Every year, millions of people visit California in search of beaches, hiking, celebrity sightings, and more. In the map below, Peter J. Holliday shows us his version of California, focusing on the rich history of classically inspired art and architecture in Southern California. Enjoy the stories of grand landmarks such as Hearst Castle, Pasadena City […]
The post A guide to Southern California for classical art enthusiasts [interactive map] appeared first on OUPblog.
I'm so excited to kick off the Pasadena Teen Book Festival blog tour! Make sure you read through for an interview with debut YA author Catherine Linka as well as a couple of giveaways and a renaming contest!
Event date: Saturday, April 26, 2014 from 12pm-4pm
Venue: Pasadena Public Library, 285 E Walnut St, Pasadena, CA 91101
About The Secret Hum of a Daisy
Twelve-year-old Grace and her mother have always been their own family, traveling from place to place like gypsies. But Grace wants to finally have a home all their own. Just when she thinks she's found it her mother says it's time to move again. Grace summons the courage to tell her mother how she really feels and will always regret that her last words to her were angry ones.
After her mother's sudden death, Grace is forced to live with a grandmother she's never met. She can't imagine her mother would want her to stay with this stranger. Then Grace finds clues in a mysterious treasure hunt, just like the ones her mother used to send her on. Maybe itis her mother, showing her the way to her true home.
Lyrical, poignant and fresh,
The Secret Hum of a Daisy is a beautifully told middle grade tale with a great deal of heart.
Spotlight on Tracy Holczer
RNSL: What inspired you to write
The Secret Hum of a Daisy?
TH: So many things, really. Living life. Having loved and lost. Soup and all its meanings :) And like a good soup, it all came together in HUM.
RNSL: Grace comes from a very creative family: they make things, they write, they help things grow. Other than writing, what are your favorite creative pursuits?
TH: Really, writing is my only creative pursuit. I don’t even listen to the radio in the car. And any “art” I might produce is pretty much limited to unrecognizable stick figures. My kids never asked me to help with any creative project because, even at age five, they were much better than I could have been. Mothering is a creative pursuit, and I am a mother to three wonderful daughters.
RNSL: The Secret Hum of a Daisy is very much about relationships and emotions. Which relationship (i.e. mother/daughter, girlfriends, etc.) or emotion did you have the hardest time writing about?
TH: Being an only child, the hardest part for me was writing about friendship. I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a loner or outcast (even though I’ve felt that way at times), but I definitely enjoy my solitude, as any good introvert will. I’ve been more successful at friendship as an adult than I ever was as a child because I did so much observing rather than connecting back then. I wasn’t around very many children until I was in school, and so they baffled me.
RNSL: There's a lot of poetry in your book. Have you always read and written poetry? Did you grow to love it just recently or did it start when you were a child?
TH: I have always written spectacularly bad poetry about love gone wrong. Example:
Yesterday’s rain had left me alone
Locked up inside of my room
Where I unfolded my memories.
December, 1983
Interestingly, I’m not a huge fan of all poetry. I love simple things, poetry included.
RNSL: I love the Spoons Souperie restaurant in your story. What's your favorite soup?
TH: My small but mighty Italian grandmother, who I outgrew when I was ten, was a great soup maker. She had soup for every occasion. Minestrone, Straccetti (which was what she called egg soup even though actual straccetti has nothing to do with eggs), Lentil, and my very most favorite, square soup.
What is square soup you might ask? Well, its soup with little squares in it. Sounds simple, but nothing was ever simple in Nonni’s kitchen. She’d boil the chicken for the stock (always) and hand roll the pasta for the squares. She cooked them Just So and they were the slightest bit chewy. Even I haven’t been able to replicate it, but I have my memories. No problem was ever too big for the healing properties of Nonni’s square soup.
You can find more about Tracy on her website,
www.tracyholczer.com, and follow her on Twitter @
tracyholczer Giveaways
#1: ARC of A Girl Called Fearless
Winner may request personalization/autograph
Open to US residents only - ends 4/25/2014
Enter with Rafflecopter #1
#2: Choose from 1 of the books featured at the Pasadena Teen Book Festival
Winner may request personalization/autograph
Open to US residents only - ends 4/25/2014
Enter with Rafflecopter #2
#3: $50 Gift Card to Vroman's Bookstore
Open to attendees of the Pasadena Book Festival only! - ends 4/21/2014
To enter, suggest a new, unique/clever/fun name for the Pasadena Teen Book Festival. Examples of other cool names for teen book fests include (already taken, unfortunately)
Teen Author Carnival,
YALLFest, and
YABFest. What should we call our event from now on? Email your top 3 best name suggestions to
[email protected] OR
fill out this form! A panel of judges will choose the best name from all of the submissions. The winner will be announced at the Festival!
I'm so excited to kick off the Pasadena Teen Book Festival blog tour! Make sure you read through for an interview with debut YA author Catherine Linka as well as a couple of giveaways and a renaming contest!
Event date: Saturday, April 26, 2014 from 12pm-4pm
Venue: Pasadena Public Library, 285 E Walnut St, Pasadena, CA 91101
and Holly Goldberg Sloan
About A Girl Called Fearless
Avie Reveare has the normal life of a privileged teen growing up in L.A., at least as normal as any girl’s life is these days. After a synthetic hormone in beef killed fifty million American women ten years ago, only young girls, old women, men, and boys are left to pick up the pieces. The death threat is past, but fathers still fear for their daughters’ safety, and the Paternalist Movement, begun to "protect" young women, is taking over the choices they make.
Like all her friends, Avie still mourns the loss of her mother, but she’s also dreaming about college and love and what she’ll make of her life. When her dad "contracts" her to marry a rich, older man to raise money to save his struggling company, her life suddenly narrows to two choices: Be trapped in a marriage with a controlling politician, or run. Her lifelong friend, student revolutionary Yates, urges her to run to freedom across the border to Canada. As their friendship turns to passion, the decision to leave becomes harder and harder. Running away is incredibly dangerous, and it’s possible Avie will never see Yates again. But staying could mean death.
Romantic, thought-provoking, and frighteningly real, A Girl Called Fearless is a story about fighting for the most important things in life—freedom and love.
Spotlight on Catherine Linka
RNSL: What inspired you to write
A Girl Called Fearless?
CL: I am pretty passionate about the plight of girls in developing nations, and how many of them are taken out of school so they can support their families, or are sold into marriage, some as young as twelve. I wondered what it would be like for an American girl to have her world changed so completely by a cataclysmic event that she and her friends lose all control over their lives. Imagine knowing how life used to be-- driving a car, hanging out with guys, going away to college, falling in love--and you see the world returning to normal after this horrible period, and you think that in a year or so, you'll be off at college when, bam! Your father sells you into marriage to a man twice your age and you have to decide if you've got the guts to make a run for freedom.
RNSL: Your book's premise is pretty scary! What research did you have to do in terms of currently proven science facts? Did you then bend the rules towards fiction or do you think these events could really happen in our future?
CL: Thanks for asking about the science behind the Scarpanol disaster. I'm a big current events/politics dork, so I knew that Europe had banned American beef, because their researchers believe that synthetic hormones in beef act as endocrine disrupters, causing breast cancer. I switched that up by linking a new synthetic hormone for cattle to ovarian cancer, because it is very hard to diagnose, and the survival rate is much lower.
Could these events really happen? While I think that the US is pretty careful about testing drugs and additives in food, there's a lot we still don't know. And I was blown away last year when a Chinese company was allowed to buy Smithfield, the largest pork producer in America. Smithfield dictates to pork farmers around the US exactly what feed and drugs to give the pigs. Imagine what could happen if a foreign government decided to attack the US through our food supply.
RNSL: When did you first start working in the book industry?
CL: Actually, my first job in the book industry was when I'd just graduated from college and went to work as a field sales rep for a college textbook company. I traveled to colleges all over Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, calling on college professors and encouraging them to use our books in their classes. I had summers off. It was a great job.
RNSL: What got you hooked on reading and/or writing?
My mom. My mom read to me all the time. I remember when the new library opened in our town and we were the first in line for a library card. Hers actually had number "1" on it and mine had number "2."
RNSL: What's the most delicious food on earth? Not just your favorite--the one that if it were all things bad for you, poisonous even, you would still really really want to eat it?
CL: Well, I don't know what the most delicious food on earth is, but I just discovered chocolate covered cashews with caramel and sea salt. I ate an entire box last week!
You can find more about Catherine on her website,
www.catherinelinka.com, and follow her on Twitter @
cblinka Giveaways
#1: ARC of A Girl Called Fearless
Winner may request personalization/autograph
Open to US residents only - ends 4/25/2014
Enter with Rafflecopter #1
#2: Choose from 1 of the books featured at the Pasadena Teen Book Festival
Winner may request personalization/autograph
Open to US residents only - ends 4/25/2014
Enter with Rafflecopter #2
#3: $50 Gift Card to Vroman's Bookstore
Open to attendees of the Pasadena Book Festival only! - ends 4/21/2014
To enter, suggest a new, unique/clever/fun name for the Pasadena Teen Book Festival. Examples of other cool names for teen book fests include (already taken, unfortunately)
Teen Author Carnival,
YALLFest, and
YABFest. What should we call our event from now on? Email your top 3 best name suggestions to
[email protected] OR
fill out this form! A panel of judges will choose the best name from all of the submissions. The winner will be announced at the Festival!
Help a kid out! Some of you already know I'm trying to Tugg the Fat Kid Rules the World movie to Pasadena, CA, but today I have a time-sensitive request for help that I saw via @
FatKidMovie.
Read this:
http://fiercefatties.com/2012/07/30/buy-michael-a-ticket/Then help out with $10 here:
http://www.tugg.com/events/990They just need 16 more tickets sold (as of this writing) to confirm the screening. They have until about 6pm Pacific (it's noon as I'm writing this).
Unless you're actually in the area of Chesterfield, MO, you won't be able to attend this screening, but you can make a good kid SO happy for just $10. Priceless, IMHO.
You won't be charged unless they meet the minimum # of tickets sold. I helped, please do, too!
If you'd like to go to the Pasadena, CA screening of the film, please
click here.
Ours is at the Pasadena Laemmle Playhouse 7 at 7:30 pm on Thursday, August 16.
(Tickets on sale through August 10 at 7:30!)
Thank you! Thank you very much!
from Sunset Junction to Union Station
echo park travel mart!
stumbled upon this treasure trove
& picked up a potential cabinet of curiosities
4.5 miles later...
with the subway sandwich man there to greet me
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