Secret Bonus Task #3

Hey, Summer Reading Challengers! Things are heating up...we've already had over twenty kids finish level one! Remember, you get one entry in the Grand Prize Drawing for every level you complete, and one more entry for every Secret Bonus Task you finish.

Here's the third Secret Bonus Task:

Fill out a character sketch for a character you've invented. The character sketches are available on the Summer Reading Challenge wall at the bookstore. Or you can email me (Jake) at p1ratewench@hotmail.com and I'll email you a copy.

Hand in your completed character sketch when you turn in your next level. The sheets will be available until 7 p.m. on Thursday, July 7th.

Happy reading! And happy Independence Day!

jake

Secret Bonus Task #2

Secret Bonus Task #2:

Come to the 2nd annual Children's Book Swap! The swap is this Sunday, June 26th at 5 p.m. Bring all the used books you don't read any more and trade them for other books!

All donations must be received at the store by 4 p.m. on Sunday. There will be a sale at the front of the store for grown-ups.

Secret Bonus Task #1

I'm so sorry, Summer Reading Challengers--I didn't realize you were coming to the blog to find the Secret Bonus Tasks! I'll be posting them here on Friday from now on. They will also be on the Summer Reading Challenge wall at the bookstore.

The first Secret Bonus Task is this:

When you pick up your Reading Record at the store, write the code word "NOSTRIL" at the bottom of the page. You'll get an extra entry in the grand prize drawing when you hand in your Reading Record.

Good luck, and keep reading!

(And don't forget about the Children's Book Swap on Sunday at 5 p.m.)

Review by Mayfair

Title: Starcrossed
Author: Josephine Angelini
Genre: Young Adult
Publisher: HarperTeen
Publication date: Available now in hardcover
Reviewed by: Mayfair

Helen Hamilton, a resident of the small island of Nantucket, is different, she doesnʼt know why, all she knows is she finds herself waking up from vivid nightmares feeling like sheʼs walked hundreds of miles, or feeling cramps so bad she needs to go home from school. A family moves onto the island. One of the boys, Lucas Delos, helps Helen find what she really is, her true heritage. The Three Fates have decided that Lucas and Helen will be never be together. Will their true love overcome the power of the Three Fates?

Author Josephine Angelini has created an unpredictable plot, that will have the pages turning. Starcrossed is a Greek mythology and romance twisted book that should be a definite must-have on your book list. Angelini is an amazing author and I truly hope that she will write a sequel to Starcrossed. In fact, the ending of Starcrossed practically screamed the fact that there will be a second book.

If you liked this book you should like these books:
The Pandora Series, by Carolyn Hennesy (ages 8-12)
The Percy Jackson series, by Rick Riordan (ages 8-14)
Troy, by Adele Geras (ages 10-adult)
Fallen, by Lauren Kate (ages 12-adult)
Torment, by Lauren Kate (ages 12-adult)

Addition by Jake: you might also like Abandon by Meg Cabot (ages 14-adult).

This is Teen

One of the major perks of bookselling is getting to hang out with authors. Something I've noticed in four years of spending time with authors is that there are some very different communities within the publishing world. Some authors keep to themselves. Others (usually award-winners) limit their author-author relationships to people who are at least as famous as they are. Still others have a tight-knit community of local writers.

But it's the Young Adult community that really blows my mind. These people are crazy. First of all, it seems like most of them are friends with each other, even the ones whom you'd never expect to get along. Second of all, follow any one of them on Twitter and you'll quickly learn that they have WAY more fun than you do. While you're going about your day, doing your boring day-things, they are inventing crapfts (crappy crafts) and making bets that end in someone eating a Crisco milkshake and passing around a pair of traveling pajants. I'm not making this up. All of these things have actually happened. And in between they're getting angry about injustice and convincing young people to care about something other than what their classmates are thinking about them.

Also, they write books.

So I'm always a little wary when I come across an author whom I know to belong to this group of lunatics. Some of them seem perfectly nice and normal on the outside, and then BAM! They're doing an interpretive dance to summarize their latest book for a middle-aged man who hasn't read it yet.

Which is exactly what happened last week at a Scholastic luncheon with Libba Bray.

"Livin' Large," featuring Meg Cabot, Maggie Stiefvater, and Libba Bray


I was really excited about this luncheon, because I have a lot of respect for all three authors who were there. Libba Bray (Beauty Queens), Meg Cabot (Abandon), and Maggie Stiefvater (the Shiver series and The Scorpio Races) are giants in YA literature. I don't know why I expected them to be be sober, serious professionals when I know for a fact that they're actually way more interesting than I am. The fact that Scholastic is sending them around the country together means that the publishing industry is starting to wise up to the fact that YA authors can be used for entertainment as well as for the signing of title pages. And believe you me, we got some serious entertainment.

It's common knowledge that The Young Adult Genre Is Exploding. Every day I have adults wander into the bookstore looking for this "new thing," YA. So, great, now you've read your first YA book, good for you. The next step is to start organizing outings to readings with YA authors (with, of course, a group of young adults). I promise you, something interesting will happen...and you never know who else might be in the audience.

Review of The Scorpio Races

Title: The Scorpio Races
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Young Adult fantasy
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Publication date: October 18, 2011

I like fantasy novels; I always have. These days, with the explosion of the YA genre, it's actually a little harder to find a good, straight-up fantasy novel. It seems like everything has to include one of the current trends: vampires, or a badass female heroine, or what have you. That makes it so much more satisfying when I find an original fantasy novel.

Prior to this book, Maggie Stiefvater wrote a trilogy about werewolves that includes Shiver, Linger, and Forever. I'm not a huge fan of werewolf mythology, but what impressed me about that series was the way that Stiefvater differentiated between the four characters who narrate the series. When I picked up The Scorpio Races, I was expecting more of the same.

This book is nothing like anything I've read before.

Kate "Puck" Connolly lost her parents to the capaill uisge, the water horses, some time ago. Now she and her two brothers are struggling to make ends meet on the tiny island of Thisby, where there are more people than jobs. This year, Kate knows that she needs to make some money from the Scorpio Races, but she doesn't intend to actually race until her older brother announces that he's leaving the island. In attempt to make him stay, she enters the race as the first female rider in the race's history. Here's the catch: it's not an ordinary race. She'll have to ride a water horse.

As an Irish-American, I love the atmosphere of this novel. It's got all the music and melancholy of the traditional Celtic myths without the darkness that can easily take over. Stiefvater really brings Thisby alive, from the landscape to the weather to the colorful people who live and visit there. And Kate is a real heroine: desperate, hesitant, but fiercely courageous because she is protecting those she loves.

When I finished the book, I found myself wishing I could spend a little more time on Thisby.

Review of Lola and the Boy Next Door

Title: Lola and the Boy Next Door
Author: Stephanie Perkins
Genre: Young Adult fiction
Publisher: Dutton
Publication date: September 29th, 2011

I went into this book with mixed expectations. On one hand, there's a purple-haired girl on the cover, which is awesome. On the other hand, it isn't Anna and the French Kiss, which is an automatic mark against it (and most other contemporary YA). Plus, it's Perkins's second novel, which means it's subject to the Second Novel Curse. So I approached it with caution.

I quickly discovered that any comparison to Anna and the French Kiss was unnecessary. Lola and Anna are like apples and oranges. Lola is...crazy. Like, the kind of crazy that involves a lot of wigs and a dress made out of a sheet. She's also extremely dramatic. At points even the narration is over-the-top, Lola style.

In Lola and the Boy Next Door, the Bell family has just moved back into the house next to Lola's. Lola and Cricket Bell used to be almost-more-than-friends, until Cricket got weird and broke her heart. Now Lola is her own woman: she's got amazing style, a hot rocker boyfriend, and a life that does not need to include Cricket. It's hard to avoid him, though, when his bedroom window is only a few feet from hers.

The things I love about this novel are legion. First of all, Lola's family is very unconventional. She lives in the Castro in San Francisco with her two dads, one of whom is a professional baker. (The second thing I love is the pie. Every good book should have at least one pie in it.) Anna and St. Clair make an appearance, but the real story is between Lola and Cricket. He's awkward, sweet, a gifted inventor, and has great taste in pants (in Lola's opinion).

I was really impressed by how different Lola's voice is from Anna's. This novel didn't feel at all like Perkins's first, despite being just as excellent and satisfying. I think Stephanie Perkins is right up there with Sarah Dessen when it comes to comfort reads. I'm glad we have at least one more (Isla and the Happily Ever After) to look forward to.