105 Ways to Give a Book

Shout-Out Sunday

Last week, as I was writing my Shout-Out Sunday post, I kept having the nagging feeling that I was forgetting something. It bugged me all the rest of the day and didn’t come to mind until the next day, when I finally remembered...

READERGIRLZ!

This website has been mentioned a lot, but it’s my turn to give the idea some play. Here’s some information from their press release:
Starting on March 1, readergirlz founders Dia Calhoun, Janet Lee Carey, Lorie Ann Grover, and Justina Chen Headley will unveil a monthly book selection, featuring young adult novels with gutsy female characters. More than just a book club, readergirlz aims to encourage teen girls to read and reach out with community service projects related to each featured novel. As well, readergirlz will host MySpace discussions with each book’s author, include author interviews, and provide book party ideas, including playlists, menus, and decorations.

Each book selection will dovetail to a topic, identified by the readergirlz divas and prominent children’s lit bloggers as topics teen girls should know about in this millennium. The first topic is Tolerance, a theme explored in the kick-off book selection for readergirlz, Nothing but the Truth (and a few white lies). In conjunction with the first novel, teen girls will be encouraged to visit www.tolerance.org to learn how to safely stop bullying and to apply for one of the organization’s Mix It Up grants to break social and racial barriers within their schools.
This past week I learned about the extensive list of coming-of-age books put together by Chasing Ray. If you love your teen angst — and I know that I do — this is a great collection of the best. She’s also identified some key components making it that much easier to find a multicultural, gay character dealing with the death of a loved one. Or something like that.

I read this Meg Cabot post while working at the information desk at the library and had to cover my mouth to hide my laughter as the story kept getting funnier and funnier. It’s definitely for cat lovers, but this is choice stuff with my personal stamp of approval. Thanks to Robin Brande for pointing it out.

Always happy to jump on the Mo wagon (that didn’t sound dirty, did it?), I’d love to promote a project that I saw on his blog. A fan wrote in to mention that there’s a Camel Bookmobile that travels around the bush in Kenya. They invite book donations from authors and others, with picture books being particularly needed. Mo’s in and wants to know who’s going to join him. Well... duh, me. For now I can promote it, but I’ll probably put my Girl Scouts to work collecting books. They’re already collecting books for a middle school in DC, so why not? I don’t get stacks of picture books for review, but I know some of you do. If you want a cool place for them to go, consider the Camel Bookmobile.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you SO MUCH for mentioning the camel book drive! Gratefully, Masha Hamilton

Little Willow said...

Yay readergirlz!

Yay your troop!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the shout out!
Lorie Ann, readergirlz diva

Little Willow said...

Thanks for mentioning my site and author interviews in your new feature at Edge! :)

I sometimes DON'T update every day because I don't want people to miss whatever book I reviewed the day before - because I want that post to stay at the top of the page - etc.

Robin Brande said...

Oo, good--I like to get people in trouble for laughing too loudly in libraries.

Meg Cabot is so damn funny. That post was one of my favorites yet.