Meet the authors

You love to read. Have you ever met the folks who write the books you love? They are real people who have families and eat dinner, just like you. We’ve got some local authors and illustrators that just might be your neighbors. Recently, Christy Ann Conlin published a new book, The Memento. “The Memento tells the story of Fancy Mosher as she lives and works in the servants’ quarters at Petal’s End, a formerly illustrious private land surrounded by dense forest belonging to the famed Parker family. Fancy grows up listening to her family’s ghost stories and watching the Parkers from a safe distance with her best friend, Art.” Anyone who lives in the Valley will recognize places, people, and sayings in this literary gothic novel. You can meet Christy Ann at her book launch on Thursday, May 5 at the Al Whittle theatre in Wolfville. 

Ron Lightburn is another local who has recently written a children’s book about garbage. Most of you may know Ron from his book The Pumpkin People, which his partner Sandra wrote. Ron has illustrated many books, including Juba This, JubaThat, which we made into a StoryWalk. If you want something funny and gross that also teaches a lesson, you have to try Ron’s latest book, Frankenstink, which was just awarded the Lillian Shepherd Award for Excellence in Illustration at the Atlantic Book Awards!

On Friday the 13^th, we have an author coming to the Wolfville Library. Here’s your chance to meet and chat with a Real Live Author. YA Horror writer Judith Graves (I promise, that is her name!) will be touring Nova Scotia as part of the TD Children’s Book Week. She lives & writes in Northern Alberta, so we need to show her a warm Valley welcome. At this event,

Judith Graves helps you dig deep and unearth the killer themes lurking in your horror and thriller fiction. This genre isn't just writing tales of blood and guts - it's creating fiction to DIE for. Learn how to get under your reader's skin, play on their primal fears, and hold mirrors up to their own inner monsters. These FANGtastic tips will keep your readers turning the page...to the dire end. She says it will be a bit scary but no blood and guts. There will also be Creepy Cupcakes for you to enjoy, so if you are a writer who wants some tips, or just a rabid reader (ages 12 and up, please), start your Friday the 13^th with YA Fiction to Die For.  PS - Get a head start on things and read her book, Exposed.

--Angela J. Reynolds, Community Engagement Coordinator

It's OK to Read YA

More and more, adults are reading novels written and published for the YA (Young Adult) market. This blog post is a companion piece to a presentation that I am giving at the NSLA conference this weekend—lots of links and titles and authors and articles for you to explore. 

YA is not ALL Ghosts & Vampires, (but there are some good ones.) A boy whose father is a grave robber, two young cancer-stricken lovers, a prisoner of the Nazis in France, the best love story ever (with 80’s music), a very creepy ghost meets some flappers, a real-live Cinderella, growing up in a whore-house in New Orleans, a sexy and sensitive vampire, and a Voynich manuscript mystery: do these sound like YA to you? Meet the new YA!  Do those sound good? Try them:

Rotters by Daniel Kraus, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell, The Diviners by Libba Bray, Gorgeous by Paul Rudnick, Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys, Blood by K.J. Wignall, and The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman.

Yes, the themes are mature. But so are teenagers. Some of these books may not be suitable for a 13 year-old, but then another 13-year old may have already lived through worse. We have to give teens credit for being able to handle mature themes in books. There’s plenty of controversy surround YA books: they get banned all the time.  Some adults think teens shouldn’t read these books,  but “challenging the books doesn’t change the teen years".

Why are adults reading these books (and loving them?) Have you ever snuck into the teen area of the library or book store and pretended to be picking out a book for your son or daughter? It is OK to read YA!  Here are some authors to check out (in no particular order):  Maggie Stiefvater, Paul Rudnick, Robin Wasserman, Elizabeth Wein , Malinda Lo, Philip Reeve, Carrie Mac, A.S. King, John Green, Daniel Kraus, Libba Bray, Maureen Johnson, Rainbow Rowell, Andrew Smith, Sarah Dessen, Lurlene McDaniel, Ruta Sepetys .  All of these authors already have a pretty big fan base with teens, and adults are starting to figure out why. These books are savvy, exciting, terrifying, funny, witty, creepy, real, and grab you from the first page. There’s often very little time in a YA book for too much navel-gazing. It is all about the character and the story and often, some really good writing. 

If you want more, here are some booklists. And don’t forget about audiobooks, because many of these books have been produced as high-quality audios that will make you stand up and pay attention. Have fun on your YA journey. Share a book you loved with a teen, and find out what they are reading—you might just like it. 

Booklists on the AVRL website:  Dystopia For Beginners, Ghosts & Vampires, Got Wolves?, Faerie Realms, FantasticFantasies, Realistic Fiction, Teen Romance. There are even more on our website, so go explore!  Still skeptical that YA is not for you, the discerning adult reader? Try some read-alikes suggested in this article.

Celebrate YA books with us next week, when Teen Read Week gets into gear! Lots of programs and a contest, so stay tuned!  

--Angela J. Reynolds, Head of Youth Services

Alissa York to Read at Kentville Library

Alissa York, the author of this year’s pick for One BookNova Scotia, will be giving a free reading from her novel Fauna on Wednesday, October 2^nd at 7:00 p.m.  at the Kentville Library.

One Book Nova Scotia is a province-wide community reading event for adults in which everyone is encouraged to read the same book and share the same story.  

York’s novel Fauna examines the complex relationships that humans have with animals – the ones we fear, the ones we love, and those we hate.  Animals can be our friends, our enemies, or even our saviours.  In cities and in the country all over the world people strive to coexist with animal life, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.

Alissa York will be touring Nova Scotia from October 2-10 with twelve readings from Kentville to Sydney sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts.  All public, community college and university libraries have multiple copies of Fauna to loan, and the ebook is available for download through the public libraries.  The visually impaired can borrow the audiobook version through the CNIB, and the novel is also available en Francaise.

Bookstores are also promoting Fauna and Mitzi from Box of Delights in Wolfville will be coming to the Kentville Library reading so you can purchase a copy that night and have it signed by the author.

So why not come out to the Kentville Library on Wednesday night and be a part of Nova Scotia’s province-wide community reading event!

Posted by Frances Newman, Regional Librarian

My love affair with Twitter

First off, Happy April Fool's Day! I really, really wanted to play a trick on the blog, but instead, I'm going to share my love for Twitter.  If you don't know about it, Twitter is a social networking site that limits posts to 140 characters.  If you aren't Tweeting, try this sometime: say something witty and pithy, using ONLY 140 CHARACTERS.  It is challenging! Some teachers are using Twitter for writing exercises, and I can understand why. You have to really use just the right word, and you have to THINK about what it is you want to say.  But honestly, that's not the main reason I love Twitter. Being a stay-up-past-my-bedtime book fanatic, I love Twitter for the interactions I have with the authors of the books I so adore.  

I read Cathy Marie Buchanan's (@CathyMBuchanan) lovely new novel, The Painted Girls, and Tweeted about how much I enjoyed it. She replied to me! She even retweeted one of my Tweets! And followed me! (For those of you unfamiliar with Twitter, a "retweet" is when someone reposts your Tweet. Exciting!) Ok, so maybe that is not earth-shaking to some of you, but I had a personal interaction with the author of a book I really enjoyed.  When was the last time you did that?  I follow many authors on Twitter, and I feel like I know something about them. For instance, I found out that Elizabeth Wein (@EWein2412) was a huge fan of the show Flambards when she was in High School, because I tweeted that watching it made me think of her book, Code Name Verity.  Yes, some of them Tweet about breakfast, the TV shows they watch, their chickens, their travels, and their political views. I find it fascinating. I also wonder when some of them actually write because they sure do Tweet a lot. Those who follow YA author Maureen Johnson (@maureenjohnson) know what I mean!  I can also keep in touch with authors that I have actually met or worked with:  I love hearing about @CarrieMacWrites and her adorable children, and @arthurslade posts all sorts of interesting tidbits. 

I've also won things on Twitter. I've won 2 books and an iTunes gift card. Again, not headline news, but I now have a personally signed copy of a book from an author I really admire. @DanielDKraus sent me a copy of his new book Scowler because I loved his first book and Tweeted about it during a giveaway.  My winning Tweet: "I want Scowler advance copy...because Rotters nearly made me puke about 10 times."

@SavvyReader has a great 50 Book Pledge initiative on Twitter.  You pledge to read at least 50 books in the year, and you Tweet about the books you read. They even have a nifty bookshelf this year that you can use to track your reading. I love this new feature, and I love that I can write a quick review of the book – it comes in handy when I am recommending books to others! Check out my bookshelf here. PS – I've already read more than 50 books this year.  Refer to above paragraph. I stay up too late reading on a regular basis.   

I've connected with other librarians on Twitter, too. I have many new librarian colleagues that I have never met, yet I feel like I know a bit about them. And when library conferences roll around, and someone organizes a Tweet-up (meet-up) in person, worlds collide! Internet becomes reality! 

So if you've heard about Twitter, but haven't delved into the Twitterverse, now's the time. Follow me @annavalley and follow AVRL @valleylibs. See you in the ether. 

--Angela J. Reynolds, Head of Youth Services