The Make It Safe Project

I just learned about The Make It Safe Project at Lee Wind's blog. I hope that you (yes, you, wonderful readers) will help support Amelia's efforts. Here's more about the project, as detailed at their website:

The Make It Safe Project donates books about sexual orientation and gender expression to schools and youth homeless shelters that lack the resources to keep their teens safe.

Giving: We donate books to K-12 schools, their Gay-Straight Alliances (a group that educates the school community about equality), and LGBT-inclusive youth homeless shelters nationwide. For information on how you can help give books or receive books for your school or shelter, please click here.

Support: If you are wondering what starting, leading, or joining a GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) would be like, you can browse through stories written by teens who have been involved with GSAs here.

Advice: If you have experience starting, leading, or being in a GSA, you can anonymously submit a story about your experience here.

One book can save a life.

For every $100 raised, the Make It Safe Project sends a pack of GLBTQ books to a school or youth homeless shelter. The pack will include around ten of the books on the following list:

Fiction Books
Ash by Melinda Lo
Annie On My Mind by Nancy Gardener
Empress of the World by Sara Ryan
Luna by Julie Anne Peters
Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan
Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
Will Grayson, Will Grayson by David Levithan
Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger
Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez

Nonfiction Books
It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living edited by Dan Savage and Terry Miller
GLBTQ: The Survival Guide for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Teens by Kelly Huegel
Queer: The Ultimate LGBT Guide for Teens by Kathy Belge
Kicked Out edited by Sassafras Lowry
Like Me by Chely Wright
Let's Get This Straight: The Ultimate Handbook for Youth with LGBTQ Parents by Tina Fakhrid-Deen

If you are a student, teacher, parent, or principal at any K-12 school or a volunteer or client at a youth homeless shelter in the USA and your school or shelter is in need of books, please contact the Make It Safe Project.

The Stupendous Dodgeball Fiasco by Janice Repka

With a plot line parallel to what's going on with this season of Glee, where Kurt's campaign platform for student government was to end dodgeball, this Middle Grade novel is a fast and fun read.

Phillip's dad is a clown. Literally. He's Leo Laugh-a-Lot. Phillip's mom is The Fat Lady. But 11 year old Phillip doesn't fit in at the Windy Van Hooten Circus. He doesn't want to be the guy following behind the elephants with the giant pooper-scooper. And everything 'circus' he tries to do ends in disaster. All Phillip wants is to be a regular kid.

So when he goes to live with his aunt and uncle in Hardington, the unofficial Dodgeball Capital of the World and home to The American Dodgeball Company, he thinks he's finally gotten his chance.

But there's a bully, B.B., who doesn't like him. Her dad is the hard-as-nails P.E. Coach. And every P.E. class is dodgeball. Every. Single. One.And Phillip is the #1 target.

Sidekicks by Jack D. Ferraiolo

After spending the past six year as sidekick to the famous superhero Phantom Justice, Bright Boy (real name: Scott Hutchinson) decides it’s time for a change. Scott still believes in saving people from evil villains, but can’t he do it while wearing something other than bright yellow tights? The tights are embarrassing to begin with, but when television cameras catch him getting a little, uh, involuntarily excited while holding the very attractive woman he just rescued, Bright Boy becomes a joke. Seriously, even the little kids at Scott’s school are laughing at Bright Boy.

It doesn’t help that Phantom Justice’s archnemesis, Dr. Chaotic, returned to town after a five-year hiatus (translation: he just broke out of prison). Dr. Chaotic’s sidekick, Monkeywrench, was always a thorn in Bright Boy’s side, and now Monkeywrench is back as well. Only Monkeywrench now has a brand new, totally awesome, costume.

So not fair.

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

The wolves will not stop chasing Ben through his dreams. They are wild and persistent, leaving paw prints in the snow next to Gunflint Lake, Minnesota: The boy's home.

Jump back fifty years. Rose lives just outside of New York City, where the bright lights and tall towers tempt her to visit--much against her parents’ wishes. Though separated by time, Ben and Rose are both looking for a place where they can belong. Thus begins Wonderstruck.

The Mind's Prisoner

Sapphique, the sequel to Katharine Fisher's Incarceron, continues the story of two dystopic worlds: one, the Realm, artificially frozen in time roughly around the 18th century; the other, Incarceron, a failed uptopia set up for the incarceration and rehabilitation of massive numbers of The Realm's prisoners, which has instead devolved into a kind of organic-mechanical hybrid hell full of metal forests and half-mechanical animals. Travel between the two worlds (or even any sharing of knowledge) is forbidden for all except the Warden of Incarceron. One legendary figure, however, Sapphique, escaped long ago, leaving behind him a religious hope in both worlds fueled by tales of his exploits.

SPOILER ALERT: To speak of Sapphique requires that we reveal some of the surprises of Incarceron. So if you are determined to have nothing spoiled, go read volume one now. Kelly Fineman has an excellent review of Incarceron here.

Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi

Amulet is the long running graphic novel series by Kazu Kibuishi. The series began in 2008 with the Stonekeeper and earlier this year the fourth installment, The Last Council, was published.

The Amulet series began with a car accident and the tragic death of Emily and Navin’s father. When the family moves to live in the abandoned home of Silas, the children's grandfather, they are drawn into the world of Alledia where their mother is abducted by a creepy, walking, squid-type creature. Emily and Navin plunge into the world to save her. Luckily the children have the help of Silas’ inventions and find Silas himself, though he only has enough strength left to explain the choice Emily must make concerning a magical amulet she found in his house.

Emily accepts the power of the amulet to become a Stonekeeper, but it becomes a double edged sword. Emily must save the world of Alledia and finds that the amulet's motives are not always pure, much like the ring in J.R.R. Tolkien's epic series.

In the fourth book we find that Emily's crew has grown and she has seemingly succeeded in completing an important quest, which was to find the lost city of Cielis and receive help from the Guardian Council. There is, however, something wrong with the city with its scared residents and large prison. Emily decides to go along with the training program for Stonekeepers despite the uneasy feeling that they need to flee.

The real power of Amulet is not in the action and adventure, which is great, but in how Emily fares in becoming the leader of her family and working to navigate in a simultaneously beautiful and horrifying world she doesn't understand. Early in the book, Emily is told, "When you begin to realize the true weight of your actions you will awaken to become the person this world needs you to be."

Amulet is a wonderful series with emotional depth, exciting action and a fascinating world to explore. Fans of Jeff Smith's Bone and anything by Doug TenNapel will enjoy Amulet.

Ghosts of Ascalon by Matt Forbeck and Jeff Grubb

Books based on computer games? It’s the best of both worlds! Many different games have a literary component to their worlds: WoW, Starcraft, and Halo to name a few. With Ghosts of Ascalon, the PC game Guild Wars recently entered the list of games with novels based on their lore. You don't have to be a fan of the game though, or have ever played the game, or even be at all familiar with the setting to enjoy the book.

The Inquisitor's Apprentice

I'll be honest, this past year I've stepped away from YA and MG fiction, taking some time away from kidlit just to recharge my batteries. This fall, though, I dove back in big time. Gorging on one kind of book (in this case, fantasy and science fiction), one genre can be a real recipe for burnout. But the really great books that rise above all others can excite in ways that aren't just about the thrills of one book, but the kind of thrills that make you eager to pick up other books because they remind you just how awesome reading can be. One of those books, for me, is The Inquisitor's Apprentice by Chris Moriarty. Read on to find out why...

420, Scientific Atheism, and Street Photography

photo: Vivian Maier

Toward the end of the year I get this sudden urge to want to recommend all sort of books to people, mostly stemming from years of retail bookselling where that was all I did for the last six weeks of the year. And because publishers know this is where they can scoop up a large chunk of annual revenues the holiday season is full of all kinds of attractive new releases.

Many of which I want for myself.

This leads me down a path where I sometimes think holiday shopping can make us all a little selfish. But weeding through my various wish lists I find a number of things that would make interesting and inspiring gifts for teen guys, particularly creative, free-thinkers.

Ready Player One

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Insert quarter. Ready Player One. Designed by Ernest Cline.

Level One: The story of Wade Watts in the year 2044, as the teen tries to navigate a cruel reality as he simultaneously navigates the much cooler virtual reality of OASIS, a massive multiplayer world that (think WoW X Second Life X Facebook, and then put an exponent around your product) everyone is playing and many have made their preferred existence.