Posts made in March, 2010

A few weeks ago I was participating in an online chat with some fellow Elevensies, and the subject of book blurbs came up. I said something along the lines of never having read a book based on a blurb that appeared on the cover of the book. I now have to eat those words. The other day at the library I was randomly perusing the graphic novel section, when I pulled out a copy of Fun Home by Allison Bechdel and read the following blurb on the back cover: If David Sedaris could draw, and if Bleak House had been a little funnier, you’d have Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. - Amy Bloom author of A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You Obviously the book went straight into my library bag. Amy Bloom’s blurb is spot on and this graphic novel memoir is a must...

First an interview with Kim Harrington and now I learned that Heather McCorkle has featured me as her Twitter Tuesday author, even if I am an inconstant Twitterer? Tweeter? (see, I don’t even know  the proper terminology) at best. Thanks, Heather! I better watch out or all this fame will go to my head!

Please visit Kim Harrington’s blog to read her interview with me as part of the Pay It Forward Interview series. For more Pay It Forward interviews visit these other YA author blogs: Elana Johnson, Lisa and Laura Roecker, Beth Revis, Leah Clifford, Victoria Schwab, Kirsten Hubbard, Susan Adrian, Dawn Metcalf, Carrie Harris, Amy Holder, Kathy McCullough, Gretchen McNeil, Tiffany Schmidt, and Suzette Saxton/Bethany...

Here’s a quick update of what I have been doing this weekend in the order of occurrence. 1. Yelled at a DVD I watched the movie Adam Friday night. It was a sort of Asperger love story. In general it was a good movie. My yelling didn’t come until the very end. Rose Byrne plays Beth the love interest of Aspergian title character played by Hugh Dancy. Beth is a teacher who dreams of being a published children’s book author. So far so good. At one point she tells Adam about her hope of someday winning a Newbery award. I was impressed that the moviemakers at least had some familiarity with children’s publishing. That all fell apart at the end when we finally got to see the book that Beth had been working on in published form. The problem? It...

I just finished Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me, the latest Newbery Medal winner. The book is great. It’s easy to see why this book was selected as the winner. What I did find kind of cool was that the book referenced another Newbery Medal winner. It was more than a reference, in fact. It was pretty much an essential part of the book. Miranda, the main character of When You Reach Me has a favorite book. It is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle and she reads it over and over and over again. A Wrinkle in Time was one of my favorite books as well, and I definitely read it more than once, but not quite as often as Miranda. I’m not sure how many times I read The Westing Game (another Newbery book) by Ellen Raskin, but it was definitely a...