FFFT 11/11/11

I have oodles of things to share with you on this Friday!

Put all of these on the TO-READ list: Publisher's Weekly and Amazon have both released their top YA books for 2011 lists.

Ever wonder how a book cover is created? See a sample of the process through Blood by K. J. Wignall. (This book will be reviewed on the blog soon. I mean, just look at the picture below!).

We all do it. We think, do teens actually act this way? Here about the "believability factor" from a YA author. 

Remember my obsession with Divergent (still the best book I've read all year)? If you loved it as I did, you might be interested to hear how Veronica Roth was inspired to write it.

And while I'm aware that it's no longer October, I found these pumpkin carving ideas and just had to share!

CONTESTS! I love them, you love them. Here's one to win free YA ARC's from The Young Adult Literature Review.

Okay finally, this is hilarious: Is YA Lit RUINING Our Children?? Mad-lib style.

Friday Food for Thought

Fridays are hereby designated as days for sharing. I always find lots of neat stuff online through the week relating to YA lit and to books in general, and I want to share it with you. This week’s finds include:

The world’s smallest library

Book art in Edinburgh

 This is now my computer background- so beautiful! 

Have you heard about the gay-YA hoopla? This sums it up better than I ever could, but it is a bit lengthy. The gist I got was that earlier this week, an literary agency was reported to have suggested an author "straighten" a gay character. The internet exploded in protest, and many authors and publishers insisted they would never do this. Eventually, everyone agreed that YA books should have diverse characters, and to show publishers/authors/agents your support, readers should buy books that have gay (or other diverse) characters. As @maureenjohnson likes to remind me on Twitter, #YAsaves. Kids need books like these too. (Has anyone read Will Grayson, Will Grayson? Great book with gay characters.)

I also read (okay, skimmed, there were a lot of names and numbers) an interesting article about children's bookstores in the tough economy. You can read it here. They remain positive and slightly hopeful about the position of children's books, but I was miffed at their reporting. Being a Kansas City native, I noticed that while our favorite indie bookstore, Rainy Day Books gets the article lead, our well-known exclusive seller of children's books, The Reading Reptile, isn't mentioned at all (is this article about kid booksellers or isn't it?). It's easy to think that the big bookstores are the indie's worst competition, and now that Borders is gone, the indies will do better. But maybe competition between the indies will now grow worse, and that's not necessarily a good thing.

Just food for thought.