The View from Star Trek's Bridge

There are a lot of Hollywood memoirs out there, and most of them are, well, junk. “Written” by a star of the moment, they convey carefully market-researched, harmless or deliberately “controversial” stories designed to make you buy not only the book, but whatever other products the star is shilling.



The View from the Bridge, Nicholas Meyer’s 2009 account of his involvement in Star Trek, is different.

The Midnight Palace -- Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Calcutta, 1916: A British officer sacrifices himself to save two babies from an evil figure determined to wipe their entire bloodline out of existence.

The twins are then separated in an effort to keep their identities a secret.

Calcutta, 1932: The day the twins turn sixteen, it is immediately obvious that that effort was All For Naught.

Jawahal is coming for them, and he's coming for them now.

An Update from Ballou High School

To everyone who participated a few months ago in the GLW Book Fair to support Ballou Sr High School in Washington DC, I have the loveliest of news from school librarian Melissa Jackson. Melissa is back on the job and now shelving and sorting the many many books that arrived due to your efforts. (Remember we were right up against the school schedule as the fair ended and there wasn't much time to give the incoming books a thorough sort.) At the beginning of the year Ballou had less than one book for each of its students. (The ALA standard is 11 books for every student in a school library.) Well, after all the publicity and the gifts you all purchased (and the many others that were donated by authors and publishers) there are now FOUR books for each Ballou student. This is a huge big deal, guys - it's amazing. These are books that the school wants and the library is shelving and that is part of what makes our effort so significant - it's about books Ballou has asked for and not just ones that folks wanted to get rid of.

Donations are always a very nice thing but giving someone what they specifically ask for? That's a truly significant thing.

Guys Lit Wire intends to stay with Ballou - we are hoping that a more long term partnership can be formed with them so we can continue to help them grow their library. I am talking to Melissa now about a smaller book fair in late November and we certainly hope to return with our annual fair in the spring. But right now, this moment is about celebrating what we have already accomplished. Think about all those books, everyone. Think about all those books!

Knights of the Lunch Table by Frank Cammuso

Looking for a colorful graphic novel for kids who are about to enter middle school? Give The Knights of the Lunch Table by Frank Cammuso a try!

Artie King really wanted to have a good first day at Camelot Middle School, but things went south quickly. He accidentally tripped the principal. He bumped into some bullies. Gulp. Luckily, he soon befriends two other boys, Percy and Wayne, and finds a mentor in the cool science teacher, Mr. Merlyn.

Though this series tips its hat to the Arthurian legends, it is not myth-heavy, so it's easy to recommend Knights of the Lunch Table to kids whether or not they like fantasy stories. Even if they aren't familiar with King Arthur, they will definitely be familiar with the social hierarchy of middle school as well as the simple delights (and pitfalls) of childhood and tweendom. There are the adults who guide the kids (Mr. Merlyn, of course, plus the school janitor) and there are the adults who scare the kids. In addition to the legendary advice, each book also has a healthy does of competition: the first book has a dodgeball tournament; the second, a school fair; the third, an epic Battle of the Bands...and lots of Rock, Paper, Scissors!

Kudos to Cammuso for creating a diverse cast. The characters are different races, heights, weights, and body types. They have different temperaments, strengths, and skills. While reading the books, I very quickly and very easily assigned each character a different voice in my head, just as I always do - and were these graphic novels to make the jump to animated TV series or film, I'd be first in line to audition for the role/voice of Melody.

Here's a rundown of the series so far:
#1: The Dodgeball Chronicles
#2: The Dragon Players
#3: The Battling Bands

The Knights of the Lunch Table series is published by Scholastic, under their awesome Graphix imprint. Every page boasts full-color artwork. Story and artwork by Frank Cammuso. Book design by Phil Falco. Lettering by John Green.

Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne

Most people know David Byrne as a musician, with the Talking Heads and as a solo artist. In his three-decade career, Byrne always managed to incorporate a diverse collection of international influences in his sound. In Bicycle Diaries, he has found an equally engaging role as a worldwide cultural critic. The book is much more than a travelogue though. It is a grand celebration of how people live, observed from the seat of a two-wheeler as it whisks through city streets worldwide. It is made up of meditations on art, politics, architecture, and so much more.

Deadline by Chris Crutcher

Your doctor tells you that you have one year to live. What do you do?

For high school senior Ben Wolff the decision is to do nothing. Or at least nothing to try to stop the disease. While his prognosis is very grim, there is a treatment option. It is most likely he will live a miserable year and then die anyway. So he opts for the do nothing treatment so he can have one very good – and what he calls one “normal” -- year. He also chooses to tell no one. No family, no friends. Being eighteen he has the legal right to instruct his doctor (an old friend of the family in his small Idaho town) to follow his instructions. But maybe when you're dying there is no such thing as normal?

While Ben does nothing to try to survive, he does everything to try to live. Suddenly, life has new meaning. As he says, knowing you’re dying makes you brave. He’s a short, skinny cross-country runner at his school. He immediately drops running and joins the football team, knowing full well that given his size, it could get him killed. But so what?

Now Is the Time for Running by Michael Williams

Deo is playing soccer with his friends when the soldiers arrive in Gutu. "You voted wrongly at the election," the commander tells the villagers. "You were not thinking straight. That is why the president sent me."

The first villager to be beaten is Deo's grandfather. The second villager to be beaten is Deo's mentally disabled older brother, Innocent. Soldiers drag Innocent out of the village; other soldiers beat the rest of the villagers. Deo manages to escape and find Innocent, but soon he realizes that they have no choice but to flee Zimbabwe. All Deo and Innocent have with them are Innocent's Bix-box, in which Innocent stores his most important possessions, and Deo's homemade soccer ball, stuffed with bill after bill of near worthless Zimbabwean currency.

Running to South Africa will not be easy.

I'll Be There

Just about the only downside I experienced through reading Holly Goldberg Sloan's debut novel, I'll Be There, is that I've been walking around since I've finished it with the Jackson 5 playing very quietly inside my head over, and over, and over. (And there are days when I like the Jackson 5. Just not everyday). I suppose it says something about how much I admire this book that I am willing to let the Jackson-5-a-thon go, and tell you that you'd be crazy not to get your hands on this outstanding story as fast as you can manage. It's evocative, thematically-rich, exciting, and touching. It has characters you'll remember for a long time. It's what a book should be, but often isn't.

Emily Bell is not a good singer. She knows it, but her father doesn't seem to know it, or else because he's a music professor he doesn't want to believe it. Either way, he insists that she sings a solo in the church choir. But if he hadn't insisted she might never have seen Sam, the strange guy at the very back of the church who was never there before. The fact that Emily sings, and that Sam witnesses her humiliation, and what he does after she runs out of the church - all of this is the beginning of their story. From this small moment which seems to be based so much on chance, these two are intertwined.

Throughout their lives, Sam and his little brother Riddle haven't lived in one place for long. Their father is mentally unstable and he's a thief, a combination that makes him frightening and difficult to oppose. After Sam and Emily fall for each other, it isn't long before his father gets wind of it and sets events spinning towards danger for the boys and for Emily and her family.

KidLit Con Teams Up With RIF Because It Is The Right Thing To Do

When Jackie Parker-Robinson and I sat down to plan this year's KidLit Con in Seattle one of the things that we spent some time thinking about was how to incorporate a fundraiser into the weekend's plans. This has always been a significant and enjoyable part of the conference and everyone looks forward to it. What we decided was to shift things just a bit, both by moving away from publisher donated ARCs as raffle prizes and also toward a long term partnership with one organization. Ultimately what we came up with made sense in so many ways that in retrospect it was one of the easiest things we decided. I am delighted to announce that KidLit Con is now entering into a partnership with Reading Is Fundamental which we hope will extend for many years into the future and make a powerful difference in the lives of many.

I'm sure many of you are aware how RIF's budget was decimated by the elimination of federal funds this year. I'm not going to get all political with you because the hard truth is that there are few painless answers to our economic mess. But cutting RIF is particularly harsh as it exists solely to put books into the hands of children who otherwise can not afford them. RIF is an investment in our future in the purest and most direct terms. When you think about that way, it's hard to understand why anyone would ever put RIF on the chopping block but that is what has happened and now we just have to do what we can to make sure that future promise remains unchanged.

There are many generous groups and corporations who have stepped up to help RIF and for that we should all be grateful. KIdLit Con is seeking to make a more personal and direct contribution as the funds we raise will be coming directly from book lovers in the pursuit of creating more book lovers. Now is the time, quite frankly, where we need to put up or shut up. If you are a writer or a librarian or a bookseller or a book blogger or if you read blogs about books then this fundraiser is targeted directly at you.

So that's all of you, right?

We are living in the era of information overload and thus we don't get to say anymore that "there is nothing we can do" or "we just didn't know" or "we didn't have time to figure out how to help". This is easy. You think books matter then you need to do something to help kids get books. Period. This is your job, it's your political moment, it is your calling. And it doesn't matter what color state you live in or what little letter is next to your choice when you vote or who you think is to blame for where we are right now.

None of that matters.

The only thing you need to think about is the $1 or $5 or $10 or $20 or $50 (or more) that you can donate right this very second to RIF. You need to think about linking to this effort and you need to think about posting it to facebook and you need to think about tweeting it. You need to think about telling folks on your list serve. You need to think about how much you can give and how many other people you can spread the word to because at the end of the day the best thing about who we are is that we believe in the power of words and RIF is all about spreading that power as far and wide as possible. RIF does nothing less than change the world - that's its very mission - and if you don't think that's the most worthy thing any of us can be part of then you really are not the kind of book lover I know you to be.

Don't let us down, folks. Join KidLit Con's effort to raise money for RIF over the next thirty days as we count down to the conference. Help us show the power of booklovers; help us prove that it's not about the books we get, it's always and only about the books we can give.

Please donate now.

[Post pic from Macy's RIF event.]

It May be a New Era, but the Old One was Pretty Cool

The Space Shuttle program is grounded. NASA is renting Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get its scientists to and from the International Space Station. And all the big voyages, the ones to asteroids and other planets, are being carried out by robots. At the same time, new companies like Virgin Galactic and Space Adventures have emerged, promising "space tourism" opportunities that will soon offer rides to the edge of space and even weightless vacations and honeymoons on private space stations. It's clear that a new era of space travel and exploration has begun.

The book Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon, a collaboration of former astronauts Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton with journalist Jay Barbree, provides a look at the old era of space exploration, the one that began with America's then nemesis the Soviet Union launching the tiny Sputnik satellite into orbit to the great chagrin of American rocket scientists. It's a story of military test pilots--a rare mix of daredevil enthusiasm and ferocious discipline--who were shot up into the heavens in tiny capsules atop massive rockets that were never quite as reliable as a space traveller might hope. It's a story of a race between nations, a race that, at the outset had America playing catch up behind the Russians who reached milestone after milestone months and years ahead of the USA. Finally, of course, it’s a story of triumph, of the moment when humans stepped onto the moon's grey dust, of perhaps the greatest thing the U.S. has ever accomplished as a nation.