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Showing posts from December, 2020

3 ON A YA THEME: AUSSIE YA

  T here’s something in the water in Australia. Among some of the most prestigious award-winning books in the U.S. are books that originally came from the land down under, and publishers in the U.S. continue to bring over talented authors and exceptional YA titles. Perhaps the names Markus Zusak, Melina Marchetta, Justine Larbalestier, John Marsden, or Simmone Howell are already familiar to you. It’d be easy to build a huge list of Australian YA, but we're going to keep titles limited to books that published in the U.S.  Eleven girls went to the park with their teacher, but eleven girls came back to the park without their teacher. What happened to Miss Renshaw is the central question in Ursula Dubosarsky’s  The Golden Day . Did she run off with Morgan, the man who lived in the park because he was avoiding war? Did Morgan kill her? It takes eight years before any of the girls are ready to talk about what they saw that day or what details they remember, but by then, perhaps their mem

3 ON A YA THEME: CHARACTERS WITH DISABILITIES

Reading diversely and talking about diversity in reading has been a huge priority this year. It’s a theme and discussion that will continue on through the new year and long after. As you prepare your to-be-read piles for the turn of the calendar, as well as build up your reads within YA, it’d be high time to talk about three books that feature disabled characters. We don’t talk enough about disability, and we don’t see disabled characters in our reading as much as we should. This, as much as skin color and sexuality, matters greatly and represents what learning about and living in a diverse world means. It’s thanks to the writers and readers at sites like  Disability in Kid Lit  that we learn far more about disability than ever have in the past — and for readers who want to educate themselves, as well as continue growing a to-be-read list of quality kid lit featuring disabled characters, this is a go-to resource. Here are three YA novels where disability is a significant and important 

More YA Dance Books!

  Let’s take a look at 3 YA books — two fiction and one non-fiction — featuring people of color who are dancers.   A Time To Dance  by Padma Venkatraman Veda, a classical dance prodigy in India, lives and breathes dance– so when an accident leaves her a below-knee amputee, her dreams are shattered. For a girl who’s grown used to receiving applause for her dance prowess and flexibility, adjusting to a prosthetic leg is painful and humbling. But Veda refuses to let her disability rob her of her dreams, and she starts all over again, taking beginner classes with the youngest dancers. Then Veda meets Govinda, a young man who approaches dance as a spiritual pursuit. As their relationship deepens, Veda reconnects with the world around her, and begins to discover who she is and what dance truly means to her. Pointe  by Brandy Colbert Theo is better now. She’s eating again, dating guys who are almost appropriate, and well on her way to becoming an elite ballet dancer. But when her oldest frien

3 of the Best YA Books About Dance

  Tirzah Price   Dec 16, 2020 This week, the adaptation of  Tiny Pretty Things  by Dhonielle Clayton and Sona Charaipotra landed on Netflix! If you haven’t already read this dance thriller, then you’ll want to get a copy ASAP, and then  check out the trailer for the Netflix show . To celebrate the release, I wanted to highlight three more great YA books about dance that you should check out if you enjoy stories about this incredible art form! I WANNA BE WHERE YOU ARE  BY KRISTINA FOREST Chloe Pierce wants nothing more than to audition for a spot at an elite dance conservatory, but her mother has forbidden her from even trying. So she comes up with the perfect plan to audition without her mom knowing…but it involves driving 200 miles with her annoying neighbor, who invites himself and his dog along and threatens to tell her mom if Chloe doesn’t agree. Chloe finds herself stuck with them if she’s to make her audition on time, and their road trip does not go as planned. THE MIDNIGHT DANCE

And the Goodreads 2020 Winner Is.....

  Midnight Library  by Matt Haig      Yay! I read this and loved it! Here's the synopsis from Goodreads: Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better? In  The Midnight Library , Matt Haig's enchanting new novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what

YALSA Reveals Finalists for Morris Award

  by  SLJ staff   Dec 10, 2020 The buildup to the 2021 Youth Media Awards (YMA) continues as YALSA announced the five finalists for the William C. Morris Debut Award, which is given each year to a book published by a first-time author writing for teens “and celebrating  impressive new voices in young adult literature.” The 2021 finalists are: Black Girl Unlimited: The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Wizard   by Echo Brown The Black Kids   by Christina Hammonds Reed If These Wings Could Fly   by Kyrie McCauley It Sounded Better in My Head  by Nina Kenwood Woven in Moonlight  by Isabel IbaƱez The winner of the Morris Award will be announced during the virtual YMA ceremony on January 25. Stay tuned!