Source: io9
IS THE GOLDEN AGE OF YA SCIENCE FICTION OVER?
We thought we were living in a golden age of young-adult science fiction, with authors like Cory Doctorow turning to YA protagonists and authors like Scott Westerfeld and Suzanne Collins hitting big. But two bloggers say YA SF is scarce.
There’s been a lot of talk in science-fiction circles over the past year or two about how the biggest growth in SF publishing was over in the YA world. But now a couple of YA bloggers say actual YA science-fiction is hard to find.
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Source: entertainmentweekly
BLOOMSBURY WITHDRAWS ‘MAGIC UNDER GLASS’ COVER AFTER WHITEWASHING
Ready for the FAIL news of the day? Here it is: Publisher Bloomsbury has come under fire for whitewashing the cover of one of its titles — for the second time in a year.
The controversy began less than a year ago, when readers discovered that Justine Larbalestier’s Liar — a book about a biracial high school student — had a white girl pictured on its jacket. Now, the publisher is facing ire once again for its cover of Jaclyn Dolamore’s Magic Under Glass, a fantasy novel with an African-American protagonist, which features a white woman on its jacket. Oof.
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Source: timesonline
WILL SELF REVEALS WHY HIS ULTIMATE MODERN BOOK IS WELL’S ‘WAR OF THE WORLDS’
H G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds is one of those books that demonstrates our culture’s surprising ability to continue the manufacture of myth. I say surprising, because one would think, with all the technological reproducibility of art now at our disposal — from raw print, to film, to digitisation — that there would be no room left for that hazy instability within which myth thrives.
I first properly noticed the existence of these modern myths when working on my adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray — almost everyone knows the story of the beautiful young man who wishes his portrait would age rather than his looks fade, but only a small proportion have actually read the book.
It’s as if the centrality of narcissism to our culture had somehow been inseminated by the myriad versions of Wilde’s tale to produce this polymorphous myth; one so commanding that there are undoubtedly quite a lot of people who believe the story to be true.
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Source: nytimes
THE BOOK CLUB WITH JUST ONE MEMBER
Early in the novel “When You Reach Me,” which last week won the John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature, the narrator, Miranda, falls into an uncomfortable conversation with a schoolmate about her favorite book, “A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeleine L’Engle.
Miranda, who is 11, doesn’t want to have the discussion. “The truth is that I hate to think about other people reading my book,” she thinks. “It’s like watching someone go through the box of private stuff that I keep under my bed.”
Clearly, “When You Reach Me,” which the author Rebecca Stead set in 1970s New York City, does not take place in the era of Facebook, Goodreads, Shelfari or book clubs.
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