teen readers rock

Um, seriously? It does not get any cooler than this:



I'm so honored that BUTTER made YALSA's 2013 TEENS' TOP TEN list!

28 nominees and 32,000 votes means a lot of teens were out there reading, and a lot of librarians were connecting kids with books. How awesome is that?

To all of those teen readers and librarians who spent a little time with Butter over the last few months, thank you Thank You THANK YOU, from the bottom of my heart. you so completely rock.

words and pictures

question: words, pictures or both?
yes, i'm talking about books. no, i'm not talking about children's picture books.

i recently had the great pleasure of participating in The Ladies Comics Project (link! click it!) - part of the weekly column, "She Has No Head!" - on the CBR (Comic Book Resources) website.

this is phase two of a successful experiment by writer and columnist Kelly Thompson, in which she brings together women from all walks of life and connects them with comics or graphic novels. phase two, which i was lucky enough to be a part of, focuses on graphic novels. Kelly has the women each choose a different book and review it, to see how they interpret a medium that may be unfamiliar to them.

my review (from my tragically-inexperienced-with-graphic-novels perspective) is part of today's bunch in the link above.

be sure to read Kelly's summary at the end of the post, which i thought was really insightful, about how exposure to comics at a young age can help people connect with the story-telling style of graphic novels.
i for one, did not fall in love with the medium, and i think it may be for the reason Kelly said - i was never really exposed to it.
i will probably read more graphic novels in the future, to see if they grow on me.

so? words, pictures or both?

teen me

so, i had fully planned to participate in the rejectionist's awesome humiliation "uncontest" today, which involves digging into your childhood/teenage diaries and posting your most embarrassing entries and/or sharing some of your first ventures into writing.

but after an hour revisiting my teenage angst, i have to say - OH HELL NO! NONE OF THIS CRAP IS GOING ONLINE! my journals are mortifying. i'm tempted to burn them.
seriously.

but i did learn a few things from the exercise, and some of you who kept journals and who now write for young adults might want to give it a try.

observation - teen me thought mostly about boys, friends, Boys, theater, boys, family, BOYS, how to be popular and OMG BOYS!!
lesson - if i ever write from the POV of a girl, it should probably at least somewhat involve her interest in ...boys.

observation - teen me had decent vocabulary and grammar skills.
lesson - don't write down to teen readers.

observation - despite said vocab and grammar skills, teen me liked to write in short. choppy. sentences. sometimes the thoughts changed at lightning speed from one short sentence to the next.
lesson - pace! teens think fast and feel fast. writing for them should reflect that.

if you, like me, are well past the age of the characters you write, it doesn't hurt to return to that teenage voice and tap into those teen emotions. however, i will say - thankfully - my characters are so much cooler and more interesting than i was!

finally, one bit of youthful writing i'm not afraid to share is my first "book." (AKA 'a 3rd grader's attempt at plagiarism')
in fact, i already posted it here. <-- link! click it!

happy monday.

speak up

..LOUDLY!

the literary blogosphere is alive this normally sleepy Sunday - alive with outrage over an editorial by some ass face in Missouri who is pushing for censorship of the much-loved book, Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson... an article in which he not only slams Anderson but also - for good measure - my favorite author of all time (whose book was, in fact, removed from the school district's curriculum - sadly).

here's the bottom line on the controversy: the article implies that the rape scenes in Speak are akin to pornography. he further implies that no good Christian would condone such a book.

i wouldn't normally waste blog space even acknowledging such ignorance, but in this case, the author herself has called for help, and i'm inclined to answer that call and add my voice to the chorus of those "speaking up for Speak."

from Anderson's website:

I need your help.

Please share your experiences with SPEAK; your own response to the book, or the way you’ve seen it work in a school setting. Tahleen has already posted her thoughts on her blog. You can do the same. Please share links to your blog in Comments.

i don't have a personal story to share, but i wanted to guide you to some of the more eloquent posts i've read on the subject tonight, in case you haven't seen them:

- click here for a response from the author herself. the poem in the video moved me to tears.
- click here for a response from a SURVIVOR.
- click here for a response from a Christian.
- click here for a response from a literary agent.
- click here for a long-ass list of links to blogs by writers and opponents of censorship.
and aw, hell, click here for a link to the original article causing the uproar, because i'm a journalist down to my bones and believe you need to read both sides of the story to make up your own mind. (though i can't imagine anyone reading this guy's thoughts and feeling anything other than horror and embarrassment on his behalf.)

by the way, if you write grit and truth and things that teens NEED to read and talk about, even if it scares adults... then the best revenge on this guy is to write those books and make them sing.

because an army of teenagers toting around books like Speak screams a lot louder than the voice of a single fool.

a page from my childhood

back in april, i took this trip down memory lane. <--link! click it!

well, it turns out, my mom didn't just save everything i'd ever written as a kid but also everything i'd ever read. she tells me there are boxes and boxes of books getting dusty somewhere in the attic, and it got me thinking (with mom's help) about the books i read growing up.


Pat the Bunny

i didn't remember this one until my mom mentioned it, and in fact, when i first posted this, i described the book wrong (which mom pointed out, of course). but now i clearly remember the fuzzy pages and the peek-a-boo mirror. apparently, it was my favorite.

Berenstain Bears

i needed a nudge from mom to remember this too, but oh yeah, i was totally into these bears. i think i had every book.



East of the Sun & West of the Moon






this is my all-time favorite childhood book. it always creeped me out a little, especially near the end, but the artwork was so beautiful, and the writing so memorable. in fact, i think i still have parts of that book memorized to this day. i hope hope hope this is one of the books in mom's dusty boxes.

Charlotte's Web

this was my first "big girl" book, and i remember thinking it wasn't much harder to read than all the thin books. mom claims i read it in a single day, and she didn't believe me, so she sat me down to quiz me on the story to prove it.


i don't remember that, but i do remember reading this book over and over again, to make it last longer.

Sweet Valley Twins
what can i say? i was ten. i was a girl. i was an only child who dreamed of having a sibling - especially a twin!
also, i was more of a jessica than an elizabeth... at least, i wanted to be. ;)




Fear Street books



i picked these up as a pre-teen. pure escapism.
all i remember is that the main characters were always 17 years old.
always.



Watership Down

and this was my graduation from kids books to adult books. it was at least a decade before i knocked that literary chip off my shoulder and went back to reading young adult stories. it was another decade after that that i started writing them.

and i have all the books on this list to thank.


so please share!! what books tell the story of your childhood??

book shopping, a family affair

i love people-watching at my local borders. i almost always see something that interests me.

when i did nano last year and spent lots of weeknights in the borders coffee shop, i loved watching the ladies who got together once a week to play mahjong late into the evening.
when dan brown's last book came out, my heart soared seeing people who'd come only for that book venture deeper into the store - like they'd just remembered they love reading - and come out with armloads full of books, not just brown's.
and around christmas time, when i stood behind a woman and her son in the checkout line, complaining about how there were no non-fantasy books for teenage boys, i had to bite my tongue to keep from saying: "i am writing a book for you!"

those interactions - the ones between parents and kids - are the ones i most like to observe. it surprises me how much of a role parents play in choosing what their children read.

yesterday, i watched a mother and her young daughter pick apart the children's section. the mom steered her daughter toward the shelf i was at, saying, "here are the award-winning books. let's pick from this section."
i wanted to hug her.
i already had "when you reach me" in my hands, but i lingered at the shelf to listen as mom and daughter went through book-by-book, talking about which ones they read, how much they liked "wrinkle in time," how they'd never heard of this one, how so-and-so recommended that one... and so on. then dad showed up and gave his input on the pile they'd picked out.

in the next aisle over, an older girl was reading the back cover and inside flap of every single vampire book on the shelf, while her mom moved behind her, picking up only the ones her daughter had added to the "to buy" pile. this pair had graduated past the family discussion over which book to read, but mom was still silently approving the choices.

i'll have to ask my mom, but if i remember right, i was always set loose in the bookstore to grab whatever i wanted. i would hang out by myself in the kids' section until mom came to tell me it was time to check out. then i'd pick up my selections and follow her to the cash register. occasionally she'd say, "all of those?!" and raise her eyebrows, but she never asked what they were about or sensored my choices in any way. and neither did my dad.

i wonder if times have changed or if it just varies from parent to parent.

either way, i love seeing families together at the bookstore. i love watching kids/teens pick up stories on their own or listen to their parents' input. i love spying on what goes into their bags at checkout time. and i love love love overhearing kids talk about which books they liked or didn't and why.
the hope that my name might someday be a part of that discussion is what motivates me through this sometimes frustrating path to publishing. i am so proud to write for young readers.