Share this… As anyone knows, the cost of college textbooks is sky-high. One of the advantages of being an English major, however, is that you are studying novels and plays that are available relatively inexpensively in paperback. Quite often you can get them used in the college bookstore for slightly under the price of new, or you …read more…
Posts contained in the “Publishing Issues” category:
The Accidental Genius of Weasel High by Rick Detorie
Share this… All that Larkin Pace wants is a new camcorder, so he can become the next great filmmaker. But he’s too young for a real job, his parents won’t give him money, his older sister exists just to make him miserable, and his arch-enemy Dalton Cooke is trying to steal his girlfriend, who might just …read more…
King of the Mild Frontier by Chris Crutcher
Share this… Fans of Chris Crutcher (which in my experience includes just about anyone who has read any of his books) will welcome this insight into his life and writing. Although he often writes about sports, it’s a bit of a surprise to learn that Crutcher was not athletically gifted as a child. This was his …read more…
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Share this… Update as of 26 October 2011: This book continues to be controversial. Only this past spring, I was asked to help fight a push to not just remove this book from the twelfth grade curriculum of a public high school, but to remove the book from the school library, as well. The irony is …read more…
Some Notes on my Writing Process
Share this… For some time now, I have wanted to do a blog post about my writing process for the reviews I do here, in an attempt to demystify my writing process for my students. I want to be very clear about one important thing up front: writing for this blog is very different that some …read more…
Latino Literature: A Guide to Reading Interests edited by Sara E. Martínez
Share this… I find books like this one a bit maddening, first because they are expensive (all books for librarians are expensive), and second, because they are out of date almost as soon as they are in print. As an introduction to Latino literature for someone who is unfamiliar with it, it can be a good …read more…
My Name is Brain Brian by Jeanne Betancourt
Share this… If you’ve read my posts up to now, you’ll know how strongly I feel about what makes a book work or not. And if you’ve read my “10+ Rules” page (see the link above) and I tell you that the first chapter of this book is called “The Jokers Club” (sic) you can pretty …read more…
Lawn Boy by Gary Paulsen
Share this… Worried about finding enough money to buy a new inner tube for his bike, a twelve-year-old boy gets an old riding mower from his grandmother for his birthday. Soon he is mowing his neighbors’ lawns, and making more money than he thought possible. When he meets Arnold, a stockbroker who teaches him about managing …read more…
I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak
Share this… Nineteen-year-old Ed Kennedy, a cabdriver in Australia, almost accidentally stops a bank robbery and nabs the would-be thief, thus achieving his Warholian fifteen minutes of fame. This would seem to be the high point in a life of mediocrity, but then a series of playing cards begin arriving in Ed’s mail, each with a …read more…
