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The Boy at the End of the World by Greg van Eekhout - review

So it has come to this, you say: post-apocalyptic fiction for middle grade readers. Really, you say? We're not going to wait until they're at least twelve or thirteen before giving them main characters who have to make their way by scavenging the wreckage of our world's bad decisions?

Yup. And about frickin time, I say.

Pick a winner - BEA 2011

I'm closing my eyes and taking a deep breath and letting all the new books I've seen in the past few days come flying past my head. Here (in addition to the titles I've already mentioned) are the books I am most looking forward to receiving in my library that I saw at BEA:

 

There will be a new Vordak, and it will be incomprehensible to all but small boys and some teachers. Since it will be called Vordak the Incomprehensible: Rule the School, we got a preview signed for a friend of ours who is a high school principal.

 

Liveblogging the stash - BEA 2011

Wandering the convention floor and gladhanding the entire kidlit industry at Book Expo is fun and all that, but the best part for me is when my kids arrive, and I get to collect their reactions to the exciting books (and swag!) that I have rounded up for potential review.

 

Guys Read: Thriller - BEA 2011 panel discussion

First of all, I want to make it clear that my forthcoming glowing review of the new short story collection in the Guys Read Library, Guys Read: Thriller is influenced not at all by the willingness of Jarrett Krosoczka to dress entirely in Michael Jackson red pleather - and even wear his wife's spangled, got-to-be-itchy socks - just to make a brief visual pun on the book's name.

 

I could refer to an REM song here but I am NOT GONNA

This morning, I'll be talking to host Tom Hall on Maryland Morning with Sheilah Kast, sometime between 9 and 10AM, on Maryland's NPR station, WYPR 88.1 FM. Later in the day, the audio of our conversation, plus my usual exhaustive booklist, will be up on the program's web site. Listen in!

Tom and I will be talking about movies that are being and have been made based on children's and young adult books - good, bad, and whether or not the book is always better.

While I was researching that conversation, I made some terrible and grotesque discoveries about the movies and young adult literature. Like for instance: OMG YOU GUYS APPARENTLY THERE'S AN APOCALYPSE COMING!! And love triangles! With some reincarnation and a few throwback vampires.

Thankfully, few zombies and no mermaids. YET.

But check it out, there are like a million YA series that have been optioned for movies - some of them, even before print copies have kissed sunlight - and half of 'em Look Like THIS:

Notes from the insect world

I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. Most of my friends have gone through it already. Some of them have had to deal with it over and over. I'm just lucky I have boys, and I can shear 'em like sheep.

It's head lice.

Gross.

Doodleday by Ross Collins - review

There are some picture books that I gravitate to so strongly, it's like they are the Sun and I am a speck of planetary debris.

Hm. "Debris" sounds so drab. Brightly colored planetary debris. Planetary crayon shavings. Or... planetary confetti. I am wearing my calavera cowboy shirt today, and feeling not at all drab.

Plus I am looking at this orangey yellowy and bright white picture book, which is probably what made me think about the Sun, and that book is not making me feel drab either.

Nonfiction Monday: the Star Wars Craft Book by Bonnie Burton - review

Craft books. So tempting, so cool! In my experience, no other type of book causes people to delude themselves quite so thoroughly.

The cute little R2-D2 hat? Oh My God I am SO going to learn to crochet so that I can make that hat! The AT-AT herb planter? Hey, that could happen - we have almost all those supplies laying around the house somewhere. And half the rest of this stuff is all cutting and glueing felt! Easy! Ok there's a little sewing if you want the Jar Jar Binks Voodoo Doll to look like Jar Jar Binks and not like Jabba the Hutt. And there's some embroidery. Paper mache. Hmm.

On the other hand - sticking pins into Jar Jar Binks? GENIUS.

Electronic Thursday: Comics4Kids by Comixology - review

 

You know what's great about comics? Trick question. Almost everything is great about comics. The bang zap pow action, the smartmouth dialogue and the smooth outfits, and the knowledge that when you pick one up, nobody in that thing is going to make you work too hard. Archie, Spidey, Scooby, and the Tiny Titans? They are just there to entertain you.

And here's some grown-up brain-development blither-blather, in case you're game for that kind of stuff (if not, scroll down a little, it'll pick right back up):

Are you going to kiss me now? by Sloane Tanen - review

All that really has to happen here - if you're me, at least - is to see the words "Sloane Tanen."

 

 

"Samantha looked around the playground in amazement. Her mother had been right. She really was the smartest and the prettiest."

 
"Goodnight moon, hello, martini."

 
"It's dad calling about the birth control prescription I took out of your backpack and taped to his cell phone."

 

At least, that was all I had to see when my friend Sarah messaged me on Facebook: "Have you heard of my friend Sloane's new book? Do you want to?"

I have the coolest friends.

Nonfiction Monday: Manners Mash-up - review

I'd have had this book reviewed earlier, but there was a manners emergency.

One of Zhou's teachers came into the library with her almost-three-year-old son, who has got to be one of the cutest little guys in the whole world. She was looking for ABC books, truck books, and dinosaur books (I love three-year-old boys!) - and also a manners book that wasn't too heavy-handed.

I kind of pooh-poohed her - at almost three, there's plenty of time to teach him about elbows on the table. At almost three, they're so cute that we still forgive them if they forget to say "excuse me" when they burp. We're programmed that way. But Kayisha had this story to tell: