Saturday Link Party is on Hiatus!

Saturday Link Party (and IMM tomorrow) is on hiatus this week! I know you guys look forward to the weekly collection of links and contests, but I'm at SCBWI LA this weekend, and I don't have time to sit and gather them all up in a post. I'm sorry!


You'll be happy to know, though, that I'm having an awesome time, and I'm meeting so many great MG/YA writers and authors! The highlight of the day so far? Definitely M.T. Anderson. He's amazing...AND he can sing! Who knew?


I'll give more of a recap of what I did, who I met, and all of that at some point when I get back. 


Have a great weekend everyone!


xoxo,
Jessica

What's Your Status Giveaway

I'm excited to give away a Top 8 Prize pack including Top 8 and What's Your St@tus by Katie Finn!

About What's Your St@tus
Sixteen-year-old Madison still loves logging on to Friendverse to see what her BFFs and her cute new boyfriend Nate are up to. But the latest social networking craze is Status Q, which is all about rapid-fire status updates. When one of Mad’s friends has to pull off a high-pressure heist, the gang relies on Status Q to send code messages to each other…all in the middle of a school dance! Will up-to-the-minute social networking save the day…or lead to good old-fashioned disaster?


You can see Ch 2 of the book here.





Katie Finn is the author of Top 8 and What's Your St@tus?. She lives and writes in Los Angeles. Friend her on Facebook, follow her on Twitter @katiefinnwrites, and visit her online at www.katiefinn.com.


To win a prize pack that includes both Top 8 and What's Your St@tus, just enter the form below! I don't usually do extra entires or anything, but since these books are all about social networking, I thought it might be fun to try it out! So, I am giving one extra entry to anyone who posts about this contest on Twitter. 

• Giveaway is open until Friday, August 13 at midnight PST
• You must be at least 13 years of age to enter
• You must have a US or Canada mailing address

Amy & Roger's Epic Detour - Morgan Matson

Amy has been having a hard time since her father died in a car accident. Her twin brother went to rehab, and her mom moved across the country, leaving Amy to finish up the school year all alone. Now that school is out, Amy's mom needs the car and wants Amy to bring it to her. But Amy hasn't been driving since the accident, so her mom enlists the help of Roger, the son of a friend, to drive across the country with her.

So begins Amy and Roger's road trip across America. It doesn't take long before the detailed itinerary Amy's mom made is thrown out the window, and Amy and Roger are doing things that they need to do and visiting places they need to visit in order to find closure, Amy with her dad and Roger with his ex-girlfriend. Along the way they eat a lot of burgers, listen to some really amazing playlists, and really learn about themselves and each other.

I knew I would like this book when I read the description. What I didn't really realize was how emotional this story was going to be. I thought it would be more of a fluffy road trip book, and, while it was definitely funny and cute, it also dealt with some very real emotions and did make me have a tear in my eye on more than one occasion. Dealing with grief and loss is a difficult thing for anyone, but Amy has been carrying around an extra burden when it comes to her father's death and she is utterly unable to forgive herself, which is so heartbreaking.

I am a little bummed that I read the ARC of this book rather than a finished copy. It's full of these great scrapbook pages with photos of the places they visited, postcards, notes, receipts, and things like that. There were some of these in the ARC, but mostly just placeholders. I went into B&N to check it out in the finished version and they all look so cool! I love this element of this book, it really makes the experience of reading it a lot more fun, and it totally feels like you are on this trip with them. Then, there's the playlists that both Amy and Roger make. I love showtunes like Amy does, so her playlists were awesome...and then Roger filled his playlists with awesome music (I was sold when I saw Something Corporate on one of his playlists...Globes and Maps, even! One of my favorites! And Sufjan Stevens? Love) too. I don't know if you guys know this, but I download as many book playlists as I can, so this is going to be one that I have to add to the collection.

Amy and Roger are both great characters. Roger is just an adorable guy...he's not a bad boy, he's not anything weird, he's just a sweet, awesome guy character with killer taste in music and a bitchy ex-girlfriend. And Amy is a great character to be stuck in the head of. She's dealing with a lot of stuff, but she's also funny and smart and someone you can really relate to. There's a great supporting cast in this one, too, as Roger and Amy meet up with interesting and wacky people they know as they make their way across the country. (I have to give a big shout out to both the rabbit and the fish.)

I enjoyed every second of reading this book. It was a fun road trip with two awesome people and a great soundtrack, full of laughing and crying and everything in between.

2010 Debut Author Challenge Book 13

Check out this book on Amazon.

Waiting on Wednesday - Not That Kind Of Girl by Siobhan Vivian

Waiting on Wednesday was started by Jill over at Breaking The Spine. It's a feature for bloggers to swoon over upcoming releases they can't wait to get their hands on.

Today's pick:

Not That Kind Of Girl by Siobhan Vivian

Released September 1, 2010

Amazon.com Description:

Natalie Sterling wants to be in control. She wants her friends to be loyal. She wants her classmates to elect her student council president. She wants to find the right guy, not the usual jerk her school has to offer. She wants a good reputation, because she believes that will lead to good things.

But life is messy, and it's very hard to be in control of it. Not when there are freshman girls running around in a pack, trying to get senior guys to sleep with them. Not when your friends have secrets they're no longer comfortable sharing. Not when the boy you once dismissed ends up 

being the boy you wants to sleep with yourself - but only in secret, with nobody ever finding out.

Slut or saint? Winner or loser? Natalie is getting tired of these forced choices - and is now going to find a way to live life in the sometimes messy, sometimes wonderful in-between.

My thoughts:

First of all, I really like Siobhan Vivian, and I've been looking forward to a new book from her. Second, I love this very realistic premise. I think there is a lot going on in the high school dynamic when it comes to reputation and how people perceive you vs doing what you want to do, and it's hard to find a balance, so I'm curious to see how this book explores that. And, third, the cover is HOT. I love it. (And we all know that's the best reason to look forward to a book, right?)

You can pre-order this book here. 

July Book Club - Hate List Discussion Post 2

Yesterday was the first day of our July discussion of Hate List. (Did you miss it? It's not too late! Go check out the post and throw in your thoughts. I was totally late to my own party, so if you didn't see my comments, you can go check them out now.)

Remember, there are spoilers in the questions and in the comments, so if you didn't read the book, don't peek!

Let's continue the discussion with the following topics:

• Valerie talks over and over about how she had no idea that Nick's talk of suicide and death felt like fiction to her, and she never thought he was serious. Valerie's mom is accused of being a bad mother, and she feels like a failure as a parent, because she had no idea Valerie could be involved in something like the shooting. What do you think about this? Looking at Valerie's flashbacks of Nick, do you think she should have seen it? Do you think Valerie's mom should have seen it?
• One of the big things missing for me in this book was Jeremy. Valerie mentions how much time Nick had been spending with him, and how she felt like he was a bad influence on her boyfriend. Do you think that Jeremy's influence had something to do with Nick's behavior? I feel like the subject is just dropped. If you were Valerie, would you have looked more into Jeremy after the shooting? Or would you have just let it go? Why?
• If you have any other questions / issues to discuss, go ahead and throw them out there...

Also, on my review of the book, Julie left this comment:

I'm really interested in hearing your perspective on it as a high school teacher. Can you talk about that some more? Have you ever had concerns about violence in your school or seen students ostracized the way they are in Hate List?

That's a great question, Julie. I feel really lucky because I work at a great school with a great school culture. Of course, though, I'm sure there are students like Valerie who don't really fit in and aren't happy and have people they dislike. It's so weird, though...as a teacher I feel like I just don't SEE them the same way. I look at my class and I just see this great group of kids. This one may not be in any activities, but he tells me funny jokes and makes me laugh. This one might not have school spirit, but we both watch reruns of The Prisoner, or like Glee, or read a lot. And while I can tell when people really don't get along or like each other, or who that kid's "one person" is, I don't have too much insight into the out of class dynamics because I live in the world of my classroom, not the quad or the band room or the parking lot or the grocery store across the street.

I know that high school kids look at their teachers and think we are clueless. And, honestly, in a way they are right. You may think it's obvious that so-and-so is giving you attitude...but when I have a classroom of 40+ kids, the subtle whatever that so-and-so is doing to you can get lost in the daily shuffle. I had stuff going on in my room this year that I was COMPLETELY oblivious to...and every single student in the class was totally clued in on. Not because I am stupid, but more because 1) I assume the best of my kids 2) I only have what you give me to work with, and (shocker) teenagers are good at hiding stuff from adults

Several people in the book mention they were so shocked by what Nick did; that they never expected it from him. If something like this happened at my school, I would feel the same way. I can't think of one single kid I know who would be capable of such a thing. Maybe that makes me clueless, but I really do love looking for the best in each and every one of them. That's what makes me love my job so much, you know? If I thought every one of them (or even ONE of them, really) was capable of looking me in the eyes and shooting me, or doing the same to anyone else in my room, there is no way I could do my job.

What do you think? Reply in the comments! (And remember that one lucky commenter will win a copy of next month's book club choice, so the more you comment and participate, the more chances you have to win.)

Thanks so much for participating!

July Book Club - Hate List Discussion Post 1

Yay! It's time for July book club! We're discussing Hate List by Jennifer Brown here on the blog for the next couple of days, so if you've read the book, be sure to share your thoughts in the comments. 

Just a warning, the assumption of book club is that everyone who is participating has actually read the book. So consider this your spoiler warning!

Alright, with that out of the way, let's get to the discussion. There's so much to talk about with this book, but today I want to look at the following things:

• It's hard to stay objective about what happened when we are inside of Valerie's head. Do you think she was partially responsible for the shooting? Why or why not?
• What did you think of Jessica's behavior toward Valerie? If you were in Jessica's shoes, do you think you would have reacted similarly toward her?
• Toward the end of the book, both Valerie's dad and brother call her selfish. Do you think she was selfish? Do you think she should have behaved differently in the time following the shooting?
• What was the part of this book that stuck with you the most? Why?

So, what do you think? Respond in the comments! (And remember, one lucky commenter will win a copy of August's book club choice, so the more you comment, the more chances you have to win.) Feel free to see what other people have written and respond. And if you have a question you want to ask...go ahead! I might add it to tomorrow's discussion.

And come back tomorrow for more talk about the book!

Hate List - Jennifer Brown

Valerie and her boyfriend Nick had a lot of things they didn't like, and they put all of these people and things on a list. The guy who threw soda on Nick's car. The girl who called Valerie Sister Death. Valerie's parents who never stopped fighting. The science teacher who picked on Nick.For Valerie, the list was a way to vent her frustrations, but for Nick it was a lot more, because on the morning of May 2nd, Nick brought a gun into school and started shooting at people who were on the list. He killed and injured quite a few people before Valerie jumped in front of the next victim, getting a shot in the leg herself, and Nick turned the gun on himself.

Now it's time for the new school year to begin, Valerie's senior year, and she's not sure how she feels about going back. There are many people who see her as partly responsible for the shooting, since she was a co-author of the Hate List, and even though the newspaper is acting like everything is peaceful back at school, Valerie suspects otherwise. Now she's finding herself shunned by her former friends, struggling to earn back the trust of her parents, and wondering how much she really knew her boyfriend, or herself, before this shooting happened.

Wow, this was an emotional book. Being a high school teacher, this book really hit me in a weird place, and there were times it was just plain difficult to read. I read the whole thing in one sitting, even though it's on the longer side (400 pages), and I cried and cried and cried through a big portion of it.

I thought Jennifer Brown did a great job dealing with Valerie's struggle, and showing how she could be so close with someone who could do something like this and not see it coming. The book goes back and forth between the present, Valerie going back to school and trying to get on with her life, and the day of the shooting, so we get to see what happened on that day, and how Valerie, the school, and the community all try to move on.

This isn't one of those books you "enjoy," because it just wears your down emotionally, and is about such a sad, terrible thing. But it's such a gripping read, and one that I think should be in classroom libraries like mine. Let's explore what this kind of anger and hate can lead to, without having to actually go through it in real life. This book touches all of the sadness and all of the helplessness and it's one everyone can get something out of.

Check out this book on Amazon.