Friday, November 21, 2008

Teens expelled for silent protest

Students in Oak Harbor were expelled for refusing to take off t-shirts protesting a fellow student's expulsion.

Students demand free speech
By LIZ BURLINGAME
Whidbey News Times Reporter

“We felt if we were silent with this, no one would pay attention to us,” junior Justin Chambers said. “You need to be 40-years-old and carrying a suitcase for people to actually listen to you.”

How do you feel about this? Were these teens treated unfairly? Would you have done what they did? Why?

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Another Best Books List

This time from a magazine you've probably never heard of called Publisher's Weekly. PW is one of the ways we figure out what books to buy for the library. I've stolen this from their Best Books of the Year announcement.

Chains
by Laurie Halse Anderson
A young slave in New York City offers readers a provocative view of the Revolutionary War, within the context of a fast-moving, emotionally involving story; a National Book Award finalist.



The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 2: The Kingdom on the Waves
by M.T. Anderson
With an eye trained to the hypocrisies and conflicted loyalties of the American Revolution, Anderson resoundingly concludes the finely nuanced bildungsroman begun in his National Book Award–winning novel.



The Penderwicks on Gardam Street
by Jeanne Birdsall
Even better than the National Book Award–winning original, this vivid sequel finds the four Penderwick sisters plotting to foil their aunt's matchmaking schemes for their widowed father.

Masterpiece
by Elise Broach
With overtones of The Borrowers and Chasing Vermeer, this inventive mystery about a boy, a beetle and an art heist is packed with seductive themes: hidden lives and secret friendships, miniature worlds lost to disbelievers.



Graceling
by Kristin Cashore
An exquisitely drawn romance, political intrigue, a take-charge heroine and a magnificently imagined fantasy realm—this riveting debut offers something for almost everyone, adults as well as teens.

The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins
In a dystopian fantasy that blends elements of classical mythology, a kill-or-be-killed competition and reality television, the author explodes a series of surprises, all the while challenging readers to consider how far her heroine can go while retaining her humanity.



Little Brother
by Cory Doctorow
Filled with sharp dialogue and detailed descriptions of how to counteract real-life surveillance, this techno-thriller imagines a teen arrested and held in a Guantanamo-like setting by an out-of-control Department of Homeland Security after a terrorist attack.

Bog Child
by Siobhan Dowd
The discovery of a child's ancient corpse launches this multilayered novel about moral choices, set in Northern Ireland amid the Troubles in 1981.



Dark Dude
by Oscar Hijuelos
The smooth, jazzy flow of the narration—along with very funny writing—sweeps readers through a '60s-era story about a Cuban-American teenager in search of his identity.


Tender Morsels
by Margo Lanagan
Dense, atmospheric prose holds readers to a cautious pace in an often dark fantasy that explores the savage and gentlest sides of human nature and how they coexist.



Savvy
by Ingrid Law
A cinematic and vibrant debut novel introduces a family whose members are each endowed with a different supernatural gift, or “savvy,” on their 13th birthdays.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
by E. Lockhart
Big ideas—about class and privilege, feminism and romance, wordplay and thought—are an essential part of the fun in this sparkling, mischievous novel, an NBA finalist, about a sophomore girl who decides to infiltrate an all-male secret society at an elite boarding school.



Sunrise Over Fallujah
by Walter Dean Myers
Written from the point of view of the rank-and-file, this pointed novel allows American teens to grapple intelligently and thoughtfully with the war in Iraq.

Nation
by Terry Pratchett
In a superb mix of alternate history and fantasy, Pratchett balances the somber and the wildly humorous as his protagonists, lone survivors of disasters, suffer profound crises of faith.



Have you read any of these? What do you think? The descriptions are a little lame - if you have a better quick description of any of these titles, stick it in the comments!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

If you were lookin' for something to read...

You know how movies have award season with the Golden Globes and the Oscars and whatnot? Well, books have an award season, too, and it pretty much starts out with the National Book Award nominations. Below, with stolen publisher descriptions, you will find the 2008 Finalists for Young People's Literature:

Chains
by Laurie Halse Anderson
As the Revolutionary War begins, thirteen-year-old Isabel wages her own fight...for freedom. Promised freedom upon the death of their owner, she and her sister, Ruth, in a cruel twist of fate become the property of a malicious New York City couple, the Locktons, who have no sympathy for the American Revolution and even less for Ruth and Isabel. When Isabel meets Curzon, a slave with ties to the Patriots, he encourages her to spy on her owners, who know details of British plans for invasion. She is reluctant at first, but when the unthinkable happens to Ruth, Isabel realizes her loyalty is available to the bidder who can provide her with freedom.

The Underneath
by Kathi Appelt (Interview)A calico cat, about to have kittens, hears the lonely howl of a chained-up hound deep in the backwaters of the bayou. She dares to find him in the forest, and the hound dares to befriend this cat, this feline, this creature he is supposed to hate. They are an unlikely pair, about to become an unlikely family. Ranger urges the cat to hide underneath the porch, to raise her kittens there because Gar-Face, the man living inside the house, will surely use them as alligator bait should he find them. But they are safe in the Underneath...as long as they stay in the Underneath.

What I Saw and How I Lied
by Judy Blundell, (Interview)
When Evie's father returned home from World War II, the family fell back into its normal life pretty quickly. But Joe Spooner brought more back with him than just good war stories. When movie-star handsome Peter Coleridge, a young ex-GI who served in Joe's company in postwar Austria, shows up, Evie is suddenly caught in a complicated web of lies that she only slowly recognizes. She finds herself falling for Peter, ignoring the secrets that surround him . . . until a tragedy occurs that shatters her family and breaks her life in two. As she begins to realize that almost everything she believed to be a truth was really a lie, Evie must get to the heart of the deceptions and choose between her loyalty to her parents and her feelings for the man she loves. Someone will have to be betrayed. The question is . . . who?


The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
by E. Lockhart (Interview)
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:
Debate Club.
Her father's "Bunny Rabbit."
A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15:
A knockout figure.
A sharp tongue.
A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.

Frankie Laundau-Banks.
No longer the kind of girl to take "no" for an answer.
Especially when "no" means she's excluded from her boyfriend's all-male secret society.
Not when her ex boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places.
Not when she knows she's smarter than any of them.
When she knows Matthew is lying to her.
And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.

Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16:
Possibly a criminal mastermind.

This is the story of how she got that way.

The Spectacular Now
by Tim Tharp (Interview)
SUTTER KEELY. HE’S the guy you want at your party. He’ll get everyone dancing. He’ll get everyone in your parents’ pool. Okay, so he’s not exactly a shining academic star. He has no plans for college and will probably end up folding men’s shirts for a living. But there are plenty of ladies in town, and with the help of Dean Martin and Seagram’s V.O., life’s pretty fabuloso, actually.

Until the morning he wakes up on a random front lawn, and he meets Aimee. Aimee’s clueless. Aimee is a social disaster. Aimee needs help, and it’s up to the Sutterman to show Aimee a splendiferous time and then let her go
forth and prosper. But Aimee’s not like other girls, and before long he’s in way over his head. For the first time in his life, he has the power to make a difference in someone else’s life—or ruin it forever.


I'll follow up this post with a few more lists of 2008 favorites so you can stock up for vacations and boring holiday travel and gatherings.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Uber-fans, I'm sure have already seen

the interview with Stephenie Meyer in Entertainment Weekly.

She talks about the movie (next week!), fame, Breaking Dawn, and the Midnight Sun leak:

"For example the part that's me is where I said, ''If I wrote it now everybody would end up dying.'' But that was a joke! And it sounded so serious amidst all the lawyer talk and I think my fans thought, Wow, she's threatening to kill everyone! [Laughing] I felt kind of bad about that. I never felt any anger, actually. Just a lot of sadness. I mean it was a sucker punch — like someone came up behind you and just hammered you in the kidneys and you had no idea it was coming."

And mermaids. She says the word mermaid a lot.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

awesome author - Thursday in Seattle

One of my favorite teen authors is M.T. Anderson. He has written some amazing books. The first one I read was Thirsty, about a pretty normal teenage guy who wakes up one morning craving blood, and his expensive braces get popped off by fangs! Is he happy about being a vampire? No! Lots of people think it would be great...but would it really mesh with your social life?

Feed is one of my all time favorite books, which starts with the classic line "We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck." This is sci-fi with attitude, humor, and chilling insight as to how the world could go very very wrong.

I've only read the first book in his series, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing - The Pox Party. I confess I hesitated to check out at first...it just looks daunting! But a precocious 7th grader shamed me into reading it. If you want a great challenging read, this is historical fiction like you have never seen it before...and a mind-blowing look at some of the crazy stuff that was going on during the founding of our country.

If you are a fan, or just want to hear an amazing author talk, make your way down to Seattle this Thursday night to check him out!:

Thursday • November 6 • 7pm
M.T. Anderson
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume II: Kingdom on the Waves (CANDLEWICK)
Reading & Book Signing
Seattle Public Library, Central Branch, 1000 Fourth Avenue, Seattle

Monday, November 3, 2008

Meet Tamora Pierce in NYC?


I know some of you out there LOVE Tamora Pierce. I've talked to you. I know this is a fact.
How'd you like to win:
All you have to do is fill out this form with 10 questions you'd like to ask this amazing author and tell them in less than 200 words why YOU would make a great correspondent. It almost seems too easy!


*If winner is under 18, the travel companion must be a parent/guardian.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Dear Mr. President...


If you had an opportunity to write a letter to the next President of the United States, what would you say?

So far over 5,000 teens across the United States have shared their concerns and ideas as part of the Writing Our Future: Letters to the Next President project. The project is sponsored by Google Docs and the National Writing Project, and is a way that classes learn about civic engagement and improve their writing skills at the same time.

The site can be searched by region, if you want to know what other teens that live near you are thinking about, or you can search by a particular topic that interests you.

I'm really looking forward to reading these letters.

And remember to vote on Tuesday if you can. If you're not old enough to vote, then encourage everyone you know who is registered to cast their ballots!

~ Anne