Tag: children’s literature

Whitney Award nominations

- Stacy 3 Comments

The Whitney Awards are a fairly new award given out at the LDS Storymakers conference that honors novels written by LDS writers, both in the niche LDS market and in the national market. Every year, you can nominate titles for the committee to read and vote upon.

They’ve started to announce the books that have gotten enough nominations to be considered “official nominees”—these are the books that will be considered and whittled down to finalists.

You don’t have to be LDS to nominate books, but the author or authors do need to be members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a fact that’s hard to determine sometimes when looking at books published for the national market. I have a particular interest in the Speculative and Young Readers (mislabeled Young Adult) categories, given my interests, and while several good books have been nominated, I think that several haven’t made the list for official nominations yet that ought to be.

So, if you have an interest in books by LDS authors published in 2010 that aren’t already official nominations—see the Rules page here for criteria; note that books for young readers need to be at least 20,000 words long and novels for adults need to be 50,000 words long—please feel free to pop over and nominate, especially if you know for a fact that a particular writer is LDS that hasn’t ever been considered for the award. As I said, sometimes it’s hard to determine if an author qualifies; I hate to just assume that someone with ties to BYU is LDS, because I knew plenty of non-Mormons while there as a student, and there are quite a few LDS authors who never lived in Utah or went to BYU as well. Sometimes bios don’t include that information, for obvious reasons—it’s not a professional credit to announce your church affiliation.

Remember, this is just the preliminary nomination—books of merit that should be considered. From there, the committee will whittle each category down to five finalists, and then (I’m fuzzy on the process, but they outline it on their site) will vote on which ones get the awards. So, in my opinion, the list of nominees should be pretty long.

In case anyone was wondering, below are the titles I nominated, to ensure that a large range get considered. I didn’t re-nominate anything that had already had enough votes to get on the list. If you like these books, consider nominating them, or others published last year by LDS authors. My list focuses on the national market, because that’s the market I know best, but you can also nominate books published in the LDS market (sold in LDS bookstores and catalogs).

I had several nominations. This first was for debut novel, but I’m not sure if the author is actually LDS. She has some affiliation with BYU and lives in Utah, but as we all know, that doesn’t mean she is. If anyone can confirm or deny (privately), I can let the committee know.

  • Kristin Chandler, Wolves, Boys, and Other Things that Might Kill Me, Viking

In speculative and/or young readers:

  • James Dashner, The Scorch Trials, Random House (YA or speculative)
  • Ally Condie, Matched, Dutton (it comes out at the end of this month; I’ve read an ARC)
  • James A. Owen, The Dragon’s Apprentice, Simon & Schuster
  • Aprilynne Pike, Spells, HarperTeen
  • Becca Fitzpatrick, Crescendo, Simon & Schuster
  • Mette Ivie Harrison, The Princess & the Snowbird, Bloomsbury
  • Bree Despain, The Lost Saint, Egmont (it comes out Dec. 28; what with the cutoff being so late but the nominations coming so early, I wonder if her Dark Divine ever got nominated for debut last year?)
  • Carol Lynch Williams, Glimpse, Paula Wiseman Books/S&S
  • Julie Berry, Secondhand Charm, Bloomsbury

Resources for writers: Links for reflecting on white privilege and writing the Other

- Stacy 1 Comment

I promised the writers of the Ventura/Santa Barbara SCBWI that I’d post the list of resources I flashed at them at the end of my talk so they’d be able to actually reference them. These should also have been emailed out to the local listservs, but for those who aren’t on those listservs, and I’m sure this list will be of use for anyone thinking about writing someone who is, as Ursula Le Guin says, “a being who is different from yourself. This being can be different from you in its sex; or in its annual income; or in its way of speaking and dressing and doing things; or in the color of its skin, or the number of its legs and heads.” I can’t help but add for that last item: this is speculative fiction we’re talking about, after all. (That’s from her book mentioned below, The Language of the Night, in the essay “American SF and the Other”—a GREAT read for anyone thinking about these issues.)

Nisi Shawl’s Writing the Other—both a workshop and a book
“Appropriate Cultural Appropriation” by Nisi Shawl
“Transracial Writing for the Sincere” by Nisi Shawl
Le Guin, Ursula K. “American SF and the Other,” The Language of the Night. New York: HarperCollins, 1979/1989. (Out of print—your best bet is your local library/interlibrary loan or finding it online used.)
Le Guin, Ursula K. “Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?” The Language of the Night. New York: HarperCollins, 1979/1989.
“Being Poor” by John Scalzi
“Things I Don’t Have to Think about Today” by John Scalzi  paired with his next post on narrative usurpation, covering why he wrote the previous post

What we’re looking for at Tu: Mystery

- Stacy 1 Comment

For the first season, Tu Books focused on science fiction and fantasy. Now that Fall 2011 is acquired and in the midst of editing and production, we’re opening up our focus on genre fiction to include mysteries for children and young adults. Remember, we’re still looking for main characters of color, but the setting could be anywhere—or any when—in the world.

As always, please refer to our submission guidelines for details.

Booklists: Touchstone children’s/YA fantasy and science fiction

- Stacy 15 Comments

I’m working on my talk at the Ventura/Santa Barbara SCBWI Writers’ Day. In preparation for it, I’m doing a personal review of touchstone children’s and YA fantasy and science fiction titles from, say, the late Victorian period forward. Science fiction is tougher—I’m not going to cover pulp novels from the 30s or anything. Perhaps we might start with the 70s or 80s in SF (though I tossed Jules Verne and Robert Heinlein on the list because they do stand out—please advise me of others of similar caliber). I’m heading to the library tomorrow to grab a number of books, and trying to think if I’ve missed any.

Now, “fantasy” in children’s books has a pretty broad definition. I’m going to narrow the focus down to prose novels with human or humanoid main characters. That is, I’m not interested in animal stories (Redwall is awesome, but not the point of what I’m going for) or graphic novels or toy/doll stories (Winnie the Pooh, lovely as he is, doesn’t count here, though he does play into the whole British tradition; but no matter, that’s not what I’m looking for today). The Wind in the Willows is iffy–it’s anthropormorphized animals running around in frock coats and talking in British accents; for our purposes here today I’m going to say we’ll leave it off, though I reserve the right to change my mind later. Of course, so is Redwall (without the frock coats), so that helps make my decision in identifying their similarity.

I’m looking for books that a large number of readers would consider a touchstone—not obscure. “Touchstone,” as I’m using it here, is a title that’s either so popular practically everyone would probably have read it (like Harry Potter) and/or has great literary merit—something with great importance. Hence my list becomes more thin as it comes closer to the present day because I feel like we’re a little too close to those books to really be able to pick out that many books (right now) with lasting merit; those will manifest over time. But some do stand out, and I’ve included them.

Here’s my list. Anything you might add? Surely there are more pre-WWII era that I’m forgetting, and I’m sure I’m overlooking something obvious altogether. I’ve never (gasp) read Andre Norton, for example—hence my request on Twitter & FB for title suggestions—and could use some prompting about what her most memorable/important titles are.

Late Victorian Era (1850–1901)

  • The Water Babies, Charles Kingsley (1863)
  • The Light Princess, George MacDonald (1864)
  • A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne (1864)
  • The Princess and the Goblin, George MacDonald (1872)
  • The Princess and Curdie, George MacDonald (1882)
  • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Louis Carroll (1897)
  • Through the Looking-Glass, Louis Carroll (1897)
  • The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum (1900)—its sequels cross my arbitrary dateline of 1901, which is the end of the Victorian era because that’s when Queen Victoria died

Pre-World War II (1901–1940)

  • Five Children and It, E. Nesbit (1902)
  • Peter and Wendy (or Peter Pan), J.M. Barrie (1911)
  • Mary Poppins, P.L. Travers (1934)
  • The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien (1937)

Post-World War II, including Vietnam Era (1940s—early 1970s)

  • Bedknob and Broomstick, Mary Norton (1943 & 1946)
  • The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis (1950) and of course its sequels
  • The Borrowers, Mary Norton (1952)
  • The Children of Green Knowe, Lucy M. Boston (1954) and its sequels
  • Half Magic, Edward Eager (1954)
  • The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien (1955) and The Two Towers and Return of the King
  • Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, Robert Heinlein (1958) and other Heinlein juveniles
  • James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl (1961)
  • A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle (1962)
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl (1964) and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972)
  • The Book of Three, Lloyd Alexander (1964) and its sequels, especially The Black Cauldron (1965)
  • The Dark is Rising series, Susan Cooper (1965-1970s): Over Sea, Under Stone (1965), The Dark Is Rising (1973), Greenwitch (1974), The Grey King (1975), Silver on the Tree (1977)
  • Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey (1968)
  • A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin (1968)
  • The Perilous Gard, Elizabeth Pope (1974)

Gen Xers’/Millennials’ growing-up years (late 1970s–2001)

  • Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt (1975)
  • Dragonsong, Anne McCaffrey (1976)
  • Chrestomanci Chronicles, Diana Wynne Jones (1977–2006, with perhaps more to come? DWJ is seriously ill, so it depends on her health)
  • Beauty, by Robin McKinley (1978)
  • The Blue Sword, Robin McKinley (1982)
  • Alana: The First Adventure, Tamora Pierce (1983) and its sequels
  • The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl, Virginia Hamilton (1983)
  • The Witches, Roald Dahl (1983)
  • The Hero and the Crown, Robin McKinley (1984)
  • Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card (1985)
  • The Hounds of the Morrigan, Pat O’Shea (1985)
  • Howl’s Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones (1986)
  • The Devil’s Arithmetic, Jane Yolen (1988)
  • Matilda, Roald Dahl (1988)
  • Dealing with Dragons, Patricia C. Wrede (1990) and its sequels
  • The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
  • The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, Nancy Farmer (1994)
  • Sabriel, Garth Nix (1995), and Lirael (2001) and Abhorsen, its sequels
  • The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman (1995) and its sequels
  • Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling (1997) and its sequels (though that also cuts across past Sept. 11th)
  • Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine (1997)
  • The Folk Keeper, Franny Billingsley (1999)

Post-September 11th (2002–present)

  • Harry Potter sequels, J.K. Rowling
  • Feed, M.T. Anderson (2002)
  • The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer (2002)
  • The Spiderwick Chronicles, Holly Black & Tony DiTerlizzi (2003)
  • The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins (2008)


A Is for Anansi, NY Comic Con, and TANKBORN

- Stacy 2 Comments

Last weekend I went to the excellent A Is for Anansi conference at NYU, and met a lot of thoughtful people who want to make the world a better place for African American kids. I took a lot of notes and would like to share them at some point, but I’m in the midst of finishing an edit and have only popped online, so I’ll have to do it some other time. In the meantime, Hannah in Lee & Low’s marketing department took some great notes that she shares here.

I cut out from that conference a little early to pop by New York Comic Con over at the Javitz Center, and the best way I can find to describe it is CROWDED. Apparently something like 90,000 people went over the course of the weekend, but I believe most of them were there Saturday between 1 and 4. Got to see my friends Brandon and Emily Sanderson for a few minutes while Brandon was signing books in the midst of a madhouse (we caught up later in less crowded circumstances), wandered around the significantly less-crowded Artist Alley for a while, said hi to some old Wizards of the Coast coworkers at the Wizards booth, and then the crowds got to me and I made my escape. It helped that I was also in the midst of a Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood marathon on Hulu at home, and watching that sounded much more appealing than shoving through crowds and not really seeing anything. I took my camera with me to take pictures of the costumes—and there were some really good ones—but there wasn’t any room to get a good candid shot, so I didn’t bother. Sorry–blog posts are always more fun with pictures. (I’ve taken a number of pictures lately, but haven’t had the time to actually upload them online.)

Thirdly, and BEST of all, I can finally announce our third acquisition at Tu Books, making our third book and rounding out the Fall 2011 season! As reported in PW Children’s Bookshelf yesterday:

Stacy Whitman at Lee & Low Books bought North American rights to Tankborn by Karen Sandler, for publication in fall 2011 as part of the Tu Books imprint launch list. The dystopian YA title is about best friends Kayla and Mishalla, genetically engineered slaves on the planet Loka, whose developing friendships with higher-status boys lead them to question the strict caste system of their world. Sandler has written more than 17 adult romance titles; this is her first YA. Lindsay Ribar and Matt Bialer at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates brokered the deal.

I’m SO EXCITED. The lineup for Tu for Fall 2011 is going to be awesome. We’ve got a YA paranormal thriller (I call it Burn Notice with werewolves), a middle grade space adventure (Olympics in space), and a YA dystopian with two main characters you’re going to love. As time goes on, I’ll be able to tell you more about Wolf Mark, Galaxy Games, and Tankborn; for now, the teasers will have to suffice!

Speaking of which, as I said, I’m in the midst of an edit that I’m trying to get back to the author before I leave for the weekend. Have a good one!

Toph: “Supercrip” stereotype or well-rounded disabled character?

- Stacy 9 Comments

I just today read this post on disabled people (or, if you prefer, people who happen to be disabled)—particularly regarding creation of characters—over at the Rejectionist, so being a little late and interested in continuing the discussion focusing on a specific character, I am turning my potential comment into a blog post instead.

Rachel notes that the “Supercrip” character stereotype is “the most pervasive and most cherished in the Able-bodied Narrative.” What was that relatively recent book made into a movie in which a kid with spina bifida (or was it cerebral palsy?) joins up with his able-bodied friend/nemesis with a mental disability to imagine that they’re both superheroes, but ends up with at least one if not both dead because they get beat up? (Forgive me if I mangled that plot—I got so annoyed by the emotional manipulation that I stopped paying attention; I must have been watching it in a location where I couldn’t just turn it off, like at a relative’s house or something.)  Then there’s A Beautiful Mind, which I can’t judge well because I refused to see it because it appeared to portray a schizophrenic curing himself—another trope Rachel discusses, looking for the cure. (My mother is schizophrenic. Sorry, it’s not curable.) It isn’t enough that the guy is a mathematician who happens to have schizophrenia. No, it makes him one of the best mathematicians in the world! It’s all so inspiring! (gag) Tell me if I’m wrong, because like I said, I avoided it it due to perceived possible emotional manipulation.

As Rachel says,

Supercrip is the “inspiring” and “amazing” disabled person who has “suffered” and “overcome” the “terrible limitations” of disability. Bitch magazine explains it thus:

Supercrip provides a way for non-disabled folks to be “inspired” by persons with disabilities without actually questioning—or making changes to—how persons with disabilities are treated in society…. Supercrip cannot just be human; she or he must be superhuman and surpass not only her/his disability, but the realms of “normal” human achievement. Supercrip allows some non-disabled folks to feel better about themselves; this is quite evident when it comes to statements like, “What an inspiration!”

In fiction, particularly fantasy, the Supercrip trope is interpreted in its literal sense—the disabled superhero, a la Daredevil, a blind man with super-sensitive hearing and touch that completely negated the effects his blindness and therefore of his experience as a blind man. It is a form of fixing and normalizes disability by rendering actual conflicts and difficulties of being disabled as irrelevant.

Which makes me wonder where Toph in Avatar: The Last Airbender fits in to this paradigm.  I don’t see Toph in the same way that I see those emotionally manipulative stories. Toph may be “making up” for her blindness via Earthbending, yet it’s not really the same thing … is it? Sure, she can “see” with her feet, but it’s a much different kind of seeing. She still can’t do some things her companions can, like read. (Because, duh, she’s blind, as she so matter-of-factly reminds them.) Being blind is simply a part of who she is as a well-rounded character. She’s not *more* awesome than everyone else (though she’s still VERY awesome)—she’s just who she is, a smart, capable girl who happens to be one of the best Earthbenders in the world (hence, my wondering: stereotype?), who discovers metalbending, who grows emotionally as a character (as does everyone in the group), and who is one of several essential people who will help the Avatar save the world.

It makes me wonder how a fantasy hero with a disability might be portrayed without playing into the Supercrip stereotype; after all, one of the main tropes of fantasy protagonists is that the reason they’re the protagonist is that they stand out in a crowd, whatever their unique talent is. It makes me wonder if it’s simply that their disability doesn’t need to be replaced with a magical ability (i.e., their disability doesn’t compensate for the “loss” of whatever ability an able-bodied person might possess), or if there’s something I’m missing, as a mostly-able-bodied person who doesn’t always get it.

How about Professor X? His disability (being unable to walk) doesn’t affect whether or not he can use his mental powers to speak in others’ minds or read their minds. It’s not a direct compensation for abilities lost—Jean Grey has the same powers and is able-bodied. And for that matter, if you’ve seen (spoilers!) The Book of Eli, in which a disabled character is a major part of the plot, there’s a huge possibility of the stereotype interpretation.

I’d really like to parse this out, because it’s important to me that people of all kinds are portrayed in the fiction I edit, and I’d like to be sure to watch out for stereotypes, but in the case of fantasy and science fiction—as opposed to realism, in which I find many more of the “inspiring” Supercrip stories using Rachel’s definition—it seems important for many (not all) protagonists to have special powers, whether able-bodied or not.

What’s your opinion? Would Toph be considered a Supercrip? How might Toph be made better as a character, within the bounds of the Avatar world, but not as a Supercrip, if you might consider her one?

Scary middle grade books

- Stacy 4 Comments

I have a friend whose 11-year-old daughter likes scary books. She asks:

Hoping maybe you can help. My daughter who will be 11 in a few months enjoys reading scary books, for example All The Lovely Bad Ones. Do you have any good ones in mind that I could send her way?

I have a lot of suggestions for good middle grade with suspenseful action, but not as many for truly scary horror/ghost story kinds of books. If she’s already outgrown R.L. Stine’s books but isn’t ready for the plethora of paranormal and horror published for teens, I’m sure there are still plenty of scary books for her, but I’m coming up blank. I have a few suggestions, but hopefully the comments will yield more.

  • Skeleton Man and its sequels (I believe there are 5 now), Joseph Bruchac

(In fact, that’s the only one I could think of today–I’ll look at my shelves at home again tonight; hopefully others will come to mind.) I’ve also included suggestions from Child_Lit subscribers, with quotes about their read annotated if it would make a difference in choosing the book.*

  • Shadowed Summer, Saundra Mitchell (Child_Lit: “A delicious ghost story. Only caveat: heavy on metaphors and similes. Some readers might find it too much.”)
  • Halloween Night: Twenty-One Spooktacular Poems (Child_Lit: “scary-funny poems”)
  • The Crossroads and The Hanging Hill Chris Grabenstein
  • Revenge of the Witch (The Last Apprentice series), Joseph Delaney, and its sequels
  • Coraline, Neil Gaiman
  • The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
  • The Witches, Roald Dahl
  • The House with the Clock in its Walls, John Bellairs, and its sequels
  • The Ghost Belonged to Me and Ghosts I Have Been, Richard Peck
  • Boots and Pieces, The Curse of Cuddles McGee, and Night of the Living Lawn Ornaments, Emily Ecton

Edited to add:

  • Wait Till Helen Comes, Mary Downing Hahn
  • The Prince of Mist, Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Child_Lit: quite creepy. I’d say it would be
    of interest to older intermediate/younger YA readers; the main character is
    thirteen.)
  • Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Alvin Schwartz (Child_Lit: These books have always been a delightful read in the classrooms I have worked in.  Parents (even the really conservative Christian parents) have enjoyed the stories and books as much as the children have.  The images in the book are a bit on the scary side and I encourage parents to read the text before looking at the pictures (which will stay with kids long after they read the book).  Stephen Gammell does a bone-chilling job in his artwork.  The books keep the folklore tradition alive.)
  • The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall, Mary Downing Hahn, the same author of All the Lovely Bad Ones (Child_Lit: It had some marvelous fictional sleight of hand in the end, so just when you think it’s going to slide to a predictable ending, a new twist reaches out with chilly fingers to grab you!)
  • Wait Till Helen Comes, Mary Downing Hahn (Child_Lit: wonderfully scary. Much scarier than All the Lovely Bad Ones.)
  • Jane-Emily, Patricia Clapp
  • A Candle In Her Room, Ruth M. Arthur
  • Breathe, Cliff McNish
  • The Intruders, E.E. Richardson
  • Deep and Dark and Dangerous, Hahn
  • Skeleton Creek and Ghost in the Machine
  • The Dollhouse Murders
  • The Ghost of Fossil Glen, Cynthia DeFelice
  • Stonewords, Conford
  • The Proof that Ghosts Exist, The Curse of the Evening Eye, and The Hunt for the Haunted Elephant, Perry Nodelman and Carol Matas
  • The Owl Service, Alan Garner

I’ll add more to the list as suggestions come in.

* Some comments have been edited for brevity.

Updated multicultural SFF booklist

- Stacy 15 Comments

ETA 5/22/12: I’m keeping this book list up to date on Pinterest nowadays, linking each book to its Goodreads entry. It’s much easier to just pin a book than to keep this list up to date. For the running lists (broken down by age group and genre) and more, go here (sorry, the link was broken for a while there):

 

ETA: I’ve finally gotten the ability to edit the post back, so I’ve put as many of the suggested books into the list now as I can. Suggestions always still welcome. This is a continuous project.

I’ve gotten a lot of great suggestions to add to the list, but my website seems to still be broken, and my own computer has a dead motherboard (well, it did when I started writing this last week—thankfully, it’s now fixed). I’m still figuring out why WordPress won’t let me edit any of my old content.

So, in the interest of having one place that people can use as a resource, I’m going to copy everything into this entry. Rather than divide the list by what I’ve read and what I haven’t, which was just more a personal exercise last year in wondering whether my own reading habits had reached past my own culture, I’ll divide the list by age group and genre (fantasy/SF). What that means is that I am not making a comment on how good I think a book is or recommending it/not recommending it—there are several books on this list I haven’t had a chance to read yet. It’s simply a list compiling what’s out there. I’ve also added books that I’ve discovered over the last year or that have been suggested to me in the comments. Go to the previous booklist post for comments on some of the books in this list.

Middle Grade Fantasy

  • Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, 2009, Grace Lin
  • Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, 2008, Nahoko Uehashi, and its sequel, Moribito II
  • City of Fire, Laurence Yep
  • The Tiger’s Apprentice, Laurence Yep
  • Dragon of the Lost Sea, Laurence Yep (and pretty much anything else written by Laurence Yep)
  • Zahrah the Windseeker, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
  • Chronus Chronicles, Anne Ursu (someone mentioned this and I haven’t read them—are the main characters people of color or is it set in a non-Western culture? from its Amazon listing, it seems to star a white girl and use Greek mythology, which are great, but don’t fit the definition we’re using here)
  • The Red Pyramid, Rick Riordan
  • Sword and Wandering Warrior, Da Chen
  • The Conch Bearer, Chitra B. Divakaruni
  • Circle of Magic quartet, Tamora Pierce
  • Circle Opens series, Tamora Pierce
  • Pendragon series (?)
  • Un Lun Dun, China Mieville
  • Lavender-Green Magic, by Andre Norton
  • Dragon Keeper and Garden of the Purple Dragon, Carole Wilkinson
  • Moonshadow: Rise of the Ninja, Simon Higgins
  • The Magical Misadventures of Prunella Bogthistle, Deva Fagan
  • Magic Carpet, Scott Christian Sava
  • Marvelous World #01: The Marvelous Effect, Troy Cle
  • Ninth Ward, Jewel Parker Rhodes

Middle Grade Science Fiction

  • The Animorphs series
  • The True Meaning of Smekday, Adam Rex

Young Adult Fantasy

  • Wildwood Dancing, Juliet Marillier
  • Book of a Thousand Days, Shannon Hale
  • Flora Segunda, Isabeau S. Wilce, and its sequel Flora’s Dare
  • Little Sister, Kara Dalkey, and a sequel for which I’ve forgotten the name
  • Magic or Madness, and its sequels, Justine Larbalestier
  • Eternal, Cynthia Leitich Smith
  • Tantalize, Cynthia Leitich Smith
  • Tantalize: Kieren’s Story, Cynthia Leitich Smith
  • Sucks to Be Me, Kimberly Pauley
  • Silver Phoenix, Cindy Pon
  • How to Ditch Your Fairy, Justine Larbalestier
  • Guardian of the Dead, Karen Healey
  • A Wish after Midnight, Zetta Elliott
  • The Black Canary, Jane Louise Curry
  • The Secrets of Jin-Shei, Alma Alexander (older YA and up)
  • The Worldweavers Trilogy, Alma Alexander
  • The Will of the Empress, Tamora Pierce and its sequels
  • Libyrinth, Pearl North
  • Across the Nightingale Floor and its sequels, Lian Hearn (older YA)
  • Devil’s Kiss, Sarwat Chadda
  • Annals of the Western Shore series, Ursula K. LeGuin
  • The Two Pearls of Wisdom (or Dragoneye Reborn as it’s known in the US), Alison Goodman
  • City of the Beasts, Isabel Allende
  • Blood Ninja, Nick Lake
  • Magic under Glass, Jaqueline Dolamore
  • Stormwitch, Susan Vaught
  • 47, Walter Mosley
  • Pemba’s Song, Marilyn Nelson and Tonya C. Hegamin
  • Rogelia’s House of Magic, Jamie Martinez Wood
  • Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie
  • The Icarus Girl, Helen Oyeyemi
  • Invisible Touch, Kelly Parra
  • Soul Enchilada, David Macinnis Gill
  • Eon: Dragoneye Reborn, Alison Goodman
  • The Comet’s Curse: A Galahad Book, Dom Testa
  • Bleeding Violet, Dia Reeves
  • Liar, Justine Larbalestier
  • Meridian, Amber Kizer
  • Ruined, Paula Morris

Young Adult Science Fiction

  • The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, Nancy Farmer
  • The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer
  • A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Leguin
  • The Shadow Speaker, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
  • Extras, Scott Westerfeld
  • Black Hole Sun, David Macinnis Gill

Unsure of whether these books are MG or YA (have not read yet, pulled titles from Shweta Narayan and The Happy Nappy Bookseller‘s lists. Can someone give me a head’s-up what categories they fit in?

  • A Posse of Princesses Sherwood Smith. (Is this YA?)
  • The Dragon Keeper, Carole Wilkinson
  • A Girl Named Disaster, Nancy Farmer
  • The Wizard series, Diane Duane
  • The Green Boy, Susan Cooper
  • The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl, Virginia Hamilton
  • Willie Bea and the Time the Martians Landed, Virginia Hamilton
  • The Night Wanderer, Drew Hayden Taylor
  • Dread Locks (Dark Fusion), Neal Shusterman

Please feel free to continue to leave other suggestions in the comments.

Link roundup

- Stacy

Thanks for all the comments on my last post discussing writing African American characters (Is my character “black enough”?). The perspectives in the comments are great—just the kinds of things that people writing cross-culturally need to hear as they think about their characters. If you haven’t read the comments (and there are a few more on my LJ mirror and on Facebook), make sure to do so.

No news is still good news. I’m reading away on some really awesome submissions, going through revisions that I asked for from some writers, presenting some books to my acquisitions committee, and all that kind of stuff. We come closer and closer every day to having books to share with you! We just still don’t have much to talk about specifically… yet! But we hope to soon.

In the meantime, here are some links that I’ve already shared on Twitter and Facebook, but if you haven’t seen them there, check them out:

Two friends of mine who just sold their debut novels in the YA market talk on Writing Excuses about breaking in: http://bit.ly/aEWrcJ.

Congratulations to Howard & Sandra Tayler for ten years of Schlock Mercenary: http://bit.ly/9w7WsZ

On the main Lee & Low blog, they’re running a poll about picture books with same-sex parents.

Speaking of the Lee & Low blog, always check in on them on Fridays for a roundup of diversity related links in the feature This Week in Diversity.

And if you somehow missed Elizabeth Bluemle’s post about The Elephant in the Room (complete with hilarious/cute illustrations from a number of children’s illustrators), you need to read it, and all the comments.

Oh, and random star sighting: I saw Liam Neeson on Friday night in the movie theater. No, I didn’t go to see The A-Team (that’ll be next week)—he walked past me. You could tell where he went from all the rubber-necking moviegoers. But no mob as there was for Will Smith IN THE VERY SAME THEATER that I watched Karate Kid in, apparently. I didn’t see him, but the mob waiting outside told me he was in there. There’s of course always the chance that the rumor that Liam Neeson was in the building somehow morphed to Will Smith via opening-weekend movies? (That is, Will Smith directed KK. Liam Neeson starred in A-T. Both opened last weekend. Telephone ensues.)