Emily M. Danforth's Blog, page 8
July 10, 2014
"By art alone we are able to get outside ourselves, to know what another sees of this universe which..."
- Marcel Proust (via mttbll)
July 7, 2014
"The Miseducation of Cameron Post" Removed From Delaware Summer Reading List
By Malinda Lo
In 2012, I was invited by NPR to review an about-to-be-published young adult novel titled The Miseducation of Cameron Post by debut authoremily m. danforth. I was a little nervous about it because I don’t like to criticize about my colleagues’ novels in public. But I didn’t need to worry — Cameron Post blew me away. It was the coming-of-age, coming-out novel that spoke to me in in such a deeply personal way that it felt like it was written for me.
Maybe that’s why I was so ticked off to hear thatCameron Post was recently removed from a summer reading list in Delaware due to parental complaints about its explicit language. Cameron Post is a complex, multilayered, award-winning novel that cannot by any means be reduced down to the number of times the word fuck in used in its 470 pages. And yet that is what has happened.
[Continue reading the full story at Diversity in YA]
UPDATE: #LeaveTheBlueHenListAlone Giveaway!
In very exciting news:
Fellow 2014 Blue Hen List writers Erin Jade Lange, Rainbow Rowell, Gene Luen Yang and Emily Murdoch are each donating signed copies of their acclaimed novels—Butter; Eleanor & Park; Boxers and Saints, and If You Find Me, respectively—to the #LeaveTheBlueHenListAlone giveaway.
I’m very grateful for their generosity and support—and so excited to get to send the entire list of 10 books off to a lucky reader.
The #LeaveTheBlueHenListAlone giveaway ends this Friday, July 11th—so be sure to tweet your reason(s) for why you want/need these books prior to then (and don’t forget the hashtag, so I’m sure to see your entry). More details in the original post.
July 5, 2014
"If someone reads fewer books than you do, it does not make them less intelligent than you. It does..."
- from Pages Ain’t Nothing But a Number (or, Let’s All Stop Judging People By How Much They Read) by Jill Guccini (via bookriot)
artchipel:
Artist on Tumblr
Véronique Buist | on Tumblr...
Véronique Buist's embroidery art
Véronique Buist's embroidery art
Véronique Buist's embroidery art
Véronique Buist's embroidery art
Véronique Buist's embroidery art
Véronique Buist | on Tumblr (b.1987, Canada/France) - L’imposture (2013-2014)
After obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree in Visual and Media Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM), creation has always been a starting point for Véronique Buist to realize various projects. Being involved in different backgrounds such as graphic design, publishing, cinema and event design, her interest for all art forms had quickly turned into a multidisciplinary tool. Since her graduation, the artist completed several exhibitions, solo and collective, in addition to managing artistic events. Born in Montreal, the artist currently work and live in Paris. She reinterpret everyday rituals and try to make them more delightful and intelligent using illustration, photography, collage and writing.
In L’Imposture series, photographs whose context is unknown are trafficked through painting, drawing, cutting and embroidery. This gesture is a personal and subjective translation of the collected images. By modifying the memories of others, all notions of interpretation, memory and time effects are challenged. This impostor role brings out new stories by generating a different point of view of the same situation.
© All images courtesy of the artist
[more Véronique Buist]
July 3, 2014
Win the Entire, Original, UnCensored Blue Hen Reading List for Summer 2014!
So, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I might do to make very clear that the “solution” to fixing the Cape Henlopen school board’s ill-informed, intolerant, hasty removal of The Miseducation of Cameron Post from the Blue Hen reading list on the grounds that it has too much “inappropriate language”—given that it has now been (resoundingly) emphasized to that board that several of the other books on the list have similar language—is ABSOLUTELY NOT to remove those other books, too.
Attempting to fix a hasty act of censorship with more censorship would be, as I said in my letter to the members of the Cape Henlopen school board, a fucking travesty.
Especially because, as I was reminded on facebook today, other books on that very list (Eleanor and Park and The Fault in Our Stars among them), have also been subject to their own completely unreasonable and intolerant and misguided censorship experiences.
Which is, in fact, one of the exact reasons why the Cape Henlopen school board’s rational for removing Cam Post from the Blue Hen list is just so obviously suspect: other books on the very same list have recently been censored and challenged due to their “offensive” language, and yet, the Cape Henlopen school board has very strangely singled-out The Miseducation of Cameron Post, and only The Miseducation of Cameron Post, for removal on those grounds. It just doesn’t add up.
But now that the board is clearly aware of this, I can think of nothing that would be more heartbreaking and plainly wrong than if they attempt to censor additional books, too. (And some of the board members have already emailed vague threats about doing just that.)
I want to celebrate ALL of the books on the original, uncensored 2014 Blue Hen summer reading list—just the way those dedicated, informed librarians in Delaware originally intended. I think, really, it’s a pretty kick-ass list in terms of the range of YA books represented. I’m honored, truly, that Cam Post was included on it (well, originally, anyway).
So what I’m gonna do is give away every single book on that list to one reader. The whole list—every book—shipped to you. I’ll ask the good folks at Browseabout Books (in the Cape Henlopen area) to help me out with the logistics of this.
And those books are:
The Fault in Our Stars—John Green
Butter—Erin Jade Lange
Daughter of Smoke & Bone—Laini Taylor
The Scorpio Races—Maggie Stiefvater
March--John Lewis
If You Find Me—Emily Murdoch
More Than This—Patrick Ness
Eleanor and Park—Rainbow Powell
Boxers--Gene Luen Yang and Lark Pien
The Miseducation of Cameron Post—emily m. danforth
The copy of The Miseducation of Cameron Post will be signed (and I’ll work on maybe getting a few of the other books signed too—more updates on that, later).
All you have to do to enter is to use your twitter account (easiest for tech-challenged me to track and collate) to explain, in not very many characters, why you want/need these books. Use the hashtag #LeaveTheBlueHenListAlone so that I can find your entry. (The limited character count is part of the challenge.) And you have to do this by next Friday, July 11th. Feel free to tweet about this as many times as you’d like—the more entries the better.
I’ll compile all the entries and find some completely random way (I promise) of choosing a winner.
That’s it.
Let’s celebrate this awesome list of books and the librarians who came up with it. The whole thing—uncensored—just as they intended.
July 1, 2014
fuckyeahlesbianliterature:
[image description: a pie chart. A...
[image description: a pie chart. A big clue circle is labelled “Books with Profanity”, which includes The Fault In Our Stars (“Fuck”), Daughter of Smoke and Bone (“Bitch”), Eleanor and Park (“Dick”), More Than This (“Goddammit”), Butter (“Bastard”) If You Find Me (“Shit”), and The Scorpio Races (“Tits”). In an overlapping circle is The Miseducation of Cameron Post (“Damn”), labelled “Books with Lesbians”. The overlap is labelled “Banned Books”]
ACT NOW: Keep “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” on summer reading lists.
(Graphic by Heather Hogan, of course!)
I’ve seen a lot of thoughtful, funny, smart reactions to the Henlopen school board’s very unfortunate decision: this is perhaps my favorite of them all (thus far, anyway). Thank you, Heather Hogan.
ACT NOW: Keep "The Miseducation of Cameron Post" on summer reading lists.
Let the Cape Henlopen School Board know that teens need books like this.
This incredible response has me in tears: thank you you most excellent people at After Ellen.
Saying that I’m touched/honored/moved doesn’t get at the half of it.
So how about: I’m fucking touched/honored/moved.
