When I heard Sarah Darer Littman speak to her readers via video chat last winter, I wanted to get my hands on WANT TO GO PRIVATE? immediately. She spoke about a recent news story where the police rescued a teen girl from an Internet predator before they crossed the Canadian border. Only, the thing is, the teen girl didn't see it as a rescue. She had
wanted to go with the guy because she was in love with him. Sarah said she wondered what would have to happen for a teenager to get to that point -- the point of climbing into a car with a complete stranger and running away with him.
Willingly.
I tried to answer that question myself. I racked my brain and played out dozens of different scenarios in my mind, but I still couldn't understand why a teen girl would agree to meet a stranger she met online. All I could come up with was that she must have been stupid. A smart girl would never do something like that.
That news story compelled Sarah to find out as well. Through conversations with the police and FBI, she found out it wasn't stupidity at all.
Click here to read my full review.
This is a warning, folks. On June 30th at 7:00 PM a rugged band of children’s and YA authors will be gathering at the Barnes & Noble bookstore at Colonie Center in Colonie, NY.
That’s right, it’s time for the Summer Reading Kickoff Bookfair Spectacular . . . celebrating (wait for it) the Dolly Parton Imagination Library! Because when it comes to Dolly, the first two things anyone thinks of are reading and, erm, I forget the second thing.
So, hey, let’s put the focus on reading this summer. Bring your young readers to pick up their free Barnes & Noble Summer Reading Journal to earn a FREE BOOK and the chance to WIN A NOOK COLOR. Authors will be standing by — sitting, hopefully, on cushy chairs, under a tasteful arrangement of palm fronds — happy to autograph books. Any books.
Check out this list of authors I think will be there . . .
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Julia DeVillers * Aimee Ferris * Rose Kent * Jackie Morse Kessler
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Sarah Darer Littman * Eric Luper * James Preller * Jennifer Roy
Rgz SALON member Lyn Miller-Lachmann has been the Editor-in-Chief of MultiCultural Review; the author of the award-winning multicultural bibliography Our Family, Our Friends, Our World; the editor of Once Upon a Cuento, a collection of short stories by Latino authors; and most recently, the author of Gringolandia, a young adult novel about a refugee family living with the aftermath of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. The book is now in it's second print run and available for order (if you have trouble finding it, don't worry--the second run is on its way)! And don't forget to read the fascinating Cover Story for Gringolandia.
We're honored to have Lyn here as part of the rgz SALON, a feature where four of the top kidlit experts clue us in to the best YA novels they've read recently. Today, she reviews Life, After by Sarah Darer Littman (Scholastic, 2010). Incidentally, Life, After also has a great Cover Story.
Here's Lyn:
"When I went to Ground Zero several weeks after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and saw the tributes sent to New York City from all over the world, I thought of how this terrible event brought the United States into a global community that had suffered similar devastation. Here in our large, prosperous country, set apart from much of the world by two oceans, we are accustomed to feeling safe, above the turmoil that is a fact of life for most of the world’s populations, past and present. We never experienced in our homeland the devastation of two world wars, the dropping of the atomic bomb on a civilian population, the state terror visited upon the people of Chile following the 'other September 11' of 1973, and the regular terrorist bombings of buses, fast food restaurants, theaters, and nightclubs in places as disparate as Israel, India, Russia, and the Philippines.
"Through complex, realistic characters, Sarah Darer Littman makes that global connection in
Life, After. Sixteen-year-old Daniela (Dani) Bensimon and her family have endured much in their native Argentina. When Dani was seven, her pregnant Aunt Sara di
Sarah Darer Littman's latest novel,
Life, After, came out this month. I've been looking at this gorgeous cover for six months, and I can finally share the story behind it. Here's Sarah:
"Because one of the underlying themes of the book was that on 9/11, our country finally began to understand the kinds of terrorist threats that the rest of the world had been dealing with for decades, I wondered if they might incorporate the Twin Towers on the cover. The initial cover design did.
"I wasn't sure I was that crazy about that first cover. It was very subdued and to be honest, a little depressing, which is more the mood of the first part of the book when Daniela, the main character, and her family are living in extremely difficult circumstances during the economic crisis in Argentina. But to me, it didn't capture the hope and the optimism at the core of the story -- that a terrorist act shatters lives, but we cannot let it conquer our spirit; that with courage, faith and love, we will prevail.
"I was a bit uneasy about using the images of the Towers..."
Read the rest of Sarah's Cover Story, and see the amazing trailer for the book, at
melissacwalker.com.
Welcome Sarah Darer Littman to this stop on the Summer Blog Blast Tour!
Sarah Darer Littman is the author of the middle grade and young adult novels: Confessions of a Closet Catholic
(Dutton Juvenile, 2005) (my review); Purge
(Scholastic, 2009), and the upcoming Life, After
(Scholastic, July 2010). Her blog, It's My Life and I'll Bog If I Want To.
Liz B: You have a new book, LIFE, AFTER coming out this July. Can you tell us about LIFE, AFTER?
Sarah Darer Littman: I like to think of LIFE, AFTER as my “phoenix out of the ashes” book – for several reasons. Firstly the concept came about in a convoluted way from another book proposal that was rejected. I started working on it about five or six years ago but I couldn’t get the voice right, so I put it in a drawer, where it might have stayed if I hadn’t met someone who asked me if I’d ever considered writing anything for teens about 9/11 – she’d lost her husband on Flight United 93 and she said there wasn’t much for kids on the subject. I sent her the synopsis I’d written and she told me I should write the book. My editors at Scholastic were on board, and I found that having met Claudette, and listened to her experiences, I was able to connect with my characters better and I returned to the story with renewed passion. Life, After is dedicated to Claudette, because without her encouragement, the story would probably still be sitting in a drawer.
LIFE, AFTER tells the story of Daniela Bensimon, an Argentinean teenager whose family life is crumbling under the weight of the country’s 2001 economic collapse. When they emigrate to the U.S. hoping for a fresh start, Dani finds life in America isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. She misses her old friends, her life, Before. In addit
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Wow. I remember when I was in the ninth grade and one of my friends at the time had these conversations with this older guy and she felt like he understood her and everything. This was before the Internet. I also remember two years later her mother calling me asking if I knew where this guy was as apparently B. had left with him. I thought she was dumb to do something like that but then again I could see how if you're not really social and want a boyfriend(I know when I was 15 that all I'd fantasy about) and some older, cute guy tells you what you want to hear, yeah, it would be tempting to believe it.
I need to read this book! Sounds like a winner!
Kim, you have to read it!