ALA Adventures and Free Book Giveaway!!!

Posted

Hello, friends. I’m having a magically fun adventure at the American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago this week. I’ve strolled the conference floor for hours, picking up books an information and talking to people. I’ve met tons of cool librarians, fellow authors and book lovers galore.

I will post pics and tell my tales when I get back home (and I’ve got some good ones). At that point, I will need to exercise my fingers and rest my weary feet….

Also…the folks over at ColorOnline are doing a summer book giveaway, so pop over there to enter to win a copy of The Rock and the River, or one of several other awesome titles!!!!

What A Girl Wants: Writing Multicultural Characters

Posted

Okay….so I just wrote a long post about why everyone should pop over to Chasing Ray and read the latest “What a Girl Wants” conversation….then Blogger ate it. Grrr.

So, more on the why later, but anyone with an interest in multicutural characters in YA literature should pop over HERE for a peek.

Review at Color Online

Posted

Susan at ColorOnline has posted a discussion of some of her favorite books of the year so far, including The Rock and the River! She gives it a nice review, too. Yay!

Susan also lists and reviews some other great titles, and she talks about why historical fiction is growing on her. See, there are plenty of excellent reasons why you should check it out HERE.

Spicy Reads Review

Posted

An awesome new review of The Rock and the River is up at My Road Trip (SpicyReads.org). The reviewer, Ed Spicer, put in some great reflections about how the book affected him and sparked memories of his own experiences in 1968. Excellent commentary! And it’s not just about the book, so even if you already read The Rock and the River, it’s totally worth checking out.

Sneak Peek:

“In the late sixties and early seventies the United States saw the rise of the Black Panther Party in Chicago. In my neighborhood, the Black Panther Party was imbued with a certain amount of awe mixed with terror. We saw Blacks on the street and we locked our car doors. We took an exceptionally long time to really look at a Black like Huey Newton and really try to understand what he is saying and why he is saying it.”

Sneak Peek 2:

“Magoon’s book is an excellent fictional depiction that captures the fierce debate within the black community about how to end the systematic degradation and humiliation of black people in America. What I like about this book is that it gives readers, even old white readers like me, an insight into the human cost of protesting.”

Wanna read the rest? (Yeah, you know you do.) CHECK IT OUT HERE.

What A Girl Wants, What A Girl Reads

Posted

The “What a Girl Wants” interview series has launched over at Chasing Ray.

Today we’re talking about what we read as tweens/teens that most impacted us.

Check it out!

And then join the discussion in the comments section. This is really fun. I’m thrilled to be a part of this fabulous group of writer women!

What A Girl Wants

Posted

Colleen Mondor, of Chasing Ray , is hosting a brand new, exciting round table of women authors talking about “What a Girl Wants.”

It launches later this week, and I’ll be participating!

Here’s a sneak peek at Colleen’s introduction to the conversation:

“I’ve been a bit bothered for awhile now about the kind of books being published for teen girls. As anyone who reads YA titles knows, there are a lot more books for girls out there than boys…. But for girls, I can’t help but think that while there are a lot of books with female protagonists, there are not a lot of books with diverse female protags…. For every Dewey (courtesy Ellen Klages) or Rose (courtesy Hilary McKay) you have to wade through a lot of mean girls. And don’t even get me started on how difficult it is to find minority characters or GBLTQ characters in teen girl fiction. I’ve written about all of this before but what I’d really like to hear now is what other people think about the current status of books for teen girls and what it says about both what they want to read and what publishers think they want to read.”

Curious? Intrigued? Check out the full post on Chasing Ray.

Interview on The Chocolate Pages Show

Posted

Thursday evening I was interviewed on Blog Talk Radio, for Pam Perry’s The Chocolate Pages Show.

You can listen to the podcast here. The show’s a hour long, and I’m not the only guest, so my part doesn’t start until around 28:00, if you care to fast forward. I’m on for about half an hour. The other guest is Larry Jemison, and the topic is how to inspire youth, so if you have the full hour at your disposal, listen to it all!

Someday, if and when my latent technological savvy kicks in, I’ll try to post a briefer version that is just the highlights…….

As If BEA Wasn’t Enough…

Posted

Last night I got to give a copy of The Rock and the River to Ms. Phylicia Rashad.

I handed her a signed copy, and she looked at it, then asked me to personalize it.

I was over the moon.

Enough said.