One more wonderful blog for you to add to your list:
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Taste Life Twice run by Kiki and Tashi and covering all things YA.
Also Susan over at Color Online has issued the following reviewing challenge:
Read and review POC books through the month of August. We’ll have a random drawing for 3 reviewers at the end of the challenge. Drop us a link to your review to be eligible. +3 entries for any sidebar link/tweet or blog post about this challenge. Contest limited to US residents.
If you’re looking for suggestions for books to read and review these two blogs have lots of reviews as do the blogs I listed yesterday. I’d also like to suggest Touching Snow by M. Sindy Felin, which was shortlisted for the National Book Award in 2007. It’s one of the most moving, funny, sad and honest books I’ve ever read.
I love Touching Snow too. I always recommend that book and I find it so surprising that it isn’t better known. Felin had me hooked from the very first sentence: “The best way to avoid being picked on by high school bullies is to kill someone.”
I feel similarly about Chess Rumble by G. Neri, which is very different in form: an illustrated free verse novel about an inner city boy who learns to express his frustration by playing chess instead of fighting. (Also POC, btw.) Chess Rumble is esp great for smart, thoughtful kids who don’t read fluently. I don’t know why it’s not everywhere.
Greetings! I’d like to begin by saying that I think you’ve handled this difficult situation REALLY well…and I’d like to thank you for swinging this sudden spotlight onto other deserving blogs like Reading in Color and Color Online. Susan is one of the most committed literacy advocates I know, and through her site I’ve not only found great reading suggestions, I’ve met amazing readers who share my vision of a more just publishing industry. Another blogger who does an outstanding job of discovering and reviewing marginalized books is Doret over at The Happy Nappy Bookseller (http://thehappynappybookseller.blogspot.com/). Doret reads more than anyone I know, and as a bookseller, she’s got a unique perspective on how customers perceive publishers’ marketing strategies. I’m a writer, and a fairly solitary person, but my online community has become invaluable over time–esp as we face controversial issues around reading/writing/representing race. We’d love to see our community expand, and people of color desperately need allies, so thanks again for sending new readers our way.