Yikes – you can totally tell summer reading chaos has eaten my life!  Back in March I resolved to bring my blog back to life and commit myself to posting regularly.  I’ve been doing pretty well with it (and it’s turned out to be much more satisfying than I remembered!) but then, of course, came the SUMMER READING CRUSH and I started to backslide!  So, I’m recommitting to my promise to blog.  Honestly, I won’t be able to post AS regularly, but I am vowing to still keep posting.  IN FACT I am vowing to blog about summer reading!  There’s so much about our program changing this year, I want to document it all – what works and what doesn’t.

The first place to start is with READY, SET, READ – a program we launched this summer (two sessions so far) designed to reinvent our storytime offerings for ages 0-6.  Our problem was, I am sure, not unique to our library.  We had two storytime offerings on Thursday morning: a 0-3 baby storytime we called “wigglers” and a 3-5 storytime we called “walkers”.  The problem was, as I am sure you can guess,  that these ages got all mixed up and amorphous and we weren’t ever really doing an “older” kid storytime and the older kids were distracting in the baby storytime and on and on.   I knew something had to be done … but what?

Let me take a minute here to tell you how my professional life was forever changed by meeting the indescribably inspiring Katie Salo.

I first met Katie in 2011.  (Here we are at Midwinter 2012, hanging out with Kevin Henke’s Penny!) She was, without a doubt, one of the best early literacy librarians I had ever met.  She runs the amazing blog Storytime Katie – which if you’re not using as a resource, you’re missing out.  The way she approaches storytime was nothing short of revelatory for me.  “Whoa,” I thought, “I wish *I* could do that!” It was certainly reinvigorating and through reading Katie’s blog I was introduced to dozens of other amazing and committed early literacy librarians.

There’s that.

But it was more than that: it was the fact that Katie  is ALSO one of the best teen librarians I know. She’s intimately familiar with YA lit and she runs great programs for her teens.

When I met Katie, I realized that I could no longer say to myself, “Sure, you struggle with the early literacy part of your job, but you’re AMAZING with teens, which is your strength!” I am not a teen librarian – I am a youth services librarian and it is my responsibility to be amazing, innovative, and committed to all my patrons, ages 0-18. And once I saw how good Katie was at both parts of her job?  I knew I had to commit to trying to be like her.

My early literacy journey has not been easy! Library service to 7-18 year olds comes easy to me.  I can wing it.  I can improvise.  I can engage easily. I am not afraid, in short.  But that 0-6 contingent – oh,  I’ve struggled.  It takes research, careful planning, reading lots of blogs and professional literature, and asking for lots of guidance and help.  But luckily, like Katie, everyone has been more than willing to help and share.

Here are some of the librarians who were (and remain!) the most inspirational to me as I embarked on my early literacy journey:

Hi Miss Julie

Mel’s Desk

Read Sing Play

The Show Me Librarian

the many amazing contributors at the ALSC blog

and the countless people I interact, follow, and converse with daily on Twitter, who are always there to offer ideas and encouragement.

With these motivations in place, I decided summer was the perfect time to finally do something about all that storytime overlap, both for the 0-3 year old crowd, who were missing out on their own focused time AND for our older crowd.  Using Katie’s Growing Readers and Julie’s Beginning Readers as my inspiration, my library launched READY, SET, READ as a pilot program.

 (We’re using an image of a stoplight from ClipArt as the logo – it’s simple to grasp and fits our theme and title.)

In just the two sessions we’ve offered, it’s been a great hit.  We’ve had an older crowd both times, age appropriate to what we’ve been advertising and what our focus goal was.  I’ve focused on including a longer fingerplay and a short craft, neither of which we do at our 0-3 storytime.  I’ve also read longer books, which is such a treat!  Here’s a general outline of how the last two weeks have gone and what I’ve learned.

Week 1: Caterpillars

We all arrived and introduced ourselves.  Some kids even spelled their names, but I didn’t want to pressure others who might not have all their letters yet.

I talked about how today’s theme was caterpillars and we were going to read stories and sing songs and even make a project about caterpillars.  (I also mentioned that we were going to learn new words, which gave some of the older and more developed kids, a chance to immediately shout out CHRYSALIS!!!!)

Our first book was Arabella Miller’s Tiny Caterpillar by Clare Jarrett

And then we learned the fingerplay for Caterpillar, which I found on YouTube and practiced until I had it memorized!  With the help of my student worker, we sang this to the kids a few times and then let them sing along.  To encourage parents to keep practicing (and hopefully learn new fingerplays) one of their take homes was a print-out of the lyrics and a way to find the YouTube video.

Then we read our second book: Ten Little Caterpillars by Bill Martin, Jr.

This is a relatively simple counting book, but it was great to read this with an older group because we got to really dig into Ehlert’s awesome pictures and attention to detail in each illustration.  We practiced the words for the flowers and animals, I asked the kids to name animals they saw, we talked about how each caterpillar looked, we looked at the other words on the page, we described what each caterpillar was doing.

When our books were done, we did a simple craft that helped me burn through some of our million pompoms!

This was a great chance to talk about colors, texture, and sizes and to practice squeezing just the right amount of glue. (The greatest of all challenges for littles!)

We went back to our seats and gave our caterpillars a chance to dry and practice singing the fingerplay a few more times.

The first week was a great success, we had lots of immediate, positive feedback from parents and the kids all seemed to have a great time.  All together there were about 14 kids in attendance.

Even though it went well, I still learned lessons for the next time!

Week Two: Apples

Lesson #1: HAVE MORE BOOKS.

In the first session my mistake was not having enough books for everyone to check out and look at.  Also, they make a good decoration: for the kids I think it’s exciting and encouraging to see so many books. So, for week two I made sure we had lots of books about apples and apple pies, including some non-fiction.

Lesson #2: Include a welcoming song. I wanted a firmer way to establish storytime was starting and a song was the perfect choice.  Twitter really came through for me, giving me lots of suggestions.  I’m not sure I’ll use the same song every time, but it did set the mood.

Lesson # 3: Maybe don’t do a project that needs time to dry. Now this is not to say I won’t ever do another craft with glue, but if I do, I’ll structure the book/fingerplay/craft differently. The caterpillars were still drying when we were done, so that wasn’t the best, timing-wise.

For week two, I followed the same outline.  (This time with a welcome song!) We again read a book, did our fingerplay, read another book, and then did our craft.

Our first book was Ducking for Apples by Lynne Berry

Another fun book to do with an older crowd, lots of talk about rhymes and predicting what words might rhyme next.

Our fingerplay was the classic Two Apples.  Using the awesome resources from Hennepin County Library, I again made a handout for take home featuring the lyrics and a way to find the video.

Then we read One Red Apple by Harriet Ziefert.

And moved on to our project.  This week, I chose to make a mini-book.  I found a FREE template on Teachers Pay Teachers (can’t live without it as a resource!) for a mini-book about apples and had our volunteers assemble it.  Here’s an example of what our book looked like.

Then the kids each colored their own book. It’s full of simple, repetitive sight words – perfect for the program.  I was worried the kids wouldn’t be into this, but they loved it.  They loved the sight words and they loved the colors (some colored according to the caption, others didn’t).  I heard several kids asking their parents to read them the book and I heard others already reciting some of the sentences.  Also, I think this a great, empowering take-home: their own books!

A struggle this week was I chose to move them out of our smaller storytime room to a larger area to color.  This was great because it gave them more space to work and encouraged their parents and little siblings to come over and participate too … but it wasn’t so great because it was harder to get them to focus for an official closing and to look at the books we had available.   Maybe that’s a trade-off worth making, however, to let them work at their own pace and have lots of room.

We had another good crowd of around 12-14 kids, some returns and some new faces.  Of course, I wrung my hands over the kids who didn’t come back (what if they hated the first week??!) but that’s just my nature!   I felt, again, like we’d really did something different and important and it was great to connect with and reach out to these older kids.

Now we’re headed into week three!  My colleague Melissa will be making her Ready, Set, Read debut and I’m excited to see what she learns and tries and what works and doesn’t.  There are so many things I want to try next!

Ready, Set, Read is, for me, a challenge.  I have to put in a lot of work with it and I KNOW that I am still learning and will still need lots of guidance and support.  But I know I can do it!  I know I need to try!  I’ve seen the benefits – it doesn’t just make me feel like a better librarian, it makes me happy I’m really addressing a community need.  And I know I have an amazing professional learning network – full of librarians like Katie – to show me how it can be done and encourage me along the way.

Do YOU do an early literacy storytime or a similar program?  How have you handled the challenges of different ages at storytime?  What tips and tricks and lessons of your own do you have to share for any programs geared at this age?

I’m off to learn my next set of fingerplays :) but I can’t wait for the conversation to continue …

Artwork by John LeMasney, lemasney.com

It’s almost impossible for me to think of three librarians I admire and learn from more than Liz Burns, Kelly Jensen, and Sophie Brookover. They have acted as sounding boards, cheering squads, hand-holders, and inspirations for me in all aspects of my professional life. So, it was no surprise to me that they came up with an amazing way to help librarians talk about self-promotion: what it means, what it looks like, why we do it.  They called this project SHOW ME THE AWESOME.  Here’s an intro post from Kelly explaining it all.  SHOW ME THE AWESOME will run over the course of May, with a ton of librarians participating.   Already the past two weeks have been chock-full of great writing and insight into not just what self-promotion means but even great examples of  successful programs and outreach worth promoting. Believe me, you’ll want to read through all these amazing posts – they’re energizing and inspiring. So make sure you bookmark  this on-going round-up of SHOW ME THE AWESOME posts from Sophie.  It’s constantly updated and there’s SO MUCH good stuff there!

When I started thinking about what I wanted to discuss about self-promotion I thought of several programs I’d love to talk about or how I created a teen non-fiction collection or how I grew our manga collection and used it to wildly boost teen circulation.  Those were all serious thoughts and things I wanted to share and promote.  But then I came back to an idea that was even simpler.  I wanted to get all meta and talk about self-promotion itself.  And that’s when I realized that if you’re having problems with self-promotion, with the concept, with what it can do for you – it’s really very simple.

Stop calling it self-promotion.

Self-promotion is focused on self.  It’s the first word, after all.  Self-promotion sounds like someone who is focused on talking only about you, you, you.   It’s even has connotations that, gosh, if that person were any good – if what they were doing was any good – someone else would surely notice and then talk about and promote it without their interference.  So a self-promoter?  That must be someone who just wants to talk about their mediocre work because no one else will.

Think, instead, of having a conversation – of talking to someone about what you do and why you love it.  Think about your part in this conversation: how you’ll talk about what you did, the work you put into the project, the results you had in mind.  Think about this moment, this conversation, as one of sharing.

That sounds much better, doesn’t it? As a matter of fact, that probably sounds like something you do quite often, something you probably even enjoy.  That sounds like something you do at the salad bar and the grocery store and in small talk and, sometimes, without even being totally conscious of it.

It’s time to change that part.  It’s time to start thinking of ALL those conversations: the ones you have with colleagues, the ones you have with library and community stakeholders, the ones you have with friends who want to chat about your job,  as what they really are: self-promotion.

And yet you still don’t have to call it that.  You still don’t have to think of it as something you’re doing because you’re not good enough for someone else to do it for/about you. You can think of it, instead, as just the regular conversation about what you do, what you do in your library, and what you do in your professional life.  You can think of it as the way you explain to people that, no, actually, libraries are still very well used even though Google exists and yes, actually, lots of children and teens still love reading.  When you do this, when you do this with the clarity and passion that comes so naturally to every librarian I’ve ever talked with who believes in what we do, you are promoting not just YOURSELF and the work you do in your library and your daily life but the work all of us in our profession do.

And that, I think, is the most important lesson of “self-promotion” – it SAYS self right there and sometimes it FEELS like it’s all about self, self, self – what it’s really promoting is the value and critical importance of librarianship.  You might feel like you’re only talking about yourself, but you’re not.  You’re talking about the libraries and librarians a person has loved their whole life.  You’re talking about the things they had no idea we do now days.  You’re talking about the kind of dedication and innovation libraries in every single town in this country bring to work every day, determined to push on in the face of budget cuts and public naysayers.

In the end, self promotion, that word and concept you might struggle with or might even think doesn’t apply to all that “regular” stuff you do, is as simple as one thing:

you’re sharing the truth of what we do when you talk about what YOU do. 

“The hole is what lets it change.”

What a moment it is – the moment of recognition, the moment when you feel like someone has seen you.  For me, this moment of connection sends an almost physical jolt through me.  One of the things I loved the most about Linda Urban’s artfully crafted, painfully beautiful book The Center of Everything is how accurately it captures that moment of recognition and belonging. There is a moment when our main character, the unforgettable Ruby Pepperdine, is surrounded on both sides both physically and mentally by the love and support of two friends and you, as the reader, feel as embraced as Ruby.  You are able to stop and listen even as you are reading.  I felt that jolt of recognition in this text in this wonderful moment and, maybe even better, I felt a jolt of pleasure too.

Why I Love This Book

Craft.  Craft.  Craft.  Craft.  This is, without a doubt, one of the most well-crafted children’s novels I’ve ever read.  Yes, but what does that mean?  For me, that means that everything in The Center of Everything is deliberate; that great thought and careful work has gone into weaving the story together so that it forms a unified, powerful  narrative, a story where all the threads come together in a way that is subtle and moving on several levels at once.  Craft, to me, means that this is a story that moves you without pushing you.  Craft is the way this story uses circles, math, and physics as a narrative device about learning and healing and the way the story simultaneously uses the simple, physical shape of a doughnut – the shape of, you guessed it, a circle - to represent connection and unity.  Craft is the way none of this SHOUTS at the reader, the way, instead, it just all fits together, works together, and makes each other element richer and more resonant.  Craft is the structure of sentences, the use of point of view, both of which are stylistically advanced.  And craft is the very artful way Urban chooses to make the chapters short and move the action in them between the present and recent past, thus making the reader feel the sting of pain and the breathless yet hopeful confusion that Ruby herself feels.   This is a well-crafted story and it shows on every page.  Young readers might not pick up on every one of these subtleties but that’s part of the  beauty of this craft – young readers don’t have to analyze it, they’ll just enjoy it and be completely enchanted by it.

The Center of Everything is very much Ruby Pepperdine’s story: the story of how she is dealing with grief in the wake of her grandmother’s death, the story of how she is navigating new and old friendships, and the story of how she’s trying to figure out what she believes in and why.  BUT The Center of Everything is *also* the story of a place, a very specific place, a small-town in New Hampshire called Bunning.  Bunning is a place where everyone knows your name, where there are acapella groups, amateur stargazing groups, and yearly essay contests about the town’s founder for schoolchildren.  Bunning is the type of town where you can have friends for your whole life and things like parades are whole-town-wide shebangs. Because of all this, Bunning is as much as character in this story as Ruby and the lessons she learns about loving and understanding your place are essential to her healing AND her sense of identity.  I live in a place like Bunning, so this was ESPECIALLY special to me (“That’s my town,” I wanted to shout over and over,) but I think you could live anywhere and still connect to Bunning and recognize it as as a fundamental element of this story’s success.

The Center of Everything is on sale now.  If you can’t buy a copy, check one out from your local library.  If they don’t have it, request they buy a copy.  I think The Center of Everything skews a little bit younger than some middle-grade books (Ruby has just turned 12) but I think it still has lots of appeal to more sophisticated readers because it is so well-written.  It reminded me of Gary Schmidt’s work: thoughtful and really emotionally moving.  I highly recommend this for readers aged 9-12 and, particularly, the readers you have (oh, you know the ones) who hunger for books that are more – the readers who want books that will jolt them with moments of recognition.

The Center of Everything made me cry.  It also made my heart flutter with happiness as I saw all the pieces of it come together with such deliberate plotting and, yes, such love.  The Center of Everything is a lovely piece of art for many reasons but perhaps most of all because it’s a book about how the hole, the thing you think is missing, can be the thing that not just turns your life inside out but also shows you everything strong, good, and kind in your world.

And in you.

What’s the scariest thing you can think of?  A thing that is almost universally feared?  Spiders?  Clowns?  Public speaking?  What about … creepy dolls?  You know the kind, the kind that have heads that seem to sit uncomfortably on their cloth shoulders, the ones with porcelain arms and legs that bend in unnatural ways, the ones with too big smiles for their soft fabric faces, the ones with shiny eyes that blink slowly closed when you lay them down yet somehow still seem to be watching you?  Oooh, did you feel that little shudder?

Yup, that’s scary.  You know what’s scarier though?  What’s the scariest thing I can think of?  Middle school.

Many years ago during a high school assignment, my English class was given a piece of paper and told to draw pictures about our impressions of our life through four stages: before entering school, during elementary school, during middle school, and during high school.  We worked in solitude and then compared pictures.  Everyone had different drawings for before school and elementary school, though most of the “before school” pictures were just colors or flowers and hearts.  Our high school sections, naturally, had the most detail and even writing but they were all different too.  Only one thing was the same: our middle school sections.  Independently the whole class, from the most popular kids to the most nerdy, had colored their middle school section with black marks, scribbles, red Xs, scrawls and jumbles of the angriest, darkest, ugliest colors.  We laughed about it at the time but I never forgot that – for all of us middle school was a jumble of darkness, a scrawl of deep unhappiness.  All these years later this is still so revealing to me.

Is there a worse horror than middle school?  In Doll Bones, one of the most resonant and truly creepy middle grade novels I’ve ever read, Holly Black expertly uses the conventions of ghost stories and horror stories to argue that no, no there’s really nothing scarier than middle school.  Not even the ghost of a girl trapped in the body of a very, very creepy doll. But don’t get me wrong – that’s pretty scary too.  And thus so is Doll Bones, an ingenious and heartbreaking middle grade book about the powers of story and the pressures of growing up.

Doll Bones is the story of three friends, Zach, Alice, and Poppy.  They’ve grown up together playing “the game” – an elaborate make-believe game that uses their dolls and action figures to tell an extensive adventure story.  But now they’re in middle school, about to be teenagers, and Zach calls off the game.  It feels over … until Poppy tells Zach that the eerie, bone-china doll who ruled over the game as the Great Queen is really possessed by the ghost of a dead girl and the Poppy, Zach, and Alice must bring the game to an end with one last adventure: burying the Great Queen.   The three of them set off on a quest and an adventure that will change everything.

So, I think what you’ll hear about Doll Bones in reviews is that it’s scary and atmospheric.  That’s absolutely true, it’s creepy in the best way, the kind  you can’t shake, the kind that crawls up your skin and gives you gooseflesh.  I think you’ll also hear a lot about how Doll Bones is about the power of storytelling.  This is also absolutely true, it’s a narrative that, in the best ways, tells readers that imagination and play are important, can change your life, and have real value.

But what *I* want to tell you about Doll Bones isn’t just all that – it’s that this is a story about the rigid boxes of gender expectations our society tries to force us into and how the scariest part of adolescence can be trying to break out of those boxes.

You see, Zach doesn’t just call off the game – he calls of the game because his father throws away Zach’s players in the game.  His … well, his dolls.  Even though Zach is a popular basketball star, his father thinks he’s too old to be playing with dolls.  12 year old boys, after all, well they shouldn’t.  Without the dolls, the action figures, Zach can’t play.  And here’s a really nice touch: Zach is too ashamed to even admit this to his friends.  He’s been twice-shamed – for playing the game and caring deeply about it and for having to admit that his father thinks doing this makes him less.  And it’s more than just the dolls – it’s clear that what Zach’s father is also really talking about it PLAY.  The clear implication is that Zach, that boys, shouldn’t be playing make-believe and telling stories, which is exactly the kind of play and pastime encouraged by dolls and action figures.   That’s feminine which makes it weak and thus bad.  It’s these gender binaries and their associated societal punishments that will really grind your bones to dust and give you nightmares.  They are the scariest things of all.

I know!  This is some transgressive, brave, and quite frankly brilliant storytelling and plotting.

Doll Bones is an incredibly rich novel because of this and it’s also a lifeline to all the middle-schoolers, boys and girls, who are struggling with trying to fit into the boxes society creates for us about “girls do this” and “boys don’t this” and “this is the right way to talk to boys” and “this is the right way to be friends with girls.” Without ever being didactic and sentimental about it, Doll Bones says “It doesn’t have to be just one way.  It can be any way you want – it can be any story you want to tell.”

Doll Bones is out today!  You can purchase it from your favorite local indie bookseller or check out a copy from your library.  If your library doesn’t own a copy, suggest they purchase one.  Of course, it is highly recommended as first purchase for middle school and public libraries and is the perfect book to booktalk to 6-8 grades in the lead-up to summer reading!   Also, I hope this is going to be in serious Newbery discussions this year.  It’s so finely crafted it really deserves to be.

Doll Bones isn’t just one of my favorite novels of 2013 – it’s one of my favorite middle-grade novels ever.  It makes the most of the potential of this genre; the way middle grade should use this confusing and overwhelming time of life to tell a story that young readers who connect with will keep with them always.   Doll Bones is that kind of adventure and that kind of story.

They’re coming for us.  All of us.

“You’re going to keep reading that book even though it gave you a nightmare last night?” My boyfriend teased as I rolled over and reached out for The Fifth Wave.

I’d just finished briefing him on the intense, very scary nightmare I’d had thanks to The Fifth Wave, the book I’d reluctantly put down the night before as sleep swept me away.

I pulled out my bookmark and dove right back into the book.  ”No,” I answered, smiling slyly at him.  ”I am going to keep reading this book because it gave me a nightmare last night.

THAT’S how good Rick Yancey’s The Fifth Wave is – it gives you nightmares but you just don’t wanna stop.

Longtime readers of the blog will know that I am one of Yancey’s biggest fans – I did a series of posts about his fantastic Monstrumologist series, including an interview with him. I love the way he mixes both literary and genre elements in his work – if there was ever a YA writer who proves you can have your cake (write challenging, interesting literary fiction) and eat it too (that also manages to incorporate elements of genre fiction like horror and sci-fi) it’s Yancey.

Imagine my delight when Yancey’s The Fifth Wave was not just announced but given a full-out media, promotional blitz in the face of the book being optioned as a movie.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  Promotional blitzes usually make ME break out in hives too.  But this book?  This book deserves all the buzz.  Is it because it’s well-written and gripping and an exciting foray into a rarer genre (not just end of the world – ALIENS!) of YA?  Sure, that’s part of it.  But it’s also that The Fifth Wave has something that no amount of publicity blitzes can buy – this is one of “those” books – the kind you just want to talk about, the kind you want to share.

So, the plot is straight-forward enough: aliens attack and, quickly and efficiently start wiping humanity off the map.  There’s plagues and disasters and no attempt at communication.  It’s an honestly upsetting and scary set-up precisely because there’s no in-depth discussion of how it all happens.  It just happens and you, as a reader, feel as powerless as the rest of the world.  We begin in the woods with a single human survivor, a teenage girl named Cassie who fears she might be the last person in the whole world and, to some degree, is afraid of how much she wishes she was.  Cassie is afraid of humanity, you see, because she doesn’t know who she can trust and because everyone she loves and known has been ripped violently away from her.  For Cassie, human connection is almost as scary as whatever the aliens are up to.

Everything about this works as an opening: you feel Cassie’s ultimate desperation, which really motivates you to keep turning the pages and see how she makes it.  And Yancey excels at the details that bring Cassie’s harsh existence to life – when she talks about going into down to get bottled water because she can’t drink from the stream as it might be contaminated from human bodies somewhere upstream – that’s one of those moments that squeezes your stomach with dread and anticipation and the desire to keep burning through pages.  The book is full of details and moments like this.

Cassie is a wonderful character.  She feels like a real teenage girl who has survived unimaginable things and is now going to keep living and keep surviving no matter what because she just has a very, well, human will to survive.  I think teen readers will love this about her – she pushes past all emotional devastation and just keeps surviving.  This is compelling in a realistic, relatable way.  No matter what, Cassie just keeps on going – a lovely, subtle metaphor for what adolescence can sometimes feel like.  As she sets out to find the single family member she thinks might still be alive, Cassie crosses paths with Evan Walker.  They forge a tenuous bond that, like Cassie, the reader isn’t sure can be trusted.

Cassie and Evan’s story is just one part of The Fifth Wave.  The other major action takes place in a government facility where children and teens are being trained up to be the next generation of remorseless killing machines, sent to wipe out, well, the aliens of course.  Yancey creates a whole other world inside the narrative here and it’s just as brutal and unforgiving as the woods where Cassie finds herself.  And, naturally, inside this supposedly safe and alien-free government zone there is more going on than it first appears.  Here, again, is Yancey’s gift for creating tension that makes it impossible to put a book down.  Something is off here, so off … but what and how and why?  You just have to keep reading to find out the next brutal twist.

I really couldn’t stop reading The Fifth Wave – even as it was giving me nightmares.  It was so detailed and rich that reading it was a pleasure.  Not only can I not wait for the next one, but I totally understand why people can’t stop talking about it, even without a giant publicity push, it feels familiar and yet totally new.  There are twists but they make sense within the story and they motivate you to keep looking at the narrative from new angles.  It’s a story that’s genuinely scary; an end-of-the-world book where I actually felt like the world was ending for the first time in a long time and it filled me with a delicious sense of dread and sorrow.  It has characters to care about and invest in and trust.

This book IS going to be the next big thing.  The Fifth Wave is available today!  If you’re a public library, I recommend you order multiple copies because it’s going to circulate and circulate well. If you’re a reader?  I’d be prepared for sleepless nights you won’t soon regret.

—–

[a note about Middle Grade Mondays: this project really is starting this week!  Only I've decided that instead of Mondays, I'll be posting on Tuesdays so I can link up with my amazing friend Sarah, aka GreenBeanTeenQueen, weekly middle-grade posts/reviews called Tween Tuesdays.  Yes, I loathe the word tween too, but no need to use it with your patrons, just use all our reviews/recommendations!  And if there's anyone else interested in joining us, please feel free  to blog/tweet/comment/link along.]

“You are not the future I wanted. I can’t believe the same stupid shit is still happening. I wanted you to be better!  Be better!”

I wait for it, you know.  I wait for that minute, that second, when I will become tired of dystopias.  And sometimes it comes to me in a flash.  Sometimes I am in the middle of a book or am scanning the summaries of that month’s new releases and I am stuck in the middle of the same old thing for the thousandth time – it’s the end of the world and it’s all so obvious yet the science has no explanation and look there’s some middling, predictable love triangle and one of the guys SEEMS like the “bad” boy but PROBABLY he’s not and OH SURPRISE everyone’s corrupt and somehow this totalitarian government with complete control over everything has just been easily overthrown by a 15 year old, sure! I just can’t read another word.  I am bored and, worse, I am worn out of the entire genre beyond belief. “NO MORE DYSTOPIAS!” I say to myself.  ”I’ll read summaries and reviews and skim so I can be up-to-date for booktalking to teens, but no more!” (because, and this part is SO important for me to always keep in mind, my teens still clamor for dystopias.  They are easy sells, they fly off the shelves, they are constantly requested.  I’ve got to buy them and I’ve got to know them. My HIGH-FALUTIN’ ~FEELS do not enter into the reader’s advisory part of my job.) And I mean it!

But then … then there’s one I have to give a shot.  Someone I trust promises me this one is worth it.  It’s a summary I can’t resist.  So, I give just this one a shot and … I am reminded all over again why I love this genre – these dystopias, the post-apocalyptic worlds where teenagers are fighting for survival and figuring out their identities all at the same time. I picked up When We Wake by Karen Healey for a simple reason: she’s one of my Morris authors.  Karen’s debut Guardian of the Dead was one of the five finalists for the 2011 Morris, the year I was a member of the committee.  So, her books are always meaningful to me and, of course, always instant-reads. But still!  Even loving Karen Healey, I was not prepared for the wonderfulness of When We Wake.

When We Wake begins in 2027 on the last day of Tegan Oglietti’s life.  It begins again when Tegan awakes 100 years in the future, the first person to be successfully revived from cryogenic freezing.  Now Tegan must find out who she is 100 years later, the entirety of her world swept away from her in the blink of an eye, and she must also figure out what kind of world she’s now living in and what her part in it all is.

What I Love About This Book

Where to begin with all I love about When We Wake?  How about here: what a loving, wonderful portrayal of teen activists.  What a glorious thing to find in a YA book, a YA fantasy book at that: teenagers who aren’t just in a story to fall in love, who don’t just topple governments with a single flashy action, but who are there, on the streets, doing the every day work of protesting and organizing for change.  That is true both in 2027 and 2127, the teens we meet are interested in the world, in politics, in issues like immigration reform and justice.  These are teenagers I know and have known, smart and passionate and curious.  And this is a real strength of the book – a future world, yes, but with grounding in the here and now, with sympathetic and realistic characters.

I love that when Tegan awakes she finds herself, yes, in a totally foreign world.  It is, after all, 100 years in the future.  And yet.  And yet it’s still a recognizable world.  That’s another thing that wears me out about round after round of dystopias – it’s 150 years in the future but we’ve lost all previous human language and all live in a complete totalitarian  regime in a landscape almost ruined by plagues and natural disasters but, really, everything’s mostly recovered, well the grass is longer.  Uhhh … well that time table seems slightly off to me. The world Tegan finds in 2127 is different, of course, it has different technology and slang and great strides have been made in a lot of social issues. Yet in many ways, the world is still recognizable to Tegan.  People still play guitar and love music, there are still cliques at high schools, there’s still a voracious media and online world to sink into and be wary of.  Because this is a world where things seem real and familiar it’s a world where it’s much easier to feel the stakes, the real costs and risks of Tegan’s choices.  Again, this is a frankly brilliant take on the futuristic novel and the dystopia.

In fact, note my use of the word dystopia.  There’s plenty right in the world of 2127 – and Tegan, from a time when the world seemed to be tearing apart, can’t help but see all that.  What’s amazing and rich and nuanced about Healey’s work is that, within all of this, within Tegan knowing all of this – there’s still things wrong, very wrong,  in the world Tegan finds herself in.  A lot of what makes the novel IMPOSSIBLE to put down (I ripped through it) is how Healey ratchets up the stakes and the suspense to reveal just how deep this wrongness goes.  Usually in a typical dystopia the bad is so bad and the good is so good that very rarely do readers have a chance to look around at the world the author has built for them and, without having to side with a genocidal lunatic, think  ”But, really, is it all bad?” But that’s a real choice Tegan faces, a real puzzle she must untangle.  How bad is the bad and what exactly will I, Tegan Ogiletti, do about it?  What a question!  And, thanks to Healey’s amazing prose, what an answer we are given!

When We Wake is available to purchase now. If you can’t purchase one, go check out a copy from your local library and if they don’t have one, request they add it to their collection!  It is highly recommended for readers aged 13-18 and as a first purchase for public libraries, especially if you have a crowd who eats up end of the world books but also hungers for something new.

I return to the title – this isn’t just a story of When I Wake.  The WE is there for a reason.  This is a story of awakening, coming of age, and, most moving to me, of choosing to pick up the fight when something is unjust.  We are called awake and into this world with great passion and clarity thanks to Healey’s writing.  In a crowded field of books I thought I was all burned out on, When We Wake is special indeed.  It helped reignite my passion for dystopias and, best of all, it gave me something to think about.

(Here’s a Tor review of When We Wake that I absolutely loved and a fantastic Twitterview with Healey by Kim at Stacked.)

The beauty of Koningsburg prose was how acutely she captured the aches and pains of being an outsider, a loner, a kid that was a little different.  There’s something particularly middle-grade about that, I think,  the aches and pains of not just figuring out who you are but understanding that who you are is a little different … and that’s OK.  In her best books, there are both costs and rewards for these differences, it’s no simple change or choice.

When you hear her name I suspect, like most people, you think of the classic From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - the 1967 Newbery winner roundly considered one of the definitive works of children’s literature.  This is one of those books that was simply always in my life.  It was one of the books in our home and a book I remembered seeing my older sister read time and again.  When it was finally my turn to read it (I was probably around 9) I was so excited I could barely stand it.  And … I totally failed to connect with it.

I liked it, I guess, but even at 9 years old it seemed so … well, it seemed unbelievable to me.  Nothing happening in that book felt real to me.  Which, don’t get me wrong, I loved fantasy books (though, honestly, as a child reader, I liked realistic fiction more than fantasy) but Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler wasn’t fantasy.  Of course, I realize now as an adult it’s a work of magical realism, fantasy of a sort.  It doesn’t have to be rooted in the realism of “yes, but in actuality children couldn’t…” because it’s about possibilities and dreams.  

Of course I know that now.  And now I can see what a lovely book Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is – how all the pieces fit together, how it is an exemplary example of craft.  I know all that.  But lo these 25+ years later, I still cannot connect with it.

And so, perhaps, that would be that: not worth noting, even upon Konigsburg’s death: newsflash: a Newbery winner and classic one person doesn’t really connect with! But, for me, that’s not just that.

Because in 1996 (the year I graduated from high school, my last year as an official “child”) Konigsburg wrote The View from Saturday, which became her second Newbery winner.  Three summers later, as my life fell apart around my ears and I failed out of college, I came home to work and try to sort my life out by returning to my high school after school job.  That job was at the local public library and I ended up sorting my life out, changing the path of my life, through children’s literature. Four books made this change in me: Lloyd Alexander’s The Book of Three, Jerry Spinelli’s Crash, Rob Thomas’s Rats Saw God, and E.L. Konigsburg’s The View from Saturday.

Every voyage begins when you do.

The View from Saturday, like Basil E. Frankweiler, is staggeringly well-constructed; all the pieces click in just the right ways, there’s suspense but also a clear line tying it all together.  It’s a narrative where seeing all the pieces slowly fit together isn’t just a marvel, it’s a pleasure.  Plot-wise, The View from Saturday is a set of interlocking stories about a group of sixth graders brought together by their teacher who is struggling to return to teaching after an accident to be an unlikely quiz bowl team.

But it’s so much more than that: it’s a book about surviving the cruelty of middle school by creating friendships and uniting together in doing what’s right.  It’s a book about realizing that the truest moments of growing up happen when we have to choose between selfish pettiness and open hearts. The View from Saturday is about kindness, yes, maybe kindness most of all.  But it’s also about the miracle of every connection in our life, how every moment is a chance to reach a hand out to someone and say, “Can I help?  Can I listen?  Can I stand by you?  Can I be part of your story?”

In a sad, hard time in my life – E.L. Konigsburg, the Souls, held out a hand to me.  My voyage began when I was ready, it began, as she’d promised, when I did.

This is the eternal gift we’re left with from E.L. Konigsburg’s work – we’re all a little different, her work said, we’re all looking for something.  And, when you’re ready to speak (Silent to the Bone), to stand up (The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place), to have an adventure beyond belief (Up from Jericho Tel), to tell your history (A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver),  your voyage can begin.

I know now, Mrs. Olinski, librarianship chose me as a much as I chose it.

I know now, Mrs. Frankweiler, the secret.

Thank you, E.L. Konigsburg: thank you, thank you, thank you.

–

via Bookshelves of Doom, here’s a great round-up of remembrances.

Welcome to anyone reading this who attended the New Mexico Library Association’s pre-conference on middle grade literature and library services this past Wednesday as presented by me and Ellie Simons!  I hope you enjoyed yourself and learned at least a few new things to try in your library. Let me apologize for the technical difficulties during my presentation.  Thanks for sticking it out with me through that bump!

If you’re looking for the entire Powerpoint presentation I did (I had to skip a few slides!) You can find it on my Programs/Presentation page or use this direct link.  Ellie will be uploading her presentation to Slideshare when she returns to work on Monday and I’ll add it to the  entry on the Programs/Presentation page, so please check back.  Or, of course, you can email either of us to have us send you something directly!

I realize the technical glitches might have hindered note-taking, boo, so if you have any immediate questions about any titles I talked about (i.e. you remember the description but didn’t get to write the title/author down) please leave a comment on this post or send me and email and I’ll give you the title/author you had in mind.

Now here’s the exciting update for those of you that DIDN’T make it to the pre-conference but just happen to be reading my blog!

In my time preparing for this pre-conference (I did the literature review) I read or reviewed close to 100 middle grade titles.  Most importantly, at least to me, I categorized them as well.  From “Scary Stuff” to “Diary of a Wimpy Kid Readalikes” to “Magic Realism” (and many others!) I worked hard to make these reader’s advisory lists sorted by genre and theme because, in my experience, that’s the most reliable and common kind of reader’s advisory. (do you have funny books…do you have mysteries…do you have sad books?)

And I loved sharing this work with the pre-conference attendees!  But I want to do MORE with it.  So …

Starting this Monday (4/22) I am going to turn these reader’s advisory lists into entries on my blog as part of my Middle Grade Mondays.

I know there’s already an awesome round-up called Marvelous Middle Grade Mondays and I definitely plan to link up with them most times, but this is also just something I want to do for my own sake. Every Monday (well, OK, I’m going to shoot for every Monday!) I’ll post a new themed list of middle grade titles.  There won’t be full reviews of every book, but I’ll post a blurb and short review of every one, including a note about why I’ve made it part of  this particular list.  And, like I did at the pre-conference, I’ll also occasionally include some reflections about trends and themes in middle grade as a whole.  Now, the lists won’t be every single thing I presented at the pre-conference – there might be more and there might be a few less – but I want to use that work as a launching point for this project.

I fell in love with middle grade over the course of researching this pre-conference – I think it has amazing diversity, a wide breath of genre and talent, and so many new and exciting voices.  I want to celebrate, promote, and share that here.  I’m excited to get the fun started.  I hope you’ll read along, make suggestions and share your own middle grade favorites, and maybe even start posting on your blogs about middle grade!

This year I decided it was time for our library to try out Spring Break programming.  I’d be reading about all these amazing youth programs happening at libraries, getting all inspired and fired up, and I decided five days with no school just seemed like too big of an opportunity to pass up.  Maybe we’d get really low turn-out, too many people traveling, no one really coming out during the week.  But my hope was that we’d give parents with several children, now all at home, a little break and maybe even see some new faces.  It also seemed like a good way to start promoting summer: you think this is fun?  We’ve got two months of this coming!  I decided it was worth the effort to try.

And boy was it!  We had about 150 people attend our five day Spring-Break programming spree (not counting our regularly scheduled programs for the 0-5 set,  Music & Movement and storytimes, which continued on during Spring Break).  This was a GREAT number for us, far beyond my original hopes.  So, here’s what we did and here’s what we learned.

We had programs for children/parents on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  All our programs began at 2:00, a tradition we carried over from summer.  It’s hard to find a non-nap-non-snack time that works but we’ve found 2:00 is going to be as good as it gets.  Here’s how the week broke down.

• Monday – Game Day! We put the Wii out and hauled out our board games.  This was a moderate success: about 20 adults and children gamed.  Three 7-10 year olds rocked out on the Wii with Guitar Hero and Super Smash Brothers and the rest all played board games: Memory, Animal Upon Animal, Don’t Spill the Beans, Operation, Chutes and Ladders, and Kerplunk were some favorites.  As always, the slightly older set (6-10) loved the loud games (Operation and Kerplunk) and the slightly younger set (3-5) loved the simpler games (Chutes and Ladders and Don’t Spill the Beans).
• Tuesday – Teen Day! Our usually scheduled Teen Advisory Group met and then we had an evening screening of The Avengers.  Not great attendance at either, ten total, so  not the worst, but it’s always hard for us to get teens to show up on days there aren’t school, but it was important for us to include teen programs!  Avengers had high interest – we got tons of questions about it and it prompted me to decide to have a summer screening of it for all ages!
• Wednesday – Clifford’s Birthday Party!  Like many libraries, we decided to celebrate Clifford’s 50th birthday party.   This was our best attended program, a big hit. We had a daycare group show up for this, which added to the complications, but hey, we rolled with it!  About 50 people, adults and children, attended this program.
• Thursday – Amelia Bedelia’s Birthday Party! We decided having two birthday parties for two beloved characters back to back was a good plan.  This crowd skewed older than Clifford, though we still had younger patrons, which fit well with the Amelia Bedelia jokes.  It was another happy success. About 45 people, adults and children, attended this program.
• Friday – Makerspace! We launched Makerspace with this program – three craft CreationStations and our Lego-Duplo blocks out.  The CreationStations involved beading, paper weaving, and cutting and gluing. The Duplo blocks, making their debut appearance before this summer’s Lego Club, were an runaway hit – they were used in a lot of active play and used to build fences, skyscrapers, birds, and airplanes.  This was a slower program, but we still had about 25 children and adults attend.

MAKERSPACE CreationStation products

What did we do at the birthday party events?  We structured them around our very successful stand-alone summer programs.  Over the past two years we’ve shifted away from “attend every day for a week!” or even “attend every Wednesday!” summer programming and shifted to, instead, one day events focused on a certain theme/book.  I think we’ve seen a lot of gains from that – far more flexibility and variet, more drop-ins, and less pressure about attending (but I can’t come every day!) are a win-win in my book and I think for patrons too.  The Clifford and Amelia Bedelia events were structured the same way.  Here’s the agendas:

• We read the first Clifford book – it still got lots of giggles and laughs and audience participation, they loved it! “She’s washing him in a swimming pool, how silly!” 
• They went on a bone scavenger hunt. Our kids LOVE scavenger hunts – it’s always a favorite at events.  We cut out and taped up 50 paper bones all through out the youth services area. They peeled them off and brought them back. They could do this over and over so I recruited some older attendees to re-hide them so the fun just kept going.  I honestly think most kids could have done this the whole hour!
• They had two simple crafts and this was a big mistake, I learned over this programming extravaganza it’s MUCH better to have more activities than less. Too few and they finish WAY too quickly and start to get restless. One craft was to color and then cut out a bigger bone and then go tape it up on a Clifford birthday cake. (You’ll see from the photo it was pretty adorable!) They also used paint and Q-Tips to paint Clifford, which was a big hit but, again, not enough.
• We wrapped up with a snack time: red punch, strawberries, cheap cookies, and Chex mix. Nothing too fancy, the strawberries were a little pricey, but I thought splurging for fruit was worth it.  We fed about 30 kids for under $25.

BONE CAKE!

For Amelia Bedelia the structure was very similar  but I’d learned from the mistakes the day before and did a better job separating the craft/eating stations (a huge mistake from the day before –  there must be space!) and having more activities on hand.

• We read the very first Amelia Bedelia.  I admit, I had a staff member in the audience to be a ringer and prompt the laughter and we had a little time to stop and talk about the book.  “Draw the drapes can mean to make a picture of them or to close them!  Which do you think Mrs. Rogers meant?!” I also had a third grade helper in the crowd and that worked quite well, he was a good leader.  Still, the kids got into it as it went along, even the younger ones, and by the time we got to the chicken in suspenders and socks they were practically dancing with anticipation to see what she’d done.  It was rewarding to see the book really work with them and worth the conversation and engaging.  Made me totally fall in love with the cleverness of the books all over again.
• Their crafts were to decorate the wings of a BUTTERfly, to cut out and color clothes to dress our giant chicken, and to create their own pie and write about what it had inside in little mini-books.  It was just the right amount of crafts: plenty to do for some, enough to focus on just one for other.  Overall, a big improvement from Clifford BUT we were dealing with an older crowd!
• Snacks were the same but with grapes instead of strawberries.  Even more pricey but…fruit splurging!  They were also in a separate area from the crafts, which took a lot of pressure off all involved!

(The BUTTERfly template: big wings to decorate and color, Amelia Bedelia book display, my student worker all wrapped up in a story.)

I’d be happy to share .PDF or editable files of anything we used for anyone interested.  My amazingly gifted student worker who is also an artist created many templates for us and I bought the pie unit for $3 on Teachers Pay Teachers, the one site I never mind spending money on.

Some takeaways:

• Mini-books are where it’s AT!   They weren’t really on my radar until I started visiting teacher sites and talking about teaching methods with my roommate the third grade teacher but I love them!  I think they’re great for early literacy and understanding story, and parent-child activity, and EVERYTHING LIBRARY.  I am definitely going to incorporate more into programs and even storytimes.  Anyone else use them and have ideas to share?
• Love to the publishers, Scholastic and HarperCollins, for promoting the birthdays and creating such fun event kits.  (Clifford /Amelia Bedelia) The event kits were really good motivators and idea sources.  More of this, please!
• Tied into that: seeing the books check-out was a real highlight and very gratifying   Almost all of them were checked-out at both events.  On Friday, one patron came back to tell me that she and her parents had baked the cake from Amelia Bedelia Bakes Off.  How cool is that?
• We had the most success in the middle of the week.  I think there was some traveling happening on Friday (it was a slower day in the library in general).  I don’t think it was JUST that those were the events people were interested in, though that was a factor I’m sure,  it seemed like the real momentum was the middle of the week.  Having something every day was easier for promotion, though, and gave us chances to talk everything up.
• Related: being able to promote things on our newly created (well, a few months ago) Facebook page really helped – posting every day kept it fresh in people’s minds that SOMETHING was happening today and several items got shared by our local online news source which has a few thousand followers.

In all, Spring Break programs succeeded beyond all my dreams!  I’m glad we decided to take a leap and try something new out.  There were a lot of really great, rewarding, library moments: the mom who brought her tiny baby to Clifford and Amelia Bedelia and held him during reading and colored with him in her lap, the older kids volunteering to help during the two events by putting out chairs and hiding bones and helping younger kids color, hearing the marbles crash down during Kerplunk as kids giggled, parents we don’t usually see during the school year telling us they couldn’t wait for summer, parents in general thanking us for being there during the week off, grandparents having a chance to attend programs, Duplo planes zooming around in younger children’s hands while older siblings made beaded necklaces.  It doesn’t get much more inspiring than that!  It was worth the leap of faith – thanks to all of you out there blogging and tweeting about what you do, it makes me want to try. 

Does YOUR library do Spring Break programs or programs on days your school districts are off?  Have you been inspired to try them?  Most importantly: what ideas do you have to share?  

I am part of the Poison blog tour, dedicated to spreading the word about the amazing work of the late Bridget Zinn, librarian and YA author.  There are dozens and dozens of blogs participating, and I encourage you to visit them all to read more about Poison.  You can also go to Bridget’s site to read more about Poison and about Bridget. (Many authors have also written wonderful pieces about Bridget, one of my favorites is by E.M. Kokie, I really urge you to read that!)  Now, onto the review!

The thing about Poison is: I can’t remember the last time I had this much FUN reading a book.

I suppose I should mention that while I really am genre-ventrous (my made-up word explaining how I really will read any genre) I do read a lot of YA that’s much more … intense, let us say.  Part of this, I think, is because that’s the majority of what’s being published in YA in the first place.  Sometimes it feels like it’s back to back end-of-the-world-fight-to-the-death-sacrifices-suffering-dystopia-murder-rape in YA.  Which, ya know, is kind of brilliant,  because teens love high stakes and honest conversations about their world.  There’s nothing wrong with that, in fact, I think it’s something for the genre to be proud of: YA tells the truth, it doesn’t back down. and it means something.  That’s awesome.

BUT WHAT ABOUT FUN, ALSO?  Reading Poison reminded me of how rewarding that element of YA can be:  the delightful whirl of adventure and magical creatures and banter between two utterly charming leads.

I read Poison with a grin on my face that never stopped.  It was pure delight.

What I Love About This Book

Kyra, a potions-master, thinks she’s the only person who knows that her kingdom in about to collapse, so she’ll do whatever it takes to save it – even if it means killing the future queen, the girl who used to be her best friend.  But!  It all backfires and Kyra is soon on the run, still determined to finish her mission. In short order she finds herself saddled with a pig who can sniff out targets (said pig is not adorable!  Kyra will not be charmed by said pig!) and an obnoxious guy named Fred who just won’t leave her alone to finish her murderous quest in peace.  In hot pursuit are the entire royal guard and Kyra’s ex-boyfriend and fellow potions-master, Hal.  Twists, turns, magical creatures of all sorts, bandits, and undeniable pig adorableness soon ensues.

In short, what’s not to love?  I love everything about our heroine Kyra.  I love that she is clever but not perfect and a bad-ass but not super-human.  I love that she is not only skilled with poison darts but with making the potions as well, this is a great touch, she knows all the complicated chemistry to make the BEST potions, not just how to fling them about.  Kyra is highly skilled, intelligent, and completely capable – a dream YA heroine!  I also love Kyra and Fred.  They have banter worthy of a screwball comedy from the 1940s and one of my all-time favorite meet cutes.  They’re a great pair, full of whiz-bang chemistry that reminded me how truly satisfying a light-hearted romance can be.

I can’t stress enough how much FUN I had reading Poison.  I just flew through it. Zinn did a great job structuring it – you’re pulled into the mystery of Kyra on the run from the first page and you don’t want to stop reading until you find out the ‘whole’ story of how we meet up with her, breaking into her old living quarters, seeking out deadly poison.  The chapters are short and each have a cliff-hanger ending, throwing you headlong into the action chapter by chapter. Another strength of Poison is that not only does it have huge appeal (fans of humor!  fans of romance!  fans of adventure! fans of fairy tales! fans of fantasy!) but it’s high-interest for even younger readers – this isn’t high YA, middle-schoolers are sure to be fans too.  Because of this, and so many other factors, Poison is highly recommended as a first purchase for public libraries.

Poison is, I know, I keep using this word delightful – but it is!  In so many ways, it reminded me of The Princess Bride.  Like The Princess Bride, Poison is full of adventure, swashbuckling, hidden identities, magic, plenty of humor and heart; something that feels old-fashioned and yet modern too.

I’m so glad Bridget Zinn’s Poison is out in the world and once you pick it up and start reading (and trust me, you’ll have a hard time putting it down) you will be too. And I know you’ll want to share it with your teen readers too.

So, because I want to share the sweetness of Poison with as many people as possible, I’m giving away a copy!  All you need to do is leave a comment on this post by April 2 and I’ll choose one random winner. If you don’t win a copy, think about purchasing one. If you can’t purchase one, go check out a copy from your local library and if they don’t have one, request they add it to their collection!

I mean, don’t you think your life could use a little more delight?  Thank you, Bridget, for the all the wonder and fun and joy and, yes, delight.