YA Book to Look Out For: MATERIAL GIRLS by Elaine Dimopoulos

Material Girls

by Elaine Dimopoulos

Hi all! This week I wanted to plug a book by one of my very good friends, Elaine Dimopoulos. Elaine and I are writing buddies, which means once a week, every week we sit at a cafe together and write (except for, you know, if one of us has a baby or something). We’ve both had our shares of ups and downs in our writing lives and our personal lives, so we take some time to talk about it and encourage each other, but mostly we sit together and write. If you are a writer, I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to have someone to just sit there with you and tell you to keep going even when you don’t feel like writing.

Anyway, Elaine’s book is finally coming out this spring! Material Girls is Project Runway meets Nashville meets intelligent YA dystopia. There are so many incredible characters and meaty themes in this, and I absolutely love Elaine’s lush writing and satisfying world-building.

Here’s the premise (from the publisher’s website):

In Marla Klein and Ivy Wilde’s world, teens are the gatekeepers of culture. A top fashion label employs sixteen-year-old Marla to dictate hot new clothing trends, while Ivy, a teen pop star, popularizes the garments that Marla approves. Both girls are pawns in a calculated but seductive system of corporate control, and both begin to question their world’s aggressive levels of consumption. Will their new “eco-chic” trend subversively resist and overturn the industry that controls every part of their lives?

Smart, provocative, and entertaining, this thrilling page-turner for teens questions the cult like mentality of fame and fashion. Are you in or are you out?

Sounds great right?

You can pre-order on Amazon or at your local independent bookseller. Pre-ordering is great for authors because when a book gets a lot of pre-orders, it makes people sit up and take notice.

The book doesn’t come out until May, so expect another reminder blog/facebook/twitter post a little closer to the release date.

#bookreview #MaterialGirls #dystopia #YA #projectrunway #Elaine #Nashville

Multicultural Children’s Book Day Blog Post and Book Review

I am excited to take part in this year’s Multicultural Children’s Book Day! The MCCBD team have asked me to include a ton of great information in this blog post (including info about a book drive with First Book) so (deep breath) here goes.

Book Review: She Doesn’t Want the Worms

As part of this book day, I received a free multicultural picture book directly from the author to review.

She Doesn’t Want the Worms

by Karl Beckstrand, illustrated by David Hollenbach

She Doesn’t Want the Worms is a bilingual picture book about a girl who is offered a bunch of creepy, crawly insects and for some reason she refuses to eat them! The text is in both English and Spanish, and the book also includes a pronunciation guide.

Preschooler Monkey really enjoyed this book. She loved counting the critters and talking about how yucky they were. (Toddler Monkey listened, but I don’t think she was quite ready for this one.)

For me, the highlight of this book was the incredible, fascinatingly grotesque collage illustrations that are at once intense and playful. These images are just so unique, I couldn’t stop looking at them. Really, it almost felt like an art book.

The text, however, didn’t quite match up to the quality of the illustrations. I think the story was meant to be a mystery in the vein of the classic children’s book The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear, but instead, the story just felt incomplete rather than mysterious, leaving a fun-to-read, but somewhat clumsy rhyming poem. (And in Spanish it does not seem to rhyme or flow as well as it does in English, but bear in mind that I am not fluent in Spanish.)

She Doesn’t Want the Worms Activity

There is so much you can do with this book–but to me the most natural thing to do is to go outside and find some bugs.

If you live in a warmer part of the world, all you need is a shovel or even just a plastic cup to use as a shovel. Go outside, dig into the dirt with your shovel, and see what you can see! If it’s a nice day, you can spend quite a bit of time out there, and maybe even take a crayon and paper to draw your findings (hint: worms are pretty easy to draw even for toddlers…). What words would you use to describe the bugs you found?

Unfortunately, here in Boston it is currently winter and most days, it is wicked cold and usually not ideal weather for bug hunting (I can usually find at least one inside my house though…). You might want to check out a local science museum. For example, the Museum of Science in Boston has a ton of bugs to look at and even an indoor butterfly exhibit. If this is a little too far or too expensive for you, an alternative suggestion is to choose one bug from the story and simply talk about it. What color is it? How many legs does it have? Do a little research and find out how many varieties the bug comes in and how they are different. Which one is your favorite? Have you read other books about the book you chose? Can you sculpt it out of play dough?

More about Multicultural Children’s Book Day

Multicultural Children’s Book Day was created by Mia Wenjen from Pragmatic Mom and Valarie Budayr from Jump Into a Book/Audrey Press.

Their Mission: Despite census data that shows 37%  of the US population consists of people of color, only 10% of children’s books published have diversity content. Using the Multicultural Children’s Book Day, Mia and Valarie are on a mission to change all of that. Their mission is to not only raise awareness for the kid’s books that celebrate diversity, but to get more of these types of books into classrooms and libraries. Another goal of this exciting event is create a compilation of books and favorite reads that will provide not only a new reading list for the winter, but also a way to expose brilliant books to families, teachers, and libraries.

More info from them: “MCCBD team hopes to spread the word and raise awareness about the importance of diversity in children’s literature. Our young readers need to see themselves within the pages of a book and experience other cultures, languages, traditions and religions within the pages of a book. We encourage readers, parents, teachers, caregivers and librarians to follow along the fun book reviews, author visits, event details, a multicultural children’s book linky and via our hashtag (#ReadYourWorld) on Twitter and other social media.”

MCCBD’s Sponsors

MCCBD’s  2015 Sponsors include Platinum Sponsors: Wisdom Tales Press, Daybreak Press Global Bookshop, Gold Sponsors:  Satya House,  MulticulturalKids.com,   Author Stephen Hodges and the Magic Poof, Silver Sponsors: Junior Library Guild,  Capstone Publishing, Lee and Low Books,  The Omnibus Publishing. Bronze Sponsors:Double Dutch Dolls, Bliss Group Books, Snuggle with Picture Books Publishing,  Rainbow Books,   Author FeliciaCapers,   Chronicle Books   Muslim Writers Publishing, East West Discovery Press.

Virtual Book Drive with First Book

MCCBD is also partnering with First Book to offer a Virtual Book Drive that will help donate multicultural children’s books through their channels during the week of the event. The Virtual Book Drive is LIVE and can be found HERE.

Children’s Book Council

MCCBD is collaborating with the Children’s Book Council to highlight wonderful diversity books and authors on an ongoing basis all year.

Co-Hosts

The following list is a select group of bloggers who will assist in extending the reach and spreading the word of Multicultural Children’s Book Day.

Africa to America

All Done Monkey

The Educators’ Spin on It

Growing Book by Book

InCultural Parent

Kid World Citizen

Mama Smiles

Multicultural Kid Blogs

Sprout’s Bookshelf

Phew! I hope that’s everything! If I’ve forgotten something, I may update this page occasionally. As a grand finale I’m going to include their little graphic with information on how you can participate too:

#bookreview #picturebookreview #davidhollenbach #karlbeckstrand #picturebook #shedoesntwanttheworms #MCCBD #multiculturalchildrensbookday

Guest Post and Giveaway: The Gossip File by Anna Staniszewski

Happy 2015 from Monkey Poop!

For my very first blog post this year, I’m excited to have a Q&A guest post from Anna Staniszewski, author of the The Gossip File (Book 3 in the super fun Dirt Diary series). This post is part of a whole virtual book tour, and the publisher is offering a giveaway of the entire series (see the Rafflecopter widget at the bottom of this post). Without further ado, here’s the question for the author.

Q: In The Gossip File Rachel is pretending to be someone she’s not to hang out with the cool kids. What’s your advice to kids and teens about finding a group to hang out with?

Anna Staniszewski: When I was Rachel’s age, I tried on various personas and interests in an attempt to figure out where I fit. Was I was one of those girls who spent her life at the mall? Was I into moody music and all-black outfits? Or was I a runner who hung out with the cross country team? I wound up testing out each of these versions of me, seeing which one felt the best.

The truth was, I could feel comfortable in different groups—I loved hanging out with the cross country team and sometimes a trip to the mall was fun—but I eventually realized I was at my happiest when I was doing theater and music. Those were the interests that I’d had for most of my life, and it was when I found other people who were as into them as I was that I finally accepted the fact that they were the biggest part of me.

But I’m glad I tried out those different versions of me because it helped show that I wasn’t just one thing, and it helped me to get to know different kinds of people. But I’m also glad that I eventually was honest with myself about what mattered most. I could have spent my teenage years shopping instead of writing plays and making music, but I think that time would have wound up feeling a little empty because I wouldn’t have been doing what I really loved.

I suppose that’s my advice: It’s great to try out different groups and interests, especially if you’re not sure where you fit best, but you also want to make sure the things you wind up doing and the people you end up hanging out with are ones that make you feel the most like you. If you spend all your time pretending to be someone else, it can be fun at first, but (as Rachel discovers) it can also be exhausting. Ultimately, you want to make sure you don’t lose the things about you that make you who you are.

Book synopsis from the publisher:

The Gossip File:

•Chandra lets little kids pee in the pool.

•Melody stole $ from the café register.

•Ava isn’t who she says she is…

Ava is cool. Ava is confident. Ava is really Rachel Lee who is lying her butt off.

Rachel is visiting her dad at a resort in sunny Florida and is ready for two weeks of relaxing poolside, trips to Disney World – and NOT scrubbing toilets. Until her dad’s new girlfriend, Ellie, begs Rachel to help out at her short-staffed café. That’s when Rachel kinda sorta adopts a new identity to impress the cool, older girls who work there. Ava is everything Rachel wishes she could be. But when the girls ask “Ava” to help add juicy resort gossip to their file, Rachel’s not sure what to do…especially when one of the entries is a secret about Ellie.

—

About the Author:

Born in Poland and raised in the United States, Anna Staniszewski grew up loving stories in both Polish and English. When she’s not writing, Anna spends her time teaching, reading, and eating far too much chocolate. She is the author of the My Very UnFairy Tale Life series, the Dirt Diary series, and the forthcoming Switched at First Kiss series, all published by Sourcebooks. Visit her at www.annastan.com.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

#bookgiveaway #myveryunfairytaleseries #blogtour #guestpost #middlegrade #annastaniszewski #giveaway #TheDirtDiary #QampA #MG #TheGossipFile #switchedatfirstkiss