YA March Madness Matchups Round 3!

We’re getting closer to determining the CHAMP-E-ON! See who made it to Round 3 and make sure to vote all week for who will go on to the FINAL ROUND.

ROUND 2 RESULTS

• Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games) 66%    v.   Beatrice Prior (Divergent) 33%
• Anna Oliphant (Anna and the French Kiss) 83%    v.    Jessica Darling (Sloppy Firsts) 17%
• Zoey Redbird (House of Night) 14%    v.    Nora Grey (Hush, Hush) 86%
• Hermione (Harry Potter) 77%    v.    Cinder (Lunar Chronicles) 23%

ROUND 3 MATCHES

• Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games)    v.    Anna Oliphant (Anna and the French Kiss)
• Nora Grey (Hush, Hush)    v.    Hermione Granger (Harry Potter)

Click me, Click me, make me big!

March Madness YA Matchups Round 2!

The votes are in! Here’s how the contenders in our March Madness Matchups did in Round 1:

Dystopian 
Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games) 91%
v.
Tally Youngblood (Uglies) 9%

Lena Holoway (Delirium) 48%
v.
Beatrice Prior (Divergent) 52%

Contemporary
Anna Oliphant (Anna and the French Kiss) 53%
v.
Remy Starr (This Lullaby) 47%

Cammie Morgan (Gallagher Girls) 18%
v.
Jessica Darling (Sloppy Firsts) 82%

Paranormal
Bella Swan (Twilight) 40%
v.
Zoey Redbird (House of Night) 60%

Aislinn (Wicked Lovely) 12%
v.
Nora Grey (Hush, Hush) 88%

Sci-fi/Fantasy
Hermione (Harry Potter) 82%
v.
Katsa Po (The Seven Kingdoms) 18%

Cinder (Lunar Chronicles) 72%
v.
Alanna of Trebond (Song of the Lioness) 28%

Did your favorite character win? Keep them in the competition by voting in round 2 all week. VOTE NOW!

Click the image to enlarge the new brackets:

Pandemonium and The Butterfly Clues

Last week we had a lovely dual book-launch party for Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver and The Butterfly Clues by Kate Ellison at Freemans in NYC. On top of the awesome space in the upstairs room at Freemans we had good food, good drinks and good friends to celebrate with. Plus books. What else do you really  need in life?

We also want to thank everyone who entered our raffle at the party (in the sweet top hat). We were able to donate over $500 to 826 NYC, supporting literacy programs for kids. Find out more about them and how you can get involved on their site.

We wish we could have had you all there with us! But the best we can do is share some photos from the party, taken by local photographer Emily Berl.

Follow me to our Flickr page!

<3 Paper Lantern Lit

The Unwritten Works of Charles Dickens

Okay… well that’s not entirely true. But here’s a cool thing. When Charles Dickens moved into Tavistock House in 1851, he decided that rather than filling his shelves with real books, he would fill two entire bookshelves with fake books, and get real bindings made. That’s taking decoration to a whole new level if you ask me. In a note he sent to the bookbinder, he detailed the covers and titles he would like printed up for his ruse:

History of a Short Chancery Suit
Catalogue of Statues of the Duke of Wellington
Five Minutes in China. 3 vols.
Forty Winks at the Pyramids. 2 vols.
Abernethy on the Constitution. 2 vols.
Mr. Green’s Overland Mail. 2 vols.
Captain Cook’s Life of Savage. 2 vols.
A Carpenter’s Bench of Bishops. 2 vols.
Toot’s Universal Letter-Writer. 2 vols.
Orson’s Art of Etiquette.
Downeaster’s Complete Calculator.
History of the Middling Ages. 6 vols.
Jonah’s Account of the Whale.
Captain Parry’s Virtues of Cold Tar.
Kant’s Ancient Humbugs. 10 vols.
Bowwowdom. A Poem.
The Quarrelly Review. 4 vols.
The Gunpowder Magazine. 4 vols.
Steele. By the Author of “Ion.”
The Art of Cutting the Teeth.
Matthew’s Nursery Songs. 2 vols.
Paxton’s Bloomers. 5 vols.
On the Use of Mercury by the Ancient Poets.
Drowsy’s Recollections of Nothing. 3 vols.
Heavyside’s Conversations with Nobody. 3 vols.
Commonplace Book of the Oldest Inhabitant. 2 vols.
Growler’s Gruffiology, with Appendix. 4 vols.
The Books of Moses and Sons. 2 vols.
Burke (of Edinburgh) on the Sublime and Beautiful. 2 vols.
Teazer’s Commentaries.
King Henry the Eighth’s Evidences of Christianity. 5 vols.
Miss Biffin on Deportment.
Morrison’s Pills Progress. 2 vols.
Lady Godiva on the Horse.
Munchausen’s Modern Miracles. 4 vols.
Richardson’s Show of Dramatic Literature. 12 vols.
Hansard’s Guide to Refreshing Sleep. As many volumes as possible.

If you could just have a bookshelf of fake books (that no one would suspect), what fake titles would you put on the shelves to surprise people?

via Lists of Note

-Beth

Pretend you’re a mad scientist with the Periodic Table of Storytelling!

Though I’m not sure it’s ever been proven that writers AREN’T mad scientists already… Hmmmm

I guess this image has been floating around for a while, but I had never seen it before, so I wanted to share it’s joy with you for your weekend.

Science!

(Click to embiggen)

Thanks to deviantArtist ComputerSherpa for creating this awesome graphic.

-Beth

LET THE BATTLE BEGIN!

Follow along with our March Madness YA Playoffs each week by sharing the brackets and keeping track.

Click to Enlarge

Come back each week Thursday in March for an updated bracket until there is only ONE winner.

Go vote now!

March Madness!

While college basketball fans will spend their March debating who’s the best on the court, we want your help deciding who is best on the shelves! Join us each week in March on Facebook as we ask you to vote on matchups between some of our favorite YA leading ladies to decide who would reign supreme!

We’re kicking it off this week with SIXTEEN contenders in FOUR categories. For example, in the Dystopian corner:

Katniss Everdeen, The Hunger Games

v.

Tally Youngblood, Uglies

Go forth and vote! In fact, vote on all our matchups in this week’s poll on our Facebook page, and come back each week in March for new matchups until we have ONE winner. Who will win is up to you!

And come back here later today for a look at the official brackets. You can share it, save it, or print your own copy and follow along with all the action. Stay tuned…

Win a FREE copy of The Catastrophic History of You and Me…

AND find out more about the lovely author, Jess Rothenberg!

First things first, you need to know more about this book:

Jess Rothenberg has done it. We’re giggling, we’re tearing up, we’re swooning, we’re full-on crying, and we’re back to laughing all over again. Her debut novel, The Catastrophic History of You and Me, will charm the leather motorcycle jacket right off your back and take you on an amazing ride. It’s about a girl named Brie who dies at the very beginning of the book, literally, of a broken heart. It’s about how she deals with what happened to her, how she works through her grief while uncovering all of the secrets of the living that had been hidden to her before. Will she find the real meaning of true love? Will she learn to let go of the life she once new—even her adorable dog Hamloaf? Will you hug this book when you are done reading it? Yes, yes and YES!

Sounds great, right? We’re giving away a free copy on our Facebook this month, so be sure to enter!

But not ONLY did we have a review for you this month, we also did a Lucky Seven questionnaire with the delightful Rothenberg herself. Read on for what she had to say on important subjects like her cartoon crush and casting for her biopic.

Jess Rothenberg’s Lucky Seven!

1. What actor/actress would you want to play you in the biopic of your life? Zooey Deschanel. 

2. When you were six years old, what did you want to be when you grew up? A unicorn.

 3. Hoorah!  You’ve just been hired by a circus!  What will you be doing?  Elephant-Whisperer. 

 4. Who is your secret cartoon crush?  Aladdin.  (Riff raff, street rat, I don’t buy that…)

 5. What will the title of your autobiography be?  The Accidental Nudist.

 6. If you were a kitchen appliance – what would you be?  A toaster named Lady Toastada, whose secret crush is the handsome (also-toaster) Lord Burnside from M.E. Castle’s Popular Clone.

 7. If you could go on a road trip with any person (dead or alive), who would you choose and where would you go? The muppets, cross country, NYC to San Francisco.  

A wild Jessicorn appeared!

In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb…

Much like March, some of our favorite characters may start out rough around the edges, but ultimately they charm us with their sweetness. Here are some of our top picks for bad-boys-turned-good:

John Bender, The Breakfast Club: He might enter the scene as the scary rebel, but once he makes out with Molly Ringwald, he melts like butter. Who wouldn’t?

Chase Singer, Fury: The stereotypical jock/jerk at first, we love seeing his softer side as the book goes on. Unfortunately, the Furies don’t share our sense of sympathy.

Patrick Verona, 10 Things I Hate About You: Because who wouldn’t want Heath Ledger to serenade you during soccer practice? With a marching band. Beautiful. We miss you, Heath.

Who is your favorite character that gave you the slow win-over? Let us know here or on our Facebook wall.

Buh-bye, Dust Bunnies!

Spring is a time for new beginnings… and, of course, the ritual Spring Cleaning. We’re so ready to get our Martha Stewart on and help tidy up the messes made by certain media outlets this month:

ESPN: The well-known sports network got slammed when they posted a ridiculously racist headline after a Knicks’ loss. C’mon, copyeditors! If you need a lame but at least politically-correct pun, give Billy Crystal a call. He was full of ‘em at the Oscars!

Goodreads: As a site designed expressly for bookworms, this social reading network must have a shocking lack of nerdy friends. Hey guys-next time you need to make a data move that will leave thousands of users picking up the slack, just ask for help. We hear the Geek Squad is great.

Twitter: Everyone’s favorite micro-blogging platform has recently been caught snooping on users’ iPhone address books. Time to do a little sweeping (or maybe a full vacuum?) of those user agreements so we all know what we’re signing up for!

What news item do you think could use a good spring polish?

Or, on a more personal note, are you gearing up for Spring Cleaning? I was going to pare down my shoe collection this year, but then I realized that was just silly.

Talk to us here or on our Facebook wall!

-Beth