Rockin' the Boat

Rockin' the Boat: 50 Iconic Revolutionaries - From Joan of Arc to Malcom X Jeff Fleischer

Woo-hoo! I'm back on Zest's Rockin' Blog Tour.

Much like Members Only: Secret Societies, Sects, and Cults Exposed! this new offering by Zest is a little more text-y than previous similar titles, and is a more YA-friendly trim size.

In this one, Fleischer looks at 50 iconic revolutionaries (in case you couldn't figure that out from the subtitle) with a brief introduction to their life, any context you need to know about what they were rebelling against, and what their revolution was. Most also have a pull-out box or two about the lasting legacy of their rebellion or how history and/or pop culture has changed their story (such as the real story of William Wallace vs. Braveheart)

Arranged in chronological order, the first part is pretty heavy on the anti-Romans (Hannibal! Boudica! Cleopatra!) Sam Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson are here, as are Metacom, Tecumseh, Geronimo, Sitting Bull, and Liliukalani. Other Americans include Daniel Shays, John Brown, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Emma Goldman, Cesar Chavez, Malcom X and Marting Luter King, Jr. (If I counted correctly, 19 are Americans or were rebelling against something in the US, or doing it in what would become the US.)

It's not all white guys, and it's not all winners, which is a serious win. I also like while they are all certainly political revolutionaries, it's a nice blend between reformers and those who went to war. I would have liked to see more outside of the Americas and Europe, especially some less-known names. I mean some of these Americans are a bit obscure (Mary Harris Jones), and some of the early European ones definitely are (Vercingetroix, Arminus, Owain Glyndwr) but most of the ones south of the US aren't (Che, Castro, Simon Bolivar, Pancho Villa) And the ones that are further afield are pretty well known (Mao Zedong, Gandhi, Ho Chi Minh, Ataturk, Nelson Mandela). The one exception is New Zealand, where we get Hone Heke and Kate Sheppard.

It's a great introduction to some serious empire building and tearing down (as much as there is a lot of focus on the anti-Romans--8 out of 50, it also really shows the sweep of the Roman Empire, as well as its definite limits.) As well as major political movements, which still very much shape our world today.

While it's an easy one to dip in and out of, I recommend reading it in order, as many of the revolutions build on each other, or reference each other, so the context from a previous chapter is often useful, which is why the chronological order works so well here. Everything's only 3-5 pages, but it covers enough so people know what went down and why. IT's also short enough you think "oh, I can read just one more" and then you end up finishing the book in one session. (NOT THAT DID THAT. *whistles while looking innocent*) This is a great one for a wide range of readers and I really really really wish it had been around in 2012 when the National History Day theme was "Revolution, Reaction, and Reform". So many teens didn't know where to even start picking one-- I would have loved to be able to have them leaf through this book for inspiration!

Another fun and engaging, but still wildly informative, one from Zest.



Book Provided by... Zest, for blog tour inclusion

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Members Only: Secret Societies, Sects, and Cults--Exposed

I'm super excited that Zest asked me to be part of their Rockin' Blog Tour and let me have 2 dates and 2 books to talk about! As frequent readers, and anyone who's heard me present about nonfiction knows, I love Zest's work.

Members Only: Secret Societies, Sects, and Cults Exposed! Julie Tibbott

So, I was expecting this to be along the lines of previous Zest titles such as Scandalous!: 50 Shocking Events You Should Know About (So You Can Impress Your Friends), Historical Heartthrobs: 50 Timeless Crushes-From Cleopatra to Camus, and The End: 50 Apocalyptic Visions From Pop Culture That You Should Know About...Before It's Too Late, but about secret societies and shady groups.

In essence, it is, but it's a little more text-y and has a different trim size-- 9 by 6 inches instead of 6 inches square. I'm a big fan of YA nonfiction having a more standard trim size, so YAY for trim size.

Tibbott introduces us to 22 different secret or exclusive groups, giving their history, what they do, and what's secret about them (if anything). (And here's where I mean it's a bit more texty--it's slightly longer, but covers fewer things than the previous books, with bigger pages. Also, the design has fewer pull-out boxes.) It's a great introduction to groups--some of which teens will have heard of, some of which they'll probably hear of at some point, and some of which they may never come across again.

The format is a great one for browsing, or just dipping in and out of. They're arranged in alphabetical order, which makes for a few jarring transitions-- Branch Davidians go to Club 33 (a super exclusive dining room club at Disneyland) or the Society for Creative Anachronism leading into the Symbionese Liberation Army (which also just gives a good sense of the wide range of groups covered.) After each group, there's also a few pages of further information--usually a brief introduction to several other similar groups, or an interview with someone involved in the group (including a young Freemason.) I also appreciate that, when appropriate, she offers hotlines and other places for help if you or someone you know is effected by a similar group or related issues (such as hazing or cult membership.)

Now, I'm an educated adult, so I knew about several of the groups (Skull and Bones, Freemasons, Know-Nothings, SCA, SLA) and there were more that I had heard of, but didn't know a lot about (La Santa Muerte--Shapeshifted now makes more sense--Thuggees, The Hellfire Club) and some I had never heard of before (The Bilderberg Group, Club 33, The Machine). So, something for everyone.

Like Zest's other titles, it's a great introduction to some really big movements or ideas, done in a way that will appeal to a wide range of readers. It's a perfect book for extremely reluctant readers, and your more hardcore readers will also love it--and then come back wanting to know more about certain groups.

Also, bonus for Arrested Development fans-- The Magic Castle is covered, which gives some great background to Gob and the Gothic Castle and Magician's Alliance. So we all have "Final Countdown" in our heads now, right? Good.

Come back on Friday for my review of Rockin' the Boat: 50 Iconic Revolutionaries - From Joan of Arc to Malcom X and in the meantime, check out the rest of the tour.


Book Provided by... the publisher, for Blog Tour inclusion.

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Interview with Hilary McKay

YOU GUYS! So, I don't do that many blog tours, because they can be work. But occasionally I do, usually for an author I'm already a huge fan of.

The good people at Albert Whitman approached me for this one and it said I could interview the author. I COULD INTERVIEW HILARY MCKAY. Fortunately, they asked over email, and not in person, so they didn't see my stunned stammering followed by my ecstatic happy dance.

Then it took me FOREVER to come up with questions, because all I really wanted to ask was "what's your secret to being totally awesome?" and "Is Saffy real, and if so, can I be her second-best friend (after Sarah)?"

Luckily (for you), I pulled it together. I reviewed McKay's latest, the Lulu books, yesterday.

Questions about Lulu:

Lulu is known for animals. At the beginning of Lulu and the Dog from the Sea, she has "two guinea pigs, four rabbits, one parrot, one hamster, a lot of goldfish, and a rather old dog named Sam." She's also not your only character to have a backyard menagerie (the Cassons, for instance). How many pets do you have? What animal have you always wanted as a pet, but are unable to have?

At the moment I have only one cat and a lot of goldfish. I am looking out for a puppy but it has to be the right one. In the past, especially when my children were younger, we have had rabbits (several) hamsters (three) guinea pigs (two) dogs (two) hedgehog (one) tortoise (one). As a child I longed for a donkey, but I have got over this now.

What is Lulu's dream pet? Where would Lulu's parents draw the line at what she could adopt, even if she did clean up after it?

Well, Lulu isn't silly! I think she would probably like all sorts of wild and interesting animals in her life, but perhaps not as pets. Maybe she will end up working in conservation. She is very interested in animal welfare.

I think her parents might draw the line at snakes. In a later book in the series a snake is mentioned and her mother is not enchanted.

In the illustrations, Lulu is a person of color, even though this is never mentioned in the text. How did you convey this factor to your editor and illustrator?

I said "Let's make Lulu black." And they said, "Yes okay." So we did.

Will we see more of Lulu?

I hope so! There are six books out here and I have two more to write.

Questions about your work in general:

You've written for a wide variety of ages, from picture books to YA. What's your favorite age-range to write for? How hard is it to switch between age-ranges?

My favourite age range is the 10+ books, when you can be a bit more self indulgent with jokes and descriptions and hope the reader hangs on with you. I think books for younger readers are much harder- you need an equally strong plot and characters, but you have fewer words to achieve your end. Illustrations help. Priscilla Lamont's Lulu illustrations have been a wonderful asset to the stories.

Which one of your characters is your favorite? Whose voice refuses to leave your head?

I don't have a favourite character- or at least not a perennial favourite. There are some that I have become very fond of. Lulu is one (and Mellie is another). I have a grumpy young lad in my latest book who has stolen my heart at the moment!

English-English and American-English are not the same, which can cause issues for Americans, especially new readers. The Lulu books have been 'translated' into American. How much of your work in general gets this treatment? How do you feel about it?

I should say that at least three quarters of my work eventually makes its way across the water. The translations are minimal, and I rarely find them difficult. We have a lot of American culture over here, don't forget; films and tv and music, perhaps more than goes back the other way, so the American editions feel quite familiar. (I wonder a lot more about the translations into languages I have no hope of reading! Chinese, Korean, Arabic- I look at the pretty writing and hope for the best!) Also, I was brought up on American children's literature- everything from Alcott onwards. Laura Ingalls, Eleanor Estes, LM Montgomery (okay, Canadian there), Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and lots more. Ursula le Guin. So in some ways I feel quite at home.

How do I feel about it? Thrilled. Enchanted. Privileged.

Questions about you:

If you could go back and talk to yourself when you were Lulu's age, what would say?

Things were not good for various small reasons when I was Lulu's age. I would say, 'It'll be all right in the end.'

What are you currently reading?

Sara Wheeler The Magnetic North

What are you currently watching?

Grey light across the valley. I wish Spring would come!

What are you currently listening to?

Nothing. I can hear a blackbird singing, far away traffic, my daughters flute, and the washing machine.

Thank you so much for stopping by!

Tomorrow, Hilary McKay will be at Bring on the Books. You can see her full tour schedule here. I especially want to highlight her excellent post about libraries that appeared earlier in the week on GreenBeanTeenQueen.

Want to win a signed copy of a Lulu book for your very own? (The answer is OF COURSE I DO, JENNIE!) Fill out the form below and I'll pick a winner next weekend!




Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

My Best Frenemy Blog Tour and GIVEAWAY!

My Best Frenemy Julie Bowe

Welcome to the blog tour for the newest book what is now being called the "Friends for Keeps" series. (Previous titles are My Last Best Friend and My New Best Friend) Yesterday, the tour was at Bildungsroman and tomorrow it's heading off to TeensReadToo book club.

So, I am a huge Julie Bowe fan, and not just because she's also from Wisconsin and also went to college in Iowa. (Although that's an awesome combination. Trust me.)

Her Friends for Keeps series (I reviewed the previous titles here) is awesome because it's a great look at the complications of female friendship before you get into the complications that come with puberty and boys. Also, Ida May is just awesome.

Jenna and Brooke have been best friends since forever, but lately they're not talking. Stacey's been spending a lot of time with Brooke and Ida's worried that she's losing her best friend. Meanwhile, Brooke's challenging Jenna for who will be top girl in Mr. Crow's class.

Everything starts to go really sour when Truth and Dare gets introduced and gets way out of hand and Ida feels like she doesn't have any friends...

My favorite character in this installment is Randi. She's the class tomboy and she's so not down with they eyeshadow trend, but good dares are something she knows how to do. I also really like Ida and Jenna's developing relationship that's building slowly over the books. I love how the friendship dynamics change on a daily basis, even if it is causing some traumatic flashbacks to me feeling alone on the occasional recess and being a total witch about it when I was in 3rd grade (really, it's a miracle I wasn't alone for more recesses with the way I could act. Aiya.) Ida and her friends capture so perfectly the pain and joy of being a kid and I love returning to them with each book.

I really hope you check out this series, because it's terrific and deserves the love. Excellent clean realistic fiction for middle grade girls.

AND! A GIVEAWAY! Julie and her publisher are giving away a copy of My Best Frenemy, a button, and bookmark to one of my readers! All you have to do is leave a comment below. If you Tweet about it or post the giveaway on Facebook or blog about it or something similar and then TELL ME ABOUT IT (you have to tell me!) you'll get an extra entry for each extra thing you do. Comments have to be posted by midnight (US Eastern time) on Friday night. The winner will be drawn and announced on Sunday.

Enter away, spread the word, and check out Friends for Keeps. The fourth book, My Forever Friends is due out in Summer, 2011! YAY!

Book Provided by... the author, for the blog tour.

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Magickeepers Blog Tour

Welcome to the Magickeepers Blog Tour!

Magickeepers: The Eternal Hourglass Erica Kirov

You'd think having your birthday on the last day of school would be fun, but when your report card is dismal, you live in a hotel, and your father is the worst magician in all of Vegas? Eh.

It all changes of course, when Nick's Grandfather gives him a key and the best magician in Vegas whisks him off to meet his extended family, which is full of magic. Real magic, not just illusion and trick.

Not only is Nick expected to learn magic instead of sleep in on his summer vacation, he has to learn Russian, too. On top of this, there are some serious bad guys out there who are trying to steal magic and use it for evil. So much for skateboarding all summer...

Kirov interweaves a lot of Russian culture, food and history (Princess Anastasia and Rasputin play major roles) in a solid adventure story complete with crystal balls, flying swords, tigers, and an hour glass that stops time.

This book really sets up the series and I'm looking forward to the next one. It looks like a lot of the adult characters that Nick is meeting have both their good sides and bad sides, which is exciting. While Nick's family are the "good guys" it's apparent that they obtained many of the magical artifacts they're so carefully guarding through trickery or outright theft. Lots of murky morality to discuss. Combined with the magic and adventure (a great book for boys!) this is an excellent candidate for book discussion groups. I'm very much looking forward to the next books in the series.

For reasons I can't fully explain, this book reminds me of Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians. They are similar in the fact that "boy meets a ton of distant cousins with crazy powers and goes on adventures to save the world" way, but that's similar to a lot of books. Nick never talks to the reader the way Alcatraz does, but there is something about each book that I think if you like one, you'll like the other.

Full disclosure: copy provided by publisher.

Check out the other blogs on the tour:

YA Books Central

Books For Your Kids

The Reading Tub

Book Loons

Dolce Bellezza

The Written World

Blog Critics

Abby the Librarian (5/28)

Booking Mama (5/28)

A Childhood of Dreams (5/29)

Eva’s Book Addiction (5/29)

Word Candy (5/29)

Book Views (6/1)

Looking Glass Review (6/5)

Alea Pop Culture (6/18)

Beth Fish Reads (6/23)

Justina's in the House!

I am doing my happy dance about hosting Justina Chen Headley today for her blog tour for her kickass new book, North of Beautiful.

See, I'm even prepared--these are my really big straws, which are for BUBBLE TEA. Except I might just take her to that place in Georgetown for bubble tea and all of yesterday's bubble tea haters can just deal with it already. (I was totally going to photoshop a picture so it would look like Justina and I were drinking bubble tea together, but then I remembered I don't have photoshop on this computer and my paint skills aren't that awesome. Or I could have photoshopped myself into the above photo at Shanghai hotspot M1nt, but I wasn't sure I could handle also doing my reflection in the tank...)

Anyway, frequent readers of my blog know that most of my reading falls into 2 categories: YA fiction, usually girly, and Adult non-fiction, usually about China. And, while North of Beautiful is about many things, it is also a YA Novel that goes to China and talks about how China is changing. Also, Justina just moved back from Shanghai, so how could I not ask her about China? I couldn't.

While in Shanghai, Jacob says that "real Chinese culture" is "anything to do with money...Everything in China is tied to making a buck." Terra thinks this is because in a country with, and escaping, such poverty, how could you not think about money all the time. "Who wouldn't be consumed with money if they lived in such squalor, if they had to worry about their next meal--and whether they would have a home because of the threat of progress." Do you agree with these characters' assessments of modern China?

Let’s just say that when I was living in Shanghai for the last couple of months, it was seen as completely acceptable for everyone and anyone—even taxi drivers—to ask point blank how much money you made, how much your house cost, how much your friends earned.

One of the sad, unwitting victims in China’s mad dash to modernize are its historic neighborhoods, razed without thought to preservation. These old neighborhoods (hutongs in Beijing and lilongs in Shanghai) won’t be around for much longer. Every day in Shanghai, I saw more and more sections being torn down. That’s history—tangible history—disappearing every moment. Some locals explained to me that the Chinese have no qualms demolishing this past since it’s a reminder of a poverty that’s too close in memory for comfort.

What do you wish Americans knew or understood about China today?

China is hungry and working an eight-day work week, literally every second around the clock. There is a viable pulse—at least in Shanghai where I lived for a few months. You could feel it in the city and see it in the number of cranes erected for its non-stop construction. The work ethic in China is extraordinary. You can check out my blog (www.justinachenheadley.blogspot.com) for my Shanghai turnstile posts about some of the movers and shakers in the creative industry…and how hard they work.

China’s fervor to lead the world into the twenty-first century should be a wake-up call to America. There’s so much work we as Americans need to do. We need to invest seriously in education, raising our math and science standards, encouraging more kids (including girls!) to enter technology fields. And then we all need to hunker down, sock away money into our savings, and rebuild our America.

What music are you listening to these days? What TV shows/movies are you watching?

I spent the last four months living in Shanghai and so I feel out of touch with music, TV, and movies. So I’ll put out an SOS to your blog readers:

Young adult author in need of a serious influx of new tunes and TV shows. Smitten with hip hop and rap rhythms. Loves voices like Natasha Bedingfield and lyrics like K.T. Tunstall’s. Looking for a compelling, happening TV show with the unique storytelling of Heroes (first season), wittiness and pop cultural references of the Gilmore Girls, and procedurals like Law & Order. Has serious crush on Eugenides from Megan Whalen Turner’s Attolia series. Email all suggestions to Justina [at] justinachenheadley [dot] com immediately.

If you could go back in time, what would you tell your high school self?

Chill! Not everything has to be done right NOW. And not everything has to be done perfectly. (I often have to tell my forty-year-old self this, too.)

But I would also tell my high school self to be more financially savvy. Don’t fall into the “good girl” trap of not talking about money. Independence—being able to do what you want—is tied to having the financial wherewithal to bootstrap your own dreams.

Excellent advice! Now, before we wander around DC to make sure all of your books are prominently displayed in bookstores, Justina's giving away an AUTOGRAPHED copy of North of Beautiful to the 1st person who leaves a comment correctly answering the following question:

What famous librarian has gone geocaching with Justina

Hmmm... maybe we'll go geocaching around DC, so someday when I'm a famous librarian, I can be the answer to this question!

Anyway, if you've missed her earlier this week, check her out at Mitali's Fire Escape, Shelf Elf, Archimedes Forgets, and tomorrow she'll be hanging out over at Teen Book Review.

AND! Be sure to read all of Justina's books! In the words of my dear friend Molly, "ZOMG! I LOVE HER!"