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Being a best girlfriend isn't easy. Having a best girlfriend isn't easy either. When one girlfriend experiences a crisis, the entire friendship is in jeopardy. This is the premise of Siobhan Vivian's A Little Friendly Advice, a smart Young Adult novel for readers ages thirteen and up.

16-year-old Ruby runs in a pack of four: There's artistic Ruby, smart and social Beth, basketball star and hothead Katherine, and flirtatious, boy-crazy Maria. But Beth and Ruby are best friends within this group and have been since grade school. In fact, Beth has been Ruby's best friend since Ruby's dad disappeared, leaving the family for good.

On the night of Ruby's 16th birthday party, the girls get together to have birthday cake and then head out to drink a smuggled bottle of champagne. And that's when Ruby's dad Jim shows up for the first time in years. Jim's arrival sets of a week-long crisis for Ruby during which Ruby tries to understand why her parents split up, why her dad left, and, most important, why her best friend Beth is keeping secrets from her about Jim.

During this week of turmoil, Ruby also meets her first real boyfriend, tries to come to terms with the volatile Katherine and Katherine's own family problems, and tries to stay afloat at school. But, the heart of the novel is Ruby and Beth’s friendship and what it means to be a best friend: When should you tell the truth, when should you shield your friend from potentially stressful information, and when you should you offer just a little friendly advice?

Told in Ruby's voice, A Little Friendly Advice explores rocky family relationships, first kisses and experiences with alcohol, and, most of all, best friendships. It's a not-to-be-missed honest read for teen girls.
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Other Blog Reviews:

Bildungsroman
Teen Book Review
The Page Flipper
Page Numbered
YPulse
The Book Muncher
Propernoun.net

If I've missed your review, please leave me a comment and I'll update.
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My sun overdose continues. I burned myself yesterday and it was wonderful.

Looking for a wonderful Christmas gift for a child who loves fairy tales or an adult who loves children's books? Look no further...

Ruth Sanderson, exquisite illustrator, has a redesigned website with a large selection of artwork, cards, tiles, and books for sale. Check out her new website here. Her artwork dons the walls of my office and the walls of my daughter's room. I just ordered a print and book from The Snow Princess. I remember seeing the original artwork for The Snow Princess one summer at Hollins. She invited all of us Children's Lit. people from Hollins for an open house to view the artwork before it went off to the publisher. Gorgeous!!

You can even sign up for her newsletter.

Saturday night I had the good fortune of listening to Paul Janeczko speak at Hollins. I was looking forward to hearing him speak out of all of the speakers this summer, and he did not disappoint.

Paul Janeczko is a former English teacher. Paul Janeczko wasn't a good student but as a young child was a collector. He thinks that paved the way for his obsession of collecting poems. He has written novels, nonfiction, poetry collections, and edited over 20 poetry anthologies.

He says he travels around to preach the gospel of the possibilities of poetry. He wants kids to know that poetry doesn't have to rhyme, have a certain form, or be long, boring, and stupid.

He is probably most famous for his numerous poetry anthologies. With each anthology he is always wanting to show a new way of looking at things.

He talked about several poetry anthologies:
1) Poke in the I--A collection of concrete poetry illustrated by Chris Raschka. Concrete poems are typically in the form of a shape. They play around with language and white space. Some don't read like a regular poem, and in fact, they would be hard to read like a regular poem. Some do read like regular poems, but they are arranged differently.
2) Stone Bench in an Empty Park--A collection of haiku set in the city. He wanted students who lived in big cities to know that they could write haiku. Some kids thought since they didn't live in the middle of the country (nature) that they couldn't write haiku. He said they needed to see that they could write haiku, they just had to slow down and pay attention to their life and their surroundings. This haiku collection is illustrated in black and white photographs.
3) Wing Nuts: Screwy Haiku (my review of this book here)--He cowrote this with J. Patrick Lewis. This book is actually a collection of senryu, a type of Japanese poetry that has the same form as haiku, but instead of being about nature, it's about human nature.
** On a side note--I personally use the three poetry anthologies above ALL of the time. I highly recommend them to use with young writers.
4) Dirty Laundry Pile: Poems in Different Voices--This book is full of persona or mask poems. These poems are written from the point of view of an object.
5) Hey You!--This is a collection of poems of address. They are talking to something or someone. This one is brand new and I can't wait to get ahold of it!

One of the books he spent a lot of time talking about was a collection of poems he wrote about a circus tent fire in Connecticut in 1944. The book is entitled Worlds Afire. Each poem is told from a different person's perspective. Each of the people were in some way involved or affected by the fire that killed many. He did a lot of research for this book and was able to see his poems performed on stage at a local theater in Maine.

His advice to promising poets:
1) To get your foot in the door, send poems to magazines. It's a good way to get started with some publishing credits and gives you some credibility when you send off a collection of poems.
2) Read a LOT of poetry. Read as many poets as you can get your hands on. Then you can start to see which poets you really like and study them.

Paul Janeczko is getting reading to update his website. He is in the final proofreading now. So stay tuned for more.

Michael Stearns, editorial director at Harper Collins, came to speak to writers at Hollins on Friday evening. In addition to his editorial director title, he is also the head of foreign acquistions and manages a half dozen other editors.

He gave sort of an Introduction to the Publishing World 101. While much of the information I have read about and heard before, he gave us a visual representation (via a hand drawn chart) that really summarized publishers and what books fall into different categories.

There are four extremes on this chart (imagine a x and y axis). Literary books on one end of the extreme--competent books on the other end. They intersect with institutional books one on end and commercial books on the other end. Most books fall somewhere in the four quadrants. Likewise, most publishing companies publish within a certain range.

Here's the jist:
* Big publishers--Random House, Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster
These publishers have to concentrate a lot on commerical books that are big sellers. They have many divisions that focus on certain types of books. They have certain expectations on money to be brought in and have fewer slots for mid-list books by unknown authors. The bigger the publishing house, the more pressure on the editors to bring in books that have commercial appeal. He says he is always looking for books he can fall in love with. Series fiction is big with the bigger houses too.
* Mid-Size Houses--Harcourt, Holt, FSG, Bloomsbury, Candlewick, Abrams
These publishers don't have the big budgets, so they can't afford to do as many commercial books that the big houses do. They can take more opportunities to purchase literary fiction.
* Smaller Houses--Walker, Tricycle, Marshall Cavendish
These publishers are very effective at focusing on publishing for the school and library markets.

What is selling right now?
* Chick Lit
* Teen novels with an edge (The Book Thief, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing)
* Series Fiction
* Middle Grade Fiction--Stearns is always look for this

Books he recommends writers read:
Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy
The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman
A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

He also had us take a look at the current NY Times Bestsellers List. He said it was important to take a look at what types of books are selling well and to read some of those books on the list.

Some advice for writers:
1) Go to conferences (like SCBWI). He recommends meeting with agents there and have them critique your manuscript. In fact, he recommends meeting with agents over editors. He says agents know what the individual editors are looking for. He also recommends trying to find an agent that is trying to build up a list of authors.
2) Go to workshops and learn about your craft.
3) Try to understand that rejection is not personal. An editor has to really LOVE your book to spend time with it and take up space on their list. They must feel like they can't live without your book--and sometimes even that isn't enough at an acquisitions meeting.
4) Read broadly. Read a variety of books.
5) Read books on craft.
6) Learn to love language--language is what it's all about in kids' books.
7) Most importantly--Do NOT write to trends. Yes, it's important to see what's selling and to read the authors that are doing well, BUT it's also best to write what you LOVE! Publishers work so far in advance that it doesn't matter what is hot now. If you write to the trend, it may not be what you are passionate about, and it will be not a trend by the time it gets published.

Sharon Dennis Wyeth came to speak at Hollins on Monday, July 2. I had never heard of her before this summer, but she is the Hollins Children's Literature program's Writer-In-Residence this year. I realized when I saw her, and her books, that I was familiar with some of her work.

Sharon Dennis Wyeth began writing poetry because she wanted to make sense of things. She needed to heal from things that had happened in her life. In fact, she encouraged us as writers to tell about an event in our lives, "attaching action to specificity", and to create a narrative that will be healing for ourselves and perhaps for our readers.

She became a children's writer because it sounded important. In fact, she hadn't intended to be a children's writer at all, but she told her college friends that she was going to be a children's writer, and they seemed impressed. It was only later that this became a reality.

Wyeth writes about difficult circumstances and has characters that go through a lot. She doesn't want to sugarcoat their lives. Instead, she writes characters that rise up above their circumstances and survive.

Her advice to writers:
1) Write what you MUST write
2) If you have a memory that you think about everyday, then it is something important to you--write about it.

Some of her books include:
Something Beautiful (illustrated by the amazing Chris Soentpiet)--A picture book for all ages. Sharon Dennis Wyeth talks about her something beautiful here. I can't wait to read this book to my fifth graders at the beginning of the year and do some writing with them!

Orphea Proud--A young adult novel about Orphea, a poet. She is an African American teenager, orphaned, who falls in love with her best friend.

Corey's Underground Railroad Diary (My America Series)--Middle grade novels written by a slave boy who escapes to freedom. She talked about how many slaves were forbidden from learning to read or write, but some of them had been taught in secrecy. Corey's diaries begin with his limited writing, but he improves as the series goes on.

Always My Dad (illustrated by Raul Colon)--now out of print, Picture book, Reading Rainbow selection

I went to Hollins Saturday night for one of their author talks. D. Anne Love was the speaker. She is the author of many historical fiction and YA fiction books.

A little bit about her:
D. Anne Love wanted to be a writer when she was a child much like her cousin wanted to be Miss America. She thought she had a better chance at being a writer than her cousin did at being Miss America. She was a teacher, principal, and college professor for 15 years before writing full time.

She tried to write picture books for a long time until an editor finally told her that she really wasn't a picture book writer--she was a novelist. The editor told her she was going into too much detail with characters, plots, etc.

Her advice to writers:
1) Write what you WANT to know. If you are passionate about it, then your readers will enjoy reading about it.
2) Don't worry about current trends. Write what's in your heart.
3) Try to find the heart of the story--What does your character want? What is preventing them from getting it?
4) There are NO failed stories. Not every piece will be published, but you will learn from all of them.
5) Nothing is wasted except for the paper. (This is my favorite one)
6) Read 100 books for every one you write. Read like a writer.
7) Take a lot of showers. Something about showers is conducive to the creative process. When you are stuck and trying to work out a problem in your novel, take a shower.
8) Persistance pays.
9) Be patient with yourself.
10) Write the kinds of books you like to read.

Some of her historical fiction books include:
Bess's Log Cabin Quilt
I Remember the Alamo
The Puppeteer's Apprentice

Her YA books include:
Semiprecious--About a girl whose Mom leaves the family to make her way as a country music star. She thinks her mom is coming back for her shortly, but she doesn't.
Picture Perfect--A girl whose mother has invented beauty hair care products and gets offered a wonderful job away from home.
Defying the Diva--Forthcoming. This is about bullying that goes on with teens.
Be Mine--Forthcoming in 2009. About abusive relationships and about a girl who gets in a relationshiop with a girl that is controlling.

One of the things you can't get out the printed text is how wonderfully D. Anne Love reads her stories. She has an entrancing southern accent that gives life to her characters that she reads about. I am on my way to the bookstore today to pick up some of her books. I can't wait for Defying the Diva to come out. She talked a lot about her concern for youth in America and how they are "plugged in" constantly. The lack of interaction with people allows kids to withdraw and lack in empathy for others. She read a lot of studies about bullying and talked to kids. Both pointed to the fact that it's not always the troubled kids that bully. It's the kids who come from privileged homes that have a sense of entitlement and bully others often. Her story Defying the Diva addresses some of these issues.