Mundie Moms

Saturday, September 25, 2010

The Crescendo Trailer is LIVE!

Our friends over at Fallen Arch Angel have posted the Crescendo book trailer! They're also giving away 10 ARCS. Here over to their site here fallenarchangel.com and enter to win. Their giveaway ends Sunday September 26 at midnight EST.

Let us know what you think of the trailer!!


Don't forget to enter our SIGNED Crescendo giveaway here
http://mundiemoms.blogspot.com/2010/09/becca-fitzpatrick-interview-giveaway.html
We'll also be giving away a copy of the Crescendo audiobook, coming up in October.

Banned Books Week Guest Author Post By Carrie Ryan

To officially kick off the start of Banned Book, October 25th-October 2nd, I thought it would be a little more powerful hearing thoughts and insights from authors about Banned Books. I invited a few authors to come on Mundie Moms and do just that. I thank each of them for taking the time to write up their posts!

Thank you Carrie Ryan for sending us this beautifully written, and empowering article to be used for our Mundie Moms Banned Book Week.

Won't someone please think of the children?

I'm so proud and pleased to live in a world where young girls are never sexually abused. Where women in high school or middle school aren't raped. Where teen boys never contemplate suicide (or, heaven forfend, actually attempt and accomplish it). I'm blessed to live in a world where there's no bullying, no cyberbullying, no eating disorders or emotional abuse. Where girls don't stick fingers down their throats and slide knives or blades over their skin intentionally. Where teachers don't sleep with students, where fathers don't sleep with daughters, where no one under consenting age has sex, thinks about sex, comes close to having sex, gets pregnant, gets a disease, has an abortion or has a child when they're still in their tweens. How lovely that all girls and boys are virgins throughout middle and high school. That nary a drop of alcohol or a whiff of drugs passes their lips, their noses, their veins.

Surely each child at every school is well loved, well nourished, well cared for. Well clothed and well mannered with bright futures ahead that don't involve peer pressure and binge drinking and drugs and gangs.

Clearly none of those terrible things ever happens in the lives of REAL teens. So why would we ever need books about such horrid and odious happenings? Why would we allow such texts to enter the hallowed halls of our children's schools? Or, worse, to actually be offered on a list of recommended reading? Or even more awful to contemplate, used in a classroom? Forget that such books may have won awards or received starred reviews or been included list after list. Forget that teens have written to authors in tears, in gratitude, in awe that some of those books have changed their lives. That some of those books have saved them.

We don't need those books anymore! Therefore, we don't need them in our classes, in our schools or in our libraries. Hasn't anyone ever wondered what would happen if we let our perfect, pure, untouched and untarnished teen minds read such smut? They might contemplate drugs or sex or suicide. Clearly, all it would take is one page - one paragraph - of Laurie Halse Anderson's bookWintergirls to change even the healthiest girl anorexic! No girl today would ever have such thoughts otherwise!

Won't someone please think of the children? What are we teaching them with these books?

Unless... unless we've somehow failed. Unless we missed something. Unless there are teens out there that are in trouble. That have faced obstacles that their parents don't know about. Unless there are teens out there with secrets -- secret pains and secret fears -- that they can't take to their mother or father or sister or priest or teacher. Maybe they're ashamed. Maybe they're afraid.

Maybe they need to be shown that they're not alone. That you can survive abuse. That you can overcome bullying and peer pressure. That your friends could be facing these issues. That you can find help. Or even, what happens when you don't.

Maybe we need to have more faith in teens that reading a book won't brainwash them. That maybe instead it will expand their horizons. And maybe as the adults of the world that's our job - to show them the world and be there to answer questions and support them.

I get it. I understand that its easier to keep teens in the dark. It's easier to believe that teens aren't dealing with these difficult issues. What parents want to introduce their precious child to all the bad things in this world? What father wants to explain what rape is?

But I need to make this clear, and this comes from my experience and from my friends experiences and from the teens I've talked to: this stuff happens. And it happens to teens and tweens far younger than any of us would ever want to contemplate. They deal with these issues whether we want them to or not. This is life and life can really suck and it can be messy and dangerous and sad. And hiding from it doesn't make it go away.

So whenever someone screams "Won't someone please think of the children" and then they propose banning books or removing them from the classroom or the library, I want to ask them what they think it accomplishes. Because not talking about the difficult issues in this world doesn't make them not exist. Not letting teens read about them doesn't mean teens are somehow not going to face them.

We're not protecting anyone by keeping them ignorant. And banning books or pretending this stuff doesn't happen is the height of ignorance.

Thank you to the authors who write about these difficult topics and to those who fight to keep them in schools.
*This article was given to us to use for Banned Book Week from Carrie Ryan*
You can read the article on Carrie's site here http://tinyurl.com/2dwyxls
Carrie Ryan is the author of The Forest of Hands and Teeth, The Dead Tossed Waves and the soon to be released The Dark and Hollow Places. You find out more about Carrie and her books here http://www.carrieryan.com/

Shadow Hills Ebook Release

His love captivated her... his secrets might kill her.
Since her sister’s mysterious death, Persephone “Phe” Archer has been plagued by a series of disturbing dreams. Determined to find out what happened to her sister, Phe enrolls at Devenish Prep in Shadow Hills, Massachusetts—the subject of her sister’s final diary entry.

After stepping on campus, Phe immediately realizes that there’s something different about this place—an unexplained epidemic that decimated the town in the 1700s, an ancient and creepy cemetery, and gorgeous boy Zach—and somehow she’s connected to it all.

But the more questions she asks and the deeper she digs, the more entangled Phe becomes in the haunting past of Shadow Hills. Finding what links her to this town…might cost her her life.

If you're looking for another great YA book to add to your Ebook collection, be sure to pick up Shadow Hills by Anastasia Hopcus, which was realeased on August 25th, 2010.You can purchase it at your favorite bookstore or online here Amazon & Barnes & Noble.

We're proud members of the Shadow Hills Street Team and we're really looking forward to spreading the word about Shadow Hills. If you've read Shadow Hills, be sure to visit our Book Of The Month Forum for July, and share your thoughts with us.

Wordstock Festival, October 7th-10th in Portland, OR


What happened to “it’s just for teens”?


Once upon a time, the Young Adult lit section of your favorite bookstore may have been

a destination solely for teen readers. But not anymore. Young Adult (or YA) is bigger than

ever these days. You can thank Harry Potter or Twilight, or simply the massive wave of

incredibly well-written, fascinating stories coming from YA authors. Whatever the cause,

there is a plethora of fantastic YA to choose from at this year’s Wordstock Festival.

Join us for authors like New York Times best-seller Becca Fitzpatrick, or Patrick Ness,

whose Chaos Walking trilogy is drawing comparisons to the widely popular Hunger

Games series. You can also find some of these authors in our “YA Gets Real” panel,

discussing how the genre is increasingly addressing serious subjects and how they

relate to teens (not just wizards and sparkly vampires). YA authors discuss their work on

other panels, as well, such as the supernatural in fiction, ghostwriting, selling the movie

rights and social networking. We’re really excited about this year’s YA authors, and we

think you will be too.


Panels:

YA Gets Real:

Patrick Ness, L.K. Madigan, Conrad Wesselhoeft, Mod. Anne Osterlund

Creature Feature:

Becca Fitzpatrick, Joey Comeu, Rick Yancy, Mod. Sara Gundell


Authors:

Joëlle Anthony

Mac Barnett

Dale E. Basye

Cecil Castellucci

Nancy Coffelt

Kerry Cohen Hoffman

Becca Fitzpatrick

April Henry

Amanda Howells

Adam Jay Epstein

Andrew Jacobson

L.K. Madigan

Jane Mendle

Kaleb Nation

Patrick Ness

Heather Vogel Frederick

Renee Watson

Conrad Wesselhoeft

Rick Yancey

(above quoted from Wordstock's PDF)


Be sure to visit Wordstock's site for more information about the event, to find out about the authors, panels and more http://www.wordstockfestival.com/cms/


You can also visit Novel Novice's site http://tinyurl.com/2fwjbuk for more!

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