Stone Soup Saturday

Over at the School Library Journal blog, they've started "Battle of the Kids Books" I've read 10 of the 16 books in contention. The brackets
I'll go ahead and give my first round picks. (in bold)
As Easy as falling off the Face of the Earth Vs. Cardturner
A Conspiracy of Kings by Turner Vs. Countdown
The Dreamer Vs. The Good the Bad and the Barbie
Hereville Vs. Keeper
The Odyessy Vs. One Crazy Summer
The Ring of Solomon Vs. How Sugar Changed the World
A Tale Dark and Grimm Vs. They Called Themselves the kkk
Trash Vs. Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Author Neesha Meminger did a guest post at YA YA YA's s that shouldn't be missed.

When I was a teen, all the books I read for fun featured white protagonists. When I think of some of my favourite books in the YA romance genre now, books like those of Sarah Dessen, Megan McCafferty, and Meg Cabot–I doubt that any of the authors were expected to create artful, powerful narratives about social issues. These books are allowed to be pure entertainment because there is a vast plethora of novels showing the full gamut of the white, heterosexual, able-bodied, middle/upper-middle class teen experience. In terms of racial representation, there are white characters in horror, fantasy, romance, historical, and whatever other genres exist on bookshelves, while teens of colour are offered a limited array of options.

Ari just announced COLOR - Coalition of Librarians and Online Readers. A project to support High School librarians

Many of us love libraries and I want to help by sending books to libraries that have been hit hard by the budget cuts. A bonus is that I would like to only send books by/about people of color for children and teenagers, both fiction and non fiction. For now I am focusing on middle schools (6th-8th) and high schools in the U.S. The ideal scenario is to send books about Asians/Black people/Latinos and Native Americans to the library, but to have the majority of the books match the ethnicity of the students.

There is still time to read Bleeding Violet by Reeves, and participate in the online

African American Read In on Feb. 2oth.

Diversity YA is a new blog started by YA author's Cindy Pon and Malinda Lo. I did a guest post for Black History Month. My favorite part - the 10 recommendations.

Currently reading The Search for Wondla by Tony Diterlizzi. Its so good. Loving It.