I’ll be busy at the New York SLMS conference, hanging with awesome librarians, and (rumor has it) picking up the Knickbocker Award, which I am stoked about.
Details and pics later, I promise.
Be sure to squeeze in some poetry today and make time to hug a librarian!!!!
Hello!
Hi! I’m looking forward for your next post and your writing advices, but I guess you’re really busy writing.
Just wanted to say hi! 😉
Love ya!
Just finished Wintergirls. I loved it. I’ve had a few friends struggle along the same lines of Lia and to understand where she came from, and by extension where my friends could have been coming from, is… A gift? I wanted to cry at the end- am tearing up while writing this- SPOILER knowing that Lia made it through, as did my friends and that at the end there was hope. A truly amazing book, with gorgeous words and metaphors. I adored Emma, and Jennifer especially at the end when she told Lia what she had done to Emma. Don’t know whether it was a good or bad thing she did, but I respected her for telling Lia truths. END SPOILER I just… I really enjoyed the book. If my school library doesn’t have it yet (living in NZ means we’re substantially behind America when it comes to books, I will be advising them to pick it up. Probably ordering them to 🙂
thank you for writing the books that you do, with such real characters.
Emily
censorship pains me
Hi,
I am a high school student. My county school system is removing SPEAK from the 9th grade curriculum, and they won’t tell us why. Maybe a parent complained? I don’t know. It is very abrupt. They say it is ‘not up for discussion.’
They are moving SPEAK to English 11 Review. Unfortunately, almost everyone in 11th grade takes either Regular, Honors, or AP. So if the move goes through, we’ll go from hundreds of kids reading and discussing your book in English classes, to about 7 kids per year.
The majority of SPEAK books will gather dust in the humanities-storage-room.
This saddens me, and pains me. I will not waste your time praising SPEAK, but I will say that the potential move would be a huge loss to both students and teachers.
I started a facebook fan-page called ‘Keep the book SPEAK in the ninth grade curriculum’ yesterday and already 109 people have joined!! I am not surprised, because SPEAK is a favorite, but I am pleased. I also just started a facebook event called ‘Letter- Writing for Speak.’
If there is anything else I can do to help my school system make the right decision, could you let me know?
Thank you<3
Re: censorship pains me
Can you please tell me the name and address of your school?
You and your parents should go to the high school office and ask for a copy of the district’s policy on how challenges to books are handled. Then you can ask for the information on how the SPEAK challenge proceeded.
Let me know what you learn.