Thankful for Books, Kids, and a pumpkin named Gianna Z.
Since I got home from NCTE Saturday night, I've been devouring books. This happens to me when I've just finished a big project (I turned in the final revision for SUGAR ON SNOW after an afternoon of work in a Philly coffee shop!) - I have a sudden need to go on a reading binge before I move on to something else, so that's what I've been doing. I've finished Cynthia Omololu's fast-paced, compelling YA debut, DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS, which comes out from Walker in February. Then it was Bonnie Shimko's upcoming MG novel, THE PRIVATE THOUGHTS OF AMELIA E. RYE, which releases from FSG this spring and has a main character with one of the greatest voices of all time. Really. And finally, Elizabeth P

Holiday Book Recommendation: The Espressologist
I am a writer who is mighty attached to my mocha lattes...so when I heard about Kristina Springer's YA debut, THE ESPRESSOLOGIST (FSG, 2009), I couldn't wait to read it. The premise? A teenaged barista does some match-making with her customers, based on their favorite coffee drinks and ultimately, finds love of her own. This book made me want to be sixteen again (just for a minute, because most of sixteen was traumatic) so that I could get all my friends together to read THE ESPRESSOLOGIST and then

Stories and Standards: Pairing Fiction & Nonfiction (from NCTE)
On Friday afternoon, I was part of an author panel at NCTE on the topic "Stories and Standards: Pairing Fiction & Nonfiction" along with Loree Griffin Burns, Jenny Moss, and Tanya Lee Stone. We spoke about curriculum connections for our books and suggested other titles that would pair well with them in the classroom. Here's the presentation, via SlideShare.</div></div>Our facilitator for this session was the Goddess of YA Literature herself, Teri Lesesne, (she's

A Post-NCTE Photo Wrap-Up
Saturday was my busy day at NCTE, starting with a morning book signing, then an interview about THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z. for the ReadWriteThink podcast, lunch, and the Middle Level Mosaic, a highlight of the trip for me because I got to hear presentations from English teacher rock stars like Jeff Wilhelm, Nancie Atwell, & Teri Lesesne. I'm back to school this morning to finish our unit on dystopian literature and let my students fight over the ARCs I brought home. Since they're publisher review copies, I've decided I'll be loaning them out with strings attached...so in the next few weeks, you'll get to read some 7th grade guest reviewers' thoughts on new titles coming out in 20

Blogging from NCTE: Day One 1/2
Our NCTE publisher dinner at Philadelphia's Le Castagne was one of those nights a starry-eyed author never forgets. Friendly, book-loving people from NCTE, the International Reading Association, and Anderson's Bookshop joined us at a big table behind a curtain, so we had our own little dining room. Since Jenny Moss and I were the guest authors, our school & library publicists broughts copies of our books for everyone that we signed after dinner.Meet t