Tag: reading

Ursula K. Le Guin: “Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?”

- Stacy 1 Comment

I’ve been reading Ursula Le Guin’s collection of essays, The Language of the Night, and found her 1974 essay “Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?” just as relevant today as it ever was back then. In our post-Harry Potter world, perhaps we’re a little less afraid of fantasy as a culture, but her point remains cogent, given the backlash against Harry Potter and his ilk, too. Here’s an excerpt:

For fantasy is true, of course. It isn’t factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it too, and that is precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced into living. They are afraid of dragons, because they are afraid of freedom.

This freedom she speaks of is that of the imagination, the ability to believe in things you know not to be real:

So I believe that we should trust our children. Normal children do not confuse reality and fantasy—they confuse them much less often than we adults do (as a certain great fantasist pointed out in a story called “The Emperor’s New Clothes”). Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books. All too often, that’s more than Mummy and Daddy know; for, in denying their childhood, the adults have denied half their knowledge, and are left with the sad, sterile little fact: “Unicorns aren’t real.” And that fact is one that never got anybody anywhere (except in the story “The Unicorn in the Garden,” by another great fantasist, in which it is shown that a devotion to the unreality of unicorns may get you straight into the loony bin). It is by such statements as, “Once upon a time there was a dragon,” or “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”—it is by such beautiful non-facts that we fantastic human beings may arrive, in our peculiar fashion, at the truth.

Unfortunately, the essay isn’t online to link to the rest of it, but do look up The Language of the Night at your local library (it doesn’t appear to still be in print, but used copies are going for anywhere from 75 cents on Half.com to $151 on Amazon). I’m still working my way through—each essay is fascinating. Working my way up to “American SF and the Other,” which is the reason I checked the book out from the library.

ETA: A blogger whose post on this essay is one of the top Google results posted the results of a Q & A with Le Guin last year that addresses her thoughts on where we are today.

Updated multicultural SFF booklist

- Stacy 15 Comments

ETA 5/22/12: I’m keeping this book list up to date on Pinterest nowadays, linking each book to its Goodreads entry. It’s much easier to just pin a book than to keep this list up to date. For the running lists (broken down by age group and genre) and more, go here (sorry, the link was broken for a while there):

 

ETA: I’ve finally gotten the ability to edit the post back, so I’ve put as many of the suggested books into the list now as I can. Suggestions always still welcome. This is a continuous project.

I’ve gotten a lot of great suggestions to add to the list, but my website seems to still be broken, and my own computer has a dead motherboard (well, it did when I started writing this last week—thankfully, it’s now fixed). I’m still figuring out why WordPress won’t let me edit any of my old content.

So, in the interest of having one place that people can use as a resource, I’m going to copy everything into this entry. Rather than divide the list by what I’ve read and what I haven’t, which was just more a personal exercise last year in wondering whether my own reading habits had reached past my own culture, I’ll divide the list by age group and genre (fantasy/SF). What that means is that I am not making a comment on how good I think a book is or recommending it/not recommending it—there are several books on this list I haven’t had a chance to read yet. It’s simply a list compiling what’s out there. I’ve also added books that I’ve discovered over the last year or that have been suggested to me in the comments. Go to the previous booklist post for comments on some of the books in this list.

Middle Grade Fantasy

  • Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, 2009, Grace Lin
  • Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, 2008, Nahoko Uehashi, and its sequel, Moribito II
  • City of Fire, Laurence Yep
  • The Tiger’s Apprentice, Laurence Yep
  • Dragon of the Lost Sea, Laurence Yep (and pretty much anything else written by Laurence Yep)
  • Zahrah the Windseeker, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
  • Chronus Chronicles, Anne Ursu (someone mentioned this and I haven’t read them—are the main characters people of color or is it set in a non-Western culture? from its Amazon listing, it seems to star a white girl and use Greek mythology, which are great, but don’t fit the definition we’re using here)
  • The Red Pyramid, Rick Riordan
  • Sword and Wandering Warrior, Da Chen
  • The Conch Bearer, Chitra B. Divakaruni
  • Circle of Magic quartet, Tamora Pierce
  • Circle Opens series, Tamora Pierce
  • Pendragon series (?)
  • Un Lun Dun, China Mieville
  • Lavender-Green Magic, by Andre Norton
  • Dragon Keeper and Garden of the Purple Dragon, Carole Wilkinson
  • Moonshadow: Rise of the Ninja, Simon Higgins
  • The Magical Misadventures of Prunella Bogthistle, Deva Fagan
  • Magic Carpet, Scott Christian Sava
  • Marvelous World #01: The Marvelous Effect, Troy Cle
  • Ninth Ward, Jewel Parker Rhodes

Middle Grade Science Fiction

  • The Animorphs series
  • The True Meaning of Smekday, Adam Rex

Young Adult Fantasy

  • Wildwood Dancing, Juliet Marillier
  • Book of a Thousand Days, Shannon Hale
  • Flora Segunda, Isabeau S. Wilce, and its sequel Flora’s Dare
  • Little Sister, Kara Dalkey, and a sequel for which I’ve forgotten the name
  • Magic or Madness, and its sequels, Justine Larbalestier
  • Eternal, Cynthia Leitich Smith
  • Tantalize, Cynthia Leitich Smith
  • Tantalize: Kieren’s Story, Cynthia Leitich Smith
  • Sucks to Be Me, Kimberly Pauley
  • Silver Phoenix, Cindy Pon
  • How to Ditch Your Fairy, Justine Larbalestier
  • Guardian of the Dead, Karen Healey
  • A Wish after Midnight, Zetta Elliott
  • The Black Canary, Jane Louise Curry
  • The Secrets of Jin-Shei, Alma Alexander (older YA and up)
  • The Worldweavers Trilogy, Alma Alexander
  • The Will of the Empress, Tamora Pierce and its sequels
  • Libyrinth, Pearl North
  • Across the Nightingale Floor and its sequels, Lian Hearn (older YA)
  • Devil’s Kiss, Sarwat Chadda
  • Annals of the Western Shore series, Ursula K. LeGuin
  • The Two Pearls of Wisdom (or Dragoneye Reborn as it’s known in the US), Alison Goodman
  • City of the Beasts, Isabel Allende
  • Blood Ninja, Nick Lake
  • Magic under Glass, Jaqueline Dolamore
  • Stormwitch, Susan Vaught
  • 47, Walter Mosley
  • Pemba’s Song, Marilyn Nelson and Tonya C. Hegamin
  • Rogelia’s House of Magic, Jamie Martinez Wood
  • Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie
  • The Icarus Girl, Helen Oyeyemi
  • Invisible Touch, Kelly Parra
  • Soul Enchilada, David Macinnis Gill
  • Eon: Dragoneye Reborn, Alison Goodman
  • The Comet’s Curse: A Galahad Book, Dom Testa
  • Bleeding Violet, Dia Reeves
  • Liar, Justine Larbalestier
  • Meridian, Amber Kizer
  • Ruined, Paula Morris

Young Adult Science Fiction

  • The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, Nancy Farmer
  • The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer
  • A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Leguin
  • The Shadow Speaker, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
  • Extras, Scott Westerfeld
  • Black Hole Sun, David Macinnis Gill

Unsure of whether these books are MG or YA (have not read yet, pulled titles from Shweta Narayan and The Happy Nappy Bookseller‘s lists. Can someone give me a head’s-up what categories they fit in?

  • A Posse of Princesses Sherwood Smith. (Is this YA?)
  • The Dragon Keeper, Carole Wilkinson
  • A Girl Named Disaster, Nancy Farmer
  • The Wizard series, Diane Duane
  • The Green Boy, Susan Cooper
  • The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl, Virginia Hamilton
  • Willie Bea and the Time the Martians Landed, Virginia Hamilton
  • The Night Wanderer, Drew Hayden Taylor
  • Dread Locks (Dark Fusion), Neal Shusterman

Please feel free to continue to leave other suggestions in the comments.

Let’s talk about marketing your book online

- Stacy

I was at an SCBWI conference a couple weeks ago at which they had a panel of newly published authors do a panel chat about how they got published, and the subject came up of websites and blogs. This is something that I’ve heard a lot of people talk about in the children’s book blogosphere, and the discussion that day brought up the same question for me with these authors.

After all of the authors answered the question about marketing their books online with some version of "I have a web page," and perhaps an "I have a Facebook," I raised my hand and asked, "I’ve heard it said that the children’s book online community can be a little . . . in-bred. That is, authors friend authors on LJ and Facebook, comment on each other’s blogs and do blog tours, do interviews with reviewer bloggers, but who is the audience that these blogs reach? How do your directly reach your readers online?"

(I admit, it was a loaded question, because I’ve seen authors use the web in some very innovative ways to reach their teen readers, especially, and part of the answer to that for younger readers isn’t a direct answer because gatekeepers are involved.)

But I’d like to open up the question to you guys. Let’s brainstorm and really think about how to use these new technologies in a way that reaches teens. And how do you go beyond the message of "buy, buy, buy" (which is good for paying your bills, but there is something very commercial about that which I don’t think we really aspire to openly in the book world), and make it a more general message, yet still reach them about your book?

There are already some great examples of authors doing things that reach their readers directly–I’ll name a few off the top of my head: Readergirlz, Scott Westerfeld’s blog, Shannon Hale’s blog, several communities on Facebook. How do these accomplish what they do, and is there a way of extending their reach or following their example? How did Scott and Shannon attract so many readers–do teens look up their favorite author and see if he or she has a blog, or did the blog attract the teen first and then they became a reader of the books?

And what’s up with Twitter? I haven’t really had a chance to check it out yet. How might Twitter be used to reach teen readers?

Those are just a few questions I have, and I’m hoping to open up a discussion here and on Facebook, where this blog is imported as a note. I’ve seen these questions asked again and again on listservs I’ve been on, but usually in the context of librarianship, and I’m wondering how authors specifically can use these tools to reach readers.

- Stacy

I’m back from my trip to New York City. It was really nice to see everyone, and those of you I missed, I’m sure I’ll catch you on the next trip, which I’ll take more time to plan. 🙂 I also made it to The Strand for the first time, and wow! I think I want to live there. Just set up my little leather chair and ottoman and read to my heart’s content. I took some pictures with my cell phone, but I need to find my microdisc adapter before I can post them. It’s just a 2 megapixel little cell phone, not my regular nice camera, so the clarity isn’t so hot, but it was fun to memorialize a little of my trip.

There are some things in the works which I’m not ready to talk about on the blog yet, but hopefully I’ll be able to post about them soon when I get all the information together.

In the meantime, I was thinking about all the reading that I’ve done recently, and it occurred to me that this is the perfect place to talk to bookish people about all those good books.

So: what have I read lately?

Alcatraz vs. the Scrivener’s Bones by Brandon Sanderson. Disclaimer: Brandon is a friend of mine from college. But who cares? Whether I know him or not, the book is funny–even funnier than the first book, Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians (well, disclaimer on that too: I read book 1 in draft form, so I bet book 1 in print is even funnier).

I got started on Bad Kitty by Michelle Jaffe (the YA novel, not the picture book) before the flood happened, and I haven’t had a chance to finish it yet. So that goes back in the TBR list (i.e., books I want to read but don’t have physical copies for for the TBR pile). As far as I read, I was enjoying the snarky teen girl voice.

The Luxe by Anna Godberson. I had expectations going into the paperback version–because I think I had read spoiler at some point–that were conf
irmed by the end, but despite my expectations being confirmed I loved the way this story was told. One thing I did not expect was five different viewpoints, but it was really amazing how it all fit together so well, despite the different characters’ vastly different agendas. We in publishing can often make generalizations about the number of viewpoints a book should have; this book is a great example of the exception to he rule. If you’re thinking about doing more than one viewpoint in a book you’re currently working on, The Luxe is one to look at as a craft example. I’ve been told that its sequel, Rumors, is even better, so that goes in the TBR list.

Currently reading

Lamplighter by D.M. Cornish. The sequel to Monster Blood Tattoo (or Foundling, as it’s now called, and now the series name is Monster Blood Tattoo), which I heard on audio. Highly recommend that listening experience–I loved the narrator. I’m not very far into Lamplighter yet so I can’t really comment on it–yet!

Skinned by Robin Wasserman. Seems like science fiction for teens is taking a turn from the dystopian, which I’m really glad to see. There’s so much more to science fiction than that one subgenre. So far so good–the main character Lia Kahn is in an accident that nearly kills her and her consciousness is downloaded into a new body. It’s almost a zombie meets an android, I suppose–it almost fits in with books like Zombie Blondes and Generation Dead, but not quite–so if you have readers who liked those books this might be one of those "if you liked _________ then you might enjoy ________" recommendations (depending on the reader, of course). It looks like it’s going to tackle some interesting subjects while Lia deals with being dead, but not dead.

On the TBR pile/list (not comprehensive! 🙂 and amazingly enough, they’re not all YA)

Manolito Four-Eyes by Elvira Lindo
How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justina Larbalestier
The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, and The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner
My Rotten Life: Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie by David Lubar (this looks HILARIOUS)–ARC for the book coming out Aug. 2009, so no link yet
Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi (a YA branch-off in the world of Old Man’s War)
Veil of Lies: A Medieval Noir by Jeri Westerson
The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama (which I’ve been meaning to read for a couple years, and wanted to read before the election)
Lord Loss by Darren Shan
Skin Hunger by Kathleen Duey
The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett (this is an ARC–the book doesn’t come out until March of 2009)
Minders of Make-Believe by Leonard S. Marcus (another one that I started before the flood but hadn’t gotten through before all the craziness began. I fou
nd it at The Strand for $13! I heart The Strand!)
The Good Neighbors–Book One: Kin by Holly Black and Ted Naifeh
The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd edited by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci (which also looks hilarious–stories about geeky life). Also, another ARC for a book coming out Aug. 2009, so no link yet.
Sovay by Celia Rees. This looks awesome, but I haven’t started it yet. It’s about a rich teen girl in the late 1700s who becomes a highway robber. If you’ve read Witch Child, it’s the same author. I LOVED Witch Child, though its sequel, Sorceress, wasn’t as strong. I haven’t had a chance to read Pirates! but I’ve heard good things about it.
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin. I’ve been meaning to read Grace Lin’s books for a while, so I’m excited to get a chance to read the ARC of her new book, which comes out next year.
Meg Cabot’s 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU series.

Oh, and another reason I love The Strand? Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day? for $10.50. Not even Amazon has that price. I had this book as a kid but I can’t find my copy of it. I also had the fairy tale book–little kitty as Little Red Riding Hood? It was awesome! I didn’t go looking for it, though. Too much temptation, if I found the Richard Scarry section. I
didn’t go with a lot of extra money in my pocket. But oh, the temptation! I think this is an updated version of a book my brother and sister and I had as kids. My brother had Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. I think one of these days I need to get them all and do an homage post to Richard Scarry.