Because of my post about the US Liar cover I have discovered some wonderful blogs, which as someone who follows the YA blogosphere closely, I’m ashamed I didn’t know about already. I have added all of them to my blog roll:
Reading in Color
Color Online
Shalonda’s blog
Into the Wardrobe
The Brown Bookshelf (which the fabulous and unbelievably talented Varian Johnson is part of. Have you read My Life as a Rhombus? It’s also on my to be read pile and from what I’ve been hearing is astonishingly good.)
I am still no where near working my way through all the mail the cover post generated. It may take me a few weeks. Sorry. But thank you everyone for your intense responses and for all the links and for continuing the conversation in so many different places. I’ve heard from several people that at least two YA publishing houses have been circulating my post to their staff. Awesome.
And extra special thanks to the people who emailed me with the typos they picked up in that post. As someone who’s not the world’s greatest speller, I really appreciate it! (Though am embarrassed that I still don’t know the difference between “effect” and “affect.” Aargh.)
Justine, the way I teach my students that difference is by giving them test sentences — and I still reference the test sentences in my head, substituting in alternate words, every time I’m about to write effect/affect, to make sure I’m using the right one. For example:
We must work together to effect change in the publishing industry.
— (the verb effect is like ‘create’)
There’s so much you can do to affect this terrible situation — talk, blog, protest.
— (the verb affect is like ‘have an impact on’)
and, for the noun versions:
The effects of the discussion of the Liar cover will be wide-ranging.
— (the noun effect is like ‘consequences’)
The Bloomsbury PR person clearly had a miserable affect in the weeks following this mess.
— (Well, if she didn’t, she should have. This noun version of affect is a psychological term, meaning ‘the mood someone appears to have’. You don’t see it so much in everyday life, but for example, I had a friend who used to be manic-depressive, and went on some medication that gave her a ‘flat affect’ — her apparent mood was very calm and unemotional. Which might not correlate much to her actual mood, which is why it’s useful for psychologists to have a term to distinguish the two.)
Hope this helps. 🙂
Justine, thank you so much for the link love for Into the Wardrobe! It is ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS that your post on the US cover of Liar is being circulated in two YA publishing houses. :o) I hope other publishing houses follow suit!
Yay Shalonda! She is the best.
I read about this on another blog, Read Into This, and I’m writing a post on my YA blog, too 🙂
Congrats on the publishing houses- I hope other publishers follow that!
Justine, thank you so much for the mention.
And thank you, Khy, for the compliment!
And I would like to add that my post was not created for recognition.
I wrote my post because I was compelled by your courage and your honesty. I was moved by your willingness to create a character who is different from the cookie cutter characters in most YA books. While I admit that I often enjoy the cookie cutter characters, it is always refreshing to read genuine characters. It is nice to see characters who reflect those groups of people who are underrepresented in mainstream YA fiction.
So thank you, Justine! You are truly admirable.
Justine,
Thank you so much for the nod. I can’t thank you enough for your post, and your books will be on our shelves.
When I visited my library today, you were the first author I looked for.
thanks for the shoutout Justine!
I’m not a great speller either. Thank god for spell check 😀
Another excellent collective blog you might want to put the word out for is Livejournal’s 50 Books by Writers of Colour Challenge (http://community.livejournal.com/50books_poc/).
The actual challenge is to read 50 books by PoC in a year, but even if you don’t take the challenge proper, it is a superb collection of reviews of all kinds of books by PoC – the YA section is not neglected, and I’ve found some real gems through the reviews there.
Another blog that should not be missed is Doret at thehappynappybookseller.blogspot.com. I have found a lot of books through Doret and am always impressed by the work she does to find good books on all sorts of teens by all sorts of authors. She has lately been reading sports books for teen girls and is always a reliable source for good book info on minority characters and authors. She works hard and it shows.
Plus she’s bookseller and I love to hear what she thinks of new books out there.
Varian’s book IS amazing. You have to move it up on the pile. Really. It is just that good.