Goodreads

If you're a book lover, you definitely want to check out Goodreads!

Goodreads is a social networking site for readers to share their favorite titles, follow their favorite authors, and post their thoughts about the books they've read recently. It's a virtual version of the real life conversation that happens all the time, just like this:

                    Your friend says, "I just read this awesome book. You have to read it."
                    You answer: "What was it? I'd love to check it out!"

Goodreads says: "Our mission is to help people find and share books they love. Along the way, we plan to improve the process of reading and learning throughout the world."

Goodreads has more than 10,000,000 members who have added more than 380,000,000 books to their shelves. WOW!

Things you'll find on the shelves:

• Space to rate and review your favorite books
• Reviews by your friends
• Blog posts by authors you like
• Fun literary quotes, quizzes and trivia
• Book clubs and discussion groups

Check it out!

Monday Musings: How do you choose your book covers?

It's a very popular misconception that authors get to design our own book covers. Every publishing company has a design department full of artists whose job is to design the covers for other people's books.

How do I feel about this process, you might ask?

On the one hand, it's a little bit hard to give up control of something as important as the book cover. Even though people always say, "You shouldn't judge a book by its cover," it's impossible not to form an opinion about a book based on what you see when you look at it. Waiting to see the first book jacket samples is one of the most nerve-wracking parts of the publishing process for an author.

On the other hand, I think it's wonderful that my book covers are designed by expert artists. They know how to use graphic design programs that use cool fonts, add photo effects and all sorts of digital magic. Their skills make them much better equipped to design a book jacket than I would be. I'm only an expert with words, not with pictures!

Most of my book cover images so far have been "stock photographs." This means the book designer purchased from companies that collect photographs from many different sources, and collect them in a huge library of photos. (Getty Images is an example of a stock photography company.)

Camo Girl (hardcover)

Camo Girl (paperback)

Karin, my book designer for The Rock and the River and Fire in the Streets, chose close-up faces to feature the main characters. She also designed the hardcover jacket of Camo Girl, which is also a photograph of a girl's face, with digital photo treatments to make her face look a bit different.

When Camo Girl came out in paperback, the designers decided to try a different look for the book, and an illustrator named Yuta Onoda drew a cover that features all three main characters.

For my YA novel, 37 Things I Love, the book designer is named April. She could not find a stock photograph that matched the way she wanted the book cover to look. So she hired a photographer and models to create the picture she wanted. It was very exciting for me to learn that they did a special photo shoot for my book cover. Photo shoots are great because the cover photo is perfectly tailored to the book, but they don't happen very often because it can get expensive!

Top Five Must-Have Books for any Writer

Image: Freedigitalphotos.com/Surachai

1. Dictionary. Words, words, words! Never doubt the power of words--and words are most powerful when used correctly. Every writer should have a dictionary on hand, even if you're an excellent speller, because there are always new words to learn. And no matter how smart you are, no matter how long you've been writing, every once in a while you will find yourself asking: "Does this word really mean what I think it means?"

2. Thesaurus. A thesaurus allows you to look up words by their meaning, rather than their spelling.  This book is tremendously helpful when you know the meaning of what you want to say, but aren't sure you've found the perfect word. Words are grouped by synonym, so you can easily find less common words to work with.

If you like poetry, I would also recommend picking up a Rhyming Dictionary. It's kind of like a thesaurus, but instead of grouping words by definition, it groups them by sound. Especially helpful when you're looking for a rhyme for "orange."

3. Encyclopedia. The encyclopedia is a fabulous resource for a writer, because the encyclopedia's goal is to provide a little bit of information about as many things as possible. The content is ordered alphabetically by subject, and you can look up everything from biographies of notable world figures, to the history of a particular animal species, or a description of how a technological invention actually works, and much more. There are almost always photos that go along with these short articles, too.

4. Almanac. All kinds of interesting facts and tidbits are contained in this book. Flip through an almanac sometime, and you'll see what I mean. You never know when you will get a story answer. Almanacs are especially useful if you write about historical time periods--you can easily look up the birth and death dates of historical figures, and what they were known for, in addition to plenty of pop culture trivia, like which movies were popular in a given year, or what were the most popular baby names, or what was the market price of different products, or when major brand name companies came into existence. And so much more!

5. Craft Books. Okay, this is not just one book, but a type of book. There are hundreds of books that have been written about how to write well. (Some of them are better written than others.) Here are a few I recommend:

• What's Your Story? A Young Person's Guide to Writing Fiction by Marion Dane Bauer
• The I Love to Write Book by Mary-Lane Kamberg
• The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers by John Gardner
• Spilling Ink: A Young Writer's Handbook by Ellen Potter, Anne Mazer and Matt Phelan

***By the way...in this day and age, you can find a lot of these resources online, too. It's nice to have a physical book ou can flip through, because you never know what you will find, but definitely also check out online dictionaries, thesauri, and encyclopedias. (Wikipedia does not count, friends! You also need to look for sites that contain published, edited content.)

Monday Musings: "What have you written?"

I have published four novels for teens, plus several nonfiction books. I talk a lot about my work on my website; you can CHECK IT OUT HERE.

Here's a bit about my books:

37 THINGS I LOVE
Ellis Baldwin only has four days of her sophomore year left, and summer is so close that she can almost taste it. But even with vacation just within reach, Ellis isn’t exactly relaxed. Her father has been in a coma for years, the result of a construction accident, and her already-fragile relationship with her mother is strained over whether or not to remove him from life support. Her best friend fails even to notice that anything is wrong and Ellis feels like her world is falling apart. But when all seems bleak, Ellis finds comfort in the most unexpected places. Life goes on, but in those four fleeting days friends are lost and found, promises are made, and Ellis realizes that nothing will ever quite be the same.

THE ROCK AND THE RIVER
1968, Chicago. Thirteen-year-old Sam Childs finds himself caught between his father (a well-known civil rights leader) and his older brother, Stick, who joins the Black Panther Party. When escalating racial tensions throw Sam’s community into turmoil, he faces a difficult decision. Will Sam choose to follow his father, or his brother? His mind, or his heart? The rock, or the river?
CAMO GIRL
Set in the modern-day suburbs of Las Vegas, biracial sixth-grader Ella Cartwright finds herself caught between two worlds. She is drawn to the popular new boy, Bailey—the only other black student in the school—but also loyal to her best friend, Z, a geeky boy whose social status, like hers, is bottom-rung, and with whom she has shared an incomparable friendship. A relationship with Bailey means a chance at popularity for Ella, but Z is far too weird to ever be accepted by his classmates. When push comes to shove, where will Ella turn for real friendship?

FIRE IN THE STREETS (a companion to THE ROCK AND THE RIVER)
At fourteen, Maxie Brown is too young to be a Black Panther—or so everyone says—but it’s the only thing on her mind. When Maxie wakes up hungry, the Panthers serve breakfast in the school yard. When her friends are unfairly threatened by the police, the Panthers show up and make the cops back down. To Maxie, the Panthers are everything–so why won’t they take her into their ranks? Maxie is determined to prove herself worthy—she vows to do anything necessary to fulfill her dream. But when she finally figures out what she’ll have to do to become a Panther—is it worth the ultimate price?

TODAY THE WORLD IS WATCHING YOU: THE LITTLE ROCK NINE AND THE FIGHT FOR SCHOOL INTEGRATION 1957-58

In the fall of 1957, nine black students became the first to integrate the previously all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Their particular struggle against racism paralleled the experiences of many black children in the south after the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. The Little Rock Nine’s situation rose to national prominence when the governor sent Arkansas National Guard troops to block the black students from entering the school on their first day of classes. The tumultuous events that followed captured the attention of the entire nation. Today the World is Watching You chronicles the Little Rock Nine’s harrowing first year at Central High and the impact of their courage on the generations of black Americans that would follow them.