What do teens read?

The finalists for Teen Choice Book of the Year, the teen component of the Children's Choice Book Awards, are always partially predictable (romances, fantasy, vampires, and dystopia tend to do well) with a small element of surprise (realistic fiction). Every story has a coming of age component but the environment is often what sets the tale apart. The Teen Choice Book of the Year finalists were selected by around 4,000 teenagers who participated in a poll on teenreads.com. If you're dying to see your teenager pick up a book but he or she claims not to have the time and, frankly, isn't interested in your recommendations anyhow, suggest they take a look at this list of peer-recommendations:

Burned (House of Night, Book 7) by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast - Read the first chapter!

Mockingjay (The Final Book of The Hunger Games) by Suzanne Collins

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy, Book 5) by Richelle Mead

Fang (A Maximum Ride Novel) by James Patterson - Read an excerpt!

Happy Reading!

I'd like 3 cups of anything but tea right now!

Dear Readers,

I am sorry to have been MIA last week. A funny thing happened on my way to my blog... Actually, it wasn't funny at all. Last Sunday night, as many of you know, 60 Minutes aired an expose on Greg Mortenson. Greg is a co-founder of Central Asia Institute, co-author of the bestselling books, Three Cups of Tea and Stones Into Schools and creator of the program Pennies for Peace whereby American children collect pennies, bring them to school and collectively donate them to Central Asia Institute for the development, building and strengthening of schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. A barrage of unflattering accusations have been hurled at Greg over the last week; claims that the most compelling stories in his books were fabricated, claims that he has mismanaged funds and claims that he has not built all the schools he claims to have built, has not spent the money on them he claimed to have raised for that purpose and that many of those schools that were built are not operating as schools at all. Like so many people, I was deeply saddened and disillusioned by the multitude of claims. I had long ago drunk the kool-aid. Greg Mortenson, as far as I was concerned, was a hero who had energized the masses to think globally and step up to make a difference in the lives of others and, further, to recognize that by bettering someone else's circumstances, we make the world a better place. Greg's mission and vision were based on the belief that education and literacy, particularly of girls, were the most effective tools to bring about global peace. I was such a believer that when someone on my staff suggested some time ago that we honor Greg with the Impact Award at the Children's Choice Book Awards gala, I thought it was the most brilliant idea I had ever heard. When we approached Greg's publisher with our invitation over the summer and Greg accepted, I felt as though I'd won the lottery. Well, the gala is on May 2, just one week away, and Greg Mortenson will not be there. In light of the current accusations and unanswered questions, we agreed it was best to forego the presentation of an Impact Award this year. Our gala will still be a fabulous event that celebrates the children's books that inspire, excite and entertain kids and teens and the talented authors and illustrators that create them. While saddened by the recent developments, we are able to go on, nearly unscathed. But what about the legions of kids who were motivated to break their piggy banks open to participate in Pennies for Peace and what about the children in Pakistan and Afghanistan whose opportunities for education have been jeopardized. Greg Mortenson may or may not have done some bad things but what is incontrovertible is the fact that he raised awareness of a serious and critically important issue and people responded. My hope is that we, as a global community, hold onto the good and do not become so distrustful that it causes us to stop trying to help others. Each and every person really can and should step up and make a difference.

Before leaving you last week, I was working my way toward blogging about each of the finalists for the Children's Choice Books Awards. As you'll recall, voting closes on Friday, April 29. That means it's not too late so if you know kids who haven't voted, please encourage them to visit www.BookWeekOnline.com and vote now! Every vote counts!

In connection with my hope of what will emerge from the Greg Mortenson debacle, I'd like to introduce you to a 6th grader who gets it; who actually utters, "I'm DESTINED FOR GREATNESS". He knows this because a fortune cookie told him so. His name is Nate and he's the star of Big Nate: In a Class By Himself and the other Big Nate books by Lincoln Peirce. He's funny and his antics are a riot. Good for him for believing he is destined for greatness - I hope he uses his power for good!

Happy Birthday Jeff!

When I look at the faces of my beautiful daughters, I see their dad, my husband Jeff. They all look very much like him. Beyond their looks, each has some of his very best qualities too. Like their dad, these girls are very smart and very down to earth, each has a goofy sense of humor and they are genuinely compassionate. Jeff is an aggressive antitrust attorney so it's easy to overlook his tremendous compassion for others but Jeff helps people in need on a regular basis (he has been known to help crazy old men cross the street and he helps people up after they've fallen on the street, which seems to happen a lot). He is a good soul and he has a good soul. He also has a lower patience threshold than anyone I've ever known; that is, anyone until our daughters were born. Jeff is a great guy whom I love very, very much and I get a total kick seeing elements of him in each of our daughters.

Our kids love it when we tell them our stories - what we were like and what we were up to when we were kids. Jeff is notorious (within the confines of our nuclear family circle) for beginning stories with "When daddy was a little boy..." Parenthood has given Jeff a much needed motivator to connect with his inner child and, like at least one of our daughters, he can't seem to get through a story that begins with "When daddy was a little boy" without erupting into fits of laughter.So Happy Birthday Jeff! Kids and laughter are keeping you young and fun.

If you've been following this blog then you know that I am linking each post to a book that is a finalist for the 2011 Children's Choice Book Awards, the only national awards program for books where the finalists and winners are selected by children and teens. There is one book on the 5th-6th Grade Book of the Year list that is just too perfect for this post. In Rick Riordan's The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, Book1), we meet Sadie and Carter, 2 siblings who have lived apart for several years. They do not know each other very well, they do not know themselves very well and they learn that they never knew their parents very well either. Readers learn that they have inherited many qualities from their father and at the ages of 12 and 14, they are only just beginning to figure it all out. Sadie and Carter learn that they were descended from ancient pharaohs,  that they have god-like powers and that their earthly bodies are temporarily inhabited by Egyptian gods. Turns out the apples do not fall too far from the tree; their father, Dr. Julius Kane, also has magical powers. He is an Egyptian magician who is a host of the god Osiris, god of the Afterlife, the underworld and the dead. Rick Riordan's books get devoured in my household and it's easy to see why!

As a side note and yet completely relevant to this topic, you may recall from a prior post that, last summer,  my kids and Jeff all agreed that he might actually be Zeus. It turns out that Zeus had many mortal and immortal offspring. I can't help but wonder which are being hosted by my daughters. I'm thinking they are among the following:

APHRODITE The Goddess of Love was, according to some, a daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Dione (most accounts, however, say she was born in the sea from the severed genitals of Ouranos).

ATHENE The Goddess of Warcraft, Wisdom and Craft was sprung directly from the head of Zeus. Her mother was the Titaness Metis whom Zeus had swallowed whole in pregnancy.


EIRENE The Goddess of Peace, one of the three Horai, was a daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Themis.


EUNOMIA The Goddess of Good Governance, one of the three Horai, was a daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Themis.


HARMONIA The Goddess of Harmony was, according to one author, a daughter of Zeus and the Pleiad Elektra (the usual account makes her a daughter of Ares and Aphrodite who was only fostered by the Pleiad).


HEBE The Goddess of Youth was a daughter of Zeus and Hera.


PERSEPHONE The Goddess of the Underworld and Renewal of Spring was a daughter of Zeus and Demeter (or, according to one account, of Zeus and Styx).




Could be true! :)

He ain't heavy, he's my brother

Some time ago, I was asked if my kids mind being the subject of  my blog posts. The truth is quite the opposite. They keep tabs and object only when they feel they've been underrepresented (or, more accurately, if someone else has been overrepresented). I think I always knew that and respect them enough to keep the truly private material private so I have never had any reservations about sharing their antics in this way and have yet to be accused of misrepresenting anyone. Nobody has even been upset about disproportionate representation lately so I've been feeling pretty good about the balanced way I've handled this blog. Until today. Would you believe that today's objection came not from one of my kids but, rather, from one of my brothers?! He felt the need to call my attention to the fact that our other brother has been mentioned in 2 of the last 4 blog posts and he has not. The objection came by way of an email entitled "Unfair". OMG! I know he was only partly joking. Ahhhhh... sibling rivalry!

In fairness, let me tell you a little bit about my underrepresented brother. He's a great guy, a great father, a loyal football fan, a genius, a fabulous uncle to his nieces, the first and best hypochondriac I ever knew, and the kid who, growing up, was determined to develop many varied interests. He played hockey and rode a bike and went to camp and learned to cook beef bourguignon and had a great vocabulary, particularly when it came to describing his various ailments (he was the only 6 year old I knew that used words like "contusion", "laceration" and "hematoma"). He was a huge Beatles fan and was determined to unlock the musical magic within himself. For a short time, he had dreams of starting a band of his own. He pounded on drums for a while and then turned his focus to violin. Oy!

Today's book is selected in honor of my darling brother. Zebrafish, a 5th-6th Grade Book of the Year finalist for the 2011 Children's Choice Book Awards is the story of Vita Escolar who starts a rock band with bandmates who don't actually play instruments. Yet, they evolve as a group and grow as a community. Their individual stories are compelling. We learn that one of the bandmates has leukemia. The band, Zebrafish, holds a fundraising concert to help her hospital get the medical equipment it needs.The book happens to be partly sponsored by Generation Cures of Children's Hospital Boston, a philanthropic movement that teaches tweens to use their powers for good. Some of the proceeds from this book go to fund research for the hospital.

Smile!

We talk a lot about klutziness and clumsiness in my home. Each of our daughters has her own sense of style and her own type of gracefulness. However, each one is also at least a little bit accident prone and, thankfully, good-natured about it. I think the "it could happen" factor was a powerful tool for me when I began reading Raina Telgemeier's graphic memoir Smile, a 5th-6th Grade Book of the Year finalist in the 2011 Children's Choice Book Awards.As I kept reading and rooting for the protagonist, it struck me that Raina Telgemeier is like a Judy Blume in the age of graphic novels. I love this story and I love the way it's told. Our twin daughters are in 6th grade and wear braces just like the very real protagonist, Raina. Thankfully they've (so far) been spared the dental trauma she undergoes but trauma knows no limits when you're 12; everything is traumatic. I actually don't want to give anything away regarding this book - just encourage your middle grade kids to read it. You and they won't be sorry!

Talkin' 'bout my generation

Every generation has its name, its jargon and its cultural mindset, reflected in its cult classic movies, television shows and books. After the Lost Generation, the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation (children of the Great Depression), the Baby Boomers were born beginning in 1946. They were such an enormous part of the U.S. population back then that they changed everything. The smaller generation that followed seemed to have little identity compared to the boomers, so they became known as Generation X and sometimes called the Baby Busters. They were followed by Generation Y, also known as the Millennials, Generation Next, Net Generation and Echo Boomers. The children born in the late 90's and early 2000s are Generation Z, also known as Generation I, or Internet Generation. No big surprise there!

When I was a kid, my brothers and I watched television classics like Eight is Enough, Happy Days and Star Trek. We read The Outsiders and I read everything by Judy Blume. We used words like "cool", "nerd", and "spaz" and catch phrases like "may the force be with you" from a popular movie at the time (:)). My older brother used to say "dy-no-mite" like Jimmie JJ Walker on the television show Good Times.

My own kids speak in "abbreves". No word is too short to be abbreviated. They don't quote great films all that frequently but they quote television shows like Modern Family and music lyrics by Ke$ha routinely. They can't figure out how we ever survived without cell phones, email and texting. So many great books have been written for and appreciated by kids of this generation and new books are being created for them all the time. This is, after all, the generation of Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games. But there is one book that is like an anthem for this generation and it just so happens to be a 5th-6th Grade Book of the Year finalist for the 2011 Children's Choice Book Awards. The book is Lane Smith's It's a Book. Fifth and sixth graders should not be put off by the fact that this is a picture book. It's a clever and irreverent picture book; with humor perfect for the middle grade age group and pretty well any age group. It has been called a "delightful manifesto on behalf of print in the digital age" and that it is. The characters are a mouse, a monkey and a tech-savvy jackass and it's one of those gems that you can't help but walk away quoting. Just as scores of school children know the first line of Charlotte's Web by heart and quote it with fondness, everyone who reads It's a Book will remember the last line and quote it with gusto.

Finally...

I typically blog at night after I've finished a day of work and an evening of homework help. I think it's important to know yourself and I feel that I know myself reasonably well and yet the routine described above is ridiculous considering my early bird and non-night owl nature. In other words, I meant to post to this blog last night but I fell asleep. Sorry!

While, as you know, my blog posts typically combine a mommy/parenting/child issue with a book, the book I intended to highlight last night actually enables me to wrap it all up in a single package. The book, a finalist in the 3th-4th Grade Book of the Year category in this year's Children's Choice Book Awards, is Finally by Wendy Mass. The young protagonist in this book has waited her entire life to turn 12 and has amassed a laundry list of things she's been told she can have and she can do when she is finally that magical age. Here's a real life crazy juxtaposition for you - my twin daughters are 12 years old and each one has a list. Each of my 12 year old daughters, though, has a bucket list - yes, a list of things they want to do before they kick the bucket! Ridiculous, yes! Funny, yes! Par for the course with those two, absolutely! Lists are awesome - they are a great way of self-regulating and organizing our lives. The best thing about a list is that, between lead and wordprocessing, items are erasable. This past spring break, we went to the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. Both of our 12-year-olds had included a ride on the dreaded Leap of Faith (a water slide featuring a 60 ft. almost-vertical drop from the top of the world-famous and iconic Mayan Temple, propelling riders at a tremendous speed through a clear acrylic tunnel submerged in a shark-filled lagoon) on their lists. After one of the girls bravely faced her fears and, literally, took the plunge, her sister looked at me and said, "you know, Leap of Faith is on my bucket list but I think I might take it off." Amen.

But I digress, back to Rory Swenson and Finally. The story begins with Rory stuck in a drainpipe. The funniest thing about that is that when I read a reference to her circumstances on the back cover, I groaned just a little but when I read the story of how it happened in the book, all I could think was, "Sheesh, that could so easily have been one of my kids!". Rory is a a real kid, Her thoughts, her emotions and her antics are authentic 12-year old stuff. This book is funny and surprising and would be a great choice to cuddle around with your kid, say between the ages of 9 and 12. I have to admit that I am a sucker for a book that ends with a mom's last word, wisdom or insight as this one does, with the mom (and I'm seriously not giving away anything by telling you this) channeling Gandhi and telling Rory, "There is more to life than increasing its speed". Words to live by and a book to enjoy.