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How entirely psyched am I to visit the Big Apple next week?

Entirely psyched.

It will be a day away among people I love in a city I've got a thing for.

It will be a privilege.

I'll spend the day in Brooklyn, with my dear friend Rahna Reiko Rizzuto and her pottery-brilliant Ming. I'll see my son, who has just taken on a second job and (in addition) been elected a co-vice president of Marketing for his NYC Alumni Association (love. that. young. man. and I have to give him a personal high five). And I will spend the evening hours among wonderful YA talents, in the Great Teen Reads event at Books of Wonder.

I'll be there with gratitude.

Speaking of gratitude, I have this photo in my possession because of one Dahlia Adler, who so incredibly kindly wrote of Small Damages and Going Over here, and who, rumor has it, I will meet at the store! Speaking of gratitude (again), might I also mention that I will meet, at Books of Wonder, a certain copy editor, Debbie DeFord Minerva, who wrote to me after she worked on One Thing Stolen, the Florence novel—words I will never forget.

Join us?

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I'm always honored when Peter Glassman of Books and Wonder notices a book I've written and invites me to his store.

So of course I said yes to his recent invitation to join Brian Conaghan, Padma Venkatraman, Lindsay Smith, and Marthe Jocelyn for


New York friends, I hope you will join us for this panel discussion and signing. More information is here.

And thanks, too, to two recent reviewers who found Going Over and had kind things to say. Miss Literati concluded her review with these words:

I found GOING OVER to be exhilarating to read. It was a great book and I’m excited to read other books by Beth Kephart! — Miss Literati

And then there was Ruth Compton, Librarian and Readers' Advisor, who wrote:

Ms Kephart has created a hauntingly lyrical and powerful story about lives in a divided Berlin, about choices and consequences, about love and loss that draws you in and won’t let you go long after you’ve put the book down. —  Ruth Compton

Thank you, Miss Literati and Ruth. And hello, Books of Wonder.

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The clever projects in this crafts book take art to the next level. What you make is important, of course, but what you do with your creation counts too. Aimed at elementary-age kids, Sneaky Art tempts budding artists to call forth their inner sneak, which for most will not be a problem. Each of the 24 projects uses everyday materials that are easily found around the house. Simple-to-follow directions allow kids to customize the project. Jocelyn then offers suggestions about where to place the projects for maximum effect.

Ideas for what to make and where to display the finished projects abound. Make a fractured face out of sticky notes and facial features snipped from old magazines and arrange them on a parking meter. Float a cheerful styrofoam boat in a public fountain. Click a flock of bright red bird silhouettes on a tree branch or a grocery store cart.

Many of these good-natured projects are designed to bring a smile to a viewer's face, like "Lucky Penny," in which kids glue a penny to a cardboard shape and then compose a cheerful message. The penny can be slipped into a friend's backpack or left on the sidewalk for a stranger to find.

Throughout the book, Jocelyn stresses the playful, surprising nature of sneaky art and cautions against creating anything that will damage property or cause hurt feelings. Sneaky art isn't permanent, something kids may have trouble wrapping their heads around. But as Jocelyn points out, "although it's hard to leave behind a treasure that you're proud of, you can always make another work of art."

If you'd like to check out some sample crafts from the book, including "Lucky Penny," click here.

Sneaky Art: Crafty Surprises to Hide in Plain Sight
by Marthe Jocelyn
Candlewick Press, 64 pages
Published: March 2013

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"Scribbling Women": True Tales from Astonishing Lives Marthe Jocelyn

Scribbling Women takes a look at a selection of female writers and why their words were important, and why they remain important. What I most love about this book is how Jocelyn defines "writers." While there are a few novelists discussed, this book tends to look at women whose words made a mark in something other than fiction.

Margaret Catchpole was a horse thief sentenced to Australian transport. Her letters back to England are the major primary source of life in the early days of the Australian colony.

Mary Kingsey was an adventurer who explored Africa-- all while wearing her proper Victorian dress. (All those petticoats saved her when she fell into a tiger trap!)

Isabella Beeton wrote the first housekeeping manual and popularized a recipe format we now think as standard (ingredients first, then steps, time to complete and how many people it will serve.)

Ada Blackjack was the only survivor of a failed Arctic expedition. Her journal tells us what happened.

Many more women are discussed and represented here, making for a fascinating read. They come from all over the world and all points in time. Some of the chapters are a little weaker than others but I appreciated Jocelyn introducing me to these women’s voices and their lives. It might require a bit of a hard hand-sell to get teens to read it, but once they start, I think they’ll find it interesting.

Book Provided by... my local library

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If I wrote these things more often I wouldn't have to cram multiples into one post, but my blogging is falling so far behind my reading I need to diminish the stack a bit. And I realize I've had a number of great YA reading experiences lately -- it's a category I don't read super-often, but that I tend to enjoy (if perhaps with an occasional smirk of superiority/relief that I am no longer a teen.)

Folly
by Marthe Jocelyn
(Wendy Lamb Books, May 2010)

This book and the following one I read "on assignment" -- I was asked to take part in a YA brainstorming conference call by our inimitable Random House children's book rep Lillian Penchansky, and these two books were our homework for the call. It was kind of a delight to plunge into something that I could read in a day, and the two works, while both historical fiction, were very different. Marthe Jocelyn's Folly was the better of the two -- the story of a 19th century British servant girl who gets knocked up by a dashing soldier (when that was both common and enough to ruin your life), it's told in first person by various characters whose dialects are both defamiliarizing and believable. The backstory of the book is fascinating too: Jocelyn found out that one of her ancestors grew up in a "foundling hospital" like the one in the story, and imagined his life and his mother's from there. Reading this led to a bunch of conversations about how of course, in whatever era you're born, you're a teenager and you're filled with desire, but in this era there's no sex ed and no birth control and no safety net -- in the case of a servant far from home, not even family or friends to take you in. I loved Mary Finn, smart and kind and resourceful but still screwed over; and I loved James, the boy in the foundling hospital whose story intertwines with hers -- his internal monologue contained some meditations on the lived experience of history that I wish I could quote (I gave my galley to a certain bookseller who is said to resemble the girl on the cover -- have to remember to ask her whether she liked it too.) And even the "cad" soldier, Caden, is sympathetic -- he's just a teen as well, and totally clueless about what to do. Though it's got no creatures of the night (as way too many YA novels seems to these days), this book is dark in the way real human life is dark -- recommended for the brave reader of any age, Folly is moving and eye-opening.

The Madman of Venice
by Sophie Masson
(Delacorte Books for Young Readers, August 2010)

This book, while a charming adventure story with some resonant historical detail, reinforces my theory that YA is just where romance novels have migrated. Reading it had the slightly guilty pleasures of a historical romance: the dialogue is dramatic but not especially believable, the heroine is plucky, the hero is brave but tongue-tied about his passion for her, and it takes some life-threatening adventures to bring them together. Nevertheless, the context gives it some added weight: the British boy, girl, and chaperone are on a mission in Venice to thwart some pirates and find a missing girl, who

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