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For serious?! How did we miss yesterday was BLUMESDAY?
Judy Blume, thanks for all the books...
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“If we can’t write diversity into sci-fi, then what’s the point? You don’t create new worlds to give...”
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“I do not mean to seem indelicate or ungrateful, but are you a dangerous lunatic?”
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‘Short Change Hero’ by The Heavy
Because it’s super cool. -
YA Meme: 6/10 series or books - If I Stay & Where She Went by Gayle Forman
Gorgeous.
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Set your calendars. Tell your friends. Reblog for...
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Summer Library Tour
Destination #3: Northbrook Public Library
On Father’s Day the only...
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Medical & Psychological Syndromes Named After Literary...
Morganville: The Series - a high quality web TV series based on the int’l bestselling Morganville Vampires novels by Rachel Caine.Are you a fan of Rachel Caine’s Morganville Vampire series? There’s now a Kickstarter to fund an online adaptation of the books. To learn more - and to see the perks of donating - click the link above.
Check it out Morganville fans!
DANGEROUS - due out April 1 (no joke), 2014. I cannot wait to share this book.
The 10 Best (And Worst) YA Titles
(via Book Riot)
Some interesting selections on this top 10 list from Book Riot, they certainly could go on a list of books with unusual titles! In our collection at Cheshire Library:
Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can’t Have by Allen Zadoff
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente
I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President by Josh Lieb
Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride
The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things by Carolyn Mackler
How I Stole Johnny Depp’s Alien Girlfriend by Gary Ghislain
For the full article, click HERE.
(via brkteenlib)
So many good books to choose from! Many of our favorites!
Check out this great list from the Denver Public Library.
CREWEL
by Gennifer Albin
Gifted with the unusual ability to embroider the very fabric of life, sixteen-year-old Adelice is summoned by Manipulation Services to become a Spinster, a move that will separate her from her beloved family and home forever.
PURE
by Julianna Baggott
In a post-apocalyptic world, Pressia, a sixteen-year-old survivor with a doll’s head fused onto her left hand meets Partridge, a “Pure” dome-dweller who is searching for his mother, sure that she has survived the cataclysm.
EVERY OTHER DAY
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Every other day, sixteen-year-old high school student Kali transforms into an invincible demon hunter, but when she sees that a popular fellow-student is marked for death in the next twenty-four hours, unfortunately it is the wrong day for Kali.
INTO THE WILD
by Sarah Beth Durst
Having escaped from the Wild and the preordained fairy tale plots it imposes, Rapunzel, along with her daughter Julie Marchen, tries to live a fairly normal life, but when the Wild breaks free and takes over their town, it is Julie who has to prevent everyone from being trapped in the events of a story.
NOBODY’S PRINCESS
by Esther Friesner
Determined to fend for herself in a world where only men have real freedom, headstrong Helen, who will be called queen of Sparta and Helen of Troy one day, learns to fight, hunt, and ride horses while disguised as a boy, and goes on an adventure throughout the Mediterranean world.
CORALINE
by Neil Gaiman
Looking for excitement, Coraline ventures through a mysterious door into a world that is similar, yet disturbingly different from her own, where she must challenge a gruesome entity in order to save herself, her parents and the souls of three others.
SCARLET
by A.C. Gaughen
Will Scarlet shadows Robin Hood, with an unerring eye for finding treasures to steal and throwing daggers with deadly accuracy, but when Gisbourne, a ruthless bounty hunter, is hired by the sheriff to capture Robin and his band of thieves, Robin must become Will’s protector risking his own life in the process.
PATTERN RECOGNITION
by William Gibson
Cayce Pollard, a design consultant, is on the trail of the creator of Internet videos that have attained a worldwide cult following. As she draws closer to the truth, Cayce’s life is threatened by those who will stop at nothing to protect the secret of the videos.
DOUBLE IDENTITY
by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Thirteen-year-old Bethany’s parents have always been overprotective, but when they suddenly drop out of sight with no explanation, leaving her with an aunt she never knew existed, Bethany uncovers shocking secrets that make her question everything she thought she knew about herself and her family.
JUST ELLA
by Margaret Peterson Haddix
In this continuation of the Cinderella story, fifteen-year-old Ella finds that accepting Prince Charming’s proposal ensnares her in a suffocating tangle of palace rules and royal etiquette, so she plots to escape.
BOOK OF A THOUSAND DAYS
by Shannon Hale
Fifteen-year-old Dashti, sworn to obey her sixteen-year-old mistress, the Lady Saren, shares Saren’s years of punishment locked in a tower, then brings her safely to the lands of her true love, where both must hide who they are as they work as kitchen maids.
ENNA BURNING
by Shannon Hale
Enna hopes that her new knowledge of how to wield fire will help protect her good friend Isi - the Princess Anidori - and all of Bayern against their enemies, but the need to burn is uncontrollable and puts Enna and her loved ones in grave danger.
SECRET LIFE OF SPARROW DELANEY
by Suzanne Harper
In Lily Dale, New York, a community dedicated to the religion of Spiritualism, tenth-grader Sparrow Delaney, the youngest daughter in an eccentric family of psychics, agonizes over whether or not to reveal her special abilities in order to help a friend.
SERAPHINA
by Rachel Hartman
In a world where dragons and humans coexist in an uneasy truce and dragons can assume human form, Seraphina, whose mother died giving birth to her, grapples with her own identity amid magical secrets and royal scandals, while she struggles to accept and develop her extraordinary musical talents.
RUNEMARKS
by Joanne Harris
Maddy Smith, who bears the mysterious mark of a rune on her hand, learns that she is destined to join the gods of Norse mythology and play a role in the fate of the world.
FIRE AND HEMLOCK
by Diana Wynne Jones
At nineteen, Polly has two sets of sometimes overlapping, sometimes conflicting memories, the real-life ones of school days and her parents’ divorce, and the heroic adventure ones that began the day she accidentally gate-crashed a funeral and met the cellist Thomas Lynn.
TIME OF THE EAGLE
by Sherryl Jordan
Avala, the daughter of Gabriel Eshban Vala, dreams of becoming a healer like her mother, but she is instead destined to bring about the Time of the Eagle, in which tribes hunted by the Navoran director will unite and win their freedom.
ADAPTATION
by Malinda Lo
In the aftermath of a series of plane crashes caused by birds, seventeen-year-old Reese and her debate-team partner, David, receive medical treatment at a secret government facility and become tangled in a conspiracy that is, according to Reese’s friend, Julian, connected with aliens and UFOs.
HUNTRESS
by Malinda Lo
Seventeen-year-olds Kaede and Taisin are called to go on a dangerous and unprecedented journey to Tanlili, the city of the Fairy Queen, in an effort to restore the balance of nature in the human world.
FEARLESS
by Tim Lott
In the future, girls labeled “juvies” or “mindcrips” are taken from their families and sent to the prison-like City Community Faith School, but LIttle Fearless decides to break out, and embarks on a dangerous mission to try to free the girls from their miserable captivity.
THE DECLARATION
by Gemma Malley
In 2140 England, where drugs enable people to live forever and children are illegal, teenaged Anna, an obedient “Surplus” training to become a house servant, discovers that her birth parents are trying to find her.
THIEF’S COVENANT
by Ari Marmell
Once she was Adrienne Sati, an orphan with a rags-to-riches story until a conspiracy of human and other forces stole it all away in a flurry of blood and murder. Now she is Widdershins, a thief with a sharp blade, a sharper wit, and help from the mystical god Olgun, a foreign god with no other worshippers but Widdenshins. But now something horrid, something dark, is reaching out for her, a past that refuses to let her go.
THE HERO AND THE CROWN
by Robin McKinley
Aerin, with the guidance of the wizard Luthe and the help of the blue sword, wins the birthright due her as the daughter of the Damarian king and a witchwoman of the mysterious, demon-haunted North.
AKATA WITCH
by Nnedi Okorafor
Twelve-year-old Sunny Nwazue, an American-born albino child of Nigerian parents, moves with her family back to Nigeria, where she learns that she has latent magical powers which she and three similarly gifted friends use to catch a serial killer.
THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX
by Mary E. Pearson
In the not-too-distant future, when biotechnological advances have made synthetic bodies and brains possible but illegal, a seventeen-year-old girl, recovering from a serious accident and suffering from memory lapses, learns a startling secret about her existence.
BETWIXT
by Tara Bray Smith
Three alienated teenagers are drawn to a strange outdoor concert in the woods outside of Seattle, where they discover that they possess magical powers and that their destinies are intertwined.
HEIR APPARENT
by Vivian Vande Velde
A young woman gets trapped in a flawed virtual reality game that will kill her if she doesn’t beat it soon.
SERIES
RAZORLAND SERIES
BOOK ONE: ENCLAVE
by Ann Aguirre
In a post-apocalyptic future, fifteen-year-old Deuce, a loyal Huntress, brings back meat while avoiding the Freaks outside her enclave, but when she is partnered with the mysterious outsider, Fade, she begins to see that the strict ways of the elders may be wrong – and dangerous.
GEMMA DOYLE TRILOGY
BOOK ONE: A GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY
by Libba Bray
After the suspicious death of her mother in 1895, sixteen-year-old Gemma returns to England, after many years in India, to attend a finishing school where she becomes aware of her magical powers and ability to see into the spirit world
MORGANVILLE VAMPIRES SERIES
BOOK ONE: GLASS HOUSES
by Rachel Caine
College freshman Claire Danvers has had enough of her nightmarish dorm situation. When Claire heads off-campus, the imposing old house where she finds a room may not be much better. Her new roommates don’t show many signs of life, but they’ll have Claire’s back when the town’s deepest secrets come crawling out, hungry for fresh blood.
CROSSING MIDNIGHT SERIES
BOOK ONE: CUT HERE
by Mike Carey and Jim Fern
A fantasy/horror series set in the heart of present-dayNagakaki, Japan, Crossing Midnight begins when a set of extraordinary twinsare born - one just before midnight and the other just after. They discover the huge impact this small difference has on their destinieswhen the after-midnight twin is inducted into a world of supernaturalbeings and events that intersects with our own world. Together, they will desperately try to stay one step ahead of their terrifying fates while they learn how far the curse afflicting them really stretches.
THE PARASOL PROTECTORATE SERIES
BOOK ONE: SOULLESS
by Gail Carriger
Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she’s a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette. Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire – and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate. *The audio edition of this book is amazing.*
THE FIRE AND THORNS TRILOGY
BOOK ONE: THE GIRL OF FIRE AND THORNS
by Rae Carson
A fearful sixteen-year-old princess discovers her heroic destiny after being married off to the king of a neighboring country in turmoil and pursued by enemies seething with dark magic.
GRACELING REALM SERIES
BOOK ONE: GRACELING
by Kristin Cashore
In a world where some people are born with extreme and often-feared skills called Graces, Katsa struggles for redemption from her own horrifying Grace, the Grace of killing, and teams up with another young fighter to save their land from a corrupt king.
THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS SERIES
BOOK ONE: CITY OF BONES
by Cassandra Clare
Suddenly able to see demons and the Darkhunters who are dedicated to returning them to their own dimension, fifteen-year-old Clary Fray is drawn into this bizarre world when her mother disappears and Clary herself is almost killed by a monster.
THE HUNGER GAMES SERIES
BOOK ONE: THE HUNGER GAMES
by Suzanne Collins
In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss’ skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister’s place.
HIS FAIR ASSASSIN SERIES
BOOK ONE: GRAVE MERCY
by Robin LaFevers
In the fifteenth-century kingdom of Brittany, seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where she learns that the god of Death has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny.
LEGEND SERIES
BOOK ONE: LEGEND
by Marie Lu
In a dark future, when North America has split into two warring nations, fifteen-year-olds Day, a famous criminal, and June, the brilliant soldier hired to capture him, discover that they have a common enemy.
WICKED LOVELY SERIES
BOOK ONE: WICKED LOVELY
by Melissa Marr
Seventeen-year-old Aislinn, who has the rare ability to see faeries, is drawn against her will into a centuries-old battle between the Summer King and the Winter Queen, and the survival of her life, her love, and summer all hang in the balance.
THE LUNAR CHRONICLES
BOOK ONE: CINDER
by Marissa Meyer
As plague ravages the overcrowded Earth, observed by a ruthless lunar people, Cinder, a gifted mechanic and cyborg, becomes involved with handsome Prince Kai and must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect the world in this futuristic take on the Cinderella story.
KIKI STRIKE SERIES
BOOK ONE: INSIDE THE SHADOW CITY
by Kirsten Miller
Life becomes more interesting for Ananka Fishbein when, at the age of twelve, she discovers an underground room in the park across from her New York City apartment and meets a mysterious girl called Kiki Strike who claims that she, too, wants to explore the subterranean world.
COURTNEY CRUMRIN
BOOK TWO: COURTNEY CRUMRIN AND THE COVEN OF MYSTICS
by Ted Naifeh
Courtney and her less-than-brilliant parents move in to old Uncle Aloysius’ manor to take care of him. Courtney soon finds that taking care of him is the least of her worries.
ABHORSEN TRILOGY
BOOK ONE: SABRIEL
by Garth Nix
Sabriel, daughter of the necromancer Abhorsen, must journey into the mysterious and magical Old Kingdom to rescue her father from the Land of the Dead.
DRAGON KING TRILOGY
BOOK ONE: PROPHECY
by Ellen Oh
A demon slayer, the only female warrior in the King’s army, must battle demon soldiers, an evil shaman, and the Demon Lord to find the lost ruby of the Dragon King’s prophecy and save her kingdom.
PROTECTOR OF THE SMALL QUARTET
BOOK ONE: FIRST TEST
by Tamora Pierce
Ten-year-old Keladry of Mindalen, daughter of nobles, serves as a page but must prove herself to the males around her if she is ever to fulfill her dream of becoming a knight.
BEKA COOPER SERIES
BOOK ONE: TERRIER
by Tamora Pierce
When sixteen-year-old Beka becomes “Puppy” to a pair of “Dogs,” as the Provost’s Guards are called, she uses her police training, natural abilities, and a touch of magic to help them solve the case of a murdered baby in Tortall’s Lower City.
DAUGHTER OF THE LIONESS SERIES
BOOK ONE: TRICKSTER’S CHOICE
by Tamora Pierce
Alianne must call forth her mother’s courage and her father’s wit in order to survive on the Copper Isles in a royal court rife with political intrigue and murderous conspiracy.
*Really, anything by Tamora Pierce is going to be amazing! You can’t go wrong with her!*
WINTERSMITH: BOOK 3 IN THE THE TIFFANY ACHING ADVENTURES SERIES, AND BOOK 35 IN THE DISCWORLD SERIES
by Terry Pratchett
When witch-in-training Tiffany Aching accidentally interrupts the Dance of the Seasons and awakens the interest of the elemental spirit of Winter, she requires the help of the six-inch-high, sword-wielding, sheep-stealing Wee Free Men to put the seasons aright.
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE TRILOGY
BOOK ONE: ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
by Beth Revis
Teenage Amy, a cryogenically frozen passenger on the spaceship Godspeed, wakes up to discover that someone may have tried to murder her.
DIVERGENT TRILOGY
BOOK ONE: DIVERGENT
by Veronica Roth
In a future Chicago, sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest of her life, a decision made more difficult when she discovers that she is an anomoly who does not fit into any one group, and that the society she lives in is not perfect after all.
THE BEAUTIFUL WORLD SERIES
BOOK ONE: KINO NO TABI
by Keiichi Shigusawa
An eleven-year-old girl escapes the fate of being surgically transformed into an adult, adopts the name of the man who saved her - Kino - and escapes from her village. Kino and her talking motorcycle, Hermes, travel from country to country, observing both the beautiful and the ugly things in the world.
DAUGHTER OF SMOKE & BONE SERIES
BOOK ONE: DAUGHTER OF SMOKE & BONE
by Laini Taylor
Seventeen-year-old Karou, a lovely, enigmatic art student in a Prague boarding school, carries a sketchbook of hideous, frightening monsters—the chimaerae who form the only family she has ever known. *The audio edition of this book is amazing.*
SKINNED TRILOGY
BOOK ONE: SKINNED
by Robin Wasserman
To save her from dying in a horrible accident, Lia’s wealthy parents transplant her brain into a mechanical body.
UGLIES SERIES
BOOK ONE: UGLIES
by Scott Westerfeld
Just before their sixteenth birthdays, when they will be transformed into beauties whose only job is to have a great time, Tally’s best friend runs away and Tally must find her and turn her in, or never become pretty at all.
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER SEASON 8
BOOK ONE: THE LONG WAY HOME
by Joss Whedon
Since the destruction of the Hellmouth, the Slayers - newly legion - have gotten organized and are kicking some serious undead butt. But not everything’s fun and firearms, as an old enemy reappears and Dawn experiences some serious growing pains. Meanwhile, one of the “Buffy” decoy slayers is going through major pain of her own.
FOILED SERIES
BOOK ONE: FOILED
by Jane Yolen
Aliera is a star at fencing, but at school no one notices her – until her new lab partner Avery begins flirting with her. Aliera’s mother just bought her a foil from a garage sale, and it has a strange jewel attached to the hilt. Will Aliera’s first date be ruined when magical creatures try to steal her foil?
URL shortening is certainly nothing new. In fact, it’s become an absolute necessity when it comes to sharing links on social networks that limit your character count like Twitter. But rather than simply shorten URLs and present them in neat little shortened URLs, it’s also possible to do exactly the same thing to share multiple links. There are several services which make it easy to share a bundle of links together as one shortened link.
Check out these five tools to make book trailers:
Animoto makes it possible to quickly create a video using still images, music, video clips, and text. If you can make a slideshow presentation, you can make a video using Animoto. Animoto’s free service limits you to 30 second videos. You can create longer videos if you apply for an education account.
WeVideo is a collaborative online video creation tool. In the video editor you can upload your own media clips or use stock media clips to produce your video. The video editor provides tools for trimming the length of display and or sound of each element you add to your video project. What makes WeVideo collaborative is that you can invite other people to create and edit with you. The WeVideo Google Drive app allows you to save all of your video projects in your Google Drive account. WeVideo also offers an Android app that students can use to capture images and video footage to add to their projects.
Pixntell is an iPad app for quickly creating simple narrated photostories. To create a story using Pixntell all that you need to do is start a new project, select some images, place them in order, and then start talking about each of your pictures. You control the timing for each image. If you want to talk about your first picture for twenty seconds, your second picture for just three seconds, and your third picture for fifteen seconds, you can do that. When your project is complete you can upload it directly to YouTube, share it on Facebook, or send to friends via email.
Narrable is a neat service for creating short narrated slideshows. To create an audio slideshow on Narrable start by uploading some pictures that you either want to talk about or have music played behind. After the pictures are uploaded you can record a narration for each picture through your computer’s microphone or by calling into your Narrable’s access phone number. You can also upload an audio recording that is stored on your computer. Narrable projects can be shared via email, Facebook, or by embedding them into a blog.
Wideo is a service that allows anyone to create animated videos and Common Craft-style videos online. You can create an animated video on Wideo by dragging and dropping elements into place in the Wideo editor then setting the sequence of animations. Each element can be re-used as many times as you like and the timing of the animation of each image can individually adjusted. Wideo’s stock elements include text, cartoons, and drawings. You can also upload your own images to use in your videos. Wideo could be used by students to animate the highlights of a book that they’ve read.
In 2011, Ransom Riggs spun a chilling fantasy story from a collection of creepy vintage photographs. The follow-up to Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children — which EW can exclusively reveal will be titled Hollow City — begins in 1940, immediately after the first novel ended. Having escaped Miss Peregrine’s island by the skin of their teeth, Jacob and his new friends flee to London, the peculiar capital of the world, where more danger awaits them. Once again, Hollow City (out Jan. 14) will come complete with dozens of newly discovered (and thoroughly unsettling) vintage photographs. Are you ready to be haunted again? Check out the first excerpt below!
Hey fans of Star Trek and science in general!
Check out this awesome project.
The BuildTheEnterprise (BTE) website describes how to build the first USS Enterprise spaceship, based on technologies within our reach, over the next twenty years. You read that right. It’s possible for the United States of America to build the first generation of USS Enterprise given the national will to do so. But before digging into how to design and build this ship, you may first want to consider Our Space Problem and how this leads to Visions of Enterprise.
This site is incredibly detailed and there is tons for you to read and share with your friends. There are plenty of links to other sites, too.
Science!
Daniel Radcliffe Confesses Who He’d Like to Play in ‘Harry Potter’ Remake
This is a flawless gif of DanRad.
animperialafflictionbyfiction:
Favorite Books: Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.
(via thebooker)
RT Book Reviews interviews Susane Colasanti about her new novel, ALL I NEED!
Bookish: The Shadowhunters make a big deal of the difference between them and “mundanes,” or humans. You’ve mentioned that you picked up that term from Dungeons & Dragons; my ex was a LARPer, so I’ve encountered the phrase as well. The characters in “Harry Potter” are similarly obsessed with Muggles vs. wizards. Now, some geeks have appropriated the term to set themselves apart from non-geeks. What’s your take on this?Cassandra Clare: It’s an interesting question, because when I picked it up from my friends it was because they were role-playing. I asked if they would run a shotgun campaign in the world of “The Mortal Instruments” because I thought it’d be a way to beta-test the magic system and see if there were any things that didn’t work. They asked me if I wanted to be in on it, and I said “no,” because I’d never played Dungeons & Dragons and I didn’t want to hold up what they were doing. They kind of jokingly called me a “mundane” and I was a little bit hurt because I was like, “What do you mean, I’m a mundane? I’m writing a fantasy book, I’m obviously a geek!”I wound up putting the word in the book because when the Shadowhunters call human beings mundanes, it puts a little bit of a derogatory spin on it. As the books go on, one of the things that I wanted to explore was forcing the Shadowhunters to confront their attitude about humanity and the problematic aspects of thinking of yourself as better than the people you’re supposed to protect.Check out our interview with Cassandra Clare! She talks about the “City of Bones” movie, keeping Clary’s freckles and what it’s like writing with Holly Black.
Top 10 SF/Fantasy for Youth: 2013.
Aliens! Shape-shifters! Deadly diseases! It’s another powerhouse (and perilous) year for sf/fantasy, as these novels, all reviewed between May 15, 2012, and May 1, 2013, in Booklist, illustrate.
The 5th Wave. By Rick Yancey. 2013. Putnam, $18.99 (9780399162411). Gr. 9–12.
This heartfelt, violent survivalist series debut is set in the aftermath of an alien invasion in which the aliens themselves never appear.
The Diviners. By Libba Bray. 2012. Little, Brown, $19.99 (9780316126113). Gr. 9–12.
In Prohibition-era New York, 17-year-old flapper Evie is under the wing of an uncle who curates the Museum of the Creepy Crawlies. Business is slow until the arrival of what the papers dub the Pentacle Killer.
Every Day. By David Levithan. 2012. Knopf, $16.99 (9780307931887). Gr. 9–12.
A teenager called A wakes up in a different body every day, trying not to interfere with daily routines and to steer clear of romantic attachments. That works until A meets Rhiannon and falls in love. A study in style and an exercise in imagination.
The Future We Left Behind. By Mike Lancaster. 2012. Egmont, $16.99 (9781606844106). Gr. 7–10.
The events of Human.4 (2011) are thousands of years in the past, so distant that Kyle Straker’s account of humanity being “upgraded” by alien forces is considered superstition except by true believers. Now it’s time for a teen named Peter to upload his story into the worldwide shared space of the Link.
The Girl with Borrowed Wings. By Rinsai Rossetti. 2012. Dial, $17.99 (9780803735668). Gr. 7–12.
Frenenqer—a name meaning restraint—was born inside her father’s imagination and sculpted into his vision of the perfect daughter. But when she meets a shape-shifter, the world opens up before her in this stunningly imagined paranormal romance.
Railsea. By China Miéville. Illus. by the author. 2012. Del Rey, $18 (9780345524522). Gr. 9–12.
In this inventive fantasy that draws from Melville’s great American novel, the crew of the diesel train Medes hunt moldywarpes—enormous, man-eating, molelike creatures who burrow in the perilous earth beneath a tangled ocean of train tracks.
Seraphina. By Rachel Hartman. 2012. Random, $17.99 (9780375866562). Gr. 9–12.
After 40 years of peace between human and dragon kingdoms, their much-maligned treaty is on the verge of collapse. Seraphina’s secret—that she’s a human-dragon half-breed—must be protected in this richly drawn high fantasy.
Starry River of the Sky. By Grace Lin. Illus. by the author. 2012. Little, Brown, $17.99 (9780316125956). Gr. 3–6.
This mesmerizing companion to Newbery Honor–winning Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (2009) interweaves Chinese folklore with the main narrative, as a runaway named Rendi attempts to puzzle out why the moon is missing from the sky.
Quarantine: The Loners. By Lex Thomas. 2012. Egmont, $17.99 (9781606843291). Gr. 10–12.
A gritty, apocalyptic thriller about a sick teen who infects a Colorado high school with a disease so deadly that half the building is blown up by the military and the rest is sealed inside a giant dome.
Quintana of Charyn. By Melina Marchetta. 2013. Candlewick, $18.99 (9780763658359). Gr. 9–12.
The brilliant final volume in the Lumatere Chronicles sees Froi setting out to find and protect pregnant Quintana, his strange and savage love; raise an army against a usurper; and prevent war.
Some people have asked to read the commencement address I delivered this morning to the 2013 graduates of Butler University. So here it is.
My own commencement speaker, who shall remain nameless, began with a lame joke about how these speeches only come in two varieties: Short and bad. This raised my expectations, and then he went onto speak for 26 minutes, so I’m just going to tell you now: 12 minutes flat, 11:45 if you don’t laugh.
Congratulations to all of you here today, and I do mean all of you—parents, families, friends, professors, coaches. Every single person in Hinkle today has given something to make this moment possible for the class of 2013—well, except for me. I really just showed up and put on the robe.
But special congratulations to you graduates. Before we get to the Life Advice You’ll Soon Forget portion of the program, I want to engage in a time-honored tradition of American commencement addresses: Stealing from other commencement addresses, in this case one by the children’s television host Fred Rogers. Think, if you will, of some of the people who helped get you to today, people who’ve loved you and without whose care and generosity you might not have found yourself here, graduating from Butler, or watching someone you love graduate, or seeing your students graduate. Think for one minute of those who have loved you up into this day. I’ll keep the time.
(1 minute of silence)
Those people are so proud of you today.
We will return to those people soon, but first I have to deliver terrible news, which is that you are all going to die. This is another time-honored tradition of American celebration, the Raining on the Parade. I remember when I got married, the priest devoted most of his homily to telling me how challenging and laborious marriage would be, and I kept thinking, “Well, sure, but can’t we talk about that, like, TOMORROW?” But no, it simply cannot wait. You are going to die. Also everything you ever make and think and experience will be washed away by the sands of time, and the Sun will blow up and no one will remember Cleopatra ruling Egypt or Crick and Watson untangling the structure of DNA or Ptolemy fathoming the stars or even that improbably wonderful Gonzaga game.
So that’s unfortunate.
But I would argue that it’s good to be aware of temporariness when you are thinking about what you want to do with your life. The whole idea of this commencement speech is that I’m supposed to offer you some thoughts on how you might live a good life out there in the so-called Real World, which by the way I assure you is no more or less real than the one in which you have so far found yourselves. But I can’t give any advice about how to live a good life unless and until we establish what constitutes a good life. Of course, that’s much of what you’ve been up to for the past four years, and I’m not going to swoop in here at the end with any interesting revelations. I would just note that the default assumption is that the point of human life is to be as successful as possible, to acquire lots of fame or glory or money as defined by quantifiable metrics: number of twitter followers, or facebook friends, or dollars in one’s 401k.
This is the hero’s journey, right? The hero starts out with no money and ends up with a lot of it, or starts out an ugly duckling and becomes a beautiful swan, or starts out an awwkard girl and becomes a vampire mother, or grows up an orphan living under the staircase and then becomes the wizard who saves the world. We are taught that the hero’s journey is the journey from weakness to strength. But I am here today to tell you that those stories are wrong. The real hero’s journey is the journey from strength to weakness.
And here is the good news nested inside the bad: Many of you, most of you, are about to make that journey. You will go from being the best-informed, most engaged students at one of the finest universities around to being the person who brings coffee to people, or a Steak n Shake waiter, as I once was. Whether you’re a basketball player or a pharmacist or a software designer, you’re about to be a rookie. Your parents’ long-asked questions—what exactly does one DO with a degree in anthropology—will become a matter of sudden and profound relevance. Your student loans will come due and you will need a very good answer for why exactly you went to college, which answer you will have a hard time coming by as you sit at your job, provided you are lucky enough to find a job, and suffer the indignity of people calling you by the wrong name or, if you are forced to wear a name tag, people calling you by the right name too often.
That is the true hero’s errand—strength to weakness. And because you went to college, you will be more alive to the experience, better able to contextualize it and maybe even find the joy and wonder hidden amid the dehumanizing drudgery. For example, when I was a data entry professional, I would often call to mind William Faulkner’s brilliant letter of resignation from the United States Postal Service, which went:
As long as I live under the capitalistic system, I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation. William Faulkner.
Having read that letter in a Faulkner biography in college had nothing to do with my job typing numbers into a database, but it was still profoundly useful to me. Education provides context and comfort and access, no matter the relationship between your field of study and your post-collegiate life.
But still, you are probably going to be a nobody for a while. You are going to make that journey from strength to weakness, and while it won’t be an easy trip, it is a heroic one. For in learning how to be a nobody, you will learn how not to be a jerk. And for the rest of your life, if you are able to remember your hero’s journey from college grad to underling, you will be less of a jerk. You will tip well. You will empathize. You will be a mentor, and a generous one. In short, you will become like the people you imagined in silence a few minutes ago.
Let me submit to you that this is the actual definition of a good life. You want to be the kind of person who other people—people who may not even born yet—will think about in their own silences years from now at their own commencements. I am going to hazard a guess that relatively few of us closed our eyes and thought of all the work and love that Selena Gomez or Justin Bieber put into making this moment possible for us. We may be taught that the people to admire and emulate are actors and musicians and sports heroes and professionally famous people, but when we look at the people who have helped us, the people who actually change actual lives, relatively few of them are publicly celebrated. We do not think of the money they had, but of their generosity. We do not think of how beautiful or powerful they were, but how willing they were to sacrifice for us—so willing, at times, that we might not have even noticed that they were making sacrifices.
So with that in mind, I’d like to share a few pieces of what I believe to be rock solid advice about proper adulthood or whatever:
First, do not worry too much about your lawn. You will soon find if you haven’t already that almost every adult American devotes tremendous time and money to the maintenance of an invasive plant species called turf grass that we can’t eat. I encourage you to choose better obsessions.
Also, you may have heard that it is better to burn out than it is to fade away. That is ridiculous. It is much better to fade away. Always. Fade. Away.
Keep reading. Specifically, read my books, ideally in hardcover. But also keep reading other books. You have probably figured out by now that education is not really about grades or getting a job; it’s primarily about becoming a more aware and engaged observer of the universe. If that ends with college, you’re rather wasting your one and only known chance at consciousness.
Also a word about the Internet: Old people like myself are terrified by their ignorance of it, which you can and should use to your advantage by saying things at your job like, “You don’t have a tumblr? Oh you should really have a tumblr. I can set you up with that.”
Try not to worry so much about what you are going to do with your life. You are already doing what you are going to do with your life, and judging by your gownedness, you’re doing all right.
On that topic, there are many more jobs out there than you have ever heard of. Your dream job might not yet exist. If you had told College Me that I would become a professional YouTuber, I would’ve been like, “That is not a word, and it never should be.”
And lastly, be vigilant in the struggle toward empathy. A couple years after I graduated from college, I was living in an apartment in Chicago with four friends, one of whom was this Kuwaiti guy named Hassan, and when the U.S. invaded Iraq, Hassan lost touch with his family, who lived on the border, for six weeks. He responded to this stress by watching cable news coverage of the war 24 hours a day. So the only way to hang out with Hassan was to sit on the couch with him, and so one day we were watching the news and the anchor was like, “We’re getting new footage from the city of Baghdad,” and a camera panned across a house that had a huge hole in one wall covered by a piece of plywood. On the plywood was Arabic graffiti scrawled in black spraypaint, and as the news anchor talked about the anger on the Arab street or whatever, Hassan started laughing for the first time in several weeks.
“What’s so funny?” I asked him.
“The graffiti,” he said.
“What’s funny about it?”
“It says, Happy Birthday, Sir, Despite the Circumstances.”
For the rest of your life, you are going to have a choice about how to read graffiti in a language you do not know, and you will have a choice about how to read the actions and intonations of the people you meet. I would encourage you as often as possible to consider the Happy Birthday Sir Despite the Circumstances possibility, the possibility that the lives and experiences of others are as complex and unpredictable as your own, that other people—be they family or strangers, near or far—are not simply one thing or the other—not simply good or evil or wise or ignorant—but that they like you contain multitudes, to borrow a phrase from the great Walt Whitman.
This is difficult to do—it is difficult to remember that people with lives different and distant from your own even celebrate birthdays, let alone with gifts of graffitied plywood. You will always be stuck inside of your body, with your consciousness, seeing through the world through your own eyes, but the gift and challenge of your education is to see others as they see themselves, to grapple with this mean and crazy and beautiful world in all its baffling complexity. We haven’t left you with the easiest path, I know, but I have every confidence in you, and I wish you a very happy graduation, despite the circumstances.
