Dare You To

Dare You To by Katie McGarry
Release Date: May 28, 2013

Note: ARC received from NetGalley

From goodreads: “If anyone knew the truth about Beth Risk’s home life, they’d send her mother to jail and seventeen-year-old Beth who knows where. So she protects her mom at all costs. Until the day her uncle swoops in and forces Beth to choose between her mom’s freedom and her own happiness. That’s how Beth finds herself living with an aunt who doesn’t want her and going to a school that doesn’t understand her. At all. Except for the one guy who shouldn’t get her, but does….

Ryan Stone is the town golden boy, a popular baseball star jock-with secrets he can’t tell anyone. Not even the friends he shares everything with, including the constant dares to do crazy things. The craziest? Asking out the Skater girl who couldn’t be less interested in him.

But what begins as a dare becomes an intense attraction neither Ryan nor Beth expected. Suddenly, the boy with the flawless image risks his dreams-and his life-for the girl he loves, and the girl who won’t let anyone get too close is daring herself to want it all…”

This is a companion novel to Pushing the Limits. Chronologically, it takes place shortly after the end of PTL, but it tells the story of Beth (a secondary character in PTL). You don’t have to read PTL to read this one, but I recommend it so you have a better understanding of the people in Beth’s life. I actually read PTL and Dare You To back to back within a few days. I became so invested in these characters and will now anxiously be counting down until the release of Crash Into You (Isaiah’s story).

Beth and Ryan are such amazing characters. Beth is so tough and complicated and even though sometimes she made decisions that made me want to scream, I always admired her. She has a really rough outer shell but also has a deep moral code and strong family loyalties. Ryan is so much more than a jock. He is smart and strong but actually quite sensitive. These two seem so different and wrong for each other, but really they bring out the best in each other. Beautiful.

Of course, I loved the romance in this story. However, what makes this book really shine is that it is so much more than that. It’s not just about Ryan and Beth discovering each other, but more about them discovering themselves and becoming better and stronger people. I think they are both so inspiring.

I highly recommend this story for anyone who enjoys coming-of-age stories, drama, and romance. Katie McGarry just made her way onto my automatic-to-read list.

A Few Reviews

I got a little behind in netgalley reviews, so here is a brief round-up of a few titles I read:

Cozy Classics: Les Miserables by Jack & Holman Wang
Pub Date: May 30, 2013

Cozy Classics is a series of board book adaptations of classic texts, boiled down to 12 words. Each word is accompanied by a photograph of a needle-felted doll. These books are for the youngest readers. I think these books are adorable. I had bought the Cozy Classics: Pride and Prejudice for my baby niece. I was excited to see this Les Mis one as it is a favorite story of mine. Despite being only 12 words, it still manages to capture heart of the story. I highly recommend this title and the whole series. They are just precious little books.

A Corner of White by Jaclyn Moriarty
Pub Date: April 1, 2013

This is the first title in The Colors of Madeleine trilogy. The story goes back and forth between Cambridge (in our world) where Madeleine lives with her mother, and Bonfire (in the fantastical Kingdom of Cello) where a boy named Elliot is trying to solve the mystery of his disappeared father. The two worlds are bridged when Madeleine and Elliot happen upon a way of sending letters to each other.

The first half of this book took me so long to read. I was interested but not fully connected so I kept setting it aside to read other things. However, the second half of the book picks up drastically and became hard to put down. By the end, I loved it and now can’t wait for book 2. I definitely recommend it, but you have to be patient with it.

The Runaway King by Jennifer A. Nielsen
Pub Date: March 1, 2013

This is the 2^nd book in The Ascendance Trilogy (first title is The False Prince). Note that this review may reveal spoilers of the 1^st book.

Jaron has just taken the throne when an assassination attempt occurs. Despite objections from those closest to him, he knows the only way to save his kingdom, and himself, is to escape and face his enemies.

This book was just as fast-paced as the first book. Fun twists and exciting action sequences abound. I think this book would be especially appealing to middle schoolers who love adventure stories.

Two Boys Kissing

Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan
Release Date: August 27, 2013

ARC received from Random House… thanks!!

Description from goodreads: “New York Times  bestselling author David Levithan tells the based-on-true-events story of Harry and Craig, two 17-year-olds who are about to take part in a 32-hour marathon of kissing to set a new Guinness World Record—all of which is narrated by a Greek Chorus of the generation of gay men lost to AIDS.

While the two increasingly dehydrated and sleep-deprived boys are locking lips, they become a focal point in the lives of other teen boys dealing with languishing long-term relationships, coming out, navigating gender identity, and falling deeper into the digital rabbit hole of gay hookup sites—all while the kissing former couple tries to figure out their own feelings for each other.

This follow-up to the bestselling Every Day showcases David’s trademark sharp-witted, warm-hearted tales of teenage love, and serves as a perfect thematic bookend to David’s YA debut and breakthrough, Boy Meets Boy, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2013.”

I had super high hopes for this book as Every Day was one of my favorite titles from last year. I was intrigued to see what Levithan would come out with next.

This book was a great read and was unlike any YA I’ve read. The book only takes place over the span of a few days, but it manages to show really deep and important issues. The book is fast paced, and it was hard for me to put down because I just really wanted to see if Harry and Craig would succeed. There are other plotlines with different characters, and I was invested in them but not nearly to the extent of the Harry/ Craig story.

I still haven’t been able to decide how I felt about the narrator, a chorus of men who died of AIDS. It definitely added depth to the story by amplifying heartbreak and hope. For me though, sometimes it was just a bit much. I don’t know. I need other people to read this story so we can talk it out. I think people will either love this aspect of the story or hate it.

Overall, I highly recommend this read. It’s a quick read but also really powerful.

Check out Malina Lo’s blog post that was sparked by the Two Boys Kissing cover: Representing LGBT Romance on Young Adult Book Covers.

My Comics Education, Part 10

Note: This blog post is written for SLIS 672 at IU, Spring 2013

For my last blog post for this course, I decided to do a spotlight on TOON books. TOON Books was launched in 2008 by Françoise Mouly (known for her work on RAW, which she co-edited along with her husband, cartoonist Art Spiegelman). It has since become an imprint of Candlewick Press. The TOON books themselves are great reads for the youngest comics audience, but what I really want to focus on in this post is all the awesome resources provided on their website. These can be used by libraries or shared with teachers and parents to use with kids in the classroom or at home.

What are TOON Books? The TOON Books mission states, “TOON Books are the first high-quality comics designed for children ages four and up. Each book in the collection is just right for reading to the youngest child. Perhaps more remarkably, this is the first collection ever designed to offer early readers comics they can read themselves. Each TOON book has been vetted by educators to ensure that the language and the narratives will nurture young minds. Our books feature original stories and characters created by veteran children’s book authors, renowned cartoonists and new talents, all applying their extraordinary skills to fascinate young children with tales that will welcome them to the magic of reading” (Mouly and Spiegelman).

The TOON Books website provides many great, free resources. For example, you can download a poster about using comics to teach the common core. There are also TOON Common Core Guides for each of their books such as Little Mouse Gets Ready. These guides provide questions to ask kids while reading that enforce the common core standards. There are also downloadable lesson plans and activities sheets for each book.

Another part of the website that I thought was really neat is the TOON Online Readers. The webpage explains, “the free online TOON Readers are revolutionary tools that allow all readers to TOON into reading! Readers can listen to the text read to them (by the author!) or activate the audio on individual balloons, soon graduating to reading by themselves. The TOON Readers are available in multiple languages, including Spanish, French, Chinese and Russian, so they are a breakthrough in literacy education for ESL and ELL students.” I think this is such a cool resource that would be great in a classroom, at home, or even in library programs. I enjoyed listening through some of the stories in French and Spanish.

Lastly, a few other fun resources on the website include: Coloring pages that include characters from some of the stories, popsicle puppets of some characters so kids can reenact  the stories or create new stories with those characters, and reading lists that recommend picture books, early readers, and chapter books a kid might like based on which TOON books he/she enjoyed.

My Comics Education, Part 9

Note: This blog post is written for SLIS 672 at IU, Spring 2013

In class, we started talking a bit about our suggestions to improve this course for future semesters. Most of what I had in mind was covered in class, so this may be kind of repetitive, but I’m going to try to go more in depth and provide specific examples of comics we could use or other ideas.

Exposure to more titles: This week we are bringing in any graphic novel we enjoy to share with the class. I think doing this could work each week if we were limited by theme. For example, the week the class reads Bone, everyone could bring in a different children’s comic to share. It could be pretty informal, just go around the room and everyone does a brief booktalk. Simple to do and really helps in bringing awareness to a wide variety of titles.

In addition, it’d be nice to read more children’s comics for this class since it is a youth services class. Some possibilities: the TOON books such as Little Mouse Gets Ready (for beginning readers), Babymouse and Owly (grades 3-5), and Cardboard and Drama (middle school). There are also some great graphic novels that I think appeal to all ages such as Thor the Mighty Avenger, The Arrival, and Hilda and the Midnight Giant.

Like others in this class, I’m interested in learning more about manga. I think at least a session about manga would be beneficial as part of this course. Maybe sections from Understanding Manga and Anime by Robin E. Brenner could be assigned as well as the first books in a few popular series such as Fullmetal Alchemist and Fruits Basket.

As discussed in class already, I think the class readings would be more enjoyable if there were fewer chapters from the Weiner text assigned and more articles from various publications. It would be great to have a mix of scholarly literary analysis articles concerning the books assigned as well as articles from library related publications such as School Library Journal that deal with comics in the library. I personally would have really enjoyed reading about comics for kids and their role in developing literacy skills in children.

Another topic that would be fun to discuss is the publishers of comics. I think an interesting assignment would be to have each student (or pairs of students depending on class size) choose a publisher and then give a presentation about that publisher. The student could discuss what genres of comics or graphic novels this publisher puts out, who their most popular authors and artists are, and an example of titles they have published in the past as well as what they are publishing now.

One other quick note: I liked the reader’s advisory assignment, but wish it was required that everyone share their list on oncourse. I would have liked to see everyone’s lists because I think it would expose me to many titles I’d never heard of.

My Comics Education, Part 8

Note: This blog post is written for SLIS 672 at IU, Spring 2013

I have never read Anne Frank’s diary. Shocking, I know. It was never required reading for me, and when I was younger I was not interested in history or non-fiction so there was no way I was going to pick it up on my own. However, since it is such a widely read text, I picked up on the general basics of the book though popular culture. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting for me to experience Anne Frank through graphic novel format when we were assigned to read Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón for class. I have become much more interested in history as I have gotten older, and have enjoyed historical fiction books based around World War II. So I really thought I would enjoy this read and maybe even become interested in reading The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.

As I started the graphic novel, I was immediately turned off by the art. I do not find it appealing at all. I am not an artist, so it is hard for me to say exactly why I like or dislike a piece of art. The best I can explain it is that I found the art dull and boring. The muted colors paired with most of the panels just being the characters faces not really doing anything just did not work for me. Also, I felt the art was not even necessary in most of the book. So much of the text was boxed narration that the art was just an addition to that rather than standing on its own. I enjoy graphic novels because I enjoy seeing the movement between panels and seeing a piece of the story rather than just reading a description of it.

As mentioned, a lot of the text was narration rather than dialogue. I understand that this story needs a lot of narration, but then that leads me to think that a graphic novel is not the best format for this story. Also, the placement of a lot of these narration boxes made me confused as to when I should read it. Sometimes a narration box would be covering the corners of multiple panels and in some panels were dialogue boxes and I had no idea what I was supposed to read/look at first. I feel like throughout this semester, I have gotten pretty good at reading graphic novels and I have not had much of a problem with the flow of them and knowing what in what order to read. This book really confused me though, and I’ll be interested to hear if others had a problem with this or not.

As for the overall story itself, I did become invested in the characters which was enough to keep me reading. However, I think this is a story I would much rather just read as a full text. This graphic novel just didn’t work for me.

My Comics Education, Part 7

Note: This blog post is written for SLIS 672 at IU, Spring 2013

Just a few days ago, PBS Off Book released this video, “The Rise of Webcomics” which is exactly what we are studying this week so I thought I would share it with you all:

Up until preparing for this class session, my knowledge of webcomics was very limited. Really, the only one I was familiar with was Axe Cop, and even that I didn’t actually read online. I read the trade version of Axe Cop Vol. 1. Exploring various webcomics for this class was very fun and interesting for me. I love the variety that is out there. Some have the appearance of a standard comic or graphic novel whereas others are crudely drawn or interactive. Some plots are fairly normal and create a complete story whereas other comics are just chaos and randomness. My interest in webcomics has definitely been sparked, and I hope to find time to explore more.

One of the first webcomics I explored for this class was Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi. I have been a huge fan of the Powerpuff Girls cartoon since I was in middle school. From what I can tell, this webcomic is basically comic fanfic. It brings in characters from various other shows such as Dexter’s Laboratory and Invader Zim. When it was characters I recognized, I thought it was fun. However, there were many characters that were probably from things I did not know so it sometimes became hard to follow. When I started reading this webcomic, I enjoyed it because the characters were really true to the personalities they have in the show. However, as the comic went on it got a little too ridiculous in my opinion and eventually I gave up on it. It started in 2004 and is still going, so there’s a lot of material there. It was interesting to look at some early panels as opposed to the newer ones because the art has changed.

Another webcomic I explored this week was The Last of the Polar Bears. This webcomic has been around less than a year so there is not a ton of material yet. I really enjoyed this one, and will probably keep up with it. I think the art is really nice, and the story is just starting to really develop. This one is great for kids.

Lastly, I read all there is so far of No Rest for the Wicked. I really liked this one because I’m a sucker for all fairy tale related stories. I like the strong personalities of the main characters, and became quickly engrossed in their journey. The art in this one seemed pretty anime-esque to me which I thought was cute. My only problem is I don’t really like that the text is hand written. It looks messy. Overall though, I really like this one so far and could see it being popular with teens.