Blog
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What Does Today’s YA Offer to Readers?
“It’s not just that young adult contains growingly diverse characters, though it does, or that it pushes the limits on sexuality, gender, and identity — though it does, in books …
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Why Does There Continue to be a Lack of Diverse Kidlit?
“When it comes to diversity, children’s books are sorely lacking; instead of presenting a representative range of faces, they’re overwhelmingly white. How bad is the disconnect? A report by the …
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The Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy Establishes the Bell Picture Book Awards
A nine-member CLEL selection committee will choose one title in each of five categories representing an early literacy practice: Read, Write, Sing, Talk, and Play. Winning titles will demonstrate content …
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This Week on Girls Scouts’ The Studio: Writing Duo Stephanie Wallingford and Dawn Rynders
“What is our writing process like? Typically we get together for a brainstorming session, which includes everything from constructing couplets (some that are complete jokes) to structuring an entire book …
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Writing Sympathetic (Gay) Characters
Originally posted on the Diversity in YA blog by Brent Hartinger.
If you’re an author, how do make and keep your main character sympathetic?You could write a whole book on this very topic — in fact, many have. I confess, I find it a fascinating one, mostly because it was exactly this idea of “likable” protagonists that made me start writing fiction in the first place.Some writers reject the whole notion that main characters must be sympathetic (and to a degree, I would agree: jerks and anti-heroes absolutely have their place in the world, in certain kinds of stories).But when I started writing back in the 80s and early 90s, I found myself completely frustrated by the main characters in so many books I was reading, especially the gay books. I was looking for characters I could relate to, and too many of the ones I was reading were way too whiny and self-destructive for my taste.My partner and I used to joke that there was a name for the genre: *sshole fiction.Read more » -
Penguin Young Readers Group Develops New Literacy App
“The app features engaging narration, but also incorporates the ability for users to record the stories themselves via their devices’ installed microphones. Tools such as this are released in time …
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Scholastic Acquires Young Adult Series by Bestselling Author Ally Carter
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE New York, NY – Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education and media company, has acquired North American rights to Embassy Row, a three-book young adult series by New York Times bestselling …
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The Jim Henson Company Partners With Penguin Young Readers Group To Launch “The Dark Crystal” Author Quest
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Hollywood, CA – The Jim Henson Company and Grosset & Dunlap, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, are reaching out to fans and fantasy writers to enter The …
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Susann Cokal Writes Her Debut YA Novel
The story follows a young seamstress and a royal nursemaid in the Scandinavian city of Skyggehavn. Candlewick Pres will release the book on October 8, 2013. more at Goodreads▸▸
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Tony DiTerlizzi Finishes a First Draft for ‘The Battle for WondLa’
To design the book cover, DiTerlizzi reacquaints himself with the protagonist Eva Nine and draws inspiration from Les Misérables. “Émile Bayard‘s iconic image of Cosette sweeping from Victor Hugo’s 1862 …
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Make a Donation to Every Child a Reader Through Better World Books
Better World Books is “not a traditional company with an add-on “cause” component. Social and environmental responsibility is at the core of our business. You could say it’s in our …
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New Novel by Shannon Hale Entitled ‘Dangerous’
“Maisie Danger Brown just wanted to get away from home for a bit, see something new. She never intended to fall in love. And she never imagined stumbling into a …
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Maile Meloy & Ian Schoenherr Collaborate on ‘The Apprentices’
Artist Ian Schoenherr created the jacket and thirty eight black and white illustrations for this book. Penguin Young Readers Group released it on June 04, 2013. more at Maile …
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YALSA Announces 2013 Teens’ Top Ten Nominations
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE The nominees for the annual Teens’ Top Ten have been announced today in honor of Celebrate Teen Literature Day by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). …
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Summer Reading Book Offers Observations on Summer Slide
“One program in rural Florida puts books into the hands of children from low-income families with weekly bookmobile visits and has evolved to include more intensive one-on-one tutoring, while a …
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James Patterson to Launch a New Middle Grade Series
In an interview with USA Today, Patterson revealed that writing middle grade books is his “passion, much more than the adult books now…It’s an interesting direction now, books that are …
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Latinas for Latino Literature Launches the Latino Children’s Summer Reading Program
Adults are challenged to encourage the children in their life (offspring, nieces, nephews, etc.) to read a minimum of eight books between June 1st and August 12th. Those who register …
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Too Much Focus on Gender for YA Book Covers?
“The reason is, of course, that books exist in a society where femininity is still considered to be a second-class characteristic, and masculinity defined most strongly as an absence of …
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This Week on Girls Scouts’ The Studio: Laura Golden
“The most important thing you may do in your lifetime is to discover your voice. Not your speaking voice, but your voice as a human being. What matters to you? …
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Victoria Law Endorses Two Anthologies in the “Girls of Color in Dystopia” Blog Series
Within the After anthology, Law offers particularly high praise for Malinda Lo’s contribution “Good Girl.” For Law, it doesn’t “matter how terrible and oppressive these futuristic fiction worlds are, readers …