Debbie Harry Sings in French by Meagan Brothers.

Johnny lives an edgy life filled with Goth outfits, lots of drinking, and plenty of music.  When he discovers Debbie Harry, he finds someone who inspires him with her toughness and beauty.  Someone he would love to be like.  Johnny isn’t gay, but he’s not sure what he is exactly.  As Johnny copes with other issues in his life, including an overdose, he finds himself grappling with labels, love and sobriety.

Brothers has created a book that embodies the quest of teens who are different than those around them.  Johnny’s search for himself is told not only in his sexuality but through his struggles with addiction and his troubles with his mother.  The book has a deft coolness and an addictive readability.  It will be devoured by teens who are outsiders in any way.

The characterizations are wonderfully done as well.  Johnny is a believable teen grappling with many issues as is his girlfriend Maria.  The adults in the story are also multidimensional and honestly portrayed.  It is refreshing to find an adult character who can handle sexuality issues with such grace as Johnny’s Uncle Sam. 

Highly recommended for any outsider.  This book takes on issues that I haven’t seen handled in teen fiction before.  It is groundbreaking yes, but written so naturally and easily that it doesn’t read that way.  Just as it should be.

Kidthing is offering a free online version of Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss where the book is read aloud online.  The book is free through March 31st for classroom use. 

And the nominees for Young Adult Fiction are:

Sherman Alexie for “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”

Geraldine McCaughrean for “The White Darkness”

Walter Dean Myers for “What They Found: Love on 145th Street”

Kenneth Oppel for“Darkwing”

Philip Reeve for “A Darkling Plain”

My favorites are the first two listed, but I haven’t read any of the others.  The first two are my among my favorite YA books of 2007.  Alexie’s novel is my #1 choice of the year.  It will be interesting to see what takes the prize.

I think that any of us who are interested in books for children are also interested in children having childhoods rich in imagination.  NPR has an interesting piece on creative play for children and its importance in forming “executive function” such as self-regulation, cognitive flexibility and working memory.

The advice is common sense: children should be encouraged to play games where they dream, wish, pretend and invite.  Free play should be an integral part of their lives.  My youngest son has a way of pretending that he has done since he was tiny.  He whooshes around running, talking to himself and making loud explosive noises every so often.  He won’t tell any of us what he is doing, and we have learned to just enjoy his orbiting.  I wouldn’t rob him of that time where he is obviously in another world all his own for anything.  In fact, when teachers tell us that our sons are both daydreamers, I take it as a great compliment.  Means that I did something right.

How about you?  Any daydreaming children?  Any who have such rich imaginations that they don’t need anyone else around to have fun?  Tell us!

In the last few days, the Adbooks list has been discussing online resources where teens review books.  Because it can often be frustrating to try to figure out what teens in general enjoy without becoming stereotypical, I love these sites!  Here are my three favorites that were mentioned on the email list:

LYRE: Center for Literature for Young Readers from Youngstown State University offers the LYRE review which is filled with book reviews by high school students.  The Review is posted quarterly and features a mix of brand new titles and older ones.

NotRequiredReading.com also does reviews by high schoolers.  Their interface is more graphical and will probably appeal more to teens themselves.  They have different sections such as What’s Hot and Pageturners to draw you in.  The What’s Hot section does feature hot books in YA lit.

Teen Book Review is my final pick.  It is a book review blog written by 16-year-old Jocelyn.  She also has an active MySpace, a great blogroll, and does incredible interviews with authors.  Amazing!

Oo la la!  I adore the beta Lookybook site!  The site offers all sorts of children’s books that you can page through online!  And these are not books you have never heard of, they are top-of-the-line and recent children’s books.  The paging works seamlessly and smoothly with an intuitive interface, plus you can embed the Lookybooks onto your blog or website, even without registering for the site.

Registration gets you your own bookshelf, the ability to comment on books, and other bells and whistles. 

You can browse the books by highest rated and most looked at.  Here is an embedded book so you can see how it works:

What do you think?

VOYA does it again with a great array of fiction for middle-grade readers.  Some of my favorites from the year made the list, others are still patiently sitting in my to-be-read pile, and others are new to me.  What more could you want from a list?! 

Here are some of my favorites from the list:

Atherton by Patrick Carman.

Dragon Slippers by Jessica Day George.

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy.

A Drowned Maiden’s Hair by Laura Amy Schlitz.

See any of your favorites on the list? 

A Milwaukee Journal article offers hope that finally people are realizing that there is an art to creating books for children!  Amazing!

Here are some of my favorite quotes, but it is worth reading it in full:

“Most people have a warm and fuzzy and kind of inaccurate idea of what children’s literature is,” says John Warren Stewig, director of the Center for Children’s Literature at Carthage College.

….

In fact, the best writers for children are masters of illusion. They labor for years over their manuscripts, cutting out unnecessary words, boiling down descriptions to the finest, clearest images and immersing themselves in the worlds of childhood to make their stories authentic.

My only quibble with the article is their final section where they say that Hugo Cabret is “stronger on the graphics than the prose, which is rather plain.”  Guess it goes to make their point that all children’s books are being held to standards by readers.

The Associated Press has a wonderful article on the new trend of taking the art of children’s books seriously.  Children’s book illustrations are now being shown in museums, studied in art courses, and of course being purchased as investments.  I especially like the second page of the article where they tie children’s book illustrations to cultural and artistic movements of their times. 

The Daily Mail has an the intriguing results of a poll for the best children’s books in the UK.  Amazingly, Harry Potter came in SIXTH!  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis was voted into the top position and if you take a look at the top 50, you will see many other beloved children’s classics.  Here are the top 50.  I  started to bold my favorites, but it turned out that almost every one I have read, I have loved, so the ones in bold are the ones I have read:

1. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis

2. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
3. Famous Five, Enid Blyton

4. Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne
5. The BFG, Roald Dahl

6. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling
7. The Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton

8. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

9. Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
10. The Gruffalo, Julia Donaldson

11. The Tales of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter

12. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
13. Matilda, Roald Dahl
14. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
15. The Cat in the Hat, Dr Seuss

16. The Twits, Roald Dahl
17. Mr Men, Roger Hargreaves

18. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
19. The Malory Towers series, Enid Blyton

20. Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie

21. The Railway Children, E. Nesbit

22. Hans Christian Fairy Tales, H.C. Andersen

23, The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum

24. The Witches, Roald Dahl
25. Stig of the Dump, Clive King
26. The Wishing Chair, Enid Blyton
27. Dear Zoo, Rod Campbell
28. The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Judith Kerr

29. Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Jan Brett
30. James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl

31. A Bear Called Paddington, Michael Bond

32. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell

33. Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak

34. Aesop’s Fables, Jerry Pinkney
35. The Borrowers, Mary Norton
36. Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling
37. Meg and Mog, Jan Pienkowski

38. Mrs Pepperpot, Alf Proysen

39. We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Michael Rosen
40. The Gruffalo’s Child, Julia Donaldson
41. Room on a Broom, Julia Donaldson

42. The Worst Witch, Jill Murphy

43. Miffy, Dick Bruna

44. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

45. Flat Stanley, Jeff Brown
46. The Snail and the Whale, Julia Donaldson
47. Ten Little Ladybirds, Melanie Gerth
48. Six Dinners Sid, Inga Moore
49. The St. Clare’s series, Enid Blyton

50. Captain Underpants, Dav Pilkey

Looks like I need to brush up on my Blyton!  Anyone have a favorite one to recommend that I haven’t read yet?