I fell in love with Eva Ibbotson last week. Yikes! I can’t believe I’ve been living without this woman for so long. And I’m so glad I finally discovered her! A big thanks to Noel at Never Jam today for turning me on to this author.

I’ve read a couple of her books and have two more that should be at my door tomorrow. I’m so excited.

If you want to read my review of A Countess Below Stairs, a kind of “Sarah Crewe grows up and looks for a husband instead of a father” book, jump over here and read it.

I highly recommend that you ignore the stupid cover (because it gives you the wrong impression about the heroine. She’s a wonderful girl and she has dark hair, for pity’s sake, and red, work-worn hands.) and buy the book sooner, rather than later. I found this book totally satisfying.

So here is the promotional video for Just One More Book’s Rock Stars of Reading video series that kicks off tomorrow.

Wow! It looks like we’re in for an exciting month.

Other happenings around the kidlitosphere–these in celebration of National Poetry Month–are:

Gottabook’s ~ Thirty Poets, Thirty Days

Miss Rumphius Effect’s ~ 36 Interviews

Pencil Talk ~ accepting and publishing poems from students

I love children’s poetry. Still love the poems I learned to recite as a kid. They take me back to carefree days when you could be silly or serious or both in the space of a minute.

Yikes! I’d better start talking nice about Stephenie Meyer. She apparently can make an author. I’m not sure if that means she can break an author, too, but it seems like she’d make a better friend than an enemy.

But, wow! What kind of temptation that amount of power would present to a person. I would love to write books that millions of teens loved to read, but I don’t think the rich and famous part of the equation would be very pleasant. If I were in that position, I’m afraid my heart would shrivel and my head would expand. I’m thinking I’d be really tempted to believe the fans when they said I was wonderful.

What could a person do to fight off that temptation?

I know! If I’m ever rich and famous I’ll adopt several children. Kids have so many needs that parents fail to fulfill that every time you see them you’re reminded of what a failure you are. You may be serving millions of kids belonging to other parents but your own kids will keep you living in the real world where you know you’re just plodding along faking it, just like the next guy.

So the vampires and zombies are not swarming into just the US publishing houses at an alarming rate. The wee kids in Ireland love creepy books, too.

I’m not sure about this bit: 

In the book trade no one knows how long the teenage horror craze is likely to last, but so far it is showing no sign of slowing down. David O’Callaghan, Children’s Book Buyer at Easons, says that what is happening is brilliant for young readers. “I’m so excited — even more so than when the Harry Potter books started to fly off the shelves. Combining elements of horror, romance, darkness and the supernatural, the teen horror/goth-lit genre allows the reader to connect emotionally and has captured imaginations worldwide. …

Why is that brilliant? Do we want kids to connect emotionally with vampires? I mean, he lists several things–darkness, horror, romance why it  is good to mix these elements together to ”capture imaginations”  is not really clear.

Sure it’s dark, but the publishers are seeing a bright future for horror:

Reflecting the huge interest in the genre, Easons last week announced a nationwide promotion which they are calling Welcome to the Darkside. The promotion features a list of about 40 teenage vampire/horror books, including all the top authors and titles, and offers three books for the price of two from the list for the next month.

And parent’s and teachers are de-lighted with the dark fare.

The teenage vampire book craze has delighted teachers and parents, who have often struggled in the past to get teens to read and were worried that there might not be anything to fill the gap after Harry Potter. They should have had more bloody sense.

OK, wait, now. I loved Harry Potter and think the books were great reads in and of themselves. They didn’t need an excuse for existing. We didn’t need to hide them and if discovered say, “I know they are trash, but it’s all I can get my kid to read and I hope he’ll move on to bigger and better books after this.”

But if you are looking at the Harry Potter books that way, why then do you need something to fill the gap after Potter? If the kid has learned to read from reading Potter, why do you need to worry and wonder if there will be any horror to fill the gap left when Potter’s story is done.

Potter wasn’t horror by any stretch of the imagination. So I’m not sure why horror fills the gap left by Potter. I loved Potter and I don’t love vampires and zombies so they haven’t filled any gap for me. But then, the Twilight books don’t seem to be horror either, at least the first one wasn’t. So maybe I just don’t know what horror is.

Still, I don’t get the mindset that says, “Harry Potter taught the kids to read but we need to keep producing questionable/horrific/junky books so the kids will keep reading.”  That makes no sense. If Potter teaches kids to read he can be introduced to each new generation and then they can move on. They don’t need more and more books to teach them to read.

Jennifer Sky Band is distressed that publishers rejected her memoir saying she didn’t dish enough dirt.

Mean girls sell? Sure they do. Is a former teen model really surprised by this revelation?

Or did this gal just get turned down because no one has heard of her and she can’t write well?

Probably people do know who she is. I don’t, because I don’t have TV and I never buy pop culture magazines and I don’t read the newspaper.  But I have a hard time believing that anyone who was in the modeling world (I had to two friends who were models in high school) is not aware that teens have been reading junk for a long time. Even I know that, as cloistered as I am.

And yet I love this bit:

Aren’t we, adults who run the media, responsible for what our youth encounters? Why would we ever want our youth to grow up on sensationalized gossip?

It’s all about the money,  Jennifer. Surely you can understand this.