FFFT: Friday Food for Thought

I’ve found some things close to my heart to share with you this week.

First, I’m sure you all heard about the tornado that destroyed Joplin, Missouri, a town two hours south of my home in Kansas City. My sister is a teacher who lives one town over from Joplin, and her roommate of five years was a middle school teacher in Joplin for a while. So any information about schools and libraries in Joplin post-tornado is of much interest to me. This article shows how Kansas City locals are helping Joplin by creating mobile libraries to put in classrooms. Huge shout-out to Pete from the Reading Reptile for spear-heading the project. I chatted with Pete for nearly an hour the other week about children’s bookstores, and he’s as awesome as the article suggests. If you want to help out by donating, there is information in the article. I’ll be going to Reading Reptile to buy books to donate soon so let me know if you have any suggestions!

YA Saves. This was mentioned in last week’s FFFT as Maureen Johnson’s campaign to get people reading YA. Now there’s a tshirt! Get yours here. Anyone want to get me one as a birthday present? Just kidding- go donate books instead. 

I’ve mentioned boys reading vs. girls reading before, and how there is both a perceived and realistic gap in different ways. And I personally know how hard it is to get some boys to read. I nannyed and tutored Charlie for a summer. We read together every day. And every day it was a battle. Even though he was smart in other ways, reading wasn’t Charlie’s strong suit. As this article by the awesome Jennifer Echol’s (remember my post on her?) suggests, you have to find something they’ll relate to. This is why we read every Time Warp Trio book in existence…and a ton of Star Wars books! But this really relates to any reader- if you find something you like to read, you’ll want to read it! I can’t tell you how many times my mom told me to “put the book down!” when I was a child. I have far too many interests…

Finally, as proof that there are boys who read, check out this interview with a 16-year old boy book blogger. Not gonna lie, he sounds cooler than me as a blogger. I can only keep aspiring! 

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.