Dear Reader, What Should I Read Next?

Boy, it's been a while since I read a middle grade book--due to the fact that my book group recently read Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. (Over 600 pages!  Definitely not middle grade!)  I've also been working my way through The Artist's Way for a second time, and that's led me to check out all sorts of books on creativity. At this rate I'll need a new bedside table for the stacks!

Which got me to thinking that I need to get back into my middle grade groove. So, I headed to the library last week and grabbed a bunch off the shelves. But now I've found myself dithering about which ones to read. I thought it would be fun to have my loyal readers chime in. Below, you'll find the first lines from my selections. Please note in your comment which one you would be most tempted to read. (Bonus points if you can figure out any of the authors.)

Here goes:

#1: It all began on one of those days--one of those stupid days when absolutely everything goes wrong. First thing in the morning, when Tom tried to put on his jeans, he found his darling sister had knotted the legs.

#2: My little sister, Sam, knelt on the sofa, staring out the window. Our next door neighbors moved off base last week, and she was watching for our new neighbors to arrive.

#3: Papi had pretty much promised to stop bringing Tia Perla to Saint Scholastica school, but when the last bell rings on a Monday afternoon, there she is just the same, waiting for me in the parking lot: Tia Perla, yet again.

#4: On Monday, at exactly noon o'clock, our teacher, Mrs. Pellington, took us to the auditorium. She said there was a special surprise coming, but when we got there, we only saw other kids. It is a scientific fact that seeing other kids at school is not a surprise.

#5: My dad always says "Charlie Bumpers, your closet looks like a tornado came through and decided to live there."

Lovely to See You Again, My Dear

Summer vacations can drag on and on, it seems--and it was with perturbation I looked at the date of my last post and saw it was in July! Shocking!

It has been a very busy summer, what with almost two weeks in Orlando in August (gulp!) and the succeeding weeks being busy getting #1 Son ready for college. We drive up there next Friday, so that will be an interesting day...

I have been taking a break from middle grade fiction, and instead read THE BOYS IN THE BOAT by Daniel James Brown. Fascinating stuff, especially since I was a rower in my younger days--although I never feel quite so spiritual while slaving over my oars as did these young men in the 1930s. There were great insights, too, about life during the Depression years, and of pre-war Germany under Hitler.

I am almost done, too, with Michelle Knudsen's EVIL LIBRARIAN, which is a fun YA and which I may post about one of these days in my occasional "YA for a Day" series.

In two weeks, I will definitely be back full-time on Marvelous Middle Grade Monday, featuring Tricia Springstubb's MOONPENNY ISLAND

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What about you? How has your summer been, and what have you read? Do spill.

Sometimes Middle Grade Mafiosi read non-MG books...

I don't have a Marvelous Middle Grade Monday book for you today, but I do want to reassure you that I've been reading. A lot. Most of it's been A Game of Thrones and its sequels, but right now I'm almost at the end of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. It' s a merengue of musicality, opening my eyes to the terror that was the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic in the 1930s-1960s.

Sometimes it's good to flex the reading muscles in other areas, like working on your biceps rather than your abs. It'll be interesting to see how much infiltrates my writing too.

Have you strayed off your usual reading track lately? If so, what have you been reading?

How Can We Reach Them?

(Sorry guys, I hate it when these things don't post on schedule!!! Blogger Fail yet again!)

I am a huge fan of the blog Literary Rambles. Casey McCormick started it in 2008 and it is the definitive resource for finding out all about your favorite agents. Natalie Aguirre came aboard this year and is doing all sorts of book reviews and interviews with authors. Great stuff!

Yesterday, Natalie began her new series which she's calling "Ask the Expert." And who is this expert? None other than the guys for whom we middle grade mafiosi (and ninja and jedi and just plain writers) write. You can find her first interview with a guy named Justin here.

It was fascinating. Justin is an 8th-grader and a reader, but he doesn't find his reading choices on blogs. He gets recommendations from friends or sees ads on Facebook or Wikipedia.

In fact, this is what Justin has to say about writers and their blogs: If authors had websites that looked nice, loaded quickly, and were updated on a daily or weekly basis, I would follow them.

I don't know about you, but I've been to a lot of websites and most of them look lovely, upload quickly, and are updated regularly. So what can we do to get teens to visit, barring having them bussed in by the Don and his underlings?

I have to hand it to Justin, though. At least he reads. Because I am not at all sure that middle school kids are reading much these days. Unless it's the text on their iPods, iPhones, and iDon'tKnowWhatElses.

I googled "time teens spend reading," and came up with this blog post from a teacher in Canada called Elona Hartjes. Apparently, a report published in the Chicago Tribune called "Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8-18 year olds" found that children in this age group spend about 53 hours a week looking at screens. As Elona Hartjes continues:

Kids spend most of their time on their cell phones checking out Facebook, MySpace, texting, playing video games, watching TV and listening to music. They actually don’t spend much time actually talking on their cell phones. Those 53 hours kids spend on media takes away from family time. Communication between parents and kids is almost non existent.

All I can say is that when my 14-year-old finally saved enough money to buy himself an iPod touch, his screen time went through the roof. He used to be a big reader; now I have to force him (most of the time) to crack open a book.

(And I know, I know. It's the parents' responsibility to keep track of the time their kids spend on their devices and impose limits. I laugh now when I think of the "One hour of screen time a day" rule I had when he was younger!! As he points out, with a teen's chutzpah, "you're always on the computer yourself, Dad.")

With summer fast approaching, I can look into my crystal ball and see certain things happening: 1) If I want my kids to be active, as well as spend their down time reading, I'm going to have to 2) spend way less time blogging and more time connecting with them.

Either that, or I'm going to have to wake at 4 in the morning for my blog fix. I mean, who needs sleep, anyway?

Anyone else have "a friend" whose teen spends too much time on-screen? If so, what strategies does your "friend" use to make sure his/her child knows what a book looks like? A middle grade mafioso would be grateful for some advice.