Spread Some Holiday Good Cheer With Ballou High School & Pledge To Read 5 Books With the Students

As many of you know, we are very big friends with librarian Melissa Jackson at Ballou Sr High School in Washington DC. Melissa has done an amazing job over the past few years of taking her school library from less than one book for each student to a ratio now of more than five. She will be moving into a modern library and media center next fall when the new Ballou High School is opened. (The old one was built in the late 1950s - almost SIXTY years ago!)

But while the facilities are truly impressive, the budget does not have room for new books. So, we have updated the Ballou Wish List at Powells Books and hope that many of you will consider buying a book for these worthy students as you do your own holiday shopping.

Before you head over to the wish list though, please take note of Ballou's We Read! Reading Initiative that includes a pledge to read five books by April. If you want to show your support of Ballou's efforts to get teens reading, then print out the pledge, sign it and send a picture holding it up to Melissa via instagram or on their facebook page. You can even send a tweet letting her know you promise to read books in support of Ballou.

And now, after the cut find out more about shopping the wish list for Ballou!

Readers and Filmmakers Go SNOWBLIND

 Attention filmmakers (and readers!)

Want to show the world what you can do AND spread the love of a good book? St. Martin's Press and Talenthouse are accepting 1-minute trailers for Christopher Golden's upcoming book SNOWBLIND. All of the submitted videos will be seen by some pretty cool folks - legitimate directors, writers, producers - and one will be selected to be the book's official trailer.

If you are interested, you should enter.

If you know other filmmakers - be they amateur or professional, adults or teens or kids - please let them know about this incredible opportunity.

Trust me. I've read the book, and it's amazing. With edge-of-your-seat tension and jaw-dropping twists, Christopher Golden's Snowblind blizzard is going to blow you away!

So what are you waiting for? Spread the word, gather a production team, and make that mini-movie!

Here's the official press release and all of the pertinent information. Good luck!

Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis

Imagine a novel by the love child of H. G. Wells and Mary Shelley, one that rounds out the werewolf-sized hole in the pantheon of 19th Century classic monster speculative fiction, and you have some idea of the great gothic science fiction that is Kirsten Bakis's Lives of the Monster Dogs.

The premise is fantastic-- in all meanings of the word-- as well as absurd. In the near future, a small community of what are referred to as "monster dogs" show up in New York: cultured, dressed in elaborate Germanic clothing from over a century ago, and, due to extensive prosthetics, walking upright and speaking both German and English.

Battling Boy

Something happens to boys around the age of thirteen. For some its the physical transformations of puberty, the ungainly growth, the cracking of the voice. For others its the emotional and chemical roller coaster that creates lapses of judgment and awkward situations. It can also be marked with a ceremony of passage toward adulthood but is most often noted with the exasperation of adults. For he Battling Boy it means being plucked from the middle of his street games with his friends and sent without discussion to another world to serve as a superhero. Tough gig.

For Battling Boy that planet is Earth, and in this parallel universe where the youngest of teens are sent to weaker planets to help them survive, this planet has some serious problems. For one thing, there are monsters about. At first glance it appears these boogie men are little more than cloaked child snatchers, serious enough to require a curfew for children but hardly monsters. Very quickly though their victims are caught in nets, bound and gagged, and promised to be fed to spiders. Then along comes a flying hero to save them -- Haggard West --- in very much the garb and style of 1930s comic strips, with his leather flying gear and improbably gadgets. There's a pulsating variance between the comic and the serious where the expectation, like a serialized radio drama, is that the danger will be averted at the last minute and the bad guys will get away with a cliffhanger threat.

Instead, West is shot out of the sky, dead. The children do not escape their dreaded fates. And somewhere in the universe a boys is turning thirteen and about to be thrust into the middle of this mess.

This is how Battling Boy opens.

Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn

I have a special subgenre of books that I call “gutwrench” books. This subgenre is reserved for books that literally (wait, that is what “literally” means, right?) rip your guts out when you read them. They are the antithesis of light and breezy, they deny facile endings, they are not “tweetable.”  Consider Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridain, or Marcus Zusak’s The Book Thief. These are books whose elemental truths stay with you long after reading, even when you might wish their discomfiture would let you let them go. To this subgenre I now add Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn.

Computer Problems

Much of technology reporting is a kind of cheerleading. Isn't the Internet amazing? Look at all the stuff we can do! Look how fast we're developing new cool things! In a few years computers will be even super -faster! And super-smaller! And the Internet will be even super-cooler!

When anyone does get critical, it's usually to complain that technology is stealing too much of our attention, or our creativity, or something. Kids spend too much time Tweeting! Too much screen-time is frying our brains!

Jaron Lanier doesn't think technology is in such a great place. And he doesn't think the problem is with kids being addicted to their phones. For him, the problem goes much much deeper. In You are not a Gadget: A Manifesto he argues that our technologies have "locked us in" to a particular way of thinking. Our computers and gadgets, because they were not made thoughtfully enough, are now controlling us.

If you love your phone or your iPad or your laptop, you might be suspicious of this book, but do understand that Lanier is no Luddite. He is a musician and a technologist who has done a great deal of work in the field and has stretched his consideration of human/computer interaction into applications, virtual reality experiments and neurological studies. He is not critical of technology as whole, but merely of technology as it currently is. He believes our gadgets offer much more promise and possibility than is currently being explored.

A Stray in the Woods by Alison Wilgus

Last month, I learned of the extremely cool story A Stray in the Woods by Alison Wilgus, thanks to a tweet and corresponding Instagram posted by fellow author and artist Dave Roman. I was immediately drawn to the title and the adorable cat on the cover. Then I went to Alison's site and discovered how the story was written. In her own words: 

A Stray in the Woods was originally posted on Tumblr, updating at least once per week barring holidays and travel. After each update, I took suggestions via the "Ask Box" as to what Cat should do -- Investigate an object? Move into another room? Eat something off the floor? These "commands" could be mundane or ridiculous, foolish or brave, serious or silly -- the only rule was that they be possible for Cat to do, given the current circumstances. When I sat down to draw an update, I would read through all of the commands that had been submitted and select one as the basis for the next page.

That's right! Interactive storytelling! With cats! How cool is that?

Well, I read the entire thing in one fell swoop and I can tell you: Very cool. The pictures truly tell a story, with the text explaining all that needs to be explained. Moving forward one prompt at a time, Wilgus created one or more pictures per prompt and developed a really nifty story for readers who are as curious as her feline protagonist.

As you read the comic, look for my three favorite panels: a cat stretch, a cat nap, and a catnip mouse.

Bonus: It has a theme song, written by Paul Tuttle Starr, which is just as cute as the cat. Listen!

Follow A Stray in the Woods by Alison Wilgus on Tumblr and pick up the bound book, which is being published after an incredibly successful Kickstarter campaign.

Fun fact: Dave Roman and Alison Wilgus wrote The Last Airbender prequel comic Zuko's Story.

Zombie Makers: True Stories of Nature's Undead by Rebecca L. Johnson

This is one of those books filled with so much fascinating yet disgusting information that you can't help but read parts out loud to other people so they can be grossed out right along with you.

Or maybe that's just me. Because I started reading this at work one day and just had to read some sections aloud to my co-workers. Like when Rebecca L. Johnson explains how a certain fungus grows inside the corpse of a type of carpenter ant, until "a long, skinny stalk erupts through the dead ant's head." Or the description of a wasp laying an egg on a cockroach, then the egg becoming a larva that slowly eats the roach's internal organs while the roach is still alive. (And then I absolutely had to show my co-workers the accompanying pictures, as well. I mean, just look at page 24.)

Better Nate Than Ever

All Nate Foster wants is to see his name in lights on Broadway. Or to see a Broadway show. But he's stuck in his small Pennsylvania hometown. Stuck, that is, until he and his best friend Libby hatch a scheme to get Nate to Broadway. Nate hops a bus to New York City, where everyone is super nice and helpful (bless him), and finds his way to the auditons for E. T.: The. Musical, where he not only wows the casting folk with his, erm, unique charms but meets up with his estranged aunt as well.

Hijinks and not a few shenanigans ensue as Nate tries to keep his trip secrect from his parents, make it to callbacks, get some food, and not lose his money or himself in the big city. Does he win the covented role of Eliott? Does he keep the whole trip secret from his parents and avoid an epic grounding? Well, you'll just have to read it and see.

I adore Nate Foster. I have a couple students in my 7th grade language arts classes who have the same goofy charm and upbeat nature that Nate has. This book does deal with some heavier issues, like Nate's parents' not-great marriage, homophobia, bullying and sibling rivalry, but Nate's wit and humor keep it from drifting into afterschool special territory and keep it totally appropriate for younger middle school students. I'm definitely going to recommend it to my students.

The Cyborgs are Coming . . . or You can Make Your Own

A couple of days ago I came across an article about a science kit that allows kids to turn cockroaches into iPhone-Controlled cyborgs. My first reaction was to check the post date and make sure it wasn't April 1. But the kit is apparently not a joke and really does allow you to connect an electronic device to a cockroach and then control the bug from your iPhone. It kind of disgusts me, but I can't decide exactly why. There seem to be a lot of choices.

But for today here's the point: if you can buy a toy that allows kids to play with neuro-surgical implants, then the world depicted in Daniel Wilson's Amped may not be terribly far away.

Amped is a near-future story of human brain implants. The device, sold as Autofocus, enhances brain focus but can also be used for other brain-enhancing functions. Mostly, implants are used to treat ADD, epilepsy and other neurological brain disorders as well as repair brain damage. But they make anyone who wears them smarter.

Owen Gray, a high school teacher, has an implant which was installed by his neurosurgeon father, but to the best of Owen's knowledge it doesn't do anything except prevent epileptic episodes. The implant becomes a problem, however, when public opinion turns against the implanted, known as “amps,” and the Supreme Court revokes most of the rights of implanted persons in the U.S. Violence erupts and Owen attempts to escape to his father's lab. Just before the lab is destroyed, killing Owen's father, Owen learns that his father went all mad-scientist on him and the amp in Owen's head is military grade with “something extra,” turning his mind and body into a deadly weapon. All he has to do is activate it.