Mindy Hardwick's Blog, page 40
April 8, 2013
Oldies but Goodies–Young Adult Books Reissued
Lizzie Skurnick books is going to be reissuing those old and forgotten YA titles of the 1970′s and 1980′s.
From Publisher’s Weekly: Lizzie Skurnick Books will be issued in trade paper and e-book formats. Initial print runs will average 2,000 to 3,000 copies, with larger print runs as needed for high-demand books.
While Lizzie Skurnick Books releases will be marketed to YA readers, Skurnick believes that women who, like herself, came of age in the ’70s and ’80s, will form the core readership. “[These books] are not for teens,” she said. “Teens’ tastes have changed. It’s for adults who want to read, re-read, and collect these books. If mothers and fathers want to share the books, great.”
Noting that many of the books of that era beloved by teen boys are still in print – such as Isaac Asimov’s novels and The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier – Skurnick pointed out that, in contrast, many of the books that were embraced by teen girls are not.
I still have my late 1970′s and 1980′s YA books. I’ve had them for years. My first year of teaching, I used them in my classroom library for reading workshop. The paperbacks are old and fragile, and after the first year, I replaced the books with more current young adult and middle grade books.
I’ve never reread one of my old books. Not one. I look at their titles, and I remember reading them. I remember the twelve and thirteen year old reader I was who stayed up for hours at night reading under the covers with a flashlight. I remember trying to seek answers in the “problem novels of the 1980′s.” I remember my innovative, hippie middle school reading teacher who taught the Reading Workshop style long before Nancy Atwell came on the scene with her Writers and Readers Workshop. I remember loving Mr. Stobie’s sixth grade reading class where we could read whatever we wanted and he stocked his book shelves with these books. I remember buying these books with babysitting and allowance money at the B Daltons in the West County Mall. And I remember when I left behind these novels in exchange for the books by V.C. Andrews and Danielle Steele in high school.
When I look at my old young adult books, I see glimpses of my own stories. I see the threads of addiction and recovery which run in WEAVING MAGIC. I see my contemporary sweet romances in the older teen romances by Norma Klein. I see Jasmine from STAINED GLASS SUMMER in Cynthia Voigt’s Dicey Song and Homecoming. I see how those YA books were the soil where I built my dream to become a young adult writer myself.
But do I want to reread these books? Will I buy any of these reissued books? I’m not sure. I do already have quite a few on my bookshelves which I’ve never reread.
However, one thing I do think which will be interesting to see is if some of the young adult books of today begin to incorporate more elements of these young adult books of yesterday. Since the reissues are targeted towards those of us who grew up in the 1970′s and 1980′s, and that is a large demographics of the age group writing YA, will we see more books about social issues and problem novels? Will we see more books which linger over setting details and don’t have so much plot action?
I think that no matter where YA goes from here–whether retro, or not, the one thing we will continue to see is stories driven by character. Not once in any of my teen reading do I ever remember a story preaching at me. They were always driven by character. The character solved her problem. And this, I think, is the timeless element of any novel for children or young adults.
April 6, 2013
Fairy Tale Opener Contest
Do you have a 100-word opening for a Fairy Tale retelling? Can you write one in 100 words or less? If you want to play along with this contest, the Institute Of Children’s Literature is sponsoring a Fairy Tale Opener Contest this month! The winner may select either a year’s subscription to Children’s Writer, or the annual Writer’s Guide to 2013 (see the tabs above for descriptions of both).
The Fairy Tale Opener contest honors Hans Christian Andersen, whose birthday is April 2. Here are the directions:
- Write the opening paragraph for a modern-day fairy tale retelling. This is sponsored by the Institute of Children’s Literature, so I would recommend your opening be for a children’s story–an age.
The winner will be selected based on creativity; “promise” of a great story to follow; and a tight, invitingly well-written lead. Do your best!
- Post your entry to the Institute of Children’s Writers FACEBOOK page. Here is the link. Maximum, 100 words, plus, a title.
Deadline, April 15.
To enter and find out more here is the link to the Institute of Children’s Writers FACEBOOK page.
April 4, 2013
Fairy Tale Fortnight
A couple years ago, I stumbled onto the blog event, Fairytale Fortnight. This is a great two week-event when bloggers and authors blog about Fairytales, write posts about their favorite retellings of Fairytales and host giveaways.
The event is taking place this year from March 23-April 6…that would be now! Fairytale Fortnight is hosted by Book Rat Blog and A Backwards Story Blog.
You can see the entire schedule of blog posts at Book Rat’s Blog here.
Since the event is almost over, most of the blog posts are linked and ready for you to read! This is a great way to build up your “to read” list!
One of the young adult books published by Musa Publishing (home to STAINED GLASS SUMMER) is included in this line-up of books during Fairytale Fortnight. FIRST FROST by Liz DeJesus.
Story Blurb: Fairytales aren’t real…yeah…that’s exactly what Bianca thought. She was wrong. For generations, the Frost family has run the Museum of Magical and Rare Artifacts, handing down guardianship from mother to daughter, always keeping their secrets to “family only.”
Gathered within museum’s walls is a collection dedicated to the Grimm fairy tales and to the rare items the family has acquired: Cinderella’s glass slipper, Snow White’s poisoned apple, the evil queen’s magic mirror, Sleeping Beauty’s enchanted spinning wheel…
Seventeen-year-old Bianca Frost wants none of it, dreaming instead of a career in art or photography or…well, anything except working in the family’s museum. She knows the items in the glass display cases are fakes because, of course, magic doesn’t really exist.
She’s about to find out how wrong she is.
Liz is interviewed as a part of Fairytale Fortnight and is GIVING AWAY a copy of her book, FIRST FROST here.
FIRST FROST by Liz DeJesus is available at:
April 3, 2013
Tell the Wolves I’m Home
TELL THE WOLVES I’M HOME by Carol Rifka Brunt popped on my radar after the ALA 2013 Awards in January. The book won a 2013 Alex Award. The Alex Awards are given to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18. Other books I’ve read and enjoyed on the 2013 Alex Award List include: ONE SHOT AT FOREVER by Chris Ballard which is the true story of the Macon, Illinois baseball team in the early 1970′s and how they conquered all odds to advance to the State playoffs. This one was especially fun to read as my family has ties to Macon, Illinois.
TELL THE WOLVES I’M HOME is a beautifully written story about fourteen year old, June, who has just lost her beloved Uncle, Finn to AIDS. The book takes place in 1987 when the ignorance of AIDS was running it’s full course. I was a Junior in high school in those years, and I remember the time well. No one quite knew how you got AIDS and there was fear everywhere. Could you get it from drinking out of the same water fountain at school? What if you touched someone who had AIDS? Would you suddenly contract the disease? There wasn’t sex education about AIDS, there was fear about AIDS. Scary news for a generation of us who were just coming of age sexually in those times!
But, TELL THE WOLVES I’M HOME is more than just a story about AIDS. The story is about loss and how one family copes with that loss. There is the sister relationship between June and her older sister, Greta, who is going to parties, getting drunk, and burying herself in leaves under June’s favorite tree–waiting for June to find her. It is the story of the relationship between June and her Uncle’s partner, Toby, who everyone calls a murderer and believe he gave AIDS to Uncle Finn. And what ties this story together is the picture Uncle Finn painted of June and Greta before he died.
TELL THE WOLVES I’M HOME is a character driven story. It’s not a story with high stakes, high plot. It’s a story based on the emotional journey of characters. I enjoyed the references to the music of the late 80′s, the clothing, and some of the food-June eats a lot of Doritos! I highly recommend TELL THE WOLVES I’M HOME for those readers who are high school or older. It’s a book I would use if teaching a college level class in writing for young adults.
April 1, 2013
The Chocolate War A Read and Blog Along
One of the blogs I read, STACKED, is hosting The Chocolate War A Read and Blog Along during the week of May 12-19.
STACKED is a great blog for honest reviews of YA and MG books, ebooks, audio books, and graphic novels. They often have great posts about topics in YA such as trends in cover art and sex in YA.
The bloggers at STACKED have opened The Chocolate War A Read and Blog Along event up to anyone interested in joining in to read and blog along to Cormier’s book, THE CHOCOLATE WAR. The event is taking place May 12 through 19, and you’re welcome to post as much or as little as you’d like to about THE CHOCOLATE WAR.
STACKED will have a kick off post on May 12 where anyone who wants to join in can drop a link to their posts throughout the week, and at the end, STACKED will highlight some of the posts they read.
If you want to join, go ahead and save, copy and paste the above graphic to your blog. You might want to link back to the STACKED post here about the event.
If you don’t have a blog, STACKED is also calling for guest posts during the week of May 12-19 to blog about The Chocolate War.
I’m planning to participate on this blog. I haven’t read THE CHOCOLATE WAR for some time, but I’m planning to reread it and write up a couple posts.
THE CHOCOLATE WAR is available both as an ebook and in paperback.
March 30, 2013
Agents and Markets Seeking Submissions–Children and YA Writers
Market news for Children’s Writers:
Agent, Danielle Smith at Foreword Literary Agency is seeking picture books and chapter books.
Danielle is currently looking for picture books, early readers and chapter books with characters that embody the true essence of what it means to be a child. She’s not afraid to represent all that this encompasses whether it be vibrant joyous stories to darker and harder to tackle subjects such as bullying, loss and death. She would also love to find a great new MG novel and/or graphic novel author/illustrator with a flair for great humor that doesn’t involve devaluing others in order to be funny. More than anything she would love to represent authors who are passionate about getting children to love reading and are able to execute that in a way that both children and parents can love.
To read more about Foreword Literary Agency read here.
Foreword Literary Agency also accepts YA, romance, and other genres–find all their agents here.
Publisher, Poisoned Pencil Press is seeking YA Mystery
We publish only young adult mystery novels, 45,000 to 90,000 words in length. For our purposes, a young adult book is a book with a protagonist between the ages of 12 and 18.
We are looking for both traditional and cross-genre young adult mysteries (see below for exceptions). We encourage off-beat approaches and narrative choices that reflect the complexity and ambiguity of today’s world.
Read the rest of their guidelines and how to submit here.
March 27, 2013
Great Blogs for Discovering Children’s Books
On Friday, I’m giving a talk to the Snohomish County Tutors Association. One of the topics I’m covering is how to find great blogs for discovering children’s books.Some of the blogs which I’ll be talking about are:
Teach Mentor Texts
Two National Board Certified teachers talk about current children’s books and how to teach them in the classroom
http://www.teachmentortexts.com/#axzz2OZBtRyUA
A Chair, A Fireplace, and A Tea Cozy
A New Jersey librarian shares her reviews on children’s books. This is one of the most-well known children’s blog in the industry.
A listing of the other School, Librarian Journal Blogs
http://www.slj.com/slj-blog-network/
Stacked
Three librarians who review all types of children’s books from audio to graphic novels to print to ebooks. They also do great posts on specific topics in children’s literature such as cover art trends and sex in young adult literature.
The Cybils Blogger Literary Awards
The Cybils are the Children’s and Young Adult Blogger Literary award. Award winning books are selected by bloggers.
http://dadtalk.typepad.com/cybils/
You can find the rest of them on this handout: Blog Resources for Children’s Books Tutor Talk
The talk is based on one of my classes that I teach to educators–Discovering Excellence in Children’s Literature. In the class, educators have the opportunity to learn about all types of awards which are given to children’s books such as The Alex Awards, The Texas Bluebonnet Awards, and the Maud Lovelace Awards. (The entire list of awards covered in the class can be found here.)
Most educators are aware of the Newberry and Caldecott but few have heard about the other awards. My students always tell me how much they enjoy the class and learning about all of the awards. The class is available as a distance learning, independent study class through Seattle Pacific. More information about my educator classes can be found here.
As an author, one of the downfalls of losing so many of our bookstores is our books don’t have the opportunity to get discovered. In the last eighteen months since both my books, WEAVING MAGIC, and STAINED GLASS SUMMER have published, I’ve done many, many guest blog posts and interviews. Most of them, I’ve linked to the book’s pages on my website. WEAVING MAGIC can be found here. STAINED GLASS SUMMER can be found here.
Blogs are an important part of both an author’s platform and how a reader discovers a book. Most of the young adult books I read are found by reviews on a handful of blogs I subscribe to. (Most mentioned above).
I read most of my blogs on my Google Reader on my phone in the morning while my coffee is brewing. So, I was very dismayed to find out that after July 1, the Google Reader will no longer be available! (You can find that article here).
This means, that as an author, it is extremely important to have an email subscribe button on our blogs. If you are a reader of my blog, be sure to sign up to have the post delivered to your email before July 1! The button is on the sidebar of my blog here.
March 22, 2013
Young Adult Books–Alternative Structure
I’ve been drafting a story about my work with teens in the poetry workshop at Denney Juvenile Justice Center. (You can see their poems on their blog here.)
One of the challenges of this story is I am not using a traditional Aristotle goal oriented, action based plot structure. Instead the story contains vignettes, poetry from the workshop, and some flash pieces told in second person. Recently, I found this great blog post by VCFA student, Ingrid Sundberg, Time to Punk Rock with Plot: Discovering Alternative Plot Structures with YA Lit. Ingrid talks about plot structures. She makes reference to one called “The Ensemble Plot” and says:
This plot concerns a variety of protagonists where no character is more dominant than another. The plot explores multiple voices, consciousnesses, and takes place within a single location. Character storylines can interweave or be independent. This often becomes a portrait of a place rather than a portrait of a person with a particular goal. Film examples include: The Big Chill, Crash, and Dazed and Confused. JUMPED by Newberry Winner, Rita Williams-Garcia is a great example of the Ensemble Plot in a young adult book.
Ingrid’s blog post also talks about another plot structure called the “Daisy Chain Plot.” This is a type of plot I’ve seen in many romance stories I’ve read such as the series by Lori Wilde, The Wedding Veil Wishes Series.
The Daisy Chain Plot
There is no central protagonist in a Daisy Chain Plot. Instead the plot follows a chain of characters or an object as it’s passed from one character to the next. Each character’s story is told in whole, but their story is short and often self-contained. Examples of this type of plot include the films The Red Violin, Twenty Bucks, and Slacker. Even though Jay Asher’s THIRTEEN REASONS WHY follows a single protagonist there is an element of the Daisy Chain Plot in the device that brings out the chain of characters in the story.
Have you written a story with an alternative plot structure? What type did you use? Here is the link to the blog post by Ingrid Sundberg.
March 19, 2013
Winner of the Lucky in Love Blog Hop
Congratulations to KARLA for winning the green glass earrings on the Lucky in Love Blog Hop!
The winners for the Grand Prizes are….The winners have all been notified. Thanks for joining in on the Lucky in Love Blog Hop!
After over 4,000 comments our Lucky in Love Blog Hop has some grand prize winners!! These readers answered the questions on the posts and were chosen randomly using Random.org.
Congrats!
Grand Prize Winners:
Amazon Gift Card:
Shadow37
Swag Pack:
Heather B.
March 14, 2013
Lucky in Love Blog Hop
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! To celebrate, I am participating in the Lucky in Love Blog Hop!
It’s a time of luck and wealth…or not. With each romance we find ourselves in a new world of love and memories. Are these just by chance? Is it luck? Welcome to the second annual Lucky in Love Blog Hop where we want to hear about your love, your romance, and how much you love St. Patrick’s Day!!! Are you wearing green? Ready to get pinched? Do you like this holiday in romance? Are you Irish?
Leave a comment on EACH blog in the hop (you can find the whole list here). Each comment gives you the opportunity to win ONE of the Grand Prizes:
Grand Prize: A $100 Amazon or Barnes and Noble Gift Card (International and US)
2nd Grand Prize: A swag pack that includes paperbacks, ebooks, 50 plus bookmarks, coffee cozies, etc. (US only)
And, each blog is also giving away a prize as a part of the Lucky in Love Blog Hop. On this blog, I am giving away one pair of St Patrick’s Day earrings made by Dee Lux Designs. The earrings are glass fused with hypo-allergic nickle free metal posts. You can see more of Dee Lux Designs at her Etsy shop here.
To win the earrings, all you have to do is leave me a comment about a time you were lucky in love or about how much you love St Patrick’s Day and wearing green! Please leave your email address with your comment. (US entries only)
I’m a big fan of glass art. My upper middle grade novel, STAINED GLASS SUMMER, is about artistic mentorship in glass art. (This is a great story for those tweens ages 8-12 and has a little bit of a first crush as a part of the story!) Find out more about STAINED GLASS SUMMER here.
To continue on the Lucky in Love Blog Hop and find other great prizes, here is a list of the other blogs participating!
Good Luck!
