Guess what time of year it is?

Yup, you guessed it, it’s about the time of year that the literary community starts talking about banned and challenged books.

Why is this important, you ask?  Because people who don’t know or your children are trying to tell you was is appropriate to read.  I don’t know about you, but I’m not really down with being told what to do.  Not even a little bit.

So what do I plan to do?  I plan to join in on Banned Books Week.  Sponsored by The American Library Association, The American Booksellers Association and a host of other really awesome and notable bookish organizations the last week of September is targeted as a time to shine a light on the freedom to choose what you read.

I’m not quite sure how I’ll express that freedom or how I’ll participate but I was recently advised of an excellent opportunity.  The wonderful Steph of Steph Su Reads has created the Banned Books Reading Challenge.  Running from today (September 1) through October 15 she is encouraging  readers with a voice online to participate.  Pick a goal, any goal, related to banned and challenged books and make your voice heard.  Network with other participants and publicize your activism in an effort to increase awareness about the issue of censorship.

Steph does a fantastic job of listing challenge goals, providing useful and insightful resources, and even outlines her own intentions for the challenge in her call to action.  So what are you waiting for?  Sign up, join in and make your voice heard!

Being into young adult literature as much as I am I want to share with you two exciting industry events that are starting to gear up and kick off.

Kidlitoshpere Conference

2010′s Kidlitosphere Conference is going to be held the weekend of October 23rd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  An event where children’s and young adult book bloggers, authors, publicity types and anyone at all who is interested in YA and kidlit to congregate for a few days of eating, drinking, networking and learning from each other.

I was lucky enough that last year’s conference was held right here in DC (wanna come back folks?  I’ll do the work!) and it was truly a fabulous experience.  One that I strongly encourage anyone who digs YA and kidlit to attend.  I won’t be able to make it this year and am quite bereft at not being able to hang out with all of the new friends I made.  But, I’m looking forward to following along on Twitter and reading the posts of attendees after the fact.

Wanna know another reason why I’m so bummed that I won’t be able to go this year?  The  awesome Maggie Stiefvater is keynote speaker.  She’s an excellent writer and her blog is fantastic to boot.  I can only imagine how amazing she’s going to be standing up at the podium gabbing away about it all.

The organizers are currently sifting through session proposals so the agenda isn’t publicized yet but trust me this is an event not to be missed if you can avoid it.  To register and keep tabs on all the news that’s fit to print check out the Kidlit Con 2010 blog.

Cybils Awards

The call for panelists and judges for the 2010 Cybils Awards was put out this week.   Anne Levy, organizer, details the amount of work that will go into participation, the eligibility standards, and various other details potential interested parties must be aware of before throwing his/her hat in the ring.

What are the Cybils Awards you ask?  It’s an annual award that is designed to recognize children’s and young adult literature “whose books combine the highest literary merit and “kid appeal”.  You can learn much more about it on the Cybils blog where there is a wealth of information about the awards past and present.

I’m excited to apply to participate this year, though I suspect the competition is tough.  Even if I’m not fortunate enough to be selected I can tell you you’ll be hearing all about what is going on here on my blog.

Title: Inside Out
Author: Maria V. Snyder [Website] [Facebook]
Genre: Young Adult, Dystopian, Romance
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Format: e-book
Source: Provided by Publisher via NetGalley
Parental Advisory: none

“Used to curses and hostile glares, I shrugged.  The mass of people in the tight corridor jostled and pushed me along.  Life in the lower two levels teamed with scrubs at all hours of the week.  They moved from work to their barracks and back to work. We were called scrubs because rust and dust were the twin evils of Inside and must be kept at bay; however, scrubs also maintained the network of mechanical systems which kept both uppers and lowers alive.”

Summary (from the publisher):
I’m Trella. I’m a scrub. A nobody. One of thousands who work the lower levels, keeping Inside clean for the Uppers. I’ve got one friend, do my job and try to avoid the Pop Cops. So what if I occasionally use the pipes to sneak around the Upper levels? The only neck at risk is my own…until I accidentally start a rebellion and become the go-to girl to lead a revolution.

Opinion:
Inside Out is a unique view of the usual conflicts between the societal class structure of haves and have nots. The Lowers are charged with the care taking of the world in which both they and the Uppers live.  Keeping mechanics purring, maintaining the cleanliness of duct work and a variety of other custodial tasks the Lowers are thought to truly be the bottom of the barrel.

To add insult to injury they do this all as a result of living in a police state.  They are made lower not by choice or even by circumstance, they are such by being oppressed by the higher class. They are forced into labor,  made to dress a certain way and even eat according to the choices of others.  These people do not have any freedoms at all.

Main character Trella is a Lower, her responsibility is to crawl through duct work sanitizing it so that the Uppers have clean air.  She should be a relatively simple character but Snyder has created her with depth and complexity.  Sure, she knows her station in life and she knows she shouldn’t want more but she does.  She wants to know what Upper is like, she wants to experience the differences and what she perceives as the luxury and most of all she wants the freedom to do so.

This is where everything in her life (and frankly the lives of everyone) starts to change.  Trella explores the duct work, memorizes its every nook and cranny until she’s fluent in the language of her surroundings.  She’s bold and in some ways carefree enough to expand her exploration over time until she finally finds herself in Upper.  Only now she’s not entirely alone.  She’s met Riley, an Upper boy.

Their romance is certainly intriguing as it builds over their mutual desire to seek a better understanding of how the division of power both came about and can further be destroyed.  The latter is where most of the story is told.  Will there be a revolt?  Will there not?  How do they get there and stay safe if it does? All questions to ponder as you read this book.

In addition to building a convolutedly simple and sparse world — it seemed quite box-like to me — Snyder does an excellent job with character development.  From the almost rabid Pop Cops to the group of unexpected conspirators from Upper and Lower we meet a great variety of personalities.  Through them all we learn lessons on trust and loyalty, love and friendship, but above teamwork.

Inside Out is an excellent dystopian read with a strong female in the lead.  It has the potential to teach readers valuable and useful lessons all while keeping them entertained.

Title: Shadow Hills
Author: Anastasia Hopcus [Website] [Twitter]  [Facebook]
Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal, Mystery
Publisher: Egmont USA [http://www.egmontusa.com]
Format: Paperback
Source: Provided by Publisher
Parental Advisory: allusions to sex, alcohol, drugs, criminal activity

“I opened the journal to a heavily creased page; I’d put the envelope with the Devenish Prep crest embossed on it there as a bookmark.  When I had seen that envelope addressed to Athena after she was already gone — after the police had shown up, after I’d had to pick out a dress for her funeral, after I had said good-bye at her grave — I’d thought I’d have a breakdown right there in front of my family’s mailbox.  Ant then I’d found her diary…When I read about her dreams, so like my own, it shook me to the core.  She wrote of a recurring dream about a place she’d never been before.  A place with old redbrick buildings.  A place that she finally identified as a boarding school in Shadow Hills.  When I had read that, everything became crystal clear to me.  I wanted to feel that clarity again.  I scanned to the end of the entry, to the last words my sister has written in her diary:

The nightmares are so vivid now I’m afraid to sleep.  I feel my energy dragging constantly.  I’m a walking zombie.  I have to find a way to go to Devenish Prep’ maybe there I’ll be able to figure this out.”

Summary (from the publisher):
Since her sister’s mysterious death, Persephone “Phe” Archer has been plagued by disturbing dreams.  Determined to find out what happened to her sister, Phe enrolls at Devenish Prep in Shadow Hills, Massachusetts — the subject of her sister’s final diary entry.

Phe immediately realizes that there’s something different about this place — an unexplained epidemic that decimated the town in the 1700′s, an ancient and creepy cemetery, weird “townies” — and somehow she’s connected to it all.

But the deeper she digs, the more entangled Phe becomes in the haunting past of Shadow Hills.  Finding what links her to this town….might be a deadly mistake.

Opinion:
What did I enjoy most about Shadow Hills?  The fact that it was an interesting step outside the normal paranormal fare.  It didn’t center around vampires or werewolves but rather a relatively normal set of teens.  I say relatively because several main characters do actually have some sort of ability that is outside the realm of normal human capability.

Despite that fact I was appreciative of the opportunity to spend more time getting a glimpse into their lives at school and with their families and friends. The focus wasn’t always on them coming into their paranormal strengths, it was on how those traits influenced other more important aspects of their lives.  This isn’t to say we don’t see any paranormalcy, because we do.  It’s just not the whole point of the story.

The plot of this story uses the history of mysterious Shadow Hills and it’s lifelong inhabitants as the center point.  There is something about them that Phe just can’t put her finger on.  This, of course, gets her into investigation mode, where we see the bulk of the story playing out. This was the best most enjoyable aspect of the story.

The rest of the story revolves around the relationships she maintains with her family, friends at Devenish, and various other inhabitants of Shadow Hills.  As part of that, there were a whole bunch of characters to keep track of but because of their relationships with each other it was much easier to do so.  Hopcus did a good job of compartmentalizing the different groups — school, home, townsfolk.  Crossover between them was held to a minimum thus making the impact more significant and meaningful when they did meet up.

I wouldn’t say that the characters were super unique.  For example at Devenish we saw the usual stereo-typical teens — the rich overbearing princess, a computer geek, and the heart-throb.  Despite that fact, their interactions were entertaining and at times humorous.  It brought a much needed light spot in to an otherwise darkly focused story.

Additionally there was the burgeoning romance between Phe and Zach.  I can’t say I was all “O.M.G. they have to be together forever” about them as a couple, but their relationship added an urgency that benefited the story.  I’m interested to see where it goes in the follow-up.  I imagine we’ll get a bit more depth related to some of the larger connections between the two.

Overall, I enjoyed Shadow Hills and I’ll definitely be picking up the next in the series to see where everything goes next.  It’s certainly worth a read if you’re into paranormal but it’s not so heavy on that element that it’s not interesting to those who aren’t huge fans.

Title: The Sky is Everywhere
Author: Jandy Nelson [Website] [Twitter]  [Facebook]
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
Publisher: Dial Books for Young Readers
Format: Paperback
Source: Provided by Publisher
Parental Advisory: allusions to sex, alcohol, drugs

“She picks up one of her sticks and dramatically feigns stabbing it into her stomach with both hands.  I know behind the hara-kari is a hurt that’s growing, but I don’t know  what to do about it.  For the first time in our lives, I’m somewhere she can’t find, and I don’t have the map to give her that leads to me.”

Summary (from the publisher):
When her fiery older sister Bailey dies abruptly, seventeen-year-old Lennie, bookworm and band geek, is catapulted to center stage of her own life — and, despite her nonexistent history with boys, suddenly finds herself struggling to balance two.  Toby was Bailey’s boyfriend; his grief mirrors Lennie’s own.  Joe is the new boy in town, a transplant from Paris whose nearly magical grin is matched only by his musical talent.  For Lennie, they’re the sun and the moon; one boy takes her out of her sorrow, the other comforts her in it.  But just like their celestial counterparts, they can’t collide without the whole wide world exploding.

Opinion:
The Sky is Everywhere is a bittersweet view of how love and loss come together to shape one girl’s life and how profoundly it affects the people around her.

Nelson’s prose is beyond outstanding, I truly struggle how best to describe it’s strength and beauty.  Having rarely read a book so poetically written it was surprising to feel the emotion dripping off the page into my consciousness.  I’m even more rarely moved by a book, I mean genuinely moved but The Sky is Everywhere touched me, it made me cry and gasp and thrum with anticipation.  It was, in no small way a phenomenal read.

I could tell you all about this book — about the beautiful poems and anecdotes Lennie writes and leaves behind everywhere she goes.  About how she wrapped herself up in the memory of her sister through the boy that loved her as much as Lennie did.  About how she came alive again with Joe, her soulmate in the making, through their shared love of music.  About how her family had dysfunction galore even before Bailey left them behind. But really, my explaining it all would not only not do the story justice but would take something away from your experiencing it; and let me tell you this book was an experience, one to be felt and endured.  You feel the highest of highs and the lowest of lows with Lennie as she journeys through one of the most difficult periods of her life.

To say I recommend this book would be an understatement.  It is a book that everyone must read, lover of young adult literature or not.  Everyone.