May 2013
19 posts
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What's New: The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn...
New to the Athenaeum’s YA corner is The Summer Prince, a unique science fiction story by Alaya Dawn Johnson. From io9:
Alaya Dawn Johnson’s The Summer Prince takes place in Palmeres Tres, a far-future Brazilian city ruled by women, where every five years a Summer King is elected to help rule for a year. Feted like a rock star, at the end of the year the Summer King selects a new Queen and...
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Steampunk: An Introduction for Teens | The New... →
What is Steampunk? For a way to explain a fantasy subgenre, Steampunk is not very descriptive. According to The Steampunk Bible (2011), it can be explained most easily by this equation:
Steampunk = Mad Scientist Inventor [invention (steam x airship or metal man/ baroque stylings) x (pseudo) Victorian (or Edwardian) settings] + progressive or reactionary politics x adventure plot. (p. 9)
This...
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What's New: Drama by Raina Telgemeier
New to the Athenaeum’s YA corner is Drama, a funny, earnest, bright graphic novel by Raina Telgemeier. From the New York Times: Callie is the head of set design for her middle school’s spring musical, and such an ambitious theater geek that she explodes a cannon onstage in a perfect comic book “KA-BOOM”… Callie works hard on the tech crew while facing the standard tween tribulations:...
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Three Kickstarted Literary Card Games We Can't... →
Bookriot shares three tabletop card games for book lovers. Thanks to Kickstarter campaigns, you can soon have a new way to immerse yourself in the world of Moby Dick or The Wizard of Oz. You can also make up your own adventure with Story War by Cantrip Games - whom you can follow on tumblr.
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“Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely...”
– C.S. Lewis in “On Three Ways of Writing for Children”. I adore this.
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“What I’ve learned is, one, you cannot write a great novel or play or any...”
– Paul Zindel, author of many young adult novels, including The Pigman, The Girl Who Wanted a Boy, and Confessions of a Teenage Baboon. Zindel also received the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for his play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. He was born on this day, May 15th, in 1936.
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“The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have...”
– T.S. Eliot
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What's New: Scowler by Daniel Kraus
New to the Athenaeum’s YA corner is Daniel Kraus’s Scowler, a dark story of abuse and survival that Michael Grant (author of Gone and BZRK) called “The demon offspring of Stephen King’s The Shining and Hitchcock’s Psycho.” From Daniel Kraus’s website:
Imagine your father is a monster. Would that mean there are monsters inside you, too?
Nineteen-year-old...
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What's New: Viva Jacquelina! by L.A. Meyer
New to the Athenaeum’s YA corner is the tenth book in L.A. Meyer’s Bloody Jack series, Viva Jacquelina! From In Bed With Books: It’s hard to believe that BLOODY JACK was published ten years ago. When I picked it out from the library shelf because of the awesome pirate cover I had no idea what I was in for over the next decade. Mary “Jacky” Faber went from being a...
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“A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you...”
– E.B. White
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What's New: In the Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat...
New to the Athenaeum’s YA corner is In the Shadow of Blackbirds, a novel by Cat Winters. From Booklist: Winters’ debut ropes in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, WWI shell shock, national prejudice, and spirit photography, and yet never loses focus from its primary thesis: desperation will make people believe—and do—almost anything. Mary Shelley Black, 16, has been sent to live with her aunt...
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What's New: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
New to the Athenaeum’s YA corner is A Monster Calls, a book imagined by the late Siobhan Dowd (author of Bog Child and A Swift Pure Cry) and written by Patrick Ness (author of the Chaos Walking trilogy). Dark, chilling illustrations from Jim Kay complete this moving story. From the New York Times:
It opens in England with Conor O’Malley, 13, a boy whose recurring dream always ends in...
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“1. People should never be made to feel bad about what they are reading. People...”
– Read all 30 Things to Tell a Book Snob at Booktrust.
April 2013
26 posts
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“The girl looked around the bookshop and took a deep breath. “That smell, I...”
– Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys
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What's New: Homeland by Cory Doctorow
New to the Athenaeum’s YA corner is Homeland, the sequel to Cory Doctorow’s bestselling Little Brother (one of this season’s staff picks). From the author’s website:
In Cory Doctorow’s wildly successful Little Brother, young Marcus Yallow was arbitrarily detained and brutalized by the government in the wake of a terrorist attack on San Francisco—an experience that led him...
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What's New: Prince of Cats by Ron Wimberly
New to the Athenaeum’s YA corner is Prince of Cats by Ronald Wimberly, a graphic novel that combines iambic pentameter and samurai swordfights in a bright, bold and beautifully illustrated Brooklyn. From Depth of Field: Ronald Wimberly’s Prince Of Cats hit bookstore shelves last September… I’m still turning it over in my head, constantly revisiting it, picking it up and flipping...
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“One of the reasons I started writing is that I never felt I met children who...”
– E.L. Konigsburg, author of The View From Saturday, Silent to the Bone, and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Konigsburg passed away on April 19th at the age of 83.
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What's New: Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare
New to the Athenaeum’s YA corner is Clockwork Princess, the third and final book in Cassandra Clare’s Victorian-era Infernal Devices series. From goodreads:
Danger and betrayal, secrets and enchantment in the breathtaking conclusion to the Infernal Devices trilogy. Tessa Gray should be happy - aren’t all brides happy? Yet as she prepares for her wedding, a net of shadows...
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“Don’t be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young...”
– Stephen Colbert’s advice to the 2006 graduating class of Knox College.
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What's New: Looking for Alaska by John Green
Recently arrived at the Athenaeum’s YA corner is the classic Printz award winning YA book by John Green, Looking For Alaska. Miles “Pudge” Halter, a bright guy obsessed with famous last words, wants to take control of his ordinary, sheltered life. He goes, in the last words of Francois Rabelais, to “seek a great perhaps” at a boarding school in Alabama. He makes his...
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“I had a bad time in school in the first grade… but my mother always kept...”
– Beverly Cleary, award-winning author of The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Henry Huggins, Ramona The Brave and many other books for young people. Today, April 12th, is her 97th birthday.
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What's New: October Mourning: A Song for Matthew...
New to the Athenaeum’s YA corner is October Mourning, a collection of poems for young adults from Lesléa Newman, author of beloved children’s books such as A Fire Engine for Ruthie, Hachiko Waits, The Boy Who Cried Fabulous and Heather Has Two Mommies. From her official website: On the night of October 6, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a gay, twenty-one-year-old college student was lured from...
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“For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out...”
– “Making a Fist” by Naomi Shihab Nye. April is National Poetry Month. You can find plenty more poems as well as writing tips and other resources at the teen section of the Academy of American Poets website.
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What's New: Rookie Yearbook One edited by Tavi...
New to the Athenaeum’s YA corner is Rookie Yearbook One, a delightful compilation of articles, photographs, comics and more from the first year of Rookie Magazine. From Drawn & Quarterly: Tavi Gevinson started her personal blog, STYLE ROOKIE in 2008, when she was 11 years old. It was a place where, from the confines of her bedroom in the suburbs, she could write about personal style and...
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WatchRegistration for Girls Rock Camp opens today at 8am! From GirlsRockRI: Join us July 8th-12th for our 4th annual Girls Rock Camp for girls ages 11-18 at Rhode Island Philharmonic’s Carter Center in East Providence! Learn guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, or vocals, join a band, write an original song, and perform it live, all in just 5 days… no experience necessary! Registration starts...
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“This is one of those hidden gems of Providence - it even smells good.”
– Overheard at the Providence Athenaeum.
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What's New: Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
New to the Athenaeum’s YA corner is Eleanor & Park, a unique love story by Rainbow Rowell. From author John Green’s review in the New York Times: Eleanor is a “big girl” with bright red hair (kids on the bus call her Big Red, and she describes herself as resembling a barmaid)… Park is a half-Korean kid who’s passably popular but separated from the larger social order of his...
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What's New: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
New to the Athenaeum’s YA corner is The Perks of Being a Wallflower motion picture. Starring Logan Lerman (Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief), Emma Watson (Harry Potter) and Ezra Miller (We Need to Talk About Kevin), the film tells the story of Charlie, a shy and sensitive high school freshman whose only friend has recently committed suicide. Two seniors, Sam and her...
March 2013
26 posts
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“She was the book thief without the words. Trust me, though, the words were on...”
– The Book Thief, Marcus Zusak
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What's New: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World by Bryan...
New to the Athenaeum’s YA corner is the second volume of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series, a mash-up of humor, action, relationship drama and video game style combat. In volume one, slacker Scott Pilgrim met the enigmatic Ramona Flowers and discovered dating her came with unique complications - defeating her seven evil exes. In volume two, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World,...
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“A book, too, can be a star, ‘explosive material, capable of stirring up...”
– Madeline L’Engle, the author of A Wrinkle In Time, in her 1963 Newbery Award acceptance speech.
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What's New: Prodigy by Marie Lu
New to the Athenaeum’s YA corner is Prodigy, the sequel to Marie Lu’s action-packed dystopian debut, Legend. From the author’s website: June and Day arrive in Vegas just as the unthinkable happens: the Elector Primo dies, and his son Anden takes his place. With the Republic edging closer to chaos, the two join a group of Patriot rebels eager to help Day rescue his brother and...
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