We here at BookPros would like to thank our nation's veterans for their service. Your sacrifices have made this country a better place.
Our hearts also go out to the brave soldiers at nearby Fort Hood, and to the families of the victims of that tragedy. They will not be forgotten.
And, last but not least, a warm "welcome home" to the First Cavalry Division, who returned to Fort Hood last night from their tour of duty. Thank you for your service.
To learn more about the origins of Veterans Day, you can visit the official site of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States. Austin locals can see a schedule of the day's events here.
November 11, 2009
November 4, 2009
The Power of Proofreading
One of the most important things an author can do before sending a manuscript out to any publisher (traditional or otherwise) is proofread. Everyone commits the occasional typo, and no one can remember every single irregular spelling or grammar rule, but you don’t want your book to have errors in every sentence. You know that plurals don’t have apostrophes in them, so why let apostrophized plurals pop up as if you don't?
One of the easiest ways to do a cursory proofread is to pay attention to your word processor’s spell check feature. Microsoft Word’s spell check is not the final authority whatsoever (in fact, sometimes it's hilariously wrong), but when you see a squiggly red line underneath one of your words, take note. You may have just accidentally typed “sai” instead of “said.” Mistakes like that are easy to fix.
Another simple way to proofread is to read what you’ve written out loud. Maybe in the course of your time at the keyboard, you typed, “She went to the store,” paused and thought for a while, typed, “The store was crowded,” had a sip of coffee, and then finished up with the sentence, “There were many types of bread at the store.” Each of those sentences makes perfect sense on its own, but read them out loud as a whole: “She went to the store. The store was crowded. There were many types of bread at the store.” Unless you’re writing a children’s book, that sounds a little silly.
Remember, you don’t have to be a grammarian to write a great book. You just have to have a great story. But you can make a manuscript look a lot more professional and appealing by taking a bit of time to read it over before you submit it.
One of the easiest ways to do a cursory proofread is to pay attention to your word processor’s spell check feature. Microsoft Word’s spell check is not the final authority whatsoever (in fact, sometimes it's hilariously wrong), but when you see a squiggly red line underneath one of your words, take note. You may have just accidentally typed “sai” instead of “said.” Mistakes like that are easy to fix.
Another simple way to proofread is to read what you’ve written out loud. Maybe in the course of your time at the keyboard, you typed, “She went to the store,” paused and thought for a while, typed, “The store was crowded,” had a sip of coffee, and then finished up with the sentence, “There were many types of bread at the store.” Each of those sentences makes perfect sense on its own, but read them out loud as a whole: “She went to the store. The store was crowded. There were many types of bread at the store.” Unless you’re writing a children’s book, that sounds a little silly.
Remember, you don’t have to be a grammarian to write a great book. You just have to have a great story. But you can make a manuscript look a lot more professional and appealing by taking a bit of time to read it over before you submit it.
October 30, 2009
Literary Halloween: Our staff’s bookish costumes
OmniLit is hosting a literary Halloween costume contest from now til midnight tomorrow. In honor of the occasion, we are all sharing our past Halloween romps as literary characters.
Erin
I've dressed up as Zelda Fitzgerald, Ginny Weasley, and Little "Dead" Riding Hood (which was regular Little Red Riding Hood with green-tinged face paint and black lipstick). I’m considering repurposing my red Ginny Weasley wig to be Anne Shirley.
Michelle
My senior English class dressed up as our favorite literary characters and had to do a speech as our character. I dressed up as Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby and laughed cynically that the best
thing a girl can be in the world is a "beautiful little fool" while Steven Beaulieu delivered a fantastic closing argument as Atticus Finch. Last year my little brother borrowed a fireman's outfit from the Bedford Fire Department so that he could dress up as Guy Montag from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (the Filips kids like Bradbury).
Peggy
This Halloween I’ll be dressing as an evil faerie of Irial’s Dark Court (from Melissa Marr’s Ink Exchange). These intense faeries get their sustenance from the fear, sadness, and pain of others, so I have quite a job to do. I also dressed as a few literary favorites as a child, including the Wicked Witch of the West (complete with a long rubber nose with a wart and green face paint) and Raggedy Ann. It’s really too bad only my mom has that picture, because it is so cute you’d melt.
Caitlin
I've been both Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel. My mom made me a pretty intense Rapunzel costume, which included a princess cone hat, a faux corset, and a long braid made from yellow yarn.
Lauren
A few years ago, I dressed up as Medea. I wore a black dress and tied two baby dolls around myself to represent the children she killed. As you might imagine, it wasn't the most successful Halloween costume, as no one could really tell what I was, but at least it was sufficiently creepy for a holiday about dead souls haunting the living.
Andrea
My mom got a kick out of dressing me up in a puffy Pooh Bear costume when I was little—so much so that she did it twice. And while I adored the bedtime stories, I'm pretty sure I wasn't a fan of the costume.
Katie
I can't remember any characters I dressed up as from my childhood but this year Nancy Drew is a strong contender.
Any of your own to share?
Erin
I've dressed up as Zelda Fitzgerald, Ginny Weasley, and Little "Dead" Riding Hood (which was regular Little Red Riding Hood with green-tinged face paint and black lipstick). I’m considering repurposing my red Ginny Weasley wig to be Anne Shirley.
Michelle
My senior English class dressed up as our favorite literary characters and had to do a speech as our character. I dressed up as Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby and laughed cynically that the best
thing a girl can be in the world is a "beautiful little fool" while Steven Beaulieu delivered a fantastic closing argument as Atticus Finch. Last year my little brother borrowed a fireman's outfit from the Bedford Fire Department so that he could dress up as Guy Montag from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (the Filips kids like Bradbury).
Peggy
This Halloween I’ll be dressing as an evil faerie of Irial’s Dark Court (from Melissa Marr’s Ink Exchange). These intense faeries get their sustenance from the fear, sadness, and pain of others, so I have quite a job to do. I also dressed as a few literary favorites as a child, including the Wicked Witch of the West (complete with a long rubber nose with a wart and green face paint) and Raggedy Ann. It’s really too bad only my mom has that picture, because it is so cute you’d melt.
Caitlin
I've been both Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel. My mom made me a pretty intense Rapunzel costume, which included a princess cone hat, a faux corset, and a long braid made from yellow yarn.
Lauren
A few years ago, I dressed up as Medea. I wore a black dress and tied two baby dolls around myself to represent the children she killed. As you might imagine, it wasn't the most successful Halloween costume, as no one could really tell what I was, but at least it was sufficiently creepy for a holiday about dead souls haunting the living.
Andrea
My mom got a kick out of dressing me up in a puffy Pooh Bear costume when I was little—so much so that she did it twice. And while I adored the bedtime stories, I'm pretty sure I wasn't a fan of the costume.
Katie
I can't remember any characters I dressed up as from my childhood but this year Nancy Drew is a strong contender.
Any of your own to share?
October 29, 2009
Images in Manuscripts
by Jacob McRae, Editing Assistant
Pictures between Thousands of Words
In many manuscripts we receive, particularly nonfiction manuscripts, there are graphs, charts, diagrams, and photographs—all things that are eye-catching and alluring for readers. But an editor’s concern is directed almost solely to the text, which sometimes make images a harrowing challenge when formatting manuscripts. With a bit of awareness, authors can ease the burden on editors trying to deal with the mishmash of lines and shapes.
Building Images
During the editing process, we strip the images from the manuscript, replacing them with text-based tags so our designers can reintegrate them later. For example, if this blog post were a manuscript and an image had originally been placed after this statement, it would be removed and substituted with the design tag <>. This process might sound fairly facile, and it is, if the images are in standard web formats—such as JPEG, GIF, and PNG—which merge layered images into single objects. When you are about to save your image, remember these file types:
JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, and it’s a file type for color images. It compresses images, which can occasionally result in a loss of image quality.
GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format. GIFs are best for graphic, line-heavy art with few colors. Unlike JPEGs, GIFs are lossless; however, they do have a limited color palette. It is probably best to save graphs with this format or PNG.
PNG stands for Portable Networks Graphic. It is a lossless format like GIF, but it does not have a limited color palette. It has become increasingly popular over time and might be the best choice for authors using full-color illustrations and photographs.
Certain problems arise frequently when authors deviate from these file types and venture to create their own images within Microsoft Word. Word provides many image-building tools, such as shapes and lines that can be used to make graphs, but those tools can make things more complicated. Each of those lines and shapes is a separate character that can potentially divide and float away from the diagram. In other words, these images built in Word are not cohesive and are easily fragmented in the editing process. Just imagine putting your drawing together line by line, sealing it in an envelope, and putting it in the mail, only to have the recipient open the envelope and find a jumbled puzzle of shapes—you definitely don’t want an editor guessing what goes where!
Adding Images to Your Manuscript
The best way to insert images into your manuscript is by building or editing them in a photo-editing program—such as Picasa, Microsoft Paint, or Adobe Photoshop—that can save JPEG, GIF, or PNG files. These programs merge the shapes and layers into one simple image, so the lines and circles don’t float into space. They also give you more control over the images’ dimensions. The size of your image—referred to as DPI (dots per inch)—matters, too. For printed media, a typical size is 220 to 300 DPI, and most image-editing programs have tools to monitor those numbers. Once you’ve created your images, you can easily import them and arrange the whole pictures as you please within your Word document.
Here are some popular, free photo-editing programs:
Picasa
Paint.Net
Photoscape
Gimp
And a couple that aren’t so free:
Paint Shop Pro
Adobe Photoshop
Other resources:
Graph Builder offers a very comprehensive graph-building tool, and you can download the graph or chart you create as a JPEG or PNG. Keep in mind that the newest versions of Microsoft Word have an efficient graph builder, but graphs made using the program can be sensitive when a manuscript is being moved around.
More information about DPI can be found here.
Pictures between Thousands of Words
In many manuscripts we receive, particularly nonfiction manuscripts, there are graphs, charts, diagrams, and photographs—all things that are eye-catching and alluring for readers. But an editor’s concern is directed almost solely to the text, which sometimes make images a harrowing challenge when formatting manuscripts. With a bit of awareness, authors can ease the burden on editors trying to deal with the mishmash of lines and shapes.
Building Images
During the editing process, we strip the images from the manuscript, replacing them with text-based tags so our designers can reintegrate them later. For example, if this blog post were a manuscript and an image had originally been placed after this statement, it would be removed and substituted with the design tag <>. This process might sound fairly facile, and it is, if the images are in standard web formats—such as JPEG, GIF, and PNG—which merge layered images into single objects. When you are about to save your image, remember these file types:
JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, and it’s a file type for color images. It compresses images, which can occasionally result in a loss of image quality.
GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format. GIFs are best for graphic, line-heavy art with few colors. Unlike JPEGs, GIFs are lossless; however, they do have a limited color palette. It is probably best to save graphs with this format or PNG.
PNG stands for Portable Networks Graphic. It is a lossless format like GIF, but it does not have a limited color palette. It has become increasingly popular over time and might be the best choice for authors using full-color illustrations and photographs.
Certain problems arise frequently when authors deviate from these file types and venture to create their own images within Microsoft Word. Word provides many image-building tools, such as shapes and lines that can be used to make graphs, but those tools can make things more complicated. Each of those lines and shapes is a separate character that can potentially divide and float away from the diagram. In other words, these images built in Word are not cohesive and are easily fragmented in the editing process. Just imagine putting your drawing together line by line, sealing it in an envelope, and putting it in the mail, only to have the recipient open the envelope and find a jumbled puzzle of shapes—you definitely don’t want an editor guessing what goes where!
Adding Images to Your Manuscript
The best way to insert images into your manuscript is by building or editing them in a photo-editing program—such as Picasa, Microsoft Paint, or Adobe Photoshop—that can save JPEG, GIF, or PNG files. These programs merge the shapes and layers into one simple image, so the lines and circles don’t float into space. They also give you more control over the images’ dimensions. The size of your image—referred to as DPI (dots per inch)—matters, too. For printed media, a typical size is 220 to 300 DPI, and most image-editing programs have tools to monitor those numbers. Once you’ve created your images, you can easily import them and arrange the whole pictures as you please within your Word document.
Here are some popular, free photo-editing programs:
Picasa
Paint.Net
Photoscape
Gimp
And a couple that aren’t so free:
Paint Shop Pro
Adobe Photoshop
Other resources:
Graph Builder offers a very comprehensive graph-building tool, and you can download the graph or chart you create as a JPEG or PNG. Keep in mind that the newest versions of Microsoft Word have an efficient graph builder, but graphs made using the program can be sensitive when a manuscript is being moved around.
More information about DPI can be found here.
October 27, 2009
Texas Book Festival 2009
The Texas Book Festival was started in 1995 by First Lady Laura Bush “to honor Texas authors, promote the joys of reading, and serve to benefit the state's public libraries.” The show is always a lot of fun with author readings, cooking demos, craft projects, and freebies. (I fondly recall the handfuls of Ghirardelli chocolates I walked away with last year.) The festival is gracing the Capitol building once again this weekend (October 31 – November 1) so check out their site now to be prepared!
Participating authors: http://www.texasbookfestival.org/Authors.php
Schedule of events: http://www.texasbookfestival.org/Calendar.php
Children’s schedule of events: http://www.texasbookfestival.org/pdfs/2009_childrens_schedule.pdf
Exhibitors and vendors: http://www.texasbookfestival.org/Exhibitors.php
Tips on show basics: http://www.texasbookfestival.org/Getting_There.php
You should also check out the Children’s Chapter home page to see the winning entries in the kids’ book cover contest. So cute!
Have fun, y’all!
Participating authors: http://www.texasbookfestival.org/Authors.php
Schedule of events: http://www.texasbookfestival.org/Calendar.php
Children’s schedule of events: http://www.texasbookfestival.org/pdfs/2009_childrens_schedule.pdf
Exhibitors and vendors: http://www.texasbookfestival.org/Exhibitors.php
Tips on show basics: http://www.texasbookfestival.org/Getting_There.php
You should also check out the Children’s Chapter home page to see the winning entries in the kids’ book cover contest. So cute!
Have fun, y’all!
October 23, 2009
Teen Read Week Staff Picks
I am a big fan of young adult literature. My mother has been a third grade teacher since I was born, so we always had plenty of chapter books in the house. I’ve read the classics and the school assignments, but it was the books with castles, princes, fairies, and magic that always had me hooked. Therefore, it’s no shock that I’m a big fan of the current vampire craze (but just the gushy love story side of it—the blood creeps me out). I am also very excited about the newest trend: fallen angels. All the vampire bad boy hotness without the blood? Sign me up!
In honor of Teen Read Week, which we posted about on Tuesday, our staff has chosen their favorite recent young adult book and their favorite of all time. Check them out and feel free to add your own in the comments.
Yours truly
Favorite YA book of all time
Even though this assignment is self-imposed, I must let you know it’s very hard for me to pick a favorite of anything. No matter what the subject is, I feel like I have at least ten favorites (especially dessert). But, since I must narrow it down, I choose Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword. McKinley was one of the first fantasy authors I read, and she really got me hooked on the genre. She does such a great job setting up a new, realistic world that you can get absorbed in. The Blue Sword tells the story of feisty (female) orphan Harry and her capture by golden-eyed king of the hills, Corlath, who knows she will soon become the savior of his country. She becomes a warrior and wields the famed Blue Sword (and eventually forgives him for the kidnapping stunt).
Favorite recent YA book
I finished Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr the day I arrived in Frankfurt for the book fair. I tried really hard not to finish it because I only brought one book and the plane trip is very long, but I couldn’t help it—it’s one of those books that pulls you in. Wicked Lovely follows Aislinn, a semi-normal high schooler with both a close friend who is ultra sweet and in love with her and a stalker who happens to be a fairy king. The fairy king has sought her out as his co-ruler and wants her to leave her mortal life to save his fairy court. However, Aislinn has a secret the fairies don’t know—she can see them. And that is not a good thing. Marr’s fairies are human-sized and scary. Some are beautiful, some resemble animals, many are skinny and angular, and most of them are mean: tripping, poking, and otherwise harassing the “blind” humans. Needless to say, Aislinn isn’t as flattered by the fairy king’s attentions as he expected. The book follows their struggles and really isn’t what I was expecting. I loved it and have already started into book two (which I picked up as soon as I landed back in Texas). Side note: I didn’t realize how close these two books were until rereading this article. I guess, while I do not condone stalking and kidnapping, they seem to be common threads in the books I read.
Erin
Favorite YA book of all time
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
I'm not going to bother writing up a summary, because everyone knows the basics about this book, even if they've never read it. Some might consider it a children's book, but I think it qualifies as YA, if for no other reason than that it will inspire (nay, compel) you to read the other books in the Anne series. Like Harry Potter, Anne Shirley ages gracefully throughout the series, starting at eleven (again like Harry) and continuing through middle age and motherhood. Montgomery creates a much larger world in the fictional town of Avonlea, (located in Prince Edward Island, Canada) and its inhabitants, than the Anne series could contain, inspiring sequels and spinoffs galore. If you haven't read this one in a while, pick it up and reread it (or, better yet, read it to a kid). It will definitely charm you all over again. (For a much, much better critique, read the one written by Meghan O'Rourke for Slate on the occasion of Anne's recent 100th birthday.)
Favorite recent YA book
Generation Dead by Daniel Waters
The book focuses on a love triangle between Goth-girl Phoebe Kendall, her friend Adam, and the new boy in school, Tommy. Sounds like typical teen romance...except that Tommy is dead, or "differently biotic." No one knows why dead teenagers have started coming back to life (though it's mostly attributed to a combination of "teenage hormones and fast food preservatives"), but it's happening all over the U.S. Though the Oakvale High administration is fairly supportive of these "living impaired" teens, most of the students aren't happy about it, and a few are determined to rid their town of the dead kids. When Phoebe develops a crush on Tommy, Adam, who is supportive of Tommy and the zombies, realizes he is in love with her and would do anything for her...even if that means protecting Tommy and the other dead teens from his own living friends.
Waters does an incredible job of seamlessly blending the absurd and bizarre into the everyday. The book is equal parts quirkiness, dark humor, and pathos, and it has a terrific surprise ending. I just bought the sequel (Kiss of Life), and I can't wait to read it.
Katie
Favorite YA book of all time
Hands down, my favorite YA book of all time is The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. Technically, this book may be geared toward preteens, but I reread it as a teen (and as an adult, for that matter), and still loved it as much as I did when I read it for the first time. In fact, I love it so much that I named my dog after the main character, a plucky girl with a penchant for kicking shins and solving mysteries. And while I have a soft spot for any book with an underage detective—Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, and Harriet the Spy (more a snoop than a detective, but still), to name a few—The Westing Game is by far the most fun.
Lauren
Favorite YA book of all time
As I started thinking about YA novels, I remembered so many that were dear to me when I was younger: The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Where the Red Fern Grows, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and more. It would be impossible to pick a single favorite, but one of the most memorable ones was Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass (there seems to be a colorful theme going on here). This might be a little blasphemous, but I always wonder why people are reading Harry Potter when they could be reading a much better YA series about teenagers with magical powers. The Golden Compass and its sequels, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, chronicle the adventures of a young girl named Lyra from an alternate version of our world and a boy named Will from regular old England. It has all the fun of Harry Potter (in Lyra’s world, people even have animal familiars as constant companions) but it’s much more well written, intellectual, and morally challenging. I still haven't seen the movie version, because I can't face what will almost certainly be a disappointing adaptation.
Favorite recent YA book
A YA novel I read more recently that absolutely blew me away was Manstealing for Fat Girls by Michelle Embree. It tells the story of a high schooler named Angie who has to deal with a number of things that all too many high schoolers have to deal with: sex, drugs, alcohol, bullies, and a dysfunctional family life. It’s more intense than a Dan Brown thriller, and I’ve never read anything else that so perfectly captures the chaos of being a teenager and trying to figure out where you belong in the world...though my teenage years were considerably less exciting than Angie’s.
Caitlin
I read mostly adult fiction when I was a teenager (I worked in a library and I remember reading Anna Quindlen and Anita Shreve), but I can still recall a few of the YA books that I read and liked when I was growing up. I was a fan of The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot (before it became a movie) and I Am Regina by Sally Keehn (the fascinating story of a ten-year-old girl captured by American Indians). I also read quite a few series, including the Babysitters Club, Trixie Belden, and Little House on the Prairie.
Coincidentally, I'll actually be reading a YA book for the first time in a while this month. The pick for our next book club meeting is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and I'm looking forward to reading something different than what I normally would pick out.
Michelle
I confess, I haven’t read many lately, but when looking at the goodreads list of the best young adult novels, I realized that YA might be one of my favorite genres. Or that I had more books than friends in junior high. My three favorites of all time are:
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, a great retelling of Cinderella in which Ella must follow any command given to her, even if it could place her in danger. The book is loaded with fantastic sensory descriptions (Ella’s best friend is described as having cinnamon skin with a hint of raspberry in her cheeks), and I’m a sucker for magic and Cinderella.
A Separate Peace by John Knowles–I always liked this coming-of-age story more than The Catcher in the Rye. Don’t get me wrong, J.D., I hold your story dear, but the friendship and jealousy between Phineas and Gene always got to me, and so did sentences like this: “I wanted to break out crying from stabs of hopeless joy, or intolerable promise, or because these mornings were too full of beauty for me, because I knew of too much hate to be contained in a world like this.” (Knowles 47)
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card–It’s a sci-fi book about very intelligent children. Hollie’s review on goodreads sums it up perfectly. Here is a snippet:
In honor of Teen Read Week, which we posted about on Tuesday, our staff has chosen their favorite recent young adult book and their favorite of all time. Check them out and feel free to add your own in the comments.
Yours truly
Favorite YA book of all time
Even though this assignment is self-imposed, I must let you know it’s very hard for me to pick a favorite of anything. No matter what the subject is, I feel like I have at least ten favorites (especially dessert). But, since I must narrow it down, I choose Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword. McKinley was one of the first fantasy authors I read, and she really got me hooked on the genre. She does such a great job setting up a new, realistic world that you can get absorbed in. The Blue Sword tells the story of feisty (female) orphan Harry and her capture by golden-eyed king of the hills, Corlath, who knows she will soon become the savior of his country. She becomes a warrior and wields the famed Blue Sword (and eventually forgives him for the kidnapping stunt).
Favorite recent YA book
I finished Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr the day I arrived in Frankfurt for the book fair. I tried really hard not to finish it because I only brought one book and the plane trip is very long, but I couldn’t help it—it’s one of those books that pulls you in. Wicked Lovely follows Aislinn, a semi-normal high schooler with both a close friend who is ultra sweet and in love with her and a stalker who happens to be a fairy king. The fairy king has sought her out as his co-ruler and wants her to leave her mortal life to save his fairy court. However, Aislinn has a secret the fairies don’t know—she can see them. And that is not a good thing. Marr’s fairies are human-sized and scary. Some are beautiful, some resemble animals, many are skinny and angular, and most of them are mean: tripping, poking, and otherwise harassing the “blind” humans. Needless to say, Aislinn isn’t as flattered by the fairy king’s attentions as he expected. The book follows their struggles and really isn’t what I was expecting. I loved it and have already started into book two (which I picked up as soon as I landed back in Texas). Side note: I didn’t realize how close these two books were until rereading this article. I guess, while I do not condone stalking and kidnapping, they seem to be common threads in the books I read.
Erin
Favorite YA book of all time
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
I'm not going to bother writing up a summary, because everyone knows the basics about this book, even if they've never read it. Some might consider it a children's book, but I think it qualifies as YA, if for no other reason than that it will inspire (nay, compel) you to read the other books in the Anne series. Like Harry Potter, Anne Shirley ages gracefully throughout the series, starting at eleven (again like Harry) and continuing through middle age and motherhood. Montgomery creates a much larger world in the fictional town of Avonlea, (located in Prince Edward Island, Canada) and its inhabitants, than the Anne series could contain, inspiring sequels and spinoffs galore. If you haven't read this one in a while, pick it up and reread it (or, better yet, read it to a kid). It will definitely charm you all over again. (For a much, much better critique, read the one written by Meghan O'Rourke for Slate on the occasion of Anne's recent 100th birthday.)
Favorite recent YA book
Generation Dead by Daniel Waters
The book focuses on a love triangle between Goth-girl Phoebe Kendall, her friend Adam, and the new boy in school, Tommy. Sounds like typical teen romance...except that Tommy is dead, or "differently biotic." No one knows why dead teenagers have started coming back to life (though it's mostly attributed to a combination of "teenage hormones and fast food preservatives"), but it's happening all over the U.S. Though the Oakvale High administration is fairly supportive of these "living impaired" teens, most of the students aren't happy about it, and a few are determined to rid their town of the dead kids. When Phoebe develops a crush on Tommy, Adam, who is supportive of Tommy and the zombies, realizes he is in love with her and would do anything for her...even if that means protecting Tommy and the other dead teens from his own living friends.
Waters does an incredible job of seamlessly blending the absurd and bizarre into the everyday. The book is equal parts quirkiness, dark humor, and pathos, and it has a terrific surprise ending. I just bought the sequel (Kiss of Life), and I can't wait to read it.
Katie
Favorite YA book of all time
Hands down, my favorite YA book of all time is The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. Technically, this book may be geared toward preteens, but I reread it as a teen (and as an adult, for that matter), and still loved it as much as I did when I read it for the first time. In fact, I love it so much that I named my dog after the main character, a plucky girl with a penchant for kicking shins and solving mysteries. And while I have a soft spot for any book with an underage detective—Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, and Harriet the Spy (more a snoop than a detective, but still), to name a few—The Westing Game is by far the most fun.
Lauren
Favorite YA book of all time
As I started thinking about YA novels, I remembered so many that were dear to me when I was younger: The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Where the Red Fern Grows, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and more. It would be impossible to pick a single favorite, but one of the most memorable ones was Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass (there seems to be a colorful theme going on here). This might be a little blasphemous, but I always wonder why people are reading Harry Potter when they could be reading a much better YA series about teenagers with magical powers. The Golden Compass and its sequels, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, chronicle the adventures of a young girl named Lyra from an alternate version of our world and a boy named Will from regular old England. It has all the fun of Harry Potter (in Lyra’s world, people even have animal familiars as constant companions) but it’s much more well written, intellectual, and morally challenging. I still haven't seen the movie version, because I can't face what will almost certainly be a disappointing adaptation.
Favorite recent YA book
A YA novel I read more recently that absolutely blew me away was Manstealing for Fat Girls by Michelle Embree. It tells the story of a high schooler named Angie who has to deal with a number of things that all too many high schoolers have to deal with: sex, drugs, alcohol, bullies, and a dysfunctional family life. It’s more intense than a Dan Brown thriller, and I’ve never read anything else that so perfectly captures the chaos of being a teenager and trying to figure out where you belong in the world...though my teenage years were considerably less exciting than Angie’s.
Caitlin
I read mostly adult fiction when I was a teenager (I worked in a library and I remember reading Anna Quindlen and Anita Shreve), but I can still recall a few of the YA books that I read and liked when I was growing up. I was a fan of The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot (before it became a movie) and I Am Regina by Sally Keehn (the fascinating story of a ten-year-old girl captured by American Indians). I also read quite a few series, including the Babysitters Club, Trixie Belden, and Little House on the Prairie.
Coincidentally, I'll actually be reading a YA book for the first time in a while this month. The pick for our next book club meeting is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and I'm looking forward to reading something different than what I normally would pick out.
Michelle
I confess, I haven’t read many lately, but when looking at the goodreads list of the best young adult novels, I realized that YA might be one of my favorite genres. Or that I had more books than friends in junior high. My three favorites of all time are:
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, a great retelling of Cinderella in which Ella must follow any command given to her, even if it could place her in danger. The book is loaded with fantastic sensory descriptions (Ella’s best friend is described as having cinnamon skin with a hint of raspberry in her cheeks), and I’m a sucker for magic and Cinderella.
A Separate Peace by John Knowles–I always liked this coming-of-age story more than The Catcher in the Rye. Don’t get me wrong, J.D., I hold your story dear, but the friendship and jealousy between Phineas and Gene always got to me, and so did sentences like this: “I wanted to break out crying from stabs of hopeless joy, or intolerable promise, or because these mornings were too full of beauty for me, because I knew of too much hate to be contained in a world like this.” (Knowles 47)
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card–It’s a sci-fi book about very intelligent children. Hollie’s review on goodreads sums it up perfectly. Here is a snippet:
"‘They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.’ If you can't understand that statement, you probably won't like this book. It's about intelligent children. Not miniature adults–their motivations, understanding, and sometimes naiveté clearly mark them as children. But at the same time their intelligence and inner strength define them clearly as people. Their personalities are fully developed, even if their bodies are not.”
October 22, 2009
Price Limbo
by William Bass, Publishing Assistant
Grossly cheap products are like sugar—extremely satisfying at first, but at the end of the day, terribly unhealthy for you. The institution of slashing prices can have potentially dire consequences for the thing we actually value, the product itself. This Wal-Mart economic model of “how low can you go” has currently hit the publishing world in an all out “penny war” as described by New York Times columnist Motoko Rich in her article "In Book-Pricing Battle, How Low Can They Go?" According to Rich, “Target…has entered the battle to bring down the price of some of the holiday season’s biggest anticipated hardcover books to the lowest possible level. And Wal-Mart, which started it all and has vowed to maintain the lowest prices, immediately fired back.” While the new Steven King novel is listed at $35, this holiday season one doesn’t have to put it on layaway as the retailer giants have started the bidding under $10. As if participating in a passive aggressive poker match, Target, Wal-Mart, and Amazon have all moved the ante down a dollar or even a penny on this season’s top sellers in order to capture the elusive attention of customers. Michael Norris, an analyst for Simba Information, stated that this price warfare could be “particularly damaging to booksellers because they could not afford to discount that heavily.” The monolithic retailers, on the other hand, can keep on rolling back prices since they “don’t need to sell books in order to stay in business.”
Obviously, consumers aren't always privy to what goes into the creation of a book: graphic design, typesetting, and editing, just to name a few stages in the process. David Young, chief executive of Hachette Book Group, bluntly states that “A hell of a lot goes into the creation of a book or a career of a writer, and to have our top products savagely discounted is not good for the long-term health of our business.” As noted above, Wal-Mart and Target’s price war will wreak havoc on your favorite bookseller and eventually the quality of the books themselves. Consequently, this “savage discount” appeals to the immediate gratification of our wallets, bypassing our values. If we value books and other products that have been produced with quality and care, then we must choose to not participate in this war on prices. In the end, we must make a decision about what is healthy for us in the long-run: a quality book at a fair price that benefits booksellers, publishers, and authors, or the sugary gratification of the new Sarah Palin book for a paltry nine dollars.
Grossly cheap products are like sugar—extremely satisfying at first, but at the end of the day, terribly unhealthy for you. The institution of slashing prices can have potentially dire consequences for the thing we actually value, the product itself. This Wal-Mart economic model of “how low can you go” has currently hit the publishing world in an all out “penny war” as described by New York Times columnist Motoko Rich in her article "In Book-Pricing Battle, How Low Can They Go?" According to Rich, “Target…has entered the battle to bring down the price of some of the holiday season’s biggest anticipated hardcover books to the lowest possible level. And Wal-Mart, which started it all and has vowed to maintain the lowest prices, immediately fired back.” While the new Steven King novel is listed at $35, this holiday season one doesn’t have to put it on layaway as the retailer giants have started the bidding under $10. As if participating in a passive aggressive poker match, Target, Wal-Mart, and Amazon have all moved the ante down a dollar or even a penny on this season’s top sellers in order to capture the elusive attention of customers. Michael Norris, an analyst for Simba Information, stated that this price warfare could be “particularly damaging to booksellers because they could not afford to discount that heavily.” The monolithic retailers, on the other hand, can keep on rolling back prices since they “don’t need to sell books in order to stay in business.”
Obviously, consumers aren't always privy to what goes into the creation of a book: graphic design, typesetting, and editing, just to name a few stages in the process. David Young, chief executive of Hachette Book Group, bluntly states that “A hell of a lot goes into the creation of a book or a career of a writer, and to have our top products savagely discounted is not good for the long-term health of our business.” As noted above, Wal-Mart and Target’s price war will wreak havoc on your favorite bookseller and eventually the quality of the books themselves. Consequently, this “savage discount” appeals to the immediate gratification of our wallets, bypassing our values. If we value books and other products that have been produced with quality and care, then we must choose to not participate in this war on prices. In the end, we must make a decision about what is healthy for us in the long-run: a quality book at a fair price that benefits booksellers, publishers, and authors, or the sugary gratification of the new Sarah Palin book for a paltry nine dollars.
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