Kelly Jensen's Blog, page 82

A Crowd of Caldecotts

Normally we focus on books for older kids and teens here at Stacked, but books for younger kids have been on my mind lately thanks to my new position (where I'll be involved with materials for kids of all ages). A few years ago, I did a post on Newbery honors and winners that I loved as a kid, and I thought it would be a fun exercise to do the same for the Caldecotts, though I've also included a few I came to as an adult (I have to go back further in my memory for picture books and it's tougher). Which Caldecotts are your favorite, both to read and to teach/recommend?



The ones I remember and enjoyed as a kid:





Strega Nona by Tomie DePaola

Honor, 1976

I loved all of Tomie DePaola's books as a kid (particularly his two about Texas wildflowers, which are more problematic for me now as an adult). His books are some that I remember as vividly for the pictures as the words. A lot of award-winning picture books our school librarians and teachers read us had illustrations that were either very realistic or very ornate. DePaola's are neither, which I really liked.



The Amazing Bone by William Steig

Honor, 1977

I liked this story about a pig named Pearl who came upon a bone that could talk, which eventually gets her out of a scrape. It was such an odd idea to me (in a good way), and I still remember a lot of Steig's narration.





Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe

Honor, 1988

This is one that I remember our school librarian reading to us. I loved that it was a fairy tale, and a different fairy tale from the ones I was already well-acquainted with. I remember the vivid illustrations quite clearly, particularly the bold colors and the striking cover image.



The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales illustrated by Lane Smith

Honor, 1993

Long after I had given up picture books for my own personal reading (as opposed to the reading forced upon me by teachers), I still returned to this one over and over. It's still funny, with hilarious illustrations that compound Jon Scieszka's side-splitting humor. Never was there a more perfect marriage between writer and illustrator. I loved The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs, published in 1989, just as much.



And a few faves I've read as an adult:





Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems

Honor, 2004

It's the pigeon. Willems' illustrations are simple and expressive, and no one really does this kind of story better. He just gets kids of this age.



Flotsam by David Wiesner

Winner, 2007

I like illustrations that are unique or a little wacky or super detailed, but then sometimes I just want something beautiful, and Wiesner is my guy for that.





A Sick Day for Amos McGee illustrated by Erin E. Stead

Winner, 2011

I love this sweet story and its sweet illustrations. The idea of animals visiting a zookeeper when he's sick is just too good, and Stead's drawings are unique and a perfect fit. Betsy Bird describes the elephant in this way: "Look at this cover and then stare deep into that elephant’s eyes. There are layers to that elephant." It's hard to make me care about books about animals, but Stead does it handily.



Journey by Aaron Becker

Honor, 2014

This is a favorite of mine to give to parents of newborns (not because it'll be great for newborns, but I do think it's a good book to grow into, for a kid to find on a shelf one day and get lost in). It's been likened to Harold and the Purple Crayon for a new generation, but the art is very different (in a way that I appreciate). I love the watercolor-type style of the illustrations and I love the color palette, not to mention the story that ignites kids' imaginations.
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The Mid-Summer Review: On Backlist Reading

Summer's already half-way over, which is really hard for me to grasp. I love summer so much -- I live for those hot, sticky days that virtually everyone else loathes. I credit living in central Texas for the appreciation. 

With taking a month off of blogging, I had a lot of opportunity to sit down and do some of the things on my reading goals list that I'd talked about in my post about slowing down. Rather than let myself succumb to the pressures of reading every new book months before it hit shelves, I decided to step back and catch up on some backlist and classic titles I've been meaning to read but hadn't yet. 

The project so far has been going extremely well. In slowing down more than one part of my life with the blogging break, I was also able to take reading the books I wanted to at a much better pace. I'm not a particularly fast reader, but I dedicate a lot of time to reading; having a plan of books I wanted to read helped me more quickly move from one book to the next, without the stress of choosing what next. And since I wasn't then sitting down feeling like I needed to write something thoughtful or coherent about the book, I was able to instead let the words and pieces I felt important permeate my mind and only my mind. 

In some ways, being less social with my reading made me appreciate reading for myself a little bit more. But it's been interesting, too, not sharing those thoughts with fellow readers. It gives me time to work the things I need to work with into my own life, rather than spending time thinking about the broader take aways to an audience. 

Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye was the first book I picked up that I talked about in my initial post. It was also the first book since I graduated from college that I found myself wanting to take a pen to and mark as I read. It's a short book, but reading with pen in hand forced me to slow down, to savor the language, and to mark the passages that really stood out to me. 

And you know, I didn't write anything about the book yet. I feel I got a lot of value in reading it, taking the time to pull from it what I needed for me, and letting the rest of the pieces of story land within me how they were meant to land. I do plan on writing more in depth about this particular book, but it's not something I feel pressure to hurry and talk about. I want that slow burn to take hold, and I want space between when I finished it to better inform what I have to say about it when I pick it up again to look through the things I marked while reading. They stood out to me for a reason in the process of reading -- will they still hold up later? Will they resonate even more?

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood really hit me hard, which I completely expected going in. I knew I'd love it from the minute I started, but what I found most valuable about this particular reading experience was that I had zero baggage attached to the book. It wasn't something I'd ever read before, and as I read, slurping down each of the words and images and carefully constructed sentences, I realized how much more I was getting out of the book than I ever would have gotten had I been assigned to read this in high school or college. I always loved classroom discussions, but I was always the person who chose to skip out on participation points because I don't care to discuss out loud. I like the act of listening to others talk and thinking about how their points and ideas do or don't fit into the framework of my own thinking about a text. It's in that act that I'm able to consider a piece of art. That's why writing about books works for me -- I get as much private time thinking about other's words and my own as I need before I share something. 

But what was interesting about reading Atwood's book was that there were times I found myself sharing her words or wanting to talk about her words. I restrained myself, only copying one particular passage onto Tumblr to share, which was this:

Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it really isn't about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.The thing about the quote that haunts me is that it's not just about sexism. It's about racism. It's about classism. It's about ableism. It encompasses so many systems of oppression and yet...Atwood does it in such an economy of words that it's a gut punch. 

I'll be honest: I haven't read a lot of other books on my goals list from earlier this summer. I'm definitely going to get to Americanah, and I'm definitely going to dive into Harry Potter. But beyond that, I'm actually finding interspersing these back list reads with titles I'm really looking forward to for the fall is helping me appreciate both a little more. Likewise, I have been reading more adult non-fiction, a category of books I have always loved but sort of pushed a bit to the side in favor of the newest, latest, and the upcoming. But this summer, I dove into reading Ta-Henisi Coates's Between the World and Me and Claudia Rankine's Citizen, both of which should be required reading alongside Jessmyn Ward's Men We Reaped, which I read in late spring. All tackle the complexities of race in America. That's such a simplification of what these books are about, but it's the best way to adequately capture why reading them should be vital. I think for anyone who works with teens especially, it's tough reading but it's important. Reading those three book did a lot more for me in terms of thinking about race than my reread of To Kill A Mockingbird did. 

This summer I also blew through a huge pile of YA horror. I read about haunted houses and ghosts. In non-fiction, I spent time learning about the history of the board game Monopoly (which is yet another entry into the story of how women paved the way for influence but were overshadowed by men) and I learned about the Beanie Baby phenomenon of the late 90s -- I hadn't realized that so much of that frenzy took place in my backyard and how my own experience with and to beanie babies would have been different were I not a child in the Chicago suburbs. 

There's still half a summer left, and I'm eager to see where my intentionally slowed-down reading takes me. I am absorbing more and I'm observing more. The pieces are sticking where they should, and I'm allowing my brain and my heart new places to explore. Pushing myself has been fun. It's damn fun to walk into the library and pick up not just the normal stuff I'd read, but to stumble upon a new book of poetry from a favorite poet who I haven't read in nearly a decade. 

Maybe it's because I blog and because my job is to be on top of the book world, but slowing down and being deliberate has really been invaluable in terms of reconnecting with what reading is to me and what it adds to my life, my thinking, and my place in the world. In many ways, choosing to be quieter and slower has given me better capacity to speak and be critical in ways that hurrying, that feeling like I need to perform, hasn't. 

I'm being a better listener now. 


             

This Week at Book Riot

Here's a look at the two pieces I wrote for this week at Book Riot:





Kimberly linked earlier this week to my 3rd quarter preview of YA fiction and I'm going to go ahead and link it again. Your reading list will be getting much, much larger. 

This week, I talked about 3 recent(ish) YA books published by indie presses. I am not a big fantasy reader, but after seeing some really great reviews of Archivist Wasp, I grabbed it from the library. 

Over at School Library Journal, Shelley Diaz wrote a really great piece about the Size Acceptance in YA project that I'm a part of. I'm really proud of this project and honored to be part of it with three really smart librarians. 
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On Becoming A Re-Reader

I've never been a re-reader when it comes to books. Well, that's a bit of a stretch. I'm generally not one to re-read. I like to think when I finish a book, I've read it and taken away the things I need to from it, and I can move on to the next books. 

I started this year's reading a little differently though. There's always a weird pressure to pick the ideal first book to start a year, as if it somehow sets the tone for how the rest of the year will go in books. I can't be the only person who feels that way. But rather than succumb to the possibility of disappointment this year, I decided to crack open my all-time favorite book: Ann Patchett's The Magician's Assistant. 

Patchett's book is one of the rare ones I've picked up and re-read over the course of my life, but it had been a good five or seven years since I last read it. For once, I didn't worry about whether the magic of the book would be lost in the re-read. I let myself go at it with my whole heart, knowing that it'll always been a book with a place in my heart. 

Back in the summer of 2006, my college roommate got married in her home state of Montana. My husband and I decided we'd drive out there from Iowa, then we'd go down to Austin, Texas, in order to look at the University of Texas, where I'd been thinking about going to library school. From the trip down the belly of the plain states, one of the things we decided we would do is stop in Alliance, Nebraska -- half of the setting of Patchett's work. Both of us were fans of the book, and we'd had the opportunity just months before that to go out to Los Angeles, together (my first trip on a plane!), where we'd both remarked about how that city will always be a "place" to us because of Patchett's book. Alliance was not as exciting as Los Angeles, of course, but it was neat to be where the book had drawn inspiration.  

I curled up on the couch and read The Magician's Assistant nearly cover-to-cover on New Years. I loved it, maybe even more than I had before. It was so interesting to think about the things I hadn't considered in previous reads. The characters were much younger than I remembered them being, and part of that is simply that now I was of a different age myself and could compare my life experiences to their own. The language, the imagery, and the setting still hit me hard and reminded me why this book is so special to me. 

It was a good start to my reading year.

My re-reading didn't begin and end there though. Just a couple of weeks later, after spending days with Leila at ALA talking about seminal YA titles, I couldn't stop thinking about how I would feel re-reading Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak. I read it when it came out -- when I was 15 -- but hadn't picked it up again since. I ordered it and picked it up to re-read, and I think I loved it even more than when it opened my eyes as a teenager. I had forgotten how amazingly voice-driven it was, and it's Melinda's voice that stays with me and makes me think about how powerful it is to have a voice and how much power one can wield with it. This book not only absolutely holds up, it will continue to hold up forever. It makes me want to revisit Wintergirls because Anderson is a writer I trust and I suspect that re-reading that book would crush me as much as Speak did. 

But not all re-reads bring such delight. I recently picked up To Kill A Mockingbird to re-read and found myself....bored. Not only was I bored with the reading experience, I didn't feel any sense of hope or enjoyment out of the experience. If anything, I walked away from Lee's classic wondering why it was such a beloved, widely-read book. Was it because it's an easy, mostly-palatable examination of racism? Is it because we really enjoy being able to see the world through the construction of innocence Lee builds (and it's constructed -- she's telling the story as an adult looking back at her youth, which is a detail easy to miss but vital to, I think, the endurance of the story and its message). Finishing this book didn't put me on the "excited" side for Go Set A Watchman. I'm happy I re-read this one and reconsidered my feelings for it, as I was able to not only see the flaws in the story, but I was able to look at my own intellectual growth and see what does and doesn't work for me. Idealism and idolization aren't aspects of fiction I find endearing or enduring in my life. At least at this point.



Earlier this summer, I talked about how I planned on spending these few warm months catching up with back list titles and slowing down a bit to savor some classics I've missed out on. So far, it's been a rousing success. One of the things I'd mentioned was finally getting around to Harry Potter. I should be fair: I've read the first four books in the series. It was back during the summer the final book came out, and I read it because I was working with teenagers who told me I needed to. And because of the circumstances under which I read it -- a hot dorm room with no a/c or kitchen after long days in a hot classroom helped teach those same teenagers about Shakespeare -- I never got the spark from them that I'd hoped to find.



I picked up the first three books last month at the bookstore and cannot wait to re-read them with my mind open and ready to be excited by them. Technically, half of the series is a re-read; the other half is a first read.



I'm finding that re-reading is bringing me to texts in a much different way now. After reading so much more and simply living much more, it's interesting to see what things I take away on a new read and which things I don't. I'm definitely motivated to revisit more books now and see what does and doesn't work for me now, as compared to the person I was when I initially read it. I was recently told to revisit, of all things, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, a book I never found myself quite enjoying like I hoped to. I was told now that I know about how the publishing world works, I'd appreciate it on a whole other level, and that sort of recommendation makes me excited about a re-read in a way I never anticipated.



And that's the power of books -- they grow with you, and like any relationship in your life, sometimes growing means becoming tighter and sometimes it means choosing to come to an amicable split.



Tell me: do you re-read? What books have you found to be immeasurably better upon re-read? Which have you found yourself disappointed in? What makes the difference to you?
             

Third Quarter To-Read

I love Kelly's quarterly round-ups of YA books to look forward to over at Book Riot (in a totally unbiased way!). It's an easy way to organize my to-read pile and is great for planning blog posts. Here are a few titles that I'm really looking forward to diving into this quarter.





Silver in the Blood by Jessica Day George

This is a new twist on the Dracula story from an author I like. Really gory or dark Dracula retellings are not my cup of tea, but George's stuff is usually pretty light so I feel a Dracula story from her would be a good fit for me.



A History of Glitter and Blood by Hannah Moskowitz

I've heard a lot of good things about Moskowitz, but she hasn't written a book with a plot that really hooked me enough to give her a try. This one, with its storyline full of fairies and other magical creatures, looks to be that book.



Con Academy by Joe Schreiber

Y'all may know how much I love books about heists, con artists, and the like. The synopsis for this book makes it seem a little like Holly Black's Curse Workers series (without the magic) with a dash of E. Lockhart's Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks .





Legacy of Kings by Eleanor Herman

This is historical fantasy about Alexander the Great as a teenager and a host of fictional characters. I really dig historical fantasy in the vein of Grave Mercy and Herman is well-known for her historical nonfiction for adults, so I have high hopes for the quality of this story.



The Shadow Behind the Stars by Rebecca Hahn

I read Hahn's first novel, A Creature of Moonlight, for the Cybils last year and was impressed with the writing, though I thought the plot itself was a bit slight. Her next book, a spin on the Greek Fates, seems perfectly suited to her dreamy writing style.



The Hired Girl by Laura Amy Schlitz

This is historical fiction set in 1911 Pennsylvania that seems a little bit Hattie Big Sky with a smattering of A Northern Light. Funnily enough, I liked the concept of both of those books better than I liked their actual execution, but I have high hopes for Schlitz's take on this time period.





Ash and Bramble by Sarah Prineas

It's a retelling of Cinderella with magic and a girl in a pretty dress on the cover. Deep down (or maybe not so deep down), I am still that girl who just wants to have magical powers and wear a really pretty dress.



The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen by Katherine Howe

I really liked Howe's first try at YA, Conversion , and I have high hopes for her second outing. While the historical aspect is missing here, it does seem to have that same thread of is-it-or-isn't-it-magic throughout. (The synopsis for this would be a turnoff if the book were written by a man, but in Howe's hands I have more trust in it.) Also, that cover design is pretty cool.



Sound by Alexandra Duncan

Salvage was one of my favorite books of 2014 and I'm super excited to read the companion novel, which focuses on Ava's adopted sister Miyole. Thankfully, the cover for this book features a girl who looks alive.
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What I'm Reading Now

I've taken this month off of blogging to relax in my reading. I've spent a lot of time laying on my couch, zoning out and listening to old audiobook favorites. In fact, I've been doing a lot of re-reading in general, in audio and in print. While organizing my bookshelves at my new home, I couldn't help but page through some of the books that now sit on what I call my "books that changed my life" shelf. (Every time I pass by a copy of The Book Thief, whether my own or at a bookstore, I have to pick it up and read the last few pages.)



Now that my house is in order (more or less) and things seem to have settled down a bit more in my personal life, though, I'm really excited to dive back into new stuff, especially children's and YA. I'm especially excited because I'm transitioning into a new job within my organization, one that is allowing me to return to youth materials collection management. So my post for today is a nice, healthy mix of the old and the new.





For starters, I've been working my way through the Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters. I first read a few of these as a teenager, then made a concerted effort to listen to them all on audio while I was in library school in 2009. I decided to re-listen to them all again after being reminded how great Barbara Rosenblat is, and the decision has been a good one. I'm currently on book number 8, The Hippopotamus Pool , and the entire series has been great fun. It's been so good to reconnect with characters I have such fond memories of from both my childhood and my early adulthood. I love looking forward to a character being introduced or a particular event happening, and I love knowing that everything will work itself out happily - mostly - in the end (though it may take a few books to get there, and some endings are more bitter than sweet). Each time I re-read these books, I pick up more on Amelia's character (she's actually not a great sleuth, nor is her husband, and she's quite a bit snobbier than I initially realized, though I still love her). Re-reading favorites is a great pleasure.





I'm pretty picky about the middle grade books I read, but Louis Sachar's books are usually a good bet ( Holes remains one of the best books for children I've ever read). He's also local, which makes me more inclined to to read his stuff. Inevitably, anything Sachar publishes will be compared to Holes, which is probably unfair. In reading his latest, Fuzzy Mud, which will hit shelves in August, I tried to also evaluate it independently. The book is recognizably Sachar - a bit wry, a bit dark, with a plot that seems kind of goofy but is also quite serious. Sachar's kid characters are brave and scared at the same time, and he never writes down to his readers. The plotting doesn't match the mastery of Holes and the humor isn't as overt as the Wayside School books, but it's quite a good story regardless, with a few uniquely creative touches that I really appreciated. I'll review this one more in-depth closer to its publication date.



I don't remember where I got the recommendation for Jude Deveraux's A Knight in Shining Armor (possibly a list of must-read canonical romance novels somewhere). I don't know that I've ever read any Deveraux before, and this one had a few strikes against it already: it was written in the 80s (I have an unreasonable prejudice for any media created in that decade), it doesn't have a typical happily ever after, the audiobook is narrated by a man (so awkward during certain scenes), and the heroine's name is Dougless. Thankfully, this last strike has an explanation within the novel, though it takes a while to get to it. Overall, I'm enjoying it. It's a little campy, but in a fun way. Once I got past the setup describing how awful Dougless' situation was with her terrible boyfriend (a bit too pathetic and something I probably would have skimmed in a print book) and the literal knight in shining armor showed up from the 17th century, things got a lot more interesting. Right now, Dougless and her knight are stumbling around in the 1980s as he tries to convince her he actually has traveled from the past. Later, I know they'll travel back to the 17th century, and that should be extra fun. It feels kind of like Outlander lite - there's a hunky man from the past, but a lot less violence and mortal peril.
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July Debut YA Novels

It's time for another round-up of debut YA novels of the month.



Like always, this round-up includes debut novels, where "debut" is in its purest definition. These are first-time books by first-time authors. I'm not including books by authors who are using or have used a pseudonym in the past or those who have written in other categories (adult, middle grade, etc.) in the past.



All descriptions are from WorldCat, unless otherwise noted. If I'm missing any debuts out in July from traditional publishers, let me know in the comments. As always, not all noted titles included here are necessarily endorsements for those titles.







 



Pretending to be Erica by Michelle Painchaud: Violet has been preparing her entire life to step into the shoes of the missing heiress Erica Silverman, in order to pull off the biggest inside job in Las Vegas history. She doesn't count on having a conscience.





You and Me and Him by Kris Dinnison: Maggie Bowers thinks she knows what to expect her junior year of high school, but when she and her out-of-the-closet best friend Nash have feelings for the same boy she wonders if winning someone's heart means losing her soulmate.













Jillian Cade: Fake Paranormal Investigator by Jen Klein: A seventeen-year-old girl runs a fake paranormal detection agency, but when she takes a case involving a non-paranormal missing person, things start to get strange and her feelings for partner Sky Ramsey start to grow.





Damage Done by Amanda Panitch: Julia Vann has a new identity after being forced to leave town because of her twin brother's terrible crime. Julia is the only survivor but she can't remember what happened--at least, that's what she tells the police. 











Ruthless by Carolyn Lee Adams: When Ruth is kidnapped, she's determined not to become this serial-killer's next trophy. After she's able to escape, her captor begins stalking her through the wilderness.





Stone Rider by David Hofmeyr: A young man who seeks revenge and redemption from his past joins a brutal race to win a chance to escape his dying world. 











Forever For A Year by B. T. Gottfred: Two young teens fall in love for the first time, and discover it might not last forever. 






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Recently at Book Riot

Even though we've been on a vacation here at STACKED, I've been writing quite a bit over at Book Riot. We'll be back to our regular programming here on Monday, but in the mean time, you can catch up with everything over there:







In honor of Harper Lee day, I wrote about how and why To Kill A Mockingbird isn't a "YA" book, with some grappling about what the definition of "YA" is at all. 

How we can -- and why we should -- combat fat phobia in YA books. I talk quite a bit here, too, about graphic novels for teens that are depicting fat characters in great ways. 

Two "3 On A YA Theme" posts: first love in YA and YA books with ice cream on the cover. 








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The V-Word: Cover Reveal!

Remember when I talked about The V-Word anthology many moons ago (or last year early in the year)? 



Now I have loads more I can share about it.



First, the cover, which you can click to make much bigger: 







I really like how it looks so mature, without looking off-putting. It's enticing and appealing and will easily catch the eyes of teen girls -- the target market. 



Here's the official blurb for the anthology:  



THE V-WORD: True Stories about First-Time Sex



An anthology edited by Amber J. Keyser



HAVING SEX FOR THE FIRST TIME IS A BIG UNKNOWN. LOTS OF PEOPLE WILL TELL YOU WHAT TO DO, BUT IS ANYONE TELLING YOU WHAT IT’S REALLY LIKE?



The V-Word pulls back the sheets on sex. Queer and straight. Relished and regretted. Funny and exhilarating. The seventeen women in this book (including Christa Desir, Justina Ireland, Sara Ryan, Carrie Mesrobian, Erica Lorraine Scheidt, and Jamia Wilson) write about first-time sex—hot, meaningful, cringe-worthy, gross, forgettable, magnificent, empowering, and transformative.



Whether you’re diving in or whether you’re waiting, we hope these stories will help you chart your own course.



Beyond Words/Simon & Schuster

Released date: February 2, 2016

Simultaneous hardcover and paperback release.



ISBN: 978-1-58270-521-7 (TP) / 978-1-58270-522-4 (HC)





Along with a bio of Amber, who edited it: 



Amber J. Keyser believes in the power of sharing our experiences. She’s the author of the young adult novel THE WAY BACK FROM BROKEN (Carolrhoda Lab, 2015) and numerous nonfiction titles. Connect at www.amberjkeyser.com.







The full contributor list: 



Molly Bloom

Kiersi Burkhart

Chelsey Clammer

Christa Desir

Kate Gray

Justina Ireland

Laurel Isaac

Karen Jensen

Kelly Jensen

Sidney Joaquin-Vetromile

Amber J. Keyser

Alex Meeks

Carrie Mesrobian

Sarah Mirk

Sara Ryan

Erica Lorraine Scheidt

Jamia Wilson



Readers will also find a Q&A with teen librarian Kelly Jensen on how teen sex is portrayed in the media, resources for teens who want to learn more, guidelines for safer sex practices, support for girls wanting to delay sexual activity, and even a resource section for parents on how to approach this topic with their teenager.







I'm so thrilled -- and completely scared -- to be a part of this incredible and important anthology. I have both an essay and the Q&A included. Writing this essay was one of the most terrifying things I've ever written. It meant digging from a well of feelings I didn't know that I had. But I am really pleased with my piece, am excited to know teen girls will find it and (maybe!) relate to it, and I'm eager to see how this entire anthology comes together from start to finish. Amber has done tremendous work building a great and vital collection. 



Working through the Q&A portion meant devoting weeks to reading and thinking about depictions of sexuality in YA. I wrote a bit about that here, but the book features a much longer series of thoughts and insights into what YA is doing great and what could be improved. 

That cover again, though, just for good measure: 










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Taking A Break

We've been blogging at STACKED for over six years now. Through that time, Kimberly and I have both moved (more than once), switched jobs/careers, and taken on a ton of outside responsibilities in our personal lives. We've maintained a lot of consistency here, too -- the longest we've gone without posting is a week.



Kimberly's newest adventure in home buying and my need to buckle down a bit on my anthology means that we're going to do something we've never done before: we're taking an extended vacation. July tends to be a quiet month in publishing, as well as in the blogging world, so we're going to take advantage of this time to relax, refocus, and take care of the things outside the blog.



We will return from our vacation on July 20 with our regular posting schedule. It's possible a post will pop up between now and then, but we're taking this chance to read, relax, and unwind a bit.