Month: July 2012

{voices of youth advocates}

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July 17, 2012

4:48 pm

1 Comment on {voices of youth advocates}

Author News

This summer’s VOYA is out and online. If you’re not a librarian and familiar with it, VOYA stands for Voices Of Youth Advocates, and since 1978 it’s been one of the most respected library journals for young adult librarians. It covers advocacy issues for young adults, YA library programs, including using library spaces for gaming and other YA interests; intellectual freedom, YA lit censorship, and the promotion of young adult literature through author interviews and book reviews… all good things.

I’m proud to have been quoted in VOYA’s pages. Writer, blogger, librarian and all-round book chica Edi Campbell kindly included some thoughts from me on being an author of color, and I’m in really good company with G. Neri, Malinda Lo, Cynthia Leitich Smith, Malin Alegria, Zetta Elliot, Joseph Bruchac, and more. (Thanks, Edi!)

You’ll want to read this entire magazine from cover to cover – but you’ll find the piece where I speak up begins on pg. 28. Pull up a chair and a glass of iced tea! You’ll come away with a few new insights on writers of color and the urge to pick up more books for that teetering To Be Read pile.

“…my home, sweet home.”

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July 4, 2012

2:16 pm

2 Comments on “…my home, sweet home.”

Musings on Extemporanea

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Hearing God Bless America echoing this morning from the graveside service up the hill made me a little teary-eyed. While we’re being low-key today, having sort of exhausted our people-being-with skills, I’m still aware that my country is 263 years old today. (Meanwhile, the British, with amused smiles, say, “Awww! You’re almost a big country now!”)

I miss my friend Charlotte and her family most of all on the 4th of July, because with them in 2010 I had one of the most awesome holidays, ever, and it still stands out in my memory – fireflies, parades, corn on the cob, lemon cake – a perfect distillation of every childhood summer I ever wanted. This time, there’s peach crumble, iced tea, and burritos.

Hope you’re having a perfect summer’s day, wherever you are, celebrating the Constitution, a working government, even if we’re not always so keen on how it works, and having a union in which to be the United States.

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