MY Holiday TBR Pile

Winter Break officially began yesterday, but we got a gift of a two-day head start. Two weeks stretch ahead of me. I have some merry-making planned, but I also have this lovely pile of books waiting to be read.

Rani Patel in Full Effect  by Sonia Patel: Rani Patel, almost seventeen and living on remote Moloka’i island, is oppressed by the cultural norms of her Gujarati immigrant parents. But when Mark, an older man, draws her into new experiences, red flags abound.

Lucy and Linh by Alice Pung: In Australia, Lucy tries to balance her life at home surrounded by her Chinese immigrant family, with her life at a pretentious private school.

Girls in the Moon by Janet McNally: Tired of the half-truths surrounding her famous family’s past, Phoebe visits her indie-rock darling sister Luna to see how she fits into a family of storytellers.

Girl Mans Up by M-E Girard: Pen is a sixteen-year-old girl who looks like a boy. She’s fine with it, but everyone else is uncomfortable–especially her Portuguese immigrant parents and her manipulative neighbor who doesn’t want her to find a group of real friends

The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman: In April 1812, as she is preparing for her debut presentation to Queen Charlotte, Lady Helen Wrexhall finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy reaching to the very top of society, and learns the truth about her mother, who died ten years ago.

Samurai Rising  by Pamela S. Turner: Documents the true story of the legendary samurai who was raised in the household of the enemies who killed his father before being sent to live in a monastery where, against the odds, he learned and perfected his fighting skills

The Mirror in the Sky by Aditi Khorana: Tara, an Indian-American junior at Brierly prep school, feels her world dramatically change when a mirror planet to Earth is discovered and she, in this new era of scientific history, reconsiders her self and possible selves.

American Girls by Alison Umminger: Fifteen-year-old Anna runs away to Los Angeles where her half-sister takes her in, but after spending days on television and movie sets, she learns LA is not the glamorous escape she imagined.

Watched by Marina Budhos: Far from the “model teen,” Naeem moves fast to outrun the eyes of his hardworking Bangladeshi parents, their gossipy neighbors, and the other forms of surveillance in his immigrant neighborhood in Queens, but when his mistakes catch up with him and the police offer a dark deal, will Naeem be a hero or a traitor?

The Secret Horses of Briar Hill by Megan Shepherd: A girl living in a children’s hospital during WWII discovers that a winged horse has entered her world and needs her help.

The Last True Love Story by Brendan Kiely:Hendrix and Corrina bust Hendrix’s grandfather out of assisted living, and leave LA for New York in pursuit of freedom, truth, and love.

The Left-Handed Fate  by Kate Milford: A quest story to find the three pieces of a magical engine which can either win the War of 1812 … or stop it altogether.

Every Hidden Thing  by Kenneth Oppel: In the late nineteenth century, a budding romance develops between Rachel and Samuel, two teenagers from rival families of fossil hunters heading out to the badlands in search of a rare dinosaur skeleton.

“The Walter”

January 20, 2016 (New York) – The We Need Diverse Books™ Walter Award Judges Committee has confirmed selections for the inaugural Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature – Young Adult Category. One winner and two honors have been named.

The Walter Dean Myers Award, also known as “The Walter,” is named for prolific children’s and young adult author Walter Dean Myers (1937 – 2014). Myers was a National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature as well as a champion of diversity in children’s and YA books.

The winner of the first annual Walter award (2016) is the young adult novel All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely.

The judges also selected two Walter honor books: Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings by Margarita Engle

and X: A Novel by Ilyasah Shabazz and Kekla Magoon.

The Judges Panel reviewed titles published during the 2015 calendar year by diverse authors whose work featured a diverse main character or addressed diversity in a meaningful way. In the case of author pairs (or author-illustrator pairs), at least one member of the pair must be from an underrepresented community. The books covered many genres and included both fiction and nonfiction works. The award’s mission is to honor the memory of Walter Dean Myers and his literary heritage, as well as celebrate diversity in teen literature.

Walter Award Judges Panel: Rita Painter, Rafe Pose, Edi Campbell, Mindy Rhiger, Todd Krueger, Adeeba Rana, Maria Gentle, Christine Taylor-Butler, Lessa Pelayo-Lozada, Dhonielle Clayton and Kathie Weinberg.

 

MLK Day thoughts

On Friday, I talked to the kids about an unpopular opinion I hold. As much as I love getting an extra day off school, I think it is a shame that we aren’t in school on MLK Day or Veteran’s Day. Because we aren’t in school, I don’t think kids think about WHY they get the days off. If we were in school, there might be an assembly, an announcement, something I could do in class to make kids mindful of the holiday and why we celebrate it.The President has called to make MLK Day a day of service. It would be a great day to take kids out of the school to serve the community in some way.

Today, I will be doing the second of two Oregon Basset Hound Rescue home visits for new adoption applicants. We haven’t had a lot of dogs or many applicants over the last year. In fact, my last home visit was in January 2015! But , we have a couple of dogs that have generated some interest.

This is Sherman. He’s 2 and loves to chew on things he shouldn’t. He also loves to play hard.

This is Ellie. She’s 7 or 8 and her family is moving and can’t take her with them.

Other than the home visit, the day will be quiet. I started a new knitting project and a new book yesterday. The book is All American Boys  by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely.

It seems to be a good book to read on this day, when we should be thinking about how we treat other people.

Publisher’s Summary A 2016 Coretta Scott King Author Honor book.

In an unforgettable new novel from award-winning authors Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, two teens—one black, one white—grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided by racial tension.

A bag of chips. That’s all sixteen-year-old Rashad is looking for at the corner bodega. What he finds instead is a fist-happy cop, Paul Galluzzo, who mistakes Rashad for a shoplifter, mistakes Rashad’s pleadings that he’s stolen nothing for belligerence, mistakes Rashad’s resistance to leave the bodega as resisting arrest, mistakes Rashad’s every flinch at every punch the cop throws as further resistance and refusal to STAY STILL as ordered. But how can you stay still when someone is pounding your face into the concrete pavement?

But there were witnesses: Quinn Collins—a varsity basketball player and Rashad’s classmate who has been raised by Paul since his own father died in Afghanistan—and a video camera. Soon the beating is all over the news and Paul is getting threatened with accusations of prejudice and racial brutality. Quinn refuses to believe that the man who has basically been his savior could possibly be guilty. But then Rashad is absent. And absent again. And again. And the basketball team—half of whom are Rashad’s best friends—start to take sides. As does the school. And the town. Simmering tensions threaten to explode as Rashad and Quinn are forced to face decisions and consequences they had never considered before.

Written in tandem by two award-winning authors, this tour de force shares the alternating perspectives of Rashad and Quinn as the complications from that single violent moment, the type taken from the headlines, unfold and reverberate to highlight an unwelcome truth. – See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.com/All-American-Boys/Jason-Reynolds/9781481463331#sthash.e7o6NgFG.dpuf

 

#alamw16 It’s all over but the reading

In addition to getting to know the members of the Morris committee, I got to know some people on other committees because we all moved in similar conference circles. Although we couldn’t tell each other details about what went on in the rooms where our decisions were made, but we could talk about some things we shared, like what we’d read now that our committee work was over.

At the end of our deliberations, we, like most other committees, talked about two things:

• what we thought might win an award at the Youth Media Awards
• what we plan to read, now that our committee service is over.

One person related that two members of her committee were going to spend two months reading nothing but Regency romances!

Another person said she was going to spend the next two months watching TV.

A person I met from the Great Graphics committee was going to take a break from graphic novels.

Most members of my committee expressed a real interest in the 2K16 debut authors that next year’s Morris committee will be reading.

Some people planned to catch up on all the books they missed in 2015, but most are just going to move on and not try to get “caught up”.

A lot of us, regardless of committee membership, planned to read some of the winners of other awards. few of us were able to make many predictions because it was hard to read anything that didn’t fall into our committee’s purview.

I have a two things sitting on my shelf that won awards and they will be among the first things that I read.

 The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B is written by Teresa Toten .   It was the Winner of  the Schneider Family Teen award which honors a book for the artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences. 

All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely was Coretta Scott king honor book.

And that’s all I know for now. I also have some personal knitting I want to do, which will involve listening to an audiobook or two, but I am just not sure what yet. I am looking forward to whatever 2016 brings me.