Third Stop

The Diversity in YA tour will be in Chicago, tonight

With authors Malinda Lo an excerpt


Claudia Guadalupe Martinez my review


Nnedi Okorafor my review



Cindy Pon Ari's review

Are You Going to Kiss Me Now? - Sloane Tanen

Are You Going to Kiss Me Now? by Sloane Tanen
Francesca wins a Seventeen magazine essay contest. Her prize is a partial scholarship and a celebrity tour of Madagascar and other regions of East Africa through GLEA - Girls Literacy East Africa. Francesca will be traveling with five well known celebrities who need the good PR.

Chaz (a la Perez Hilton) who runs a very popular celebrity blog is going as well. When the plane crashes the seven people are stranded on an island somewhere near Madagascar.

Before the island Francesca's guilty pleasure is keeping up with celebrity gossip.

"When I was finished with the mags, I'd roll them up and stuff them in the bottom of the trash outside so nobody would find them. I was addicted and ashamed. I hated all those celebrities, and yet I envied how special they got to be. It wasn't fair. I mean, nobody cared that I let Andy Blank touch my boob last Saturday, so why did I care if Miley Cyrus got drunk at the CMAs or if Zac Efron wore eyeliner? But I did care. A lot?"

There are a few references to real celebrities but the story holds it's own with it's fake celebrities. Amongst the five stars there's drama and little help.

"Did I say you could go through my stuff?" Milan screeched as she snatched the bottle out of Eve's hand and pushed a mat of wet hair off her face. Milan looked seriously pissed. She reached for one of the sticks and attacked Eve, holding the twig under her chin like a knife. I kid you not."

Are You Going to Kiss Me Now? sounded like it would be a lot of fun and it was. I really enjoyed it and laughed out loud a lot. Ages 12up

Next Stop

Today The Diversity in YA tour will be in Austin, Texas

Monday, May 9 at 7:30 p.m.BookPeople with authors

Bethany Hegedus my review


Malinda Lo my review


Guadalupe Garcia McCall


Cindy Pon my review


Dia Revees my review


Jo Whittemore


and moderated by Varian Johnson


I will take a moment to mention all the stops on this tour because its a good excuse to highlight a few great titles.

Sunday - A Little of Everything

There are a lot of great links to share.

On May 1st, Guys Lit Wire announced their third annual Book Fair. This year all donated books will be going to Ballou Senior H.S. in Washington D.C.

"There are probably more books in my house then Ballou has in this video and that is wrong in so many ways that I don’t even know where to begin.

At the time the video was made early this year there were just over 1,150 books on the shelves at Ballou; there are over 1,200 students in the school. So there was barely one book for each student (the ALA standard is 11:1)"

Carol Rasco had two guest bloggers last week over at Rasco From RIF for El Dia de los libros
Illustrator John Parra - His latest project is Waiting for the Biblioburro by Monica Brown

"Creating and illustrating Waiting for the Biblioburro, was a tremendous pleasure. As I painted the book’s many scenes, I would get lost in the characters and landscapes that made this story special to me."



And author/illustrator Eric Velasquez - 2011 Pura Belpre winner for Grandma's Gift

Part of the fun of illustrating books is that sometimes the images mean more to the illustrator than to the people who read the books and other times if you are lucky the images mean more to the reader than to illustrator or the author, because they add their own back-story to the characters based on their own life experiences.



Librarian and Blogger Edi Campbell recommends a few titles for Asian-Pacific Heritage Month

"I love blogging! It gives me such an opportunity to learn! I was going to do, am doing, a quick and easy post on Asian- Pacific American Heritage month, but in gathering photos to spruce up my verbage, I found out that"

Congratuations to author Zetta Elliott and illustrator Shadra Strickland, their book Bird was this year's winner for West Virginia Children's Choice Book Award

Literacyhead is an organzation that believes in teaching literacy through art.

"A Literacyhead is someone who is intensely serious about exercising creative literacy, making connections across multiple literacies, pursuing thoughtful literacy as an individual and as a teacher, and constantly searching for ideas. Literacyheads may have expertise in different areas of literacy, but all are committed to children's literacy, passionate about the arts, incessant thinkers, and display a propensity for having fun. "



The Guardian linked to one of my post last week it was very exciting. Though the irony is they selected one of my few bookseller post and very soon on the 15th I will no longer be a bookseller, store is closing. I considered changing my blogger name but I decided againist it, I've earned my moniker.

One of my favorite novels this year ( and its not a YA crossover) is Please Look After Mom by Kyung- Sook Shin.


Usually with translated titles I feel as if I've missed something, this was not the case. I loved this book so much.

Vasilly wonderful review of Please Look After Mom.

And So It Begins

The Diversity YA Tour kicks off tomorrow

Saturday, May 7 at 3 p.m.
San Francisco Public Library (Main Library)
Latino-Hispanic Room
100 Larkin St.
San Francisco, CA 94102

Highlighting Asian American YA books with authors

Malinda Lo


Cindy Pon


Guen Luen Yang


J.A. Yang


Since it Asian American Heritage month this is a perfect way to kick off the tour.