Waiting on Wednesday - Huntress by Malinda Lo

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.


Do y'all remember my love of Ask by Malinda Lo? Do you remember how I loved it so much that I forced one of my best friend to read it and she loved it too! Well if you took my advice and read it have I got exciting news for you! (If you haven't read it yet - GET ON IT! Please?) Malinda Lo has been hard at work on a prequel! Huntress by Malinda Lo will be out in April 2011 and I cannot wait. Look at that cover. LOOK AT THAT COVER! The description from Goodreads:

Nature is out of balance in the human world. The sun hasn’t shone in years, and crops are failing. Worse yet, strange and hostile creatures have begun to appear. The people’s survival hangs in the balance.

To solve the crisis, the oracle stones are cast, and Kaede and Taisin, two seventeen-year-old girls, are picked to go on a dangerous and unheard-of journey to Taninli, the city of the Fairy Queen. Taisin is a sage, thrumming with magic, and Kaede is of the earth, without a speck of the otherworldly. And yet the two girls’ destinies are drawn together during the mission. As members of their party succumb to unearthly attacks and fairy tricks, the two come to rely on each other and even begin to fall in love. But the Kingdom needs only one huntress to save it, and what it takes could tear Kaede and Taisin apart forever.

The exciting adventure prequel to Malinda Lo’s highly acclaimed novel Ash is overflowing with lush Chinese influences and details inspired by the I Ching, and is filled with action and romance.

Sounds amazing, yes? I can't wait!

linkety link link links

The Green Bean Teen Queen (one of my favorite bloggers ever - why is she not in my side bar? Fixing that RIGHT NOW! Wow my sidebar is sparse. I need to add a ton into that.) had a contest a few weeks ago to win a slew of books from Scholastic. Guess who won? And SCORE! Two of the books are Christmas books (I Spy a Christmas Tree and It's Christmas David) - which will help my Advent Book calendar. We only owned around 10 wintery/holiday books already this year and I didn't get the idea until the day before Advent so I will admit that days 2 - 14 on my advent calendar are library books. Also two of the books I'd never even heard of (Captain Sky Blue and Tony Baloney) - which is disappointing (what kind of a children's librarian am I if I've never heard of EVERY BOOK EVER?) and exciting! Because who doesn't LOVE brand new books that are surprises even to me! And the last two books I already knew I needed to own. That spread in the middle of The Odious Ogre? The one with the temper tantrum? It just gets me every time.

I adore Pride and Prejudice so when Miss Elizabeth Bennet's inbox was leaked on the internet I have to admit that I read it - and giggled like nothing else. My favorite part? "Fwd: Hot! Chk out Bingley on a Horse! Jane Bennet"

Being a big ole geek and a big ole sap I loved Katie's Story about a Star Wars loving girl who got bullied about loving something "boyish" - and the internet jumped to her defense. I especially love (in this day and age where you hear awful bullying stories with schools not doing anything) that her school also jumped in to have a whole week dedicated to liking what you want to like and it all culminated on Friday with "Proud to be Me" day. I LOVE THIS!

Bonjour Cass has given us part one of A Guide to Reviewing GLBTQ books that is super informative and really should be read by everyone.

Not a children's book at all but A Song of Ice and Fire is being turned into what looks like the most kick-ass HBO series EVER. I love this series with a passion that I cannot even tell you. I need to reread - and soon! At least the first book ...

Also if you have an ALSC membership, there was a great piece in there recently about the baby SRP that I helped put together at my library. I'm super proud! It was beyond successful - we had to order extra prizes in the middle of the summer!

And that's basically it for book related thoughts! I'm making these wonderful looking cookies later this week and that, as they say, is that.

Linkedy linkedy links, links, links

I'm starting to understand the appeal of the link-round-ups that everyone does. There are lots of things I want to mention but I don't know that I have enough to say about any of them to merit a whole post! So here is my first link-round-up.

So the YA book blogosphere is angry about James Frey. I talked about it to some friends yesterday and was all set to write something long and involved about what an arse James Frey is and how he's taking advantage of writers - demeaning his own profession - and he's showing complete disregard to young adults in general. Then I come around today and see that Maureen Johnson has once again said it first and said it best. A Chair, a fireplace, and a tea cozy also has a lovely take-down of Mr. Frey.

I've been using goodreads so much more lately for organizing my life. I've made a shelf of my favorite story-time books and have spent way too much time looking at the communal storytime shelf. The babies shelf is too full of praenting books and what to expect books to be much use for lapsit so I've started a shelf called lapsit and so far I'm the only one using that shelf so come and join me! I'm going to branch out into more specific genres for chapter books and such soon. Mel made this brilliant List of Picture books for Boys that I'm going to stick on a shelf soon for me to remember (and add too) because that's a question I get alot. What shelves do y'all use on goodreads? What is your favorite librarian-ey way to use goodreads?

I lent my friend Anna one of my favorite books ever and she LOVED IT! Life is wonderful.

I am also over the moon about ALA adding a Stonewall Children's and YA Literature award. People who think that kids of any age are too young to read about characters who are a part of the QUILTBAG community maybe shouldn't let their kids read books where anyone loves or gets married or has any sort of passionate feelings at all. (judgey LP is judgey)

The New York Times has released their list of the Best Picture Books of 2010. I LOVE THIS TIME OF YEAR! From now until Marchish is just list after list of good books and award after award for great books and it all makes me happy. And I'm going to be linking to a lot of lists in the future. Because I love them.

I had Hush, Hush checked out and I'd just barely started it - and the whole thing was making me feel icky so I did some googling to make sure I wasn't the only one aaaaand I am definitely not. So that book when on my goodreads Abandoned shelf. Because sometimes I just don't want to finish something.

When I was in library school, Michael Gorman was still president of the ALA and a common refrain in one of my classes was “WOW Michael Gorman is SUCH A curmudgeon! I love him!” Seriously. I just want to pat him on the head and tell him how adorable he is. That isn’t to say I agree with him about, pretty much, anything - but he is an adorable curmudgeon. This article about libraries reinventing themselves just reinforced that for me.

I've never read any Eva Ibbotson but Laura Amy Schlitz has inspired me. As soon as I'm done with The Amaranth Enchantment, she's up next for audiobooks.

There was one of those memes going around awhile back where you had to write a haiku to the item sitting on your right. I was rather proud of mine:

Boxcar children book
Missing many pages
Goodbye, cruel lib’ry

I've found that weeding is much more fun (and oh, it gets super fun if you're in the right mood) if you take the book that is to be weeded and say, "you ARE the weakest link! Goodbye!"

I'm sure there's more I want to comment on but I'll leave that for another post. In the meanwhile here is a picture my brother took of Kaylee and Pippa last week. They're getting SO BIG and I love them.