TBR

I had a moment of panic yesterday.

Do I have enough books? I don’t think I have enough books and the library is closed.

I decided to do an inventory.

I have some books I need to read for the 2021 YALSA Nonfiction Committee I am chairing. There are three books I have to read and four I could read. Others have signed up for them, so I don’t have to.

I grabbed all the books I haven’t read yet and collected them together. I have lots of audiobooks in my library account. Unless this thing goes on for a really long time, I should be OK.

 

#alamw19 – Day 4 – AWARDS!

I got up early, packed, and checked out of the hotel. I swung by  Starbucks   – where I might have seen David Levithan – then went to sand in line for the Youth Media Awards (YMA).

I don’t know that I can adequately describe the energy in the air. People were buzzing about what they hoped would win, of course. Strangers in line next to you were now your new friend. We all agreed this was better than all the movie and TV awards combined.

As a short person. I really like to sit in a row where no one sits in front of me and I got one dead center.

It also let me run into a few people I know. I was standing and chatting with an former library colleague when the ALA media approached us.

“We are doing a documentary and wondered if you two would be will to answer a few questions?”

Of course we said yes. We were asked about favorites. She said Dreamers and I said Drawn Together. They asked a few more questions and afterwards we each thought we were hopelessly inarticulate, but we didn’t care because the YMA were about to begin.

For the first time, my twin sister was watching from her home in Canada and we were able to watch together.

Yeah, we cry over books.

Some favorites won awards. My TBR list just got longer. Waiting in line, my new friends and I had all agreed that even if our favorites didn’t win, we knew this was an opportunity to meet new books.

But before I could meet those new book, I attended YALSA’s Morris/Nonfiction Awards reception. This is my other favorite Midwinter event. Each of the awards announces five finalists in December. The winner is announced at the YMA. All ten finalists get a few minutes to speak and their speeches always touch my heart.
Afterwards, there is a book signing. This year we all got five books. I made a beeline for John Hendrix and got him to sign my copy of The Faithful Spy.

 

After the reception, my five signed books in tow, I collected my luggage and headed to the train station. I thought my train was at 5, but it was at 6. I sat, knitting, watching the people around me. I finished the first sock in the pair.

Boarding time finally rolled around. I boarded the train and was glad to be on my way home.

2017 National Book Awards for Young People’s Literature

The 2017 National Book Awards Longlist for Young People’s Literature was announced yesterday.  I’ve read four already. I have a few on hold, one ARC, and there are a few that my library doesn’t have yet. And the first three weren’t even on my radar.

MY TBR pile just got longer.

Elana K. Arnold, What Girls Are Made Of

Robin Benway, Far from the Tree

Samantha Mabry, All the Wind in the World

Mitali Perkins, You Bring the Distant Near

Jason Reynolds, Long Way Down

Erika L. Sánchez, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

Laurel Snyder, Orphan Island

Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

Rita Williams-Garcia, Clayton Byrd Goes Underground

Ibi Zoboi, American Street

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.

Summer reading

The summer solstice falls  at 3:34 today in Portland, OR.

I hope to be home before then. I have to go into work today to finalize grades and check out. The Math teacher on my team is moving to the high school so we are taking her out for lunch.

When I get home, summer holidays will stretch out before me. It is a glorious thing. Summer reading will also stretch out before me. Here is my current TBR pile.

Gene Luen Yang, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, has a reading platform that is ideal for summer reading.  The Reading Without Walls Challenge encourages kids to read without walls in one of three ways:

1. Read a book about a character who doesn’t look like you or live like you.

2. Read a book about a topic you don’t know much about.

3. Read a book in a format that you don’t normally read for fun. This might be a chapter book, a graphic novel, a book in verse, a picture book, or a hybrid book.

When you finish, take a photo of you and the book (or just the book if you’re shy) and post it on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #ReadingWithoutWalls. You’ll inspire others to do the same!

Have a great summer of reading.

On my TBR pile

My next “last” is a book that is sitting on my TBR pile. It is there because it has received some good press and sounds interesting.

Publisher’s Summary: From the critically acclaimed author of The List comes a stunning new novel about a girl who must say goodbye to everything she knows after a storm wreaks havoc on her hometown.

What if your town was sliding underwater and everyone was ordered to pack up and leave? How would you and your friends spend your last days together?

While the adults plan for the future, box up their possessions, and find new places to live, Keeley Hewitt and her friends decide to go out with a bang. There are parties in abandoned houses. Canoe races down Main Street. The goal is to make the most of every minute they still have together.

And for Keeley, that means taking one last shot at the boy she’s loved forever.

There’s a weird sort of bravery that comes from knowing there’s nothing left to lose. You might do things you normally wouldn’t. Or say things you shouldn’t. The reward almost always outweighs the risk.

Almost.

It’s the end of Aberdeen, but the beginning of Keeley’s first love story. It just might not turn out the way she thought. Because it’s not always clear what’s worth fighting for and what you should let become a memory.

Here are things about it that appeal to me:

1. I thought it was set in Aberdeen Scotland, and I have long fantasized about teaching at the international school there. I think it is actually set in an American town called Aberdeen, but that’s OK too.
2. A starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly.
3. It is about an environmental issue that could happen.

 

 

On my radar

My “to be read” pile is an every changing collection.

These days, my Morris pile of “to be reads” is very small. The Morris “to discuss” piles is shrinking and the “nominations” pile has become two piles.

The other shelves in my house also shift continually, but there are a couple I am currently keeping near the top. I hope to get to them soon. Here are my top three at the moment.

Publisher’s Summary:Firefly. Cricket. Vole. Peter. Can four creatures from four very different Nations help one another find their ways in the world that can feel oh-so-big? Delve into this lush, unforgettable tale in the tradition of Charlotte’s Web and The Rats of NIMH, from the author of the New York Times bestselling Someday.

Firefly doesn’t merely want to fly, she wants to touch the moon. Cricket doesn’t merely want to sing about baseball, he wants to catch. When these two little creatures with big dreams wander out of Firefly Hollow, refusing to listen to their elders, they find themselves face-to-face with the one creature they were always told to stay away from…a giant.

But Peter is a Miniature Giant. They’ve always been told that a Miniature Giant is nothing but a Future Giant, but this one just isn’t quite as big or as scary as the other Giants. Peter has a dream of his own, as well as memories to escape. He is overwhelmed with sadness, and a summer with his new unlikely friends Firefly and Cricket might be just what he needs. Can these friends’ dreams help them overcome the past?

Publisher’s Summary: The author of OPENLY STRAIGHT returns with an epic road trip involving family history, gay history, the girlfriend our hero can’t have, the grandfather he never knew, and the Porcupine of Truth.

Carson Smith is resigned to spending his summer in Billings, Montana, helping his mom take care of his father, a dying alcoholic he doesn’t really know. Then he meets Aisha Stinson, a beautiful girl who has run away from her difficult family, and Pastor John Logan, who’s long held a secret regarding Carson’s grandfather, who disappeared without warning or explanation thirty years before. Together, Carson and Aisha embark on an epic road trip to find the answers that might save Carson’s dad, restore his fragmented family, and discover the “Porcupine of Truth” in all of their lives.

Publisher’s Summary:In September 1941, Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht surrounded Leningrad in what was to become one of the longest and most destructive sieges in Western history—almost three years of bombardment and starvation that culminated in the harsh winter of 1943–1944. More than a million citizens perished. Survivors recall corpses littering the frozen streets, their relatives having neither the means nor the strength to bury them. Residents burned books, furniture, and floorboards to keep warm; they ate family pets and—eventually—one another to stay alive. Trapped between the Nazi invading force and the Soviet government itself was composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who would write a symphony that roused, rallied, eulogized, and commemorated his fellow citizens—the LeningradSymphony, which came to occupy a surprising place of prominence in the eventual Allied victory.

This is the true story of a city under siege: the triumph of bravery and defiance in the face of terrifying odds. It is also a look at the power—and layered meaning—of music in beleaguered lives. Symphony for the City of the Dead is a masterwork thrillingly told and impeccably researched by National Book Award–winning author M. T. Anderson.