Book Links: Roundup, 6/5

Hey, it was my goal to make this a bi-weekly thing - so far I'm succeeding!

Coloring Between the Lines had an interesting post about the White Mind and how it relates to kids books. What she's describing seems to fall awfully close to what's traditionally called white privilege - I'm not sure why she went with a different term, but it's definitely a must read post.

I know I was pushing Lyn Miller-Lachman heavily on the blog last week, so I hope you can stand to hear her name one more time! She reviewed a book that is high on my NEED to read list now: Tell Us We're Home by Marina Budhos. All about class and race - and as the three protagonists are the daughters of domestic workers, it seems especially timely in light of the New York state senate passing the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights earlier this week.

Over at Bookends, Lynn and Cindy are asking if books need to be put on a diet. Are all of these 500+ page novels really necessary? Lots of commenters are pointing out that the longer books are absolutely daunting for reluctant readers. What do you think?

Web magazine Slate is posting a serialized YA vampire novel this summer called My Darklyng. That spelling makes me cringe so hard, but I'm interested in how this will go. Haven't actually had a chance to read the first chapter yet, but it's on my to-do list.

MTV has the latest news on the Hunger Games movie! Link includes a minor spoiler for Mockingjay, so the basic facts on the movie are: 1st draft of script (written by Suzanne Collins herself!) has been turned in. A director announcement should follow this summer, and production should begin January 2011 for a late 2011 release! That sounds a little rushed at first, but I think that despite being a science fiction action/adventure story, the Hunger Games movie could be fairly light on special effects, which are what often drag out the production process.

Karen Healey (who I met on Thursday!) wrote a piece for Strange Horizons on families in YA lit.

Shannon Hale, who wrote Rapunzel's Revenge and Calamity Jack along with lots of other books that I haven't read, has an interesting blog post up, too, regarding morals and literature, pulling in the opinions of other prominent YA authors. Some really interesting view points!

Are you a blogger looking for more memes to do? Parajunkee's View has a list of popular memes. I haven't heard of half of them, so I have some investigating to do!

Also of interest to my fellow bloggers: there's going to be another bloggiesta next week! Highly recommend all bloggers take a look - even if you can't commit to a marathon blogging session, there's lots of good ideas passed around over the course of the weekend for general blog upkeep. If you can't do it all at once, you'll at least get some ideas of what to work on for the next six months until next January's bloggiesta!

That should be enough links to keep you busy this weekend!