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Many wonderful teen authors are over at Simon & Schuster’s BlogFest, creating a sort of blog, answering 14 reader questions (that have already been chosen), one question a day, from now until March 27th. 120 teen authors will be featured. Covering yesterday and today, check out Annette Curtis Klause on bringing fictional characters to life; Judy Blume, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Sonya Sones, E. R. Frank, Rachel Cohn, AVI, and Melvin Burgess on if they hadn’t been writers; and many, many more.

This isn’t a real blog, though the idea is clearly drawn from blogs; you can comment on what the authors say, but they will not answer any questions (aside from the questions that have already been chosen), and only some authors will be commenting on the comments, or comments in general…. Still, this is an interesting event.

Two weeks ago today, my children stayed up till well after midnight to take part in a social event which will be earmarked by history as the denouement of a publishing phenomenon: dressed in old university gowns and carrying wands; one wearing an emerald silk shirt and the other bearing a lightening scar and drawn in spectacles, they headed across the road to our local, independent bookshop for a Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows launch party. We duly picked up the book and as soon as we got home again, the boys went to bed and I started reading - a rattling good read… but the instances pointed out in the links below did not go unnoticed.

The popularity of the Harry Potter books means that they will become a focal point for many issues pertaining to children’s books, particularly now the series is complete and a critique can encompass the whole body of work. We already have the beginnings of some stimulating discussions. I read with interest Shen Book’s exploration of Harry Potter as a multicultural character, part of their Crossing Cultural Borders series – and also really enjoyed Emily Jiang’s witty reduction of the Deathly Hallows plot to a Haiku summary… if you haven’t read the book yet, don’t click here! There has been some in-depth discussion of J.K. Rowling’s use of cultural stereotyping: it is worth reading what Debbie Reese and Educating Alice have to say, as well as the comments to their posts, which are equally thought-provoking. Also, (more…)