Are you looking for books about women and girls who “follow their dreams and pursue their goals, challenging cultural and familial stereotypes to gain an education, taking charge and making plans for community, regional, national, and world change”? Then the Amelia Bloomer Project blog is a good place to start (and also the website, where the above quote comes from).
The site contains both fiction and non-fiction selected by a (deep breath) committee of the Feminist Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table of the American Library Association, and they take their job seriously! There is some good stuff in here.
Some of my suggestions in my Top 10 Strong Females list made it into the Amelia Bloomer lists, so that’s gratifying.
So who was Amelia Bloomer and did she have anything to do with underwear? Her Wikipedia entry is a good place to start to find out – there are a couple of bio links at the bottom. For more indepth research you should definitely check out (ha, Simon!) look at [edited: Simon] the Biography Resource Centre on My Gateway (you’ll need to enter your library card number and surname when prompted). Here you can search for specific names (i.e. Amelia Bloomer) or you can search by occupation (”feminist” works as an occupation in this instance), gender, nationality… or do fancier Boolean things. This database is fantastic for NCEA research.
And the boys’ list is done now – I’m quite pleased with this list, quite a few quality titles. If you think there’s a glaring omission then let us know (email us); we’d love to hear from you. In the mean time, enjoy!
An updated list is a good list, so bearing this in mind we’ve updated the Books for Teenage Girls* list. The asterisk is to let you know that we realise that girls like reading books about boys and vice versa, so check it out. If you’ve read a book you think should be on the list then let us know; we’d like to hear what you think.
We’re working on the other one now.
Thanks!
We’ve added another list of books to our collection, this time Books From Around the World. From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, there’s something in here that will hopefully grab your fancy. For our complete list of booklists go here.
Since it’s NCEA reading log sort of time I thought a post about where to find records of award winning books might be in order. Here are some of the better-known awards given each year, and one or two past winners for your information. There are many, many more of course – do a bit of searching yourself if these don’t grab your fancy.
The American Library Association awards the Newbery Medal and the Michael L Printz Award each year for children’s and young adults’ novels respectively. There is some crossover between the two (for example, The Graveyard Book won the Newbery Medal this year), so check past winners of both awards for inspiration.
The ALA also gives the Alex Awards for books that appeal to teens, which we reported on earlier.
The Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize – unhelpfully, being a newspaper, they don’t seem to have a site for the award as such, but there’s a list of past winners on the Wikipedia page, including Meg Rosoff (How I Live Now) and Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go).
The Carnegie Medal, named in honour of Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish man who apparently loved libraries so much that he established more than 2,800 of them around the world, which is phenominal. Past winners include Meg Rosoff (Just in Case), Philip Pulman (Northern Lights), Frank Cottrell Boyce (Millions) and Mal Peet (Tamar).
The Hans Christian Andersen Award is given annually to a writer to acknowledge their complete works and their contribution to children’s literature. Margaret Mahy won this award in 2006.
New Zealand Post Book Awards: last year’s winner in the Young Adult category was Salt by Maurice Gee. Other winners were (for example) Bernard Beckett (Genesis and also Malcolm and Juliet) and Ted Dawe (Thunder Road).
Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards: last year this was won by Sonya Hartnett (for The Ghost’s Child). Other winners have been Markus Zusak (The Messenger which is also published as I Am the Messenger) and Melina Marchetta (Saving Francesca).
Other awards for general (adult) fiction you might like to check out include:
The Montana NZ Book Awards are New Zealand’s premier book awards (for adults). The winners list reads like a who’s who of New Zealand literature, so there’s definitely something in there worth checking out.
The Miles Franklin Literary Award is probably Australia’s best known book accolade. Tim Winton, one of my (few) literary heroes has won this in the past. Go Tim.
The award everyone gossips about is the Man Booker Prize, which is awarded to writers from Commonwealth countries (plus the Republic of Ireland). Keri Hulme is the only New Zealand writer to have won this, in 1985 with The Bone People.
The Pulitzer Prize is probably the most coveted award in the American book industry. The list of past winners is here.
Finally, the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, which Lloyd Jones won for Mister Pip in 2007.
ps: let us know if you’ve got some tough NCEA reading log requirement: we’ll see what we can come up with.
The Internet is a handy wee thing. In addition to one or two other things, it can be used to keep track of what you’ve read, what you’re reading, what you want to read, and what other people recommend that you read. I’ve been using Visual Bookshelf via Facebook over the past year and I’ve found it to be quite good, if a little clunky. It does recommend books I might like, but not as well as the popular LibraryThing. BookRabbit is similar, but I’m not sure which is better (it looks nicer, if that matters). There’s also Goodreads, Bibliophil, and Booksie (for sharing your own stories). There’s Listbook.net, and also Shelfari, which lets users create a bookshelf to show off their latest books.
You could also just use a notebook – no one else would know what you like – but it’s a noble excuse to buy a moleskine, I reckon.
Amazon likes lists more than I do even. They’ve got every list you can think of (mostly thanks to their customers), including their Best Books of 2008 ones. This is what the Amazon.com editors suggest are the top 10 teen books for the year. This is an interesting list; partly because there is no number 2 (I looked and looked, through one eye and then the other). This suggests The Kingdom on the Waves (the second part of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M T Anderson) is so, well, astonishing that nothing comes close, perhaps? In any case there are some interesting books on this list, ones that we like even: check out our posts on The Hunger Games, Little Brother and The Graveyard Book (I’m still waiting for this one, but a reliable source tells me it’s good).
The ALA (American Library Association) have announced their Top 10 Teen books for 2008, as voted by 8,000 teens (about equal with the population of Newtown). No surprises about number one!
1. Eclipse, by Stephenie Meyer
2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J. K. Rowling
3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid, by Jeff Kinney
4. Vampire Academy, by Richelle Mead
5. Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports, by James Patterson
6. City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare
7. The Sweet Far Thing, by Libba Bray
8. Extras, by Scott Westerfeld
9. Before I Die, by Jenny Downham
10. Twisted, by Laurie Halse Anderson
Many of these are currently available in the library – if you’re desperate for a good book, do try one.
The Inkys is an Australian award for young adult literature; the 2008 winner have been announced. They are voted from selection by under-20s. The winner is Town, by James Roy, and second place went to Before I Die, by Jenny Downhand. Wellington author Bernard Beckett’s book Genesis made it to the shortlist - nice!
What are your favourite books from 2008? What is your favourite book ever?
If you’re looking for some fiction written by Māori authors then check out this new list: Māori writers of fiction. If you’re a bit of an expert in this area we’d love to hear from you: we’re keen to add to the list so drop us a line (teenblog@wcl.govt.nz). Cheers!
Monday (yes, I know I’m two days late) was Bastille Day. Celebrating the storming of the Bastille (a prison in Paris used by the unpopular monarchy to lock dissidents up) in 1789 , effectively kicking off the French Revolution and the beginning of modern France, Bastille Day is a pretty big celebration.
The French Revolution is, like many historical events, a great setting for a story. Read about Marie Antoinette’s journey to France in Marie Antoinette : Princess of Versailles, or watch the recent film, Marie Antoinette. (Neither depict her demise, happily.) Dip into the classics with The Scarlet Pimpernel, heroic rescuer of hunted aristocrats;and A Tale of Two Cities, about a heroic rescuer of another hunted aristocrat. Cat Royal larks it up in revolutionary France in Den of Thieves; a young English highwaywoman finds herself in revolutionary France in Sovay; and in The Red Necklace, the hunted daughter of an aristocrat is heroically rescued.
Au revoir, les enfants.
The Classic Book list (written in Haiku) has been transferred from the old Teen webpages, and will soon be updated. We enjoy writing Haiku, and we enjoy reading classic novels – it only made good sense to combine our two interests.
Classic novels is one of the SubText genres this year, so if you want to enter the draw to win a spot-prize and get an extra shot at the main prize, then read and review one of these.
The Telegraph has a list of 50 cult books! Several of them are, indeed, available in the teens’ section of the library’s collection – I Capture the Castle, The Beauty Myth, The Catcher in the Rye, some of the Dune books, the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, and To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s difficult to explain what makes a book a ‘cult book’ - the article does say that you know them when you see them, and their appeal doesn’t necessarily lie in any literary merit.
Do you have a favourite, ‘cult’ book that means more to you than it probably should?
If you’re stuck on what to read next, have a look at our new book lists. So far there are only two three five!, but we hope to add more as time goes by. If there are any books missing from our recommendations please add a comment to the list! Thanks!
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