In My Mailbox

In My Mailbox was started by The Story Siren.

I had time to head to the bookstore this week and I bought some great books!

Ex-Mas by Kate Brian-Seventeen-year-old Lila Beckwith's parents just left for vacation, and Lila's all set to throw the holiday party of the season. But when her Christmas-obsessed little brother, Cooper, discovers that global warming is melting the North Pole, he and his best friend, Tyler, take off on a runaway mission to save Santa.

Lila has to get Cooper safely home before her parents get back on Christmas Eve. But the only person who can help her is Tyler's older brother, Beau -- a.k.a. Lila's musician, anti-everything ex-boyfriend.

It'll take more than a Christmas miracle for Lila and Beau to overcome their differences and find their fugitive brothers. But could a journey destined for disaster help these polar opposites fall in love...all over again?

-Anyone else LOVE holiday romances???

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson-The godlike inhabitants of Elantris, once the capital of the land of Arelon, have degenerated into powerless, tortured souls, unable to die, after the city's magic inexplicably broke 10 years earlier. When the same curse strikes Prince Raoden of Arelon and he's imprisoned in Elantris, he refuses to surrender to his grim fate and instead strives to create a society out of the fallen and to unlock the secret that will restore the city's glory. Meanwhile, Princess Sarene of Kae (Arelon's new capital), who was betrothed to Raoden sight unseen, believes her intended has died. Officially declared his widow, she must use her political savvy and wit to protect Kae from malevolent forces without and within the city, chiefly Hrathen, a leader of the creepy Shu-Dereth faith, who aims to either convert Kae or destroy it within three months.

-One of my co-workers highly recommend this to me-I can't wait to read it!

Devon Delaney Should Totally Know Better by Lauren Barnholdt

-Devon Delaney cannot believe she's lying again. But the thing is, she couldn't help it. Her new boyfriend, Luke, is talking to his (gorgeous) ex-girlfriend, Bailey Barelli (!!!), every single day in mock trial. Devon couldn't just stand by and let him find out that she'd never dated anyone else before. Could she? Oopsie. Too late now. To show how totally unaffected she is by Bailey's obvious Luke hang-up, Devon invents a fake ex-boyfriend of her own: Greg. Fab! What could go wrong? But it isn't long before Devon finds herself in the middle of another supergigantic lie. Can Devon come clean in time to keep the guy? Or will she lose everything due to another lie?

-I loved the first Devon Delaney (and so did my teens) so I'm eager to read more of Devon's story

Blog Tour: Medina Hill by Trilby Kent

Rating: 3/5 Stars

Genre: Historical Fiction

Release Date: 10/13/09

About the Book: (From Amazon): In the grimy London of 1935, eleven-year-old Dominic Walker has lost his voice. His mother is sick and his father’s unemployed. Rescue comes in the form of his Uncle Roo, who arrives to take him and his young sister, Marlo, to Cornwall. There, in a boarding house populated by eccentric residents, Marlo, who keeps a death grip on her copy of The New Art of Cooking, and Dominic, armed with Incredible Adventures for Boys: Colonel Lawrence and the Revolt in the Desert, find a way of life unlike any they have known. Dominic’s passion for Lawrence of Arabia is tested when he finds himself embroiled in a village uprising against a band of travelers who face expulsion. In defending the vulnerable, Dominic learns what it truly means to have a voice.


GreenBeanTeenQueen Says: Medina Hill is a cute historical read for tweens. The story may play out a little too conveniently for older readers, but for young readers I thought it was perfect. I loved the eccentric cast-they were lots of fun. I just wish we could have gotten to know them a little more. But I did like what we did see-I especially liked Birdie, who can communicate with the dead.

I also liked Dominic's adventures with the gypsies and Sancha was a great character. The friendship between Dominic and Sancha is the one we really get to see the most, and I thought their interactions were true to tweens today and readers could relate. I also got a kick out of Marlo, Dominic's sister, and her quest to find the perfect recipe to enter the local fair. I think my favorite part of this one was the fact that a book that Dominic was reading played a big part in the story.

This is one I would add to your library if you have students looking for historical reads that aren't bogged down in depressing storylines.

Want to read more about Medina Hill? Follow the tour to Chicklish.

Book Blogger Holiday Swap

I love the book blogging community and love that there are so many book lovers that I'm connected to. So I of course jumped at the chance to participate in this year's Book Blogger Holiday Swap. Sign up to be a book blogger's Secret Santa. Click on the button above to join the fun-and hurry, you only have until November 12 to sign up! Don't forget that books always make great gifts!

Want It Wednesday

Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

Release Date: 7/20/10-ACK-So Far Away!!!

About the Book: It's the sequel to Shiver. Maggie says " it is about after. What happens after you discover there are werewolves in the wood, after you've fallen in love for the first time, after you've lost what you think you can't live without, after you've become someone you can't live with (and no, not all of these are talking about the characters you think they're talking about.)"


Sneak Peak: (Thanks Maggie!)

• grace •

This is the story of a boy who used to be a wolf and a girl who was becoming one.

Just a few months ago, it was Sam who was the mythical creature. His was the disease we couldn’t cure. His was the good-bye that meant the most. He had the body that was a mystery, too strange and wonderful and terrifying to comprehend.

But now it is spring. With the heat, the remaining wolves will soon be falling out of their wolf pelts and back into their human bodies. Sam stays Sam, and Cole stays Cole, and it’s only me who’s not firmly in my own skin.

GreenBeanTeenQueen Says: OMG-I want it even more now!! Anyone else super excited? And I love the cover. It's amazing-and I'm happy to report I saw the wolf much faster than I did on the Shiver cover!:)

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

Rating: 2.75/5 Stars (This is really hard for this book-I have mixed feelings about it)

Genre: Paranormal-but I really hesitate to call it that-I think Fantasy fits a little better -UPDATE: Dystopian fits perfectly-thanks Jana!

Release Date: 3/10/09

About the Book: Mary lives in a small village surrounded by the Forest of Hands and Teeth, where one must never venture. The forest is where the unconsecrated live and the Sisterhood make sure the village stays protected. But Mary isn't happy in the village and she longs for the ocean. When she loose her family, she begins to uncover secrets the Sisterhood have been keeping and she's not sure who to trust.

GreenBeanTeenQueen Says: I wanted to like this book-I really did, but it just fell flat for me in so many ways. Maybe I had read too much hype about it beforehand that I had very high expectations.

The premise and the story were good, I just wish I had cared more for the characters. The beginning of the novel had a strange passage of time-sometimes weeks passed within a few sentences where other times, when I felt a lot of time had passed it had only been a day. I felt the author was jumping around to much to start and I wanted more backstory.

I also had problems with the character development. The sisters were supposed to be evil and keeping secrets, Mary was supposed to be falling in love with Travis, but as a reader, I was told all of this information, never shown. Why did Mary love Travis? What drew her to him? Why should I fear the Sisterhood?

I've learned that I'm a very dialogue driven reader, and this book had little dialogue. I will enjoy books with little dialogue if I care about the characters, the settings, and I want to be immersed in the world I am reading. But I never felt that way about The Forest of Hands and Teeth. I was never made to care about Mary, her village, and what happened to them all.

That being said, the novel did pick up about 120 pages in, which is a 300 page book, seems a little too late for me as a reader to start want to be reading. This one wouldn't have passed my usual 50 page rule if I wasn't making myself finish it for my children's lit class. And there was something in the story that kept me reading, which was good. The plot picked up, but then it stalled out again after several chapters. Now we were back where we started with Mary dreaming about the ocean and little action happening. There's also a lot of time here for the reader to get drawn in to the romance between Mary and Travis, but that never happens and we're left wondering what it is they really see in each other.

For a book filled with zombies, I would expect more action in the plot. I also felt like there were a lot of things left unanswered, especially about the how's and why's and the Sisterhood, but that could be due to the fact this is the first of a series. I was surprised to read some reviews that called this one suspensful, because the suspense element was never there for me. I felt like there needed to be more mystery for this one to really work.

Overall, this was an interesting read, and I did like it-there were some very haunting parts which I thought were great. I found the writing to be rich, even if the story was lacking. Will I pick up the next book in the series? Maybe. Will I be in a hurry to read it? Probably not. I am interested in seeing this one transform to a movie though. I think it will work well on the big screen.

Author Guest Post-Jessica Blank PLUS CONTEST!

Today I am featuring a guest post by Jessica Blank, author of the new novel Karma For Beginners.

About the Book: Fourteen-year-old Tessa has never had a normal life. Her mother, a frustrated hippie with awful taste in men, has seen to that. But when her mom pulls her out of school to live at an ashram in the Catskills, Tessa goes from being a freak among normal people to being an outcast among freaks. Freaks who worship an orange robe-wearing guru. And while her mom is buzzing with spiritual energy, and finding a little too much favor with the guru, all Tessa feels are weird vibes.

Unless she's with Colin, the gorgeous boy who fixes trucks for the ashram. The connection they share is the most spiritual thing Tessa has ever felt. But he's older-like illegally older-and Tessa's taking dangerous risks to spend time with him. Soon her life is blooming into a psychedelic web of secrets and lies and it's clear that something's about to give way. When it does, will she have anyone to hold on to? Will she even know herself?

What Jessica Has to Say: My new YA book, "Karma for Beginners" isn't exactly autobiographical, but it's definitely more so than my last YA book "Almost Home" (about a group of homeless teenagers in LA) or my playwriting (the last two documentary plays I wrote with my husband, Erik Jensen, are based on interviews we did with exonerated death row inmates and Iraqi civilian refugees). And in another life, I'm an actor, and so I'm always playing characters different from myself. So when I started working on "Karma for Beginners," I wanted to write something a little closer to my own experiences as a teenager, and also something funny! Tessa, the main character in "Karma" starts out shyer and quieter than I was---I was definitely a rebellious kid--but her introspectiveness is definitely something I remember feeling as a teenager. Her mom--also a main character in the book--is different from my mom, and the actual story isn't based on my life (Tessa's hippie single mom takes her to live on an ashram in upstate New York, where Tessa falls in love with an older guy). But my parents (still happily married) did take me to VISIT an ashram kind of like the one in the book a bunch of times, and I did have an older boyfriend my freshman year of high school, and some of the other things Tessa goes through (ahem) are similar to things I experienced as a teenager. Tessa's discovery of bands and music for the first time, her questioning of her spirituality and ideas about the world, her discovery of the power that rebellion gives her--and her experience getting in a little over her head with that rebellion--are all things that I can definitely relate to my own teenage experiences, even if they're not literally taken from my life.

When I wrote "Almost Home" (the one about homeless teenagers in LA, which Erik and I are now adapting as a movie for Jon Bon Jovi's production company) I used my imagination a LOT to get inside the kids' heads; to think through everything they'd been through and work out how that would affect everything they thought and did. I also did a lot of research. With "Karma for Beginners" I didn't have to stretch so far---though Tessa and I aren't the same, her personality and the circumstances of her life are a little closer to home, so I spent more time remembering who I was when I was 14 and 15 and thinking about how I would've responded to the situations she finds herself in. The new YA book I'm working on right now is somewhere in-between---the protagonist is more like me than the kids in "Almost Home" are, but a little less than Tessa. It's a balancing act to try to figure out when to draw on my own teenage experiences and when it's better to imagine something totally different!

Want to win a copy of Karma for Beginners? Leave a comment on this post with your e-mail, blog, etc. Contest open to U.S. addresses only. Contest will end November 8 at Midnight (Central Time)

Tween Tuesday Plus a Giveaway

I have a very cool Tween Tuesday post this week: The Encyclopedia of Immaturity Volume 2

The Encyclopedia of Immaturity has been such a hit that Klutz is following up with a second book! The Encyclopedia of Immaturity Volume 2 includes thought-provoking topics such as how to slide down a banister, what we talk about when we talk about wedgies, how to send a toiletgram, and more. It’s all new and all hopelessly goofy.

This book is hilarious! There are so many great pranks-I love it! I pointed out to my husband that I had recieved this book and he picked it up and started flipping through it and laughing-so it's not just for tweens! (He's looking at it right now saying "that's cool!")

The book has a good mix of magic tricks, jokes, pranks. There are some pages that you can cut out and use, like extreme makeovers which adds goofy teeth to the bottom of your drinking glass or my favorite-grass to cover up the dog poop so it looks like you picked it up!

The Holiday's are coming and The Encyclopedia of Immaturity would make a great gift for the prankers in your life. And my loyal readers are in luck!

THREE WINNERS will recieve:

-the new release Encyclopedia of Immaturity VOL 2

-and Encyclopedia of Immaturity VOL 1

To Enter: Leave a comment below with a way to contact you (e-mail, blog) Must have a U.S. Address to ship to and be 13 or older

Contest ends November 17 at midnight Central Time. Good luck!