and the snap of the real.

New young adult novel from Small Beer Press by Delia Sherman, and what makes a book real?

The unnamed agency in our previous post has chosen to come forward to present their perception of our exchange. We confirm that it was the agency we referred to. We stand by every word we wrote in our original article ( Read more... )

Here is where Rachel Brown and I talk about a recent project which we thought would be an easy sell. It's a young adult dystopia with detailed world building, cool powers, futuristic razzle-dazzle, romance, horror, humor, and adventure. It is also gay friendly, and the main characters are not white. The sidekicks are. Click the link to find out ( Read more... )

Riff about it here

rachelmanija and I were talking the other day, and I realized that though I read scads and scads of YA last year for the Norton Award, a lot of them have blended in my mind ( Read more... )

There was a brief exchange that I wanted to highlight in hopes others might want to discuss it.
This relates to my contention that especially as times are perceived to be tough and anxious, the more helpless people feel, the more they turn to fiction that features heroes who display competence. In fact, shows like Leverage and Burn Notice and White ( Read more... )

Re the furor over this article:

This isn’t just ridiculous, it shows that the WSJ children’s book columnist doesn’t understand how books work. Are books about surviving rape only for rape victims? Are addiction memoirs only for addicts ( Read more... )

. . . and those who read them. (Which is not always young adults.)

Cindy Pon and Malinda Lo are launching a website focusing on diversity in YA.

It's Andre Norton Award time again, and we got a very late start for various reasons, some of which is the new rules and a new set of officers. Human nature being what it is, it's easier than ever for those who have a lot of SFWA buddies and the sort of outward-expressed determination to jog their friends into nominating their work to get those top ( Read more... )