{"id":301,"date":"2008-01-30T11:10:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-30T11:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbicmsblog.reedbusiness.com\/elogic_660000266\/2008\/01\/30\/last-years-mold-breaking-and-risk-taking\/"},"modified":"2008-01-30T11:10:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-30T11:10:00","slug":"last-years-mold-breaking-and-risk-taking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=301","title":{"rendered":"Last Year’s Mold-Breaking and Risk-Taking"},"content":{"rendered":"

This seems to be my week of finding inspiration from alums of Wellesley Booksmith. On Monday I linked to a post written by our fleet-footed former bookseller Sarah Nixon. Today I want to point out a paragraph written by yet another uber-fabulous former colleague, Jill Saginario, whose talents now grace the children’s section of Powell’s Books (lucky ducks!). Jill wrote this paragraph for the most recent PowellsBooks.kids<\/a> newsletter, which arrived in my inbox (and maybe yours?) last week:<\/p>\n

Jill here. Sadly, 2007 has come and gone, but its passing has imbued a sense of hope for 2008. Personally, I’m thrilled at some of the recent trends in young adult literature, and I want to take this moment to cheer on those publishers that have taken risks and broken the mold. I’ve been seeing a lot of great, dynamic male characters: Sid Hite’s fantastically written novel<\/em> I’m Exploding Now<\/a> perfectly captures the deadpan humor of a typical ennui-filled sixteen-year-old.<\/em> Hero<\/a> by Perry Moore delivers the first gay superhero in a YA action-adventure. Most notably, however, is character James Sveck in<\/em> Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You<\/a> by Peter Cameron. We on the kids’ team unanimously love James Sveck, and I adore the way the author has constructed such a strong, relatable coming-of-age story with a gay character, whose gayness is almost incidental; it’s so matter-of-fact.<\/em><\/p>\n

What risk-taking and mold-breaking did you observe in last year’s novels? Fallen in love with any great, dynamic characters of late? I’m with Jill — let’s take a moment to reflect on last year’s finest literary leaps and most memorable peeps.<\/p>\n

I’ll start: Margaret McMullan’s beautiful novel When I Crossed No-Bob<\/a><\/em> was bold in its honest exploration the emotional depression that choked the American South during the Reconstruction era. I can’t say that I’ve seen many books about this time period in American history — at least not ones narrated by kids whose parents are racist redneck scumbags. I would never have guessed that combination could yield a novel as beautiful as this one, but McMullan’s expert prose made it happen.<\/p>\n

Now it’s your turn. Sing some of last year’s praises while this year is still young.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This seems to be my week of finding inspiration from alums of Wellesley Booksmith. On Monday I linked to a post written by our fleet-footed former bookseller Sarah Nixon. Today I want to point out a paragraph written by yet another uber-fabulous former colleague, Jill Saginario, whose talents now grace the children’s section of Powell’s Books (lucky […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}