Tag: Middle grade (Page 4 of 6)

January #InkRipples: The Allure of a Book Cover

January 2, 2017 / Katie L. Carroll

Welcome to #InkRipples 2017! It looks like it’s going to be a big year for #InkRipples with lots of new bloggers joining Kai Strand, Mary Waibel, and me (Katie L. Carroll) in our monthly meme. We’re starting off the year by talking about book covers.

The rise of online shopping and ebooks have changed the way I view a book cover. It’s a much less tactile experience than it used to be. Often my first exposure to a book is a small picture of the cover on a screen. Any kind of texture it might have is not evident, and the small details are hard to discern.

This creates a new challenge for cover designers. How do you simultaneously create a cover that pops on a bookshelf and stands out in a small picture on a screen? Well, I’m no cover designer, so that’s not a question I can answer. I can, however, share some of my favorite book covers and why I like them.

Silver Phoenix (Kingdom of Xia, #1) The hardcover of Cindy Pon’s YA fantasy SILVER PHOENIX immediately grabbed my attention the first time I saw it. The colors are bold and gorgeous (something about the combo of the pink and blue hit all the right aesthetics for me), and the yellow/gold color in the background makes it looks like the cover is glowing. I get a strong sense of character from the cover model and hints of the fantasy world I’m about to delve into.

Froi of the Exiles (Lumatere Chronicles, #2) Another favorite YA fantasy cover is Melina Marchetta’s FROI OF THE EXILES. The colors are subtle, but, again, the use of color to convey light is so effective in catching my eye. The somber expression of the cover model and the sword hilt in layered in front of his face give it a dangerous feel, and the mountains at the bottom provide a sense of mystery. Looking at these two first examples, I’m noticing they both have clouds and a sunset (sunrise?) in them. Not sure what to make of that similarity, but felt worth pointing out.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1) I have the Harry Potter books in the British and U.S. versions, but for me, nothing tops the covers of the U.S. hardcover editions. The illustrations of Mary GrandPré are superb. It’s hard to pick a favorite (maybe Half-Blood Prince), but the first book serves as a beautiful example of a magical middle grade cover. The movement of Harry, the sense of wonder every detail evokes, the magical elements to it, the iconic font of Harry’s name…I could go on, but let’s just say these covers are among my all-time favorites.

So many of my favorite covers are fantasy ones, but I wanted to include something more contemporary. Nova Ren Suma’s IMAGINARY GIRLS has fantastical elements to it but is also deeply rooted in a more contemporary world. The calmness of the girl underwater creates so much drama and intrigue. Is she drowning? If she is, why is she so calm? And again, it comes back to color. The tranquil blue juxtaposed by the pop of red ribbon, and the utter paleness of the girl. Well, this cover totally made me want to read the book!

What aspects of a book cover grab your attention? What are some of your favorite book covers? Next week, I’ll be posting about how the cover of my YA fantasy ELIXIR BOUND came to be.

#InkRipples is a monthly meme created by Katie L. Carroll, Mary Waibel, and Kai Strand. We pick a topic (January is all about book covers), drop a ripple in the inkwell (i.e. write about it on our blogs), and see where the conversation goes. We’d love to have you join in the conversation on your own blogs or on your social media page. Full details and each month’s topic can be found on my #InkRipples page.

BLUE BONES by Rick Starkey Cover Reveal

February 8, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

Blue Bones

by Rick Starkey

Release Date: March 7, 2016

Thirteen-year-old Rodney Becker has found the perfect cure for stage fright. Voodoo!

Armed with the stolen finger bones of a dead blues guitar player and a mishmash of voodoo spells from the Internet, he and his best friend enter a graveyard at midnight to perform their ritual. Now, all that stands in his way of winning a local guitar competition is the power of RETURN – a side effect of the voodoo that spells disaster for Rodney.

His cure has become a curse. How else can he explain jamming his finger so bad he can’t hold a guitar pick, his part-time dad stealing his guitar, and his mom getting into an accident that could have taken her life?

How much is Rodney willing to risk to achieve his dream of being a guitar legend?

Pre-Order Sale Price of just $2.99 – regular price starting March 7^th.

Goodreads | Amazon | Smashwords

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About the Author:
Rick-Starkey Rick Starkey is a graduate of the Institute of Children’s Literature. His main interest is writing novels for middle grade. Rick has sold short pieces to Highlights for Children including a game, magic tricks, and a short story. Knowing that most writers often wish that they had started their career earlier in life, Rick teaches a basic course for the Talented and Gifted Program (T.A.G.) at Walter’s State Community College in Morristown Tennessee. Rick’s students learn the basics of magazine submissions including cover and query letters, market research, and manuscript preparation. The T.A.G. program is for students grades 5 – 8 and come from seven counties in East Tennessee.

Rick lives in a 200-year-old log cabin in the Great Smoky Arts and Crafts Community in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where he and his wife, Betty, own and run Make It Magic, a magic shop and craft store. A day in Rick’s life includes recommending and performing magic tricks for customers of all ages, carving a bear from a log with a chainsaw, and working on his next novel.

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June Ripples in the Inkwell: Summer Reading Recommendations

June 8, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

It’s the second Monday of the month and that means a new Ripples in the Inkwell post! May was all about change (my post was about how change is hard at any age). June heralds the start of summer, so Kai Strand, Mary Waibel, and I thought it would be fun to talk about summer/vacations. We’d love to read your posts on the theme; find out how to play along with the monthly meme HERE. And be sure to stop by Kai’s and Mary’s blogs to check out their posts.

When I knew the June #inkripples theme was summer/vacation, my first inclination was to talk about the last, horrible vacation I went on where we hated the (leaky, smelly, awful) rental house so much we left halfway into our trip. (The owner was quick to remind me that there was a no refund policy…jerk!) But summers and vacations are supposed to be about fun, so I started thinking about some of my favorite things to do while on vacation.

And, of course, one of those things is read. So here are a few summer reading recommendations, straight from you to me (partial blurbs pulled from Goodreads). I picked books that had a summer feel to them, whether they took place during the summer or because they fit the lovely category of beach reads. I’d love to hear your summer reading rec’s in the comments!

THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE by Jandy Nelson

“Seventeen-year-old Lennie Walker, bookworm and band geek, plays second clarinet and spends her time tucked safely and happily in the shadow of her fiery older sister, Bailey. But when Bailey dies abruptly, Lennie is catapulted to center stage of her own life – and, despite her nonexistent history with boys, suddenly finds herself struggling to balance two.”

This is one of my favorite books of all time (and it you know anything about my personal life and how I started writing, you’ll understand why), so it pretty much ends up on every recommended list I create. But it fits this list especially because it takes place during the summer.

TWENTY BOY SUMMER by Sarah Ockler

“According to Anna’s best friend, Frankie, twenty days in Zanzibar Bay is the perfect opportunity to have a summer fling, and if they meet one boy every day, there’s a pretty good chance Anna will find her first summer romance. Anna lightheartedly agrees to the game, but there’s something she hasn’t told Frankie–she’s already had her romance, and it was with Frankie’s older brother, Matt, just before his tragic death one year ago.”

This has a little bit of everything you want in a summer read: beach setting, forbidden romance, secrets and lies, and parties!

SUMMER SISTERS by Judy Blume

“In the summer of 1977, Victoria Leonard’s world changed forever—-when Caitlin Somers chose her as a friend. Dazzling, reckless Caitlin welcomed Vix into the heart of her sprawling, eccentric family, opening doors to a world of unimaginable privilege, sweeping her away to vacations on Martha’s Vineyard, a magical, wind-blown island where two friends became summer sisters…”

Judy Blume, Martha’s Vineyard, friends who are like sisters, and, um, Judy Blume! Do I even need to explain including this one? Didn’t think so.

WE WERE LIARS by E. Lockhart

“A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.”

This is one of those books you read and then want to immediately read again. The island setting screams summer, and the lies, oh, the lies!

CHARLIE JOE JACKSON’S GUIDE TO SUMMER VACATION by Tommy Greenwald

“Despite all attempts to avoid reading and extra work, Charlie Joe Jackson finds himself in a terrible dream he can’t wake up from: Camp Rituhbukkee (pronounced “read-a-bookie”)—a place filled with grammar workshops, Read-a-Ramas, and kids who actually like reading. But Charlie Joe is determined to convince the entire camp to hate reading and writing—one genius at a time.”

All the Charlie Joe Jackson books are great for young and young-at-heart readers. This one will keep you laughing all the way to summer camp!

PANIC by Lauren Oliver

“Panic began as so many things do in Carp, a dead-end town of 12,000 people in the middle of nowhere: because it was summer, and there was nothing else to do.

Heather never thought she would compete in Panic, a legendary game played by graduating seniors, where the stakes are high and the payoff is even higher. She’d never thought of herself as fearless, the kind of person who would fight to stand out. But when she finds something, and someone, to fight for, she will discover that she is braver than she ever thought.”

This one will keep you up late into the summer night. My own teen summer nights did include some dangerous antics but none quite at this level.

THE MERMAID’S MIRROR by L.K. Madigan

“Lena has lived her whole life near the beach – walking for miles up and down the shore and breathing the salty air, swimming in the cold water, and watching the surfers rule the waves – the problem is, she’s spent her whole life just watching.”

My only fantasy book in the bunch (shocking, I know, but I tend to think of more realistic stories for beach reads). Love the setting of this book; it has just the right feel for summer.

In the interest of keeping this post manageable (cause I could go on and on and on when it comes to recommending books), I’ll stop here. So now it’s your turn. What’s on your summer reading list? What book(s) do you recommend for the perfect beach read?

The Great Connecticut Caper Starts Today

January 4, 2015 / Katie L. Carroll

Gillette Castle has gone missing! And after all the hype I’ve been giving it on the blog lately, you can now finally join the young sleuths in solving the mystery in The Great Connecticut Caper. Chapter one goes lives today! (You can see I’m speaking in exclamation points!) Follow along at http://ctcaper.cthumanities.org/ as a new chapter is posted every two weeks and for fun activities as well.

The story has been getting some great local press coverage (see these great stories from the CT Post, which includes quotes from the illustrator of chapter two, the one I wrote; the Middletown Press; and NBC Connecticut), but it’s not just for my CT peeps. Any young or young at heart reader will enjoy the CT Caper. Make sure to regularly check out the blog here, too, as I’ll be hosting some of the other authors and illustrators on the weeks their chapters go live.

And if you are local, there’s still time to sign up to attend the launch party at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT, this Wednesday, January 7 from 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm. There will also be a launch party later in the month in New Haven (details to come).

Middle Grade vs. Young Adult with Anna Staniszewski Author of The Prank List

June 30, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

Anna Staniszewski is one of my favorite guest bloggers because she always brings such insightful topics and discussions. Today, as she celebrates the upcoming release of her newest book The Prank List (The Dirt Diary #2), Anna is talking the difference between middle grade and young adult fiction. Welcome, Anna!

What Separates Middle Grade from Young Adult Fiction?

by Anna Staniszewski

I get this question a lot, so I thought I’d tackle it here. Let’s start with a couple of definitions.

“Middle grade” is generally for ages 7-12, though it can skew a bit younger or older depending on the project (short chapter books vs. longer novels). Middle grade usually features protagonists in elementary or middle school, and if it deals with topics such as sex or violence, those tend to happen off-screen.The ending, while not necessarily happy, should be hopeful.

“Young adult” generally features teen protagonists (14-19) and is often a coming-of-age story for readers 12 and up. (The actual readership of YA varies quite a bit. You might have fifth-graders reading it, but you also have adults who read nothing else.) Issues such as sex and violence can be shown on-screen and can even be of a graphic nature, though you often won’t get as much detail as you would in adult books. Endings, while often hopeful, can sometimes be bleak.

Now that we have that out of the way, we can see that content isn’t necessarily the dividing line between MG and YA. The bigger distinction is how the content is handled, whether it’s off-screen and implied or on-screen and shown.

The protagonist’s age is often a factor, as well, although there is some wiggle room here, too. My main character in The Dirt Diary is 14, for example, but she’s in 8th grade. That puts her right smack in between the two genres, which is why I often refer to the book as “tween,” although it’s generally considered MG.

For me, the biggest difference between MG and YA is the character’s emotional journey. I’ve heard more than one person say that in MG, the character goes through lots of life-changing experiences but can still remain a child at the end. In YA, the character goes through lots of life-changing experiences that force him/her to become an adult. This might be too simplistic of an answer, but I think it goes a long way to explain the difference between the two.

In MG, you have characters exploring their worlds and experiencing what things outside of their own lives are like. In YA, you have characters exploring their own identities and figuring out where they belong in the world. The role of family is different in both; in MG, the family tends to be part of the story, both a support system and a source of conflict, whereas in YA, the family is often secondary or more a source of conflict than anything else. Again, this goes back to the idea of staying a child vs. becoming an adult. At some point, you need to find independence from your family (as many YA protagonists do) and strike out on your own.

Over the past decade or two, the MG and YA markets have changed quite a bit. It used to be that a book with a 14-year-old girl would automatically be labelled as YA, but now that you have more adults reading YA, the genre has started to focus on older and more mature protagonists. That means that MG has expanded too, including a wider range of books, sometimes those that feature younger teens.

Because the market is always shifting, I try not to drive myself too crazy with definitions, but I do try to keep in mind the general attitude in MG vs. YA. That, I think, hasn’t changed too much. In MG, we often still see characters branching out into the world, whereas in YA we see characters who want to find their places in it.

The Prank List blurb:

Rachel Lee never thought she’d fight for the right to clean toilets. But when a rival cleaning business starts stealing her mom’s clients, Rachel will do whatever it takes to save herself the horror of moving to Connecticut—which would mean giving up her almost, sort of boyfriend, her fantastic new pastry classes, and her best friend Marisol.

Operation Save Mom’s Cleaning Business is a go!

But when the series of pranks Rachel and her BFF cook up to take down the competition totally backfires, Rachel worries that her recipe for success is a dud. You know what they say—if you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen…

About the Author:

Born in Poland and raised in the United States, Anna Staniszewski grew up loving stories in both Polish and English. Currently, she lives outside Boston with her husband and their crazy dog. When she’s not writing, Anna spends her time reading, daydreaming, and challenging unicorns to games of hopscotch. She is the author of the My Very UnFairy Tale Life series and the Dirt Diary series. Her newest book, The Prank List, releases on July 1st from Sourcebooks. You can visit Anna at www.annastan.com.