Hey young adults, check out

http://bostonerin.livejournal.com/115570.html

This is the blog of an author whose debut novel, Models Don't Eat Chocolate Cookies, comes out next Thursday. In honor of the book release and her birthday, she's giving away:

-a signed copy of MODELS
-the book's soundtrack
-chocolate cookies
-stickers
-a t-shirt for her next book

Leave a comment on her blog to enter the drawing! And now, to refresh your memory:


Models Don’t Eat Chocolate Cookies
by Erin Dionne
Young Adult Fiction

This is a witty, angsty tale of self-esteem issues and teenage misery. Celeste is overweight and in junior high school, two things which should never occur simultaneously. When her Aunt Doreen enters her in the Miss HuskyPeach contest, Celeste is in danger of becoming the spokesperson for heavy girls across the country. She does everything she can to sabotage her chances of winning—including dieting in the hopes that she’ll be too skinny to compete. As Celeste struggles through a series of humiliating incidents at school, loses her best friend to the skinny blonde social princess, attends fittings for a heinous bridesmaid dress, and meets other HuskyPeach contestants, she finds herself becoming more comfortable in her own skin. This is a funny, smart, and eminently believable story that had me smiling from beginning to end.

Neil Gaiman Wins Newbery

So Neil Gaiman just won the Newbery for The Graveyard Book...but, more importantly,

I, Jake-the-Girl, have a signed first edition of a Newbery Award-Winner.

I feel so awesome. Congratulations to Neil, too.

The Anti-Super Bowl

Please join us for the second annual

Anti-Super Bowl Party

3 p.m. on Sunday, February 1st

We will be serving wine and cheese, tea and scones, and other baked goods.

This year's special guest is Lauren Groff, author of

The Monsters of Templeton


and Delicate Edible Birds

Tidbits and Reviews

Tidbit the first: yesterday I received a package in the mail at the store. It was a shirt. A shirt featuring Hank the Cowdog, the best canine sheriff in the contiguous states. Thank you, Steve Kent from Penguin, for making me the coolest person on earth. (Also, thank you for the Sarah Dessen galley reviewed below.)

Tidbit the second: tonight we had an author reading sans electricity. About ten minutes in, someone hit a pole with a car and knocked out the power lines. It was a candlelit reading, and it was lovely. Thank you, Tiffany Baker,

for your patience and grace. Everyone else, go read The Little Giant of Aberdeen County. It's a wonderful, sad, funny, poignant, well-written little novel. It will make you smile.

Reviews!

Along for the Ride
by Sarah Dessen
Young Adult Fiction

I do not understand how Sarah Dessen does what she does. She writes about normal high school drama, but she makes it so good that you cannot put the book down. I read A LOT of young adult fiction--WAY more than I review here--and yet I can't figure out how Sarah Dessen's books are so addictive. This one is about a very book-smart girl named Auden who decides to spend her 18th summer with her father, new stepmother, and new baby sister. Auden's parents had a rocky marriage and a cold divorce, and Auden still hasn't come to terms with the turmoil. She doesn't sleep at night, and finds herself experiencing a whole new world at night in her father's beach town. There's a boy, a bike, pie, a laundromat, three crazy girls, and some great writing. Watch for this in June.


Little Brother
by Cory Doctorow
Young Adult Science Fiction

Wow. Wow. This book is genius. It's a dystopian take on the 9/11 tragedy, except 9/11 was the bombing of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. Marcus and his friends are skipping school for the sake of an online game, and they are arrested in connection with the terrorist attack. San Francisco becomes a police state and Marcus and his friends are on the front lines, fighting for their right to privacy and free speech. The political aspect is great, but the really brilliant part is the way that Cory Doctorow has projected American technology into the future. Cory Doctorow makes math and history AWESOME in this book.

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet
by Reif Larsen
Adult fiction

Tecumseh Sparrow "T.S." Spivet is a genius cartographer. He revels in the world's details and patterns, carefully fitting them together so that they make sense. Descended from a long line of ranchers named Tecumseh, he lives on the Coppertop Ranch in Montana with his slow-talking, whiskey-drinking father; his biologist mother; and his bored 16-year-old sister. T.S. is twelve, although even he forgets this fact sometimes. When he gets a call from the Smithsonian awarding him the prestigious Baird Award, he hops a freight train to the nation's capital. In this book, which is full of T.S.'s observations and maps, we see the world through the eyes of a Cheerio-obsessed twelve-year-old with the wisdom of an old soul. It is funny, tender, heartwarming, heartbreaking, and full of insight. On every page there was something that I wanted to read aloud. Watch for this in May.


Academy 7
By Anne Osterlund
Young Adult Science Fiction

This one took me by surprise. Last year I read and liked Aurelia, Osterlund's debut novel, but with this one I felt that she really hit her stride. Aurelia is a sort of medieval princess espionage romance, so I was expecting something a little like that--but it was clear in the first few pages that Academy 7 is 100% science fiction. It's got a really well-developed political universe, and the characters feel very authentic within it. Aerin and Dane, the two main characters, find themselves at the universe's most elite academy, surrounded by students who fit in a bit better than Aerin and Dane do. As the year goes on, they are thrown together more and more until their bond is finally tested. Osterlund builds suspense by releasing one little detail at a time...I couldn't put this down until the story was over. Watch for this one in May, too.

How Many Have YOU Read?

I apologize for disappearing from the face of the earth. I was preparing for the infamous California Subject Exam for Teachers, and then taking the horrid thing. But I'm back now, and I'll start posting reviews again soon. In the meantime, here's an abridged version of the Penguin Group's

Books Every Child's Library Should Have

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Good Night, Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann
The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper
The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
Each Peach Pear Plum by Allan Ahlberg
Llama, Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney
Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey
Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney
Corduroy by Don Freeman
Skippyjon Jones by Judy Schachner
Angelina Ballerina by Katherine Holabird
Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf
Strega Nona: Her Story by Tomie dePaola
The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack
The Mitten by Jan Brett