The Joy of Children's Literature

YA author Gayle Forman (who wrote If I Stay , which I loved) reveals her five favorite teen reads of the year in an article for NPR titled, Oh, To Be Young: This Year's Best Teen Reads . She starts the article by stating: I read a lot of young-adult novels. I also read a lot of adult-adult novels, and I'm always after the same experience, whether I'm reading Philip Roth or Philip Pullman: a book that sucks me in from chapter one, makes me think and, above all, makes me feel . I want to finish the book a slightly different person than I was when I started it.  I feel exactly the same way, as I think most of us do. I have read some, but not all of the books on her list. So, I will be adding to my "to read" list for the new year. How about you?

Dancing with the Stars has brought much attention to dancing in the US in the five years it has been on the air (even my local YMCA has started ballroom dancing classes). The same year Dancing with the Stars premiered (2005), the film Mad Hot Ballroom was released documenting the New York City public school system's ballroom dance program for fifth graders. I loved this movie and if you haven't watched it yet, it's a great movie to watch with the family over the holiday break. You can see the children in the film literally transformed over the 10-week period of the documentary, culminating in a city-wide competition. Each of the dances highlighted in these shows,  such as the tango, foxtrot, swing, rumba and merengue, have a deep cultural history and when adults and children alike perform these dances, they join in the origins, history, movements, music, and performance of the generations who have gone before them to bring the dance to where it is today. I believe that i...

The 2010 National Book Award Winner for Young People's Literature is Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine, published by Penguin. ABOUT THE BOOK In Caitlin’s world, everything is black or white. Things are good or bad. Anything in between is confusing. That’s the stuff Caitlin’s older brother, Devon, has always explained. But now Devon’s dead and Dad is no help at all. Caitlin wants to get over it, but as an eleven-year-old girl with Asperger’s, she doesn’t know how. When she reads the definition of closure, she realizes is what she needs. In her search for it, Caitlin discovers that not everything is black and white—the world is full of colors—messy and beautiful. Interview by Eisa Ulen  Eisa Ulen: The female protagonist in your novel, Caitlin, has Asperger’s syndrome, a condition your daughter also has. In Mockingbird , Caitlin ...