2014 Book Bloggers Conference

This post was originally published on Randomly Reading, but I'm just too tired to come up with another post about the same day so I am repeating it here for different readers. 

I was off at BEA in NYC this week, but I feel like I have been gone from here since forever (and now you all know I don't schedule posts ahead of time, which is really surprising for someone a little on the OCD side).  Today is the official last day, and I was really hoping to be there, but it turns our that yesterday was my last day.

What did I do at BEA for three days, besides stand on long, long lines?

On Wednesday, I went to the Book Blogger Conference, which was more a lot more useful this year.  I met up with my friend Elizabeth from Silver's Reviews and she introduced me to Laura, a blogger from Library of Clean Reads and a senior coordinator at iRead Book Tours.  It's always nice to see old friends and meet new ones.

The day began with opening speaker was Maureen Johnson, YA author of 10 novel and contributor to two short story collections.  She was very funny, has an adorable new puppy named Zelda after Zelda Fitzgerald, and told us that book bloggers have and use their ability to shake up conventional reviews that tell us not to read a particular book and counter denouncements such as today's YA literature is too dark (Maureen started the YA Saves Campaign back in 2011 - read her article about UA in the Guardian HERE).  In short, bloggers can and should shake up the status quo.

After Maureen's keynote speech, we broke up into different sessions.  The first one I went to was Design 201 - Taking your Blog to the Next Level with Hafsah Faizal of Icey Designs and David Piakowski of BookLikes.  The basics of a great design were covered and include:

1- Color - use color to match your blog's theme: use dark colors, if your blog is dark; light if your blog is light.  But always use hues that you really love and don't limit yourself to one color.  Hafsah recommends using kuler.adobe.com

2- Branding - this defines your blog.  Make sure to have a nice square logo that encompasses your blog and you, and be sure to include your blog's name in it and don't keep changing your logo.

3- Layout - make sure you have a responsive design which is a layout that accommodates all screen sizes: desktop, tablet, phone or any other device.

4- Themes - if your blog is on Wordpress, you can find themes at themeforest.net, starting at about $3.00, or at creative market.com.  I don't recall anything being recommended for Blogger.

5- Design - it's all about you and how your readers feel while visiting your blog.

Some more pointers from Hafsah:
1- Do make your content area 1000px
2- Do place icons for all your social networks in a visible location
3- Do make sure you have easy to follow navigation
4- Do add a search function to your site
5- Do make sure your site loads easily
6- Do ensure your graphics across social networks match your blog
7- Do use web fonts to spruce up your content
8- Don't clutter your sidebar with too many gifs and worse, animated gifs
9- Don't have annoying pop up messages

We were give 5 tips and tricks:
     1- Use gifs, you can find some at giphy.com
     2- Be social - interact with your readers
     3- Have a proper photo of yourself
     4- Show what you read - put a bookshelf on your site
     5- Introduce yourself on your sidebar (longer intro goes on your about page)

The next session was on Software 101, Best Blogging Tools with Thea James of Book Smugglers, Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, Stephanie Sinclair from Cuddlebuggery Book Blog, and Becca Brennan from Mad Mimi.  The panelists talked about histing, RSS feeds, scheduling posts, plugins and things that again mostly pertained to Wordpress, includingAkismet for spam control, Jetpack and  Co-Scheduler and sucuri.net for male ware control, which gives you a free scan but the rests cost $$$.

Next was Blogging and the Law with Amanda Brice, Allison Leotta and Katie Sunstrom

The gist of the session was to know what is copyrightable and make sure you have a copyright on your blog.  You can register your blog with the United States Copyright Office and of course, there is Creative Commons.  Be sure to display your copyright on your blog.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a lot of information, including a Legal Guide for Bloggers which might be very helpful if you aren't sure of something.  If you think someone is stealing your stuff from your blog, you can find some help at PlagarismToday

Finally, the last session was called The Publishing Process: How Bloggers Have Changed the Game with Merrilee Heifetz, Senior VP, Writers House Literary Agency, Emily Meehan, Editorial Director, Hyperion Teen, Alexandra Bracken, author of The Darkest Mind series, Christine Riccio of Poland Bananas and Andrew Sansome, online Marketing Manager, Disney Publishing.

Apparently they didn't get the memo about the session topic.  It was all about YouTube blogging, which nobody in the audience was interested in.  Alexandra Braken was part of a vlogging video to promote her book, and that was OK, she was interesting to hear and we got free copies of The Darkest Mind, but the message we got from the rest of the panel was that vlogging was better that blogging.   People walked out!

The day ended with lots of giveaways, music from Tiger Beat and a free beer or soda.

It was a busy day, and for the most part productive.

Vango: Between Sky and Earth by Timothée de Fombelle

Born in 1915 and raised on by a nanny simply known as Mademoiselle, Vango has no idea who he is or where he came from.  He and Mademoiselle were rescued from the sea by the strange Mazzetta when Vango was only 3 and they remained on Salina, one of the Aeolian island off the coast of Sicily.  At 10 Vango discovers a hidden monastery on another island called Arkudah and befriends its founder, Father Zefiro.

The story begins in April 1934 just as Vango, now 19, is ready to take his vows, following Father Zefire into the priesthood.  Lying prostrate in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris with others about to be ordained, a shot directed at Vango suddenly is heard.  Within seconds, Vango finds himself on the run, a wanted man, for a crime or crimes of which he is completely innocent.

Eluding the very Inspector Clouseau-like Superintendent Augusta Boulard of the Paris police, as well as unknown, but the just as persistent sinister pursuers from Stalinist Russia, and Gestapo from the newly created Nazi Germany, Vango does find aid from old friends.

First with the elderly anti-Nazi German commander of the Graf Zeppelin, Hugo Eckener and second, with young, beautiful Ethel, 16, who witnessed the shooting at Notre Dame.  Since the death of their parents, Ethel and her older brother Paul have lived in the family's Everland  Castle on Loch Ness, Scotland.  Paul is in the RAF, and Ethel skillfully drives a speedy Railton automobile all over Europe looking for Vango.

As Vango remains on the run, a master of disguise and escape, he begins to wonder who he really is and why he is the focus of such an intense international manhunt.  The reader, of course, has been wondering this all along.  Is the mystery solved by the end of the novel?  Well, remember, there is a second book.

What an exciting adventure reading Vango is.  I began it one night after dinner and by the next afternoon I had finished reading this 432 page whirlwind of a novel.  Timothée de Fombelle has brought together such a varied cast of characters, some real figures from history, others completely imagined, all excellent at the part they play in Vango's story.

Though there is a lot of back story throughout the novel, the central story runs from April 1933 to Christmas Eve 1935, and both the settings and time frame are pivotal points of the interwar years.  Politically, Hitler has just seized power in Germany, Stalin had just been re-elected in Russia (thanks to the assassination of his political rival, the anti-Communist Sergi Kerov) and both dictators were beginning to tighten their grip in their respective countries through the use of secret police.

The Zeppelin had been in use since before World War I and during the war was actually used for bombing raids over England.  By 1934, the Nazis had insisted that a swastika be painted in the right fin of the Graf Zeppelin (in the novel, Eckener has trouble with the Gestapo after painting over the swastika), a real nail-biter scene.  Commander Eckener and Captain Ernst Lehmann of the Graf Zeppelin are two more characters taken from real life that populate Vango.

Vango was seamlessly translated from the French by Sarah Ardizzone.  I can't think of one awkward sentence in the whole book and I think she has really captured the feel, the flavor and the style of the storytelling, which reminded me very much of novels written during that period of time.  And as epic as  Vango is nothing is superfluous.  Everything is there for a reason.

All this results in a very exciting and interesting Zeitgeschichte.  But the mystery remains - who is Vango and why does someone want his arrested or even dead?  And what is the meaning of the Latin words "How many kingdoms know us not" that are embroidered on the handkerchief Vango is almost never without?  I have not idea!

I don't any of the answers to the mystery raised in the story, but I can't wait to read the second book: Vango: A Prince Without a Kingdom.  Maybe the answers to all the question raised in Vango: Between Sky and Earth will be answered.  One thing I do know is that this is historical fiction at its best!

This book is recommended for readers age 12+
This was an EARC received from Net Galley

This book will be available in the U.S. October 14, 2014 and normally I wouldn't post about a book so far in advance, but...

FYI: If Vango sounds like a book you might like to read and you will be at BEA 2014, galleys will be handed out by Candlewick Press at some point, according to Publisher's Weekly (but remember, that is all subject to change)

AND Walker Books Australia has posted a very useful teaching guide for Vango that can be found HERE

This is book 8 of my 2014 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge hosted by Historical Tapestry
This is book 4 of my 2014 European Reading Challenge hosted by Bay City Reader

Sunday Funnies #16: Memorial Day 2014

This Memorial Day weekend please take some time to think about those who served their country and are no longer with us.  And then, like Nancy, take a moment to thank those who are still with us.

Beetle Bailey by Mort Walker May 30, 2010

Hi and Lois by Brian and Greg Walker May 28, 2012

Red and Rover by Brian Basset May 28, 2012

Nancy by Guy Gilchrist May 28, 2012

In Memoriam

FCP 1955-2001

Top Ten Tuesday #14: Top Ten Books About Friendship

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and The Bookish

This week's topic, Top Ten Books About Friendship, posed a real dilemma for me.  I've used the label Friendship 109 times so far, and I know there were other times I could have used it, but to choose the top ten friendship books?  No easy task, because they are all top draw.   Here, then,  are the 10 books about friendships that I have reviewed and that had the most impact on me:

1- Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein- this is the best story of a friendship that I have ever read.  Wein follows the friendship between two young women, a young spy, Julie, and a ferry pilot, Maddie, by letting each character tell their own story.  This is one of the most poignantly written friendships I've ever read.

2- Traitor by Gudrun Pausewang - a dangerous friendship forms between a 16 year old German girl and a Russian POW hiding in her family's barn even though they don't speak each others language.  If caught, both would be immediately killed by the Nazis.

3- The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico - this is the story of the friendship that develops between a deformed recluse and the young girl who overcomes her fear of him when she finds an injured Canadian goose, bringing it to him and believing he can help it.  This beautifully written story still brings tears to my eyes whenever I think about it.

4- The Cay by Theodore Taylor - a friendship ultimately forms between a young white boy, Phillip, and Timothy, the black man who, despite saving his life after their boat is torpedoed, considers him to be inferior as he had been taught while living on the island of Curacao.  

5- Mister Orange by Truus Matti - though he is never mentioned by name, this is a fictional tale of the friendship between modernist artist Piet Mondrian, who has just escaped from Nazi occupied Holland, and Linus, the boy who delivers his oranges.  I wrote: "In a way, however, it is a nice example of how even a short lived friendship can impact our lives, in this case from September 1943 to February 1944."

6- Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool - I loved the friendship that develops between Jack and "that strangest of boys" Early at boarding school.  They are bound together by their individual traumas and so they go on a quest together to try and heal their wounds.

7- The Dolphin Crossing by Jill Paton Walsh - two teen boys from different classes are brought together by the war and form an unusual friendship.  Events polarize the friendship but they are united again by their desire to help bring back soldiers stranded at Dunkirk, ferrying them to saftey in a small boat.

8- Warriors in the Crossfire by Nancy Bo Flood - Joseph, son of a Saipan chief, and his Japanese cousin Kanto have always been best friends, but now the war has come between them.  They must try put aside their differences to save Kanto's family from certain death ordered by the Japanese occupiers of Saipan.

9- Johnny and the Bomb by Terry Pratchett - I loved the friendship between Johnny, Yo-less, Bigmac, and Wobbler, three modern day boys who time travel back to the 1941 and the night of the Blackberry Blitz.  This is friendship as only Pratchett can write it - funny, serious, dangerous, slapstick.

10- Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein - I started with an Elizabeth Wein book and I am ending with one.  When ferry pilot Rose Justice finds herself in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, she meets a group of young Polish woman called the Rabbits, so-called because of the medical expiments performed on them by Nazi doctors.  The life-saving, life-affirming friendship that forms between Rose and the Rabbits in the midst of unutterable horrors is not to be missed.  Wein is a master at writing about female friendships.

What are your top ten books about friendship?

Announcing the very first 2014 Kids Author Carnival

So, maybe you're going to BEA 2014 this year, and you think all the fun will come to an end on Saturday, May 31 at 3 P.M.

Well, I'm here to tell you that if you love Middle Grade books, the fun continues!!

That's right!  Because on May 31, from 6:00 to 8:30 P.M. at the NYPL's Jefferson Market Library the very first, the inaugural Kids Author Carnival will be the happening place to be in NYC.  It is your chance to meet around 37, count 'em, around 37* Middle Grade authors that you know and love.  And the best part is that your age 7+ kids are more than welcome.  In fact, age 7+ kids are encouraged to come to the Kids Author Carnival.  And it's all FREE!

The Jefferson Market Library is located at 425 Avenue of the Americas at 10th Street, almost in the heart of Greenwich Village.  You can find easy directions and a map HERE

Afraid you might not recognize the building once you get to the Village?  No problem!  It looks like this:

And speaking of Middle Grade books and the Jefferson Market Library, this is the very same place that Theo and her new best friend Bodhi go when they need to find information in Under the Egg.  And by now, you may have noticed that Laura Marx Fitzgerald, who wrote Under the Egg, is one of the around 37, count 'em, around 37* authors at the first, the inaugural Kids Author Carnival. So...

Be there, or be square!

*Alexander London is not able to attend Kids Author Carnival, after all.  Prior commitments and all that.