Mid-week round-up

A few things...

First, thank you to everyone who entered the Wentworth Hall giveaway I hosted!

The winners are... Carrie K. and Maggie H. 

Congratulations, ladies! I've emailed you. Big thanks again to Simon & Schuster for providing the prizes for this giveaway!

Second, I'm very pleased to say that I'm going to be blogging for The Hub, the teen literature blog published by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). Please check out my first posts-- I blogged about celebrating Asian Pacific American Heritage Month: here's Part 1 (an interview with author Cindy Pon) and Part 2 (a list of some really good reads that include elements of Asian or Asian-American culture). Stop by and tell me about your favorite books featuring Asian or Asian-American culture!

And finally, you know I co-host a YA lit podcast called Authors are ROCKSTARS!, right? Well, my co-host, Michelle, and I had the privilege of moderating the YA or Bust! panel at the Huntington Beach Barnes & Noble last week, featuring Stephanie Perkins, Gayle Forman, and Nina LaCour.

The event was so much fun! We had so much fun chatting with these fabulous authors. And, as always, part of the fun of attending a book signing is meeting other readers. This time, we met a book vlogger! And he put us on his video coverage of the event. I don't know about Michelle, but I am not used to being on camera, so I was super nervous! But it was really fun. Watch The Booktubenator's coverage of the YA or Bust event right here:

 (Authors are ROCKSTARS! appears towards the end of the video).
And be sure to check out The Booktubenator'sYouTube channel-- it's awesome.

That's all for today!

Around the Web

What's caught my eye on the Web recently? Let me share a few links with you...

My friend Sandie and her sister Diana over at the very awesome Teen Lit Rocks do an occasional feature called "Confessions of a YA Junkie," and guess who's their latest junkie-- that's right, me! I'm truly honored. Check it out.

Another fantastic friend of mine, fellow youth services librarian, Lalitha, has started a new blog celebrating multicultural youth literature. I love it! (And trust me, I'm not just saying that because L's my friend.) If you like thoughtful book reviews with a focus on diversity, add Masala Reader to your RSS feed.

Sarah Wethern shares some brilliant strategies to combat reader burnout at The Hub. I especially like her suggestion to switch formats when a book isn't working for you. (By the way, YALSA members: Sarah is running for the Printz committee. Be sure to vote by April 27th!)

And speaking of the Printz, everyone's buzzing about John Green's The Fault in Our Stars as a shoo-in for the Printz Award. I enjoyed the book quite a lot, but I also like this critical look at it from Katy at The Book Lantern. Spoilers abound, but you've read the book by now, haven't you? (Personally, I would be pleased to see The Fault in Our Stars win the Printz, but I'm really rooting for Elizabeth Wein's heart-wrenching WWII novel, Code Name Verity.)

I was fascinated by School Library Journal's interview with Sarah Ludwig, a librarian who is now the "technology coordinator" at a K-12 private school-- essentially, a school librarian with an emphasis on using technology to enhance learning. Talk about a cool job!

And finally, a little self-promotion: I shared back in January that my podcast co-host, Michelle, and I would be attending Passion and Prose, an exciting new conference for romance readers and writers-- and I'm pleased to report that it was a fabulous event! Check out the Passion and Prose event coverage at Authors are ROCKSTARS!, including sound bytes from a handful of the fabulous writers in attendance and a portion of the Breathless Reads panel, sponsored by Penguin, featuring YA authors Marie Lu, Beth Revis, Andrea Cremer, Jessica Spotswood, and Sara Wilson Etienne.

Have a good weekend, everybody!

Around the Web

I was excited to see that School Library Journal is now hosting a mock Printz blog, Someday My Printz Will Come. If you're reading this blog and have an interest in YA lit, you probably know that the Michael L. Printz Award recognizes excellence in teen literature, and this new blog looks like a fun and insightful place to discuss Printz predictions. It's also a nice complement to Heavy Medal, the very excellent mock Newbery blog also hosted by SLJ. And let's not leave out illustration-- Horn Book hosts Calling Caldecott. Some people get excited about the Oscars... I'm into book awards!

My friend Sandie and her sister, brilliant pop culture mavens, have gotten hooked on YA literature in the past few years, and are now sharing the fun with the rest of us over at Teen Lit Rocks! I love what they've done so far.

This is slightly old news at this point, but-- Kindle users rejoice! Library ebooks are now available for Kindle and Kindle apps. I mention this because I downloaded my first Kindle edition library ebook to my Kindle for iPhone and it was astonishingly easy. I’ve explained the library ebook checkout process to so many patrons who have stopped me in the middle with a frustrated look, saying “Well, that’s too hard,” or “I can’t do that.” The Kindle edition checkout process is so much easier, it’s almost like magic. People are going to love this.

Are you on Pinterest? Warning: Pinterest features entirely too many pictures of delicious cakes. Which is just evil when I don't have a cake in front of me. But! Lots of teen and children’s librarians are utilizing this visual-oriented social bookmarking site to exchange ideas about library programs and crafts. I've really only begun to explore the possibilities on this site, but you can take a look at my Teen Crafts board. Other Pinterest boards and accounts to check out include:

Teen Programming in Libraries (a collaborative board)
Flannel Friday - lots of great flannel board ideas
Kelly Jensen - teen/tween programming ideas, crafts for kids
Mary Kuehner - early literacy ideas

You get the idea... awesome stuff out there!

Around the Web + Summer Reading Idea

Everyone's talking about Jennifer Lawrence being cast as Katniss in The Hunger Games film. I'm not familiar with her work, and admit I'm not sure she looks the part... but according to this article from Entertainment Weekly, author Suzanne Collins fully approves of the casting decision, which is encouraging.

Now I suppose the debate will move on to the casting of Peeta! I've seen Josh Hutcherson's name mentioned as one of the possibilities and I have to say, even though he's not blond, I'm cheering him on. I hosted an event with him at my library in 2008 when he was the spokesperson for YALSA's Teen Read Week, and he was the NICEST guy- definitely Peeta material.

The ebook edition of one of my favorites, The Goose Girl, by Shannon Hale, is being offered for only $1.99 until the end of the month. What a bargain! It's such an absolutely gorgeous book. If you haven't read it, now's the time.

School Library Journal highlights the profiles of the 10 youth services librarians honored by Library Journal as Movers & Shakers. Seriously inspiring. People in this field do such very awesome things... I'm taking notes!

And speaking of what we do as librarians, I'm really focusing on my Summer Reading Program plans lately. With the travel theme, "You Are Here," I'm thinking of incorporating Boom Boom Cards as a passive program for teens. The concept is that each card dictates an act of kindness to be done. When you play the card by completing the kind act, you log your act and your location on the Boom Boom Cards website using the card's unique ID, and then pass the card along to someone else. You can view a map on the website and see where the card turns up next. How cool is that, right? I love it! There's even a teen version, so it seems perfect for Summer Reading Program purposes.

I think I'll offer a small incentive to each teen who picks up a Boom Boom Card at our reference desk and proves that they completed their assigned act of kindness by directing us to their entry on the Boom Boom Cards website. To encourage the teens to pass those cards along, maybe I'll offer bonus incentives to the teen whose card goes the farthest geographically, or gets played the most. At the end of the program, hopefully some of the cards will have traveled around to a few different places, and I'll write up an entry about it on my library's blog so the whole community can see what good things our teens are doing.

Can't wait to see how this goes!