I had been thinking that once summer arrived I would have more time to blog, but that will be on hold until at least July. I will have scheduled reviews that I already promised to do in June but I am going on a service trip to Guatemala for ten days and we will not have Internet access. So I'm hoping this won't become a regular thing, me having no time to blog but for now I'm taking it a day at a time. Tomorrow starts my last week of school and then I have finals but I leave for Guatemala a week after my last final so my days will be spent hanging out with friends. But I'm going to try and write a review everyday next week, whether to be published immediately or while I'm gone.New Crayons is hosted by Color Online (which I've neglected so much :(
Hey Shorty!: A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools and On the Streets by Mandy Van Deven, Joanne Smith & Meghan HuppuchAt every stage of education, sexual harassment is common, and often considered a rite of passage for young people. It's not unusual for a girl to hear "Hey, Shorty!" on a daily basis as she walks down the hall or comes into the school yard, followed by a sexual innuendo, insult, come-on, or assault. But when teenagers are asked whether they experience this in their own lives, most of them say it's not happening.
Girls for Gender Equity, a nonprofit organization based in New York City, has developed a model for teens to teach one another about sexual harassment. How do you define it? How does it affect your self-esteem? What do you do in response? Why is it so normalized in schools, and how can we as a society begin to address these causes? Geared toward students, parents, teachers, policy makers, and activists, this book is an excellent model for building awareness and creating change in any community.
Founded by Joanne Smith, Girls for Gender Equity is a nonprofit organization based in Brooklyn committed to the physical, psychological, social, and economic development of urban girls.
-I have mixed feelings on this topic because on the one hand blatant sexual harassment (insults and assaults) is wrong but on the other hand I can personally attest to the fact that some compliments/come-ons are a confidence booster. Should it be that way? Probably not. But is it anyway? Yes. So I'm very interested in reading this book. Received from one of the authors, thank you!
Akata Witch by Nnedi OkoraforTwelve-year-old Sunny lives in Nigeria, but she was born American. Her features are African, but she's albino. She's a terrific athlete, but can't go out into the sun to play soccer. There seems to be no place where she fits. And then she discovers something amazing—she is a "free agent," with latent magical power. Soon she's part of a quartet of magic students, studying the visible and invisible, learning to change reality. But will it be enough to help them when they are asked to catch a career criminal who knows magic too?
-I met Nnedi Okorafor at Diversity in YA and hearing her speak was awesome especially when she said that she doesn't mind using difficult Nigerian Igbo names for her characters because we teen readers are "big kids" who can power through it. haha. Anyway yay more speculative fiction diversity!
Luminous by Dawn MetcalfAs reality slips and time stands still, Consuela finds herself thrust into the world of the Flow. Removed from all she loves into this shifting world overlapping our own, Consuela quickly discovers she has the power to step out of her earthly skin and cloak herself in new ones-skins made from the world around her, crafted from water, fire, air. She is joined by other teens with extraordinary abilities, bound together to safeguard a world they can affect, but where they no longer belong.
When murder threatens to undo the Flow, the Watcher charges Consuela and elusive, attractive V to stop the killer. But the psychopath who threatens her new world may also hold the only key to Consuela's way home.
