Family Room

In this edition of YA Wednesday, we have one quick announcement because I'm supposed to be on vacation...

Forget Nobel snubbery, this time it's the bloggers' turn to award the literary honors. The 2008 Cybils (3rd annual) will honor the best children's and YA books published during 2008 in the following categories:

YA Fiction
Poetry
Nonfiction Picture Books
Middle Grade Fiction
Nonfiction Middle Grade/YA Books
Graphic Novels
Fiction Picture Books
Fantasy and Science Fiction
Easy Readers

If you have a book blog or just want to add your favorites, check the Cybils blog for rules and lists of 2006 and 2007 winners. You can submit nominations through October 15. (Thanks to Jen Robinson for the heads up.)

We'll be back next week with more from the YA world. Meantime, we *finally* have A.S. King's The Dust of 100 Dogs coming up next on our reading pile, so we're catching up with all the other bloggers who love this book. --Heidi

What it is: The American Girl book/doll franchise has encompassed a series of well-regarded television movies, and Kit Kittredge is the first installment to appear in theaters.  Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) plays the title character, an enterprising young girl whose ambition is to become a newspaper reporter.  However, jobs are tough to find for a school kid, especially in the Great Depression.

Why it's Significant: Kit Kittredge didn't make much impact at the box office, but it's a charming and moving film with a strong cast (Julia Ormond, Stanley Tucci, Joan Cusack, and others).  While it has a little mystery thrown in for fun (and it's a sneaky way to teach some history), the real heart of the story is how Kit and her friends struggle to make ends meet, or even keep their families together.  A lot of kids' movies can be indistinguishable from video games; Kit Kittredge: An American Girl is different: a film for the whole family that actually has something to say.  Watch the trailer below. --David 

Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book was officially released in the U.S. today. I've been slowly reading this book--intended for middle-grade readers--over the last couple of weeks, savoring Bod's adventures one chapter at a time. (It's like my own personal serial!) I'm completely charmed by the story of the little boy named Nobody ("Bod") who is raised in the graveyard by a cadre of the long-dead and intermittent human interlopers--and by the mischief he gets into with ghouls and witches and other kids whenever he strays from his usual play among the headstones. (It's a bit like The Jungle Book except with a graveyard cast that's reminiscent of Under Milkwood or Spoon River Anthology.) 

Gaiman was inspired to write the book when his son (who is now in his twenties) was two years old, and they played together in the graveyard near their house, reading the headstones. The beginning is a pretty scary, something Gaiman acknowledges in this video:

To commemorate the release today, Gaiman posted this widget on his blog, Exclusively Neil. Press play to hear him reading the first chapter on the audiobook.

He also announced yesterday that the latest incarnation of Mouse Circus, Gaiman's official website for young readers, is now live with many extras, including this Graveyard Book Sudoku game. 

Gaiman is touring the U.S. now. If you want to read more about the book, it's been widely reviewed over the past couple of months. One of my favorite takes on the story was from Elizabeth Bird at Fuse #8:   

"The Graveyard Book has this strong, strange, wonderful metaphor about kids growing up, learning about the wider world, and exploring beyond the safe boundaries of their homes. There's so much you can read into this book. I mean, aren’t all adults just ghosts to kids anyway?"

After watching my 1-1/2 year-old son interact with his friends during his first days of pre-school last week, his parents quickly forgotten, I'm starting to get a sense that she's right. --Heidi

In this week's roundup, we contemplate parties in our tummies, visit a new Newbery blog, and get tips on writing:

Yo Gabba Gabba board books. Thanks to some of our Amazon toy bloggers, I found out that Yo Gabba Gabba just started its second season this week! You don't need to have kids in your life to love Yo Gabba Gabba. There hasn't been a cooler kids show since the Morgan Freeman era of The Electric Company--and the second season features everyone from Biz Markie to Amy Sedaris to Hot Hot Heat. If you've never heard of it, watch this now:

So what does that all have to do with kids' books? I was wondering if there had been any YGG titles yet, and apparently there's a whole slew of sticker and coloring books and--more importantly, for our 17-month-old Silas--board books coming out in a few months, including Party in My Tummy and Welcome to Gabba Land! We'll keep you posted....

New blog: Heavy Medal. Nina Lindsay, the chair of the last Newbery commitee, and Oakland children's librarian Sharon Senser McKellar have started a new blog called Heavy Medal: A Mock Newbery Blog. They'll talk about Newbery contenders and follow this year's real--and mock--Newbery process:

The actual Newbery Committee is bound to secrecy. But their criteria and procedures are open. Using these, Sharon and I coordinate each year a Mock Newbery Discussion in Oakland CA, where adult participants who've read our posted shortlist discuss some of the best contenders of the year and vote for a medal and honor books. (This year's discussion will be Sunday, January 11, more details to come!).

In previous years, Sharon and I each had blogs to drum up suggestions for titles and discuss issues brought up by the Newbery criteria in relation to some favorites. Must a sequel stand alone? And what about the text of a "graphic" novel?

The Knife of Never Letting Go wins Guardian prize. Patrick Ness' inventive SF tale The Knife of Never Letting Go won this year's Guardian children's fiction prize:

The chair of the judges, Guardian children's books editor Julia Eccleshare, said the panel, made up of children's authors Mary Hoffman, Mal Peet and last year's winner, Jenny Valentine, had been blown away by the "breathtaking quality" of Ness's writing. "It's challenging but not bleak--an excitingly different book," she added.

Ness, 36, said he was "genuinely astonished" to win. "I think it was a super-strong shortlist," he said. "Before I Die is a huge hit, Frank is a great writer, and I'm reading Siobhan Dowd now--it's really great and I kind of thought she would win."

Don't miss some kids' takes on the award shortlist. (Found via Achockablog.)

How to write children's books. Speaking of the Guardian, they recently ran a fun How to Write series, spanning multiple genres, from the hilarious Catherine Tate on comedy to Wendy Cope talking about poetry. Children's Laureate Michael Rosen gives his thoughts on writing for kids and teens, along with some interesting meta-commentary about the genre in general:

It may sometimes seem to you that editors can only think inside specific boxes, whereas a book you liked, The Little Prince, say, defied such boxes. So you'll hear from editors, comments like: "There's no point in writing a picture book text that's longer than a couple of hundred words", "That story is too 'old' for a picture book audience", "Your story is too short" and so on. Bafflingly, if you go to the library and pick up a pile of books, you may well find some that seem to defy such boundaries. Nearly always, that's because it's a famous author who's been granted leeway to write what they want - Roald Dahl's The Minpins is an example of that. Or you've got in your hand a book produced by an independent company, a firm like Tamarind, Frances Lincoln or Barefoot Books.

(Found via Bookninja.)

Ain't no party like a Brisingr party. Readers are still debating the merits of the third and latest installment in Christopher Paolini's Inheritance series (following Eragon and Eldest), but the real question is... how much fun was your Brisingr launch party? You would be hard-pressed to top this six-hour extravaganza, with an Olympic fencing coach, readings from Dugald Steer, foam swords, and more. Foam swords!

September Carnival of Children's Literature. I have been slow to catch up on the monthly kid-lit carnivals (and blog carnivals in general), but what a worthwhile endeavor: a well-organized uber-roundup of linky wonderfulness, from all over the blogosphere. This month's carnival is hosted by Jenny's Wonderland of Books. (Found via Big A little a.)

And just a heads-up: Heidi and I will be taking some time off later this week and weekend to visit NYC--so look for YA Wednesday and the End-o'-the-Week Kid-Lit Roundup to return the following week. If you have any ideas for fun stuff to do while we're there, let us know! We already have our eyes on kid-lit exhibits at the Morgan Library and Museum and Cooper-Hewitt. (And likewise, give us tips for toddler withdrawal: this is the first time that both of us will be away from Silas for more than one night. Is a 17-month-old too young for webcam conversations?) --Paul

In this edition of YA Wednesday, we have questions! And the usual news recaps.

Beautiful, but disturbing: to read or not to read?

This week, I was pretty intrigued by the reviews popping up on various blogs of Elizabeth Scott's Living Dead Girl. It's told from the point of view of Alice, who was abducted when she was ten years old, and who is now 15 and still living with her abductor/abuser.

from Bookshelves of Doom...

"The most disturbing thing about the book, for me, was that it made me feel like a huge voyeur."

"Now I never want to let my future children go on field trips.  Or, you know, outside."

from The Book Muncher:

"While it’s not right to like a story such as this, I think Living Dead Girl should be read by everyone, if not for enjoyment then to inform readers. It is a short but fast read, beautifully written and impossible to ever forget."

The book sounded stylistically unique (a voice people haven't heard before, unusual point-of-view tricks, etc.) but I was worried that it might fall into the category of "great books I will never read" because the scenes are reputedly so disturbing that I would never be able to get them out of my head. (So far, Cormac McCarthy's The Road is the only other book in this category for me.) I guess I have to ask: how disturbing is it, and how great? 

Let's see: The book got starred reviews in both Booklist and Publisher's Weekly.

I read the excerpt, and it is beautiful and haunting and disturbing. I suspect that the "ick" factor of the book is part of its brilliance. Alice's voice is so matter of fact, and while the abuse isn't graphic, it isn't ambiguous either. You feel like you might know what it's like to be there. And that's pretty scary. And gross. 

The thing that finally sold me on the book, though, was this ALAN interview with Scott, which convinced me that it's way more interesting than just an abduction story for the sake of inducing fear and showing abuse:

"I think it’s easy to get outraged over a child’s abduction, but it’s also equally easy for us to see something--someone--that makes us uncomfortable, a moment or an expression that give us pause, and to do nothing. And that moment where we see and turn away is, I think, the heart of Living Dead Girl. Alice’s story isn’t just about what she endures with Ray. It’s what she endures at the hands of the world. How it doesn’t see her."

"...I am Bloodgarm, son of Ildred the beautiful..."

Christopher Paolini's Brisngr, the third book in the Inheritance Cycle, launched last week--with the popular-series-standard Friday night book launch parties--selling 550,000 copies in its first day. While this might seem a mere pittance compared to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (8.3 million) or Breaking Dawn (1.3 million), it is four times more than the series' second book, Eldest. Brisingr draws on a loyal fan following, which has been growing since the first book, Eragon, was published in 2003 then made into a movie in 2006.

If you're not familiar with the series, I highly recommend listening to Paolini read an excerpt.


YA for Obama: Social Networking or "Undue Influence"?

"Hi, I'm Maureen Johnson. I'm a YA author. I started this site because I realized a lot of my friends who are also YA authors were big Obama supporters. And I thought to myself, 'Wouldn't it be great if we all had a place where we could write about Obama? And if we invited everyone to join?'"

A number of YA-interest blogs have been buzzing this week about the new social-networking site, YA for Obama, founded by Johnson (Suite Scarlett) and other best-selling YA authors like Judy Bloom and Meg Cabot.

Most of the response has been positive, but Chasing Ray asks:

"Is it a good