far my favorite. Weaving magic realism into a story about illness, friendship, family and first love, all with Moskowitz’ signature sense of voice TEETH blew me away. Completely.

TEETH is the story of Rudy, who never wanted to be on the island in the first place. It’s an island where people with incurable illnesses come to be cured by the magic fish only found in the surrounding waters. Rudy is there because of his brother, whose cystic fibrosis is finally beginning to improve. Rudy is one of the only kids his age on the island, and fears he is doomed to being a loner. But then he meets Fishboy

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Banned Books Month Guest Post from Elizabeth Miles: My Mother, the Pro

Sep 21, 2012 Leave a Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
Banned Books Month Guest Post from Elizabeth Miles: My Mother, the Pro

So many banned books — practically everything Judy Blume ever wrote, BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA by Katherine Paterson, Roald Dahl’s THE WITCHES, and JULIE OF THE WOLVES by Jean Craighead George, to name just a few — were childhood favorites of mine. They featured plucky protagonists, an element of adventure, and honest prose that stayed with me long after I’d closed their covers. These are the books that made me think, that answered certain questions I had while leading me to ask new ones. They encouraged nuanced analysis. And they had something else in common, too: they were recommended to me by my mother, Evelyn, a longtime New York City reading specialist who spent the last seventeen years of her career (such a long time!!!) as principal of an elementary school in the Bronx.

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Banned Books Month Guest Post from Nancy Holder: What’s the Story, Wishbone?

Sep 17, 2012 Leave a Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
Banned Books Month Guest Post from Nancy Holder: What’s the Story, Wishbone?

It seems fitting to write this article about banned books on Rosh Hashanah. Some years ago, I had the wonderful job of writing stories based on the episodes of the TV show, Wishbone. Wishbone was a little Jack Russell terrier who presented classic works of literature for kids by imagining himself as the main character (for the most part) in those books. My first assignment was IVANHOUND, a Wishbone-style retelling of IVANHOE. For those of you (like me) who had never read the actual novel (as opposed to a kid-friendly retelling), I was quite surprised to discover how much of the novel dealt with anti-Semitism. Ivanhoe is a heroic knight for many reasons, not the least of which is that he puts his life on the line in a trial by combat to save Rebecca, who is Jewish.

My editor and I had many long conversations about how to talk about this notion of anti-Semitism within the context of a short children’s book. The Ivanhound TV episode didn’t explicitly mention prejudice against Jews, except that Isaac , Rebecca’s father, is shown wearing a tall yellow cap and a yellow star, which was required of Jewish men in the Middle Ages (at least in England.) We could have left it to the illustrator to do the same, but we felt we should address it, since we had (slightly) more room to explore the themes of the novel. But anti-Semitism is not the driving force of the novel. It is an issue, but more to the issue is the inherent nobility of the disinherited knight of this Romance, a paen to medievalism and derring-do.

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Posted in banned books, books, community, controversy, culture, guest post, literature, reading, religion, writing, YA - Tagged , , , ,

Review: A GIRL NAMED DIGIT by Annabel Monaghan

Jul 11, 2012 Leave a Comment ~ Written by E. Kristin Anderson
Review: A GIRL NAMED DIGIT by Annabel Monaghan

I loved A GIRL NAMED DIGIT. With a tough-as-nails (but totally girlie) heroine, a la early Buffy, a sexy secret agent, and plenty of villains to go around, Annabel Monaghan’s first novel is pretty much unputdownable.

Farrah — or Digit, as she used to be called, due to her prodigious talent for math — has been hiding her skills from her BFFs. Airheaded as they may be, they’re her girls, and she’d hate to have them reject her if they found out that she had perfect test scores (hidden under lock and key by the school) and early acceptance to MIT. Only her family knows that she’s Digit, long having shed the nickname that made her an outcast at her last school. But when Farrah unlocks a secret terrorist code while watching TV, she storms into the FBI to let them know she’s onto the bad guys. There’s one big hitch, though: the FBI thinks she’s nuts.

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Nat’l Poetry Month: Guest Post from Tera Elan McVoy: Poetry and the Verse Novel

Apr 05, 2012 Leave a Comment ~ Written by Guest Blogger
Nat’l Poetry Month: Guest Post from Tera Elan McVoy: Poetry and the Verse Novel

I started writing poetry in about the sixth grade, and was very serious about it by eighth. I have the Cobb Middle School yearbooks (with my poems published inside) to prove it. But I didn’t really start writing poetry until I discovered free verse. Not with the same attention to language, anyway. This was about [...]

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Review: ZOMBIE TAG by Hannah Moskowitz

Dec 14, 2011 Leave a Comment ~ Written by E. Kristin Anderson
Review: ZOMBIE TAG by Hannah Moskowitz

First and foremost, ZOMBIE TAG is a story about brothers.  About the kind of love and friendship that can only exist within a family, and the special grief that comes when that bond is broken.  Twelve-year-old Wil is a younger brother, and he knows about this grief.  Not long ago, he lost his brother Graham.  [...]

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Banned Books Month: Author Hannah Moskowitz on the Books that Scare Us

Sep 16, 2011 1 Comment ~ Written by E. Kristin Anderson
Banned Books Month: Author Hannah Moskowitz on the Books that Scare Us

Books have never been banned from me. I grew up in a family and within a small school that craved honestly and loathed censorship the same way I do now. I’m fully in the camp that believes kids self-censor; if a book is too scary or too advanced for them, they’ll put it down. They [...]

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Review: DAMNED by Nancy Holder & Debbie Viguié

Aug 19, 2011 2 Comments ~ Written by E. Kristin Anderson
Review: DAMNED by Nancy Holder & Debbie Viguié

I don’t always get to finish series.  There are so many books coming out that sequels and series aren’t usually a priority for me.  But there are some authors whose work I’ll always read, and some series that I absolutely must finish.  Even when they are giant, 500-page tomes. DAMNED is one of these books [...]

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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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