Today, we are thrilled to welcome author Lisa Burstein, with a special guest blog relating to Banned Books Week. * * * Books are banned in all kinds of ways. Sometimes it is a school denying a book to their students. Sometimes it is a library refusing to shelve it. Sometimes it is a media... Continue Reading →
Big Magic is afoot within the pages of The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde, but Big Magic must have also been afoot in his imagination when he wrote his first ever novel for young adults. The Last Dragonslayer is a tribute to Fforde's masterful storytelling and wordsmith wizardry. In the good old days, magic was... Continue Reading →
Big Magic is afoot within the pages of The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde, but Big Magic must have also been afoot in his imagination when he wrote his first ever novel for young adults. The Last Dragonslayer is a tribute to Fforde's masterful storytelling and wordsmith wizardry. In the good old days, magic was... Continue Reading →
Do you have what it takes to spook, scare, shock? We want you to try your hand at writing a scary story for our Haunted Reads writing contest! The Contest With Halloween in mind, write a story that is: scary, spooky, or just plain creepy! You can write something that's traditional horror, or something a... Continue Reading →
The Apocalypse has never been so sexy as it is within the pages of Poison Princess by Kresley Cole, the first in a new riveting series from the NYT bestseller. The book follows Evie Greene -- whose charmed, Southern life is thrown into upheaval first by troubling visions of the Apocalypse (which get her sent... Continue Reading →
The Apocalypse has never been so sexy as it is within the pages of Poison Princess by Kresley Cole, the first in a new riveting series from the NYT bestseller. The book follows Evie Greene -- whose charmed, Southern life is thrown into upheaval first by troubling visions of the Apocalypse (which get her sent... Continue Reading →
This month's Writing Prompt is more of an Exercise, and it's inspired by this blog post on Tinderbox, which is a homeschool blog: Assignment: Write two short descriptions of the same thing. One description should use only action verbs. The other should use only linking verbs. The blog post talks about active vs. linking verbs,... Continue Reading →
Here's a look at some of today's new YA releases (and a few that came out yesterday): Skinny by Donna Cooner Find your voice. Hopeless. Freak. Elephant. Pitiful. These are the words of Skinny, the vicious voice that lives inside fifteen-year-old Ever Davies’s head. Skinny tells Ever all the dark thoughts her classmates have about... Continue Reading →
This week marks the 30th anniversary of Banned Books Week, celebrating our freedom to read and highlightingfree and open access to information. Here is a look at this year's ten most challenged books: ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle Reasons: offensive language; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group The Color of... Continue Reading →
Earlier this year, I did things a little differently for our March Book of the Month. Rather than featuring just one title, we featured many for our Middle Grade March spectacular. I had so much fun, in fact, that I'm kicking off another themed Book of the Month for October: Haunted Reads. In celebration of... Continue Reading →
Novel Novice 