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Video reviews! Milo and Ezra review my pile of ARCs - PART ONE

Don't call me lazy. No, man, really you can't. I have been reading nonstop - just, I have other obligations, and the books I am reading are not for Pink Me. (Except for Necromancing the Stone by Lish McBride, oh and The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi, and Sons of the 613 by Mike Rubens - I've read those recently, I just don't have time to review them! Aagh! They're all great? Can I just say that for now? I promise there will be reviews later.)

Also, they all have great covers:

So, in the interest of actually performing some sort of informational service, which is all I've ever tried to do (insert pious expression and posture here), I brought out the Flip camera and asked my boys about the books on my coffee table. My boys are, after all, the target audience. And they read, oh Jesus they read like crazy!

Here's the big pile of books and an introduction to my reviewers:

 

Kids' Comics: Choosing titles your children will love by Scott Robins and Snow Wildsmith - review

Sometimes I complain that I have to read thirty books so that I can write some booklist, or fifty books because I'm on an award panel, or a hundred books for some committee... but from now on, I think I'll shut up.

Because I am pretty sure Snow Wildsmith and Scott Robins, who both write for SLJ's Good Comics for Kids blog, read 850 books in order to write this excellent compendium of, er, good comics for kids. Eight Hundred and FIFTY graphic novels, manga series, picture books, and beginning readers. Some with Smurfs in them.

We're going on a book hunt - Best books from Book Expo 2012

Author breakfasts. Author stages. Autograph tables. Publisher pitches. There are a lot of vectors by which book information comes at you at Book Expo America (BEA), the three-day book industry droolfest that takes place at the Javits Center in NYC once a year. My little head is still spinning.

The beauty of BEA is that you are not only going to hear about the precious few books that each publisher has selected for Super Spangly Special Star Treatment, with giveaways and signings and strippers bearing cupcakes and a dedicated website and in-store displays... but you can also get your hands on the so-called "mid-list" titles, the books that are not expected to go best-seller but which will also find an audience. In the publishers' booths on the exhibition floor, they have copies of just about EVERYTHING they are putting out in the next season or even two. 

 

And they will give you a copy if you ask nice.

So what did I see that I loved loved loved? A lot, if you go by what I came home with. I tried to be terribly disciplined and only take books that I wanted to review, or knew my boys wanted, or very much needed for our school library... and still I ended up with 57 books.

Standing in line is the new Facebook - at Book Expo 2012

Oh my lordy swordy Boordy gourd. I feel like I have been beaten with mallets.

Book Expo America is not your average event that librarians go to. Book Expo does not feature a slate of sessions designed to develop you professionally, shape you into a storytiming literacy advocate that brings services into the community and lures teens to the library with of-the-moment hip happenings.

No, man. Book Expo is all about GREED.

Publishers bring hundreds and hundreds of review copies of the books they want to sell, they fly in their authors and hand them Sharpies, and then let us line up and be fed this fabulous swag. It's... it's a dangerous environment for book addicts.

I am too physically exhausted from walking the floor of the Javits Center tracking down the likes of Tom Angleberger (Darth Paper Strikes Back!) and Nate Wilson (The Ashtown Burials), both of whom signed books for my lucky lucky children, to write a whole lot tonight. I'm just going to describe a few really great moments and impressions, and then Friday you'll see my picks and impressions of the greater books to come.