#algonquin young readers

[graphicpolicy]

Crumble is a magical story that'll hit you in the feels, especially for parents

Crumble is a magical story that'll hit you in the feels, especially for parents #comics #graphicnovel #kidslit

Emily, her mom, and her aunt Gina have a very special magical power: They can bake emotions into the desserts they sell at their family bakery. Need a dash of confidence? Try their millionaire shortbread! Want relief after a stressful day? The cheesecake will lighten your spirits! There is only one rule: Never bake a bad feeling.    Story: Meredith McClarenArt: Andrea Bell Get your copy in…

[winningthesweepstakes]

Rohan Murthy Has a Plan by Rajani LaRocca, illustrated by Kat Fajardo

Rohan Murthy Has a Plan (The Kids in Mrs. Z’s Class, #2) by Rajani LaRocca, illustrated by Kat Fajardo. Algonquin Young Readers, 2024. 9781523526581 Rating:  1-5 (5 is an excellent or a Starred review) 4 Format: Hardcover Genre: Realistic fiction What did you like about the book? The kids in Mrs. Z’s 3rd grade class at Curiosity Academy are very excited when she takes them on a tour of the…

[bookstagramofmine]

Book Review: If I Promise you Wings by A. K. Small

Book Review: If I Promise you Wings by A. K. Small @NetGalley @AlgonquinYR @HachetteBooks #BookTwt #BookReview #YoungAdult #ARCReview

Thank you NetGalley and Algonquin Young Readers for the chance to read and review If I Promise you Wings by A. K. Small. If I Promise You Wings is a young adult coming of age novel that comes out on the 16th of January! It is the authors’ second novel, with her first being Bright Burning Stars which was turned into the movie Birds of Paradise. A. K. Small is French American and we defiantly get…

[meredithmcclaren]

I forgot it's PI(e) Day!

Enjoy a small comic about me baking pies.

And check out CRUMBLE! A kids comic by me and Andrea Bell, about big feelings and disastrous desserts. Available everywhere now.

CRUMBLE is out February 25th!

(I'll keep baking until then.)

Written by me, drawn by the lovely @andyharvest, and published by Little Brown Young Readers.

[carriejonesbooks]

Why Are Publishing Imprints Closing?

Algonquin Young Readers Will End in September The traditional book publishing world is a bit like the wild west if the cowboys wore pink-framed eyeglasses and could quote Derrida. People are heroes. People are let go. Entire divisions of publishing houses close. And so on. And this continues this week with the changes at Hachette Book Group and its announcement of the closure of Workman:…

[papenathys]

My friend made a similar post to this awhile ago but I think my problem with "cannibalism as obsessive love" or "blood drinking as shared eroticism" isn't the simple existence of the tropes so much as the fact that due to popular western culture, this ONE interpretation of vampirism and cannibalism has become the word of God interpretation.

Cannibalism is now allowed to mean nothing else except obsessive love, if one so much as dares to provide a different interpretation, it becomes far too bleak and disgusting to comprehend for a subsection of Western readers. Thinking of books primarily like Tender is the Flesh, Moon of the Crusted Snow, Walking Practice, even certain aspects of Hannibal NBC dare I say.

A slight digression into the NBC show; Hannibal cannibalizes humans not necessarily out of a twisted psychosexual need of intimacy, not always, not like Garrett Jacob Hobbs. More often than not, it's because he thinks they are "worse than pigs", his conversation with Dr. Gideon in the s3 flashbacks making it abundantly clear that to him, taking someone's bodily autonomy from them is okay if you're a "higher species/being". He cannibalizes people who irritate him, who instigate him, who happened to have been there. It's funny, it's petty, it's really darkly humorous, except when it's not, which is to say, when he takes the w***ig* form. I am not the biggest fan of Bryan Fuller's symbolism and his cherry picking from Indigenous cultures, but I am intrigued by how Hannibal is depicted in Will's semiconscious.

His mindset about his dehumanized victims too, is an interesting factor, when you consider how cannibalism has often been equated with the oppressor as a symbol of unsatiated greed in Indigenous horror; on a similar vein, one should see The Vegetarian by Han Kang for a gender aspect in Asian patriarchal society, where the heroine is brutalized for not allowing her body to consume flesh, or be consumed symbolically. Also, refer to the above linked article on Tender is the Flesh, which says, "You can’t call what’s going on here “cannibalism"....(it's) a literal Transition, from Taboo to Permitted", via the couching of it in livestock rearing terminology (or in Lecter's case, "ethical" hunting and fishing). Just as Bazterrica dehumanizes the "bred humans" as "head", Hannibal thinks little of the humans he eats, to him they are low hanging fruit or easy game; they deserved it, and because they could not resist the violence done unto them, unlike Will, who resisted, retaliated and became the perfect victim, they became breakfast. I would say he cannibalized Will without ever eating him. (I will also go into the psychological and erotic grooming aspect of Hannibal with ref to Will and Randall Tier in my essay...that too, is cannibalism).

Besides, as mentioned already, that show appropriates the image of Indigenous w***i** for its artsy aesthetic, when the creature is a monster specific to Indigenous, particularly, Algonquin mythos. Of course Indigenous horror looks at cannibalism in a different light: cannibal appetites and the monster itself is heavily connected to settler colonialism and greed. Not everything is about queer eroticism, Hannigram or Yellowjackets-style.

Note: Eat Your Young by Hozier, for example, definitely isn't about sexy times covered in blood, it's about capitalism and the military-industrial complex. You'll be surprised to know in what context that song is used online though.

Coming back to the topic of vampirism, which interests me much less in its current conceptualization, many readers slam dunked on House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson because the vampiric entity is a) not named, and b) tied to an almost blatant allegory of slavery and indentureship (see also: The Wicked and The Willing by Lianyu Tan). Idk what's more concerning, the fact that some did not "realise" that the vampires were a colonialism motif, or the fact that people regarded the queer relationships in these books to be merely primal, sexy, slightly "toxic" erotic devotion fantasies, rather than the sinister imbalanced powerplay of sexual coercion between racialized servant and white master–in a Victorian Gothic novel, that is one step away from styling itself as a historical antebellum allegory!

I have also seen people calling more nuanced understandings of these books "puritanical". Everybody is horny and nothing should ever be divorced from Freud, ever again. It reminds me of the complete forgoing of understandings of racial dynamics when it comes to watching Interview with The Vampire (particularly the Louis x Armand dynamic of s2, and the antiblackness of *many* IWTV fans) or reading a literary fiction novel about biracial identity and heritage like Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda, which I talked about here.

It's fascinating, if not particularly surprising how people pick and choose for dominant group narratives which taboo topic is sexy now, and which one is altogether too discomforting to be interpreted in a different light. Anyway, I will talk more about this in my essay about the oversimplification of taboo. My point is, these stories are all good, interesting (if flawed) "taboo" or dark fictional narratives. But isn't it boring to apply a single, overdone yet simultaneously undercooked interpretation to all discomforting stories, when sometimes, the canon itself is lending to other readings? Why can't there be more avenues of interpretation and discussion beyond the endless train of "cannibalism blood incest judas iscariot dog motif obsessive love"?

[cover-art-showdown]

Round Three, Match LVIII

The Witch's Boy (Kelly Barnhill), Algonquin Young Readers 2014. Cover by Jon Klassen.

Classic Tales of Mystery (editor uncredited), Canterbury Classics 2021. Artist unknown.

[literaticat]

With Algonquin closing, ive been hearing talk that YA is dying, YA writers are ditching YA to write adult, and only unicorns and super trendy YA books will get bought now. As a debut author, this is making me feel SO doom and gloom about my career even before it’s started! Do you have any thoughts? Thank u Jenn !

Not to be mean, but baby where have you BEEN?

YA has been "Dying" for like, the better part of a decade, and has been fully rigor mortis, toe up with a tag on it, authors "ditching YA", etc, for several years. If anything, YA has recently experienced something of a reanimation -- the former corpse has officially got a pulse again and is breathing, though perhaps still a little clammy. The hotness of 2024 is complaining about how MIDDLE GRADE is dead. Keep up! ;-)

In reality, everything is cyclical. Categories or genres or trends or whatever boom, they get oversaturated, sales fall off, eventually they come back. And people ALWAYS say that "publishing is dying" that "only trendy books will be able to be bought now" or whatever whatever. I was reading DEAR GENIUS, the collected letters of Ursula Nordstrom (highly recommend btw), and there was this whole part in there about bookstore people complaining that TV was destroying the publishing industry, nobody would buy books anymore, authors should just pack it in, etc. It was literally the same conversation, and that was like 70 years ago.

(For a bit of a reality check, you might check out this post from the pinned FAQ: I heard that traditional publishing is DEAD, is that true?)

As for your opening premise, I think it is faulty, AYR closing hasn't really got much to do with the other stuff.

To be clear: I love Algonquin Young Readers. I have sold many a beautiful book to AYR over the years; they were my special favorite. (Don't tell the others!) Their founding publisher, Elise Howard, who I aspire to be for real, is an absolute Dear Genius herself and a wonderful editor and person (and now, agent)!

I am very grateful to have been able to work with the whole team there for the past decade, and I am sad that the program Elise started and Cheryl Klein and the others continued will be coming to a close, and that two wonderful editors and a terrific marketing person will be looking for new jobs (but I do hope/believe/feel strongly that they will all land in good spots, they are really great!) -- HOWEVER.

Algonquin was bought by Little Brown several years ago. And whilst Algonquin the brand is closing now, those books are not disappearing, they are just being folded in to LB. In other words, the backlist books will still be in print, and the frontlist/forthcoming books are still going to be published, just with a different publisher name on the spine. Also Algonquin only published like... 2, maybe 3 new YA books per season? It's a small list! (Small but mighty! -- but still, very small!)

So.... I'm not sure what, if anything, the news of their closing says about the larger world of YA books? In other words, obviously it is NOT GREAT, it’s a sad loss, we loved that publisher, it's good for the publishing ecosystem to have a variety of publishers so fewer is not good, capitalism and massive corporate conglomeration and whatnot are sucky things, it's awful when nice people are out a job -- but there's zero reason for you to take that news as like, an OMEN about YOUR CAREER or something. It has nothing to do with you. Unless your book was coming out from Algonquin, it won't affect YOU at all. (And even if your debut WAS an AYR book... hopefully those effects would be minimal at the end of the day, as those books are still coming out!)

[musingsofmonica]

April 2024 Diverse Reads

April 2024 Diverse Reads:  

•”All We Were Promised” by Ashton Lattimore, April 2, Ballantine Books, Historical/Saga/African American & Black/Women

•”Real Americans” by Rachel Khong, April 30, Knopf Publishing Group, Contemporary/Family Life/Cultural Heritage/Asian American

•”The Cemetery of Untold Stories” by Julia Alvarez l, April 2, Algonquin Books, Literary/Fantasy/Magical Realism/Cultural Heritage/Hispanic & Latino/World Literature/Caribbean & West Indies

•”The Stone Home” by Crystal Hana Kim, April 2, William Morrow & Company, Literary/Historical/Saga/Psychological/World Literature/Korea/Multiple Timelines

•”Indian Burial Ground” by Nick Medina, April 16, Berkley Books, April 2, Horror/Thriller/Supernatural/Cultural Heritage/Native American & Aboriginal

•”A Magical Girl Retires” by Park Seolyeon, translated by Anton Hur, April 30, Harpervia, Contemporary/Fantasy/Feminist/World Literature/Korea

•”Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees” by 

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, April 30, Ecco Press, Essays/Short Essays/Essay Collection/Memoir in Essay

•”Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire” by Alice Wong, April 30, Vintage, Essays/Short Essays/Essay Collection/People with Disabilities/Love & Romance/Human Sexuality/Social Science

•”The Backyard Bird Chronicles” by Amy Tan, April 23, Knopf Publishing Group, Personal Memoir/Personal Memoir in Journal/Animals - Birds/Motivational & Inspirational/Illustration

•”Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder” by Salman Rushdie, April 16, Random House, Personal Memoir/Literary Figure/Survival/Cultural, Ethnic & Regional/Discrimination & Race Relations/Social Justice 

•”Just for the Summer” by Abby Jimenez, April 02, Forever, Contemporary/Romance/Romantic Comedy/Women/Small Town & Rural

•”How to End a Love Story” by Yulin Kuang, April 09, Avon Books, Contemporary/Romance/Romantic Comedy/Multicultural & Interracial/Diversity & Multicultural/Cultural Heritage Asian American/Workplace/Family Life/Siblings/Women

•”When I Think of You” by Myah Arie, April 16, Berkley Books, Contemporary/Romance/Romantic Comedy/Women/Hollywood/Workplace/Diversity & Multicultural

•”Canto Contigo” by Jonny Garza Villa, April 09, Wednesday Books, Contemporary/Romance/Culwtural Heritage/Hispanic & Latino/LGBTQ

•”Table for One: Stories” by Ko-Eun Yun, translated by Lizzie Buehler, April 09, Columbia University Press, Literary/Short Stories/Women/World Literature/Korea

•”One of Us Knows” by Alyssa Cole, April 16, William Morrow & Company, Thriller/Suspense/Psychological/Mystery & Detective/Women Sleuths/Women

•”Ocean's Godori” by Elaine U. Cho, April 23, Zando - Hillman Grad Books, Science Fiction/Space Opera/Romance/Asian American/LGBTQ

•”Kill Her Twice” by Stacey Lee, April 23, G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, YA/Historical/20th Century/Mysteries & Detective/Women Sleuths/Women/Culwtural Heritage/Asian American

•”You Know What You Did” by K. T. Nguyen, April 16, Dutton, Thriller/Psychological/Culwtural Heritage/Asian American

•”The Spoiled Heart” by Sunjeev Sahota, April 16, Viking, Contemporary/Political/Family Life/World Literature/England 

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Rook | Author: William Ritter | Publisher: Algonquin Young Readers (2023)

[ash-and-books]

Rating: 1/5

Book Blurb: In this gripping literary horror, Case’s best friend Drea goes missing, forcing her into a bizarre, cultlike—and possibly murderous world—perfect for fans of The Honeys and Mexican Gothic.Something bad happened here.

When Case arrives at a run-down, ivy-covered house tucked deep in the West Texas woods, an ashy haze lingers in the air and the sky is tissue-paper pink. Her best friend Drea has been living here with a few classmates Case has never met, and Drea asked her to visit in a letter dated two weeks ago.

But now Drea is nowhere to be found.

Drea’s roommates can’t—or won’t—answer questions, leaving Case to search alone. She finds bits of Drea’s journal hidden in the tiles of the bathroom wall, in a beat-up cooler by the muddy river, wedged into the frame of her closet door. As Case pieces together Drea’s life in this strange house, the roommates’ behavior puts her increasingly on edge—and she’s not the only one. The animals nearby are lashing out, attacking each other, threatening the humans.

Something bad happened in this house. Something that must be connected to Drea’s disappearance. And if she gets too close to the truth, Case just might be next.

Review:

A girl gets a letter from her best friend asking her to visit... only when she arrives at the house it's filled with hostile classmates that she's never met and her best friend is nowhere to be seen. Case is best friends with Drea, they write letters to each other all the time. Case receives a letter from Drea asking her to come visit and two weeks later Case is at the run down house that Drea lives in... but Drea is nowhere to be found and Drea's classmates who live there aren't saying a thing about where she is. Case is stuck in a place with zero cell reception and with people who refuse to tell her what has happened to Drea. Case has to figure out what happened to her best friend and why everyone is so secretive. This was advertised as a "gripping literary horror" and it felt more like a very very boring mystery. There was no horror in this, the only real horror was how bored I was trying to get to the end of this book (and its a short read so that definitely says a lot that I was struggling to stay present in the book). It really boils down to a simple mystery with characters who don't really have any personality and a mystery that is lacking any depth or interest. Unfortunately this one was a big miss for me and despite it's beautiful cover, I would say if you like super short simple mystery reads then give this one a go, it might be more to your liking than it was for me.

*Thanks Netgalley and Algonquin Young Readers for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

[graphicpolicy]

Some magical baking in Crumble is just one graphic novel we'll be reviewing this week

Some magical baking in Crumble is just one graphic novel we'll be reviewing this week #comics #graphicnovel

There are a lot of comics coming out every week to be covered. Check out some of what we’ll be reviewing and this is only some of what’s coming to GPTV this week! This week’s reviews include: Crumble (Algonquin Young Readers) Algonquin Young Readers provided Graphic Policy with FREE copies for review

[winningthesweepstakes]

Emma McKenna, Full Out by Kate Messner, illustrated by Kat Fajardo

Emma McKenna, Full Out (The Kids in Mrs. Z’s Class, #1) by Kate Messner, illustrated by Kat Fajardo. Algonquin Young Readers, 2024. 9781523525713 Rating:  1-5 (5 is an excellent or a Starred review) 5 Format: Hardcover Genre: Realistic fiction What did you like about the book? Emma McKenna is an 8-year-old cheerleader with twin toddler sisters, a wealth of knowledge about holidays, and a…

[wellesleybooks]

The National Book Award finalists have been announced.

2023 Longlist for the National Book Award for Fiction:

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars Pantheon Books / Penguin Random House

Aaliyah Bilal, Temple Folk Simon & Schuster

Eliot Duncan, Ponyboy W. W. Norton & Company

Paul Harding, This Other Eden W. W. Norton & Company

Tania James, Loot Knopf / Penguin Random House

Jayne Anne Phillips, Night Watch Knopf / Penguin Random House

Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls Mariner Books / HarperCollins Publishers

Hanna Pylväinen, The End of Drum-Time Henry Holt and Company / Macmillan Publishers

Justin Torres, Blackouts Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers

LaToya Watkins, Holler, Child Tiny Reparations Books / Penguin Random House

2023 Longlist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction:

Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History Yale University Press

Jonathan Eig, King: A Life Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers

Viet Thanh Nguyen, A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial Grove Press / Grove Atlantic

Prudence Peiffer, The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever Harper / HarperCollins Publishers

Donovan X. Ramsey, When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era One World / Penguin Random House

Cristina Rivera Garza, Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice Hogarth / Penguin Random House

Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers

Raja Shehadeh, We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir Other Press

John Vaillant, Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World Knopf / Penguin Random House

Kidada E. Williams, I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction Bloomsbury Publishing

2023 Longlist for the National Book Award for Poetry:

John Lee Clark, How to Communicate W. W. Norton & Company

Oliver de la Paz, The Diaspora Sonnets Liveright / W. W. Norton & Company

Annelyse Gelman, Vexations University of Chicago Press

José Olivarez, Promises of Gold Henry Holt and Company / Macmillan Publishers

Craig Santos Perez, from unincorporated territory [åmot] Omnidawn Publishing

Paisley Rekdal, West: A Translation Copper Canyon Press

Brandon Som, Tripas Georgia Review Books / University of Georgia Press

Charif Shanahan, Trace Evidence Tin House Books

Evie Shockley, suddenly we Wesleyan University Press Monica Youn, From From Graywolf Press

2023 Longlist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature:

Juan Cárdenas, The Devil of the Provinces Translated from the Spanish by Lizzie Davis Coffee House Press

Bora Chung, Cursed Bunny Translated from the Korean by Anton Hur Algonquin Books / Hachette Book Group

David Diop, Beyond the Door of No Return Translated from the French by Sam Taylor Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers

Jenny Erpenbeck, Kairos Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann New Directions Publishing

Stênio Gardel, The Words That Remain Translated from the Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato New Vessel Press

Khaled Khalifa, No One Prayed Over Their Graves Translated from the Arabic by Leri Price Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers

Fernanda Melchor, This Is Not Miami Translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes New Directions Publishing

Pilar Quintana, Abyss Translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman World Editions

Astrid Roemer, On a Woman’s Madness Translated from the Dutch by Lucy Scott Two Lines Press

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, The Most Secret Memory of Men Translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud Other Press

2023 Longlist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature:

Erin Bow, Simon Sort of Says Disney-Hyperion Books / Disney Publishing Worldwide

Kenneth M. Cadow, Gather Candlewick Press

Alyson Derrick, Forget Me Not Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers / Simon & Schuster

Huda Fahmy, Huda F Cares? Dial Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House

Vashti Harrison, Big Little, Brown Books for Young Readers / Hachette Book Group

Katherine Marsh, The Lost Year: A Survival Story of the Ukrainian Famine Roaring Brook Press / Macmillan Publishers

Dan Nott, Hidden Systems: Water, Electricity, the Internet, and the Secrets Behind the Systems We Use Every Day Random House Graphic / Penguin Random House

Dan Santat, A First Time for Everything First Second / Macmillan Publishers

Betty C. Tang, Parachute Kids Graphix / Scholastic, Inc.

Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long, More Than a Dream: The Radical March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers / Macmillan Publishers

[stephaniejoanneus]

The Beautiful Game by Yamile Saied Méndez

The Beautiful Game by Yamile Saied Méndez. Algonquin Young Readers, 2024. 9781643753980 Rating: 1-5 (5 is an excellent or a Starred review) 5 Format: Hardcover Genre: Realistic fiction What did you like about the book? From the first dramatic scene of a winning goal to the last one of a tournament penalty kick, this book was hard to put down. Twelve year old Valeria is the star player on her…