YA BOOK GIVEAWAYS THIS WEEK
Reality Boy
by A. S. King
Hardcover Giveaway
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Released 10/22/2013
Gerald Faust knows exactly when he started feeling angry: the day his mother invited a reality television crew into his five-year-old life. Twelve years later, he’s still haunted by his rage-filled youth–which the entire world got to watch from every imaginable angle–and his anger issues have resulted in violent outbursts, zero friends, and clueless adults dumping him in the special education room at school.
Nothing is ever going to change. No one cares that he’s tried to learn to control himself, and the girl he likes has no idea who he really is. Everyone’s just waiting for him to snap–and he’s starting to feel dangerously close to doing just that.
In this fearless portrayal of a boy on the edge, highly acclaimed Printz Honor author A.S. King explores the desperate reality of a former child “star” who finally breaks free of his anger by creating possibilities he never knew he deserved.
Author Question: What is your favorite thing about Reality Boy?
I have a few favorite things about REALITY BOY.
First, I like the epigraph. You’ll have to read it yourself (It’s like a treasure hunt!) but it says a lot for me.
Next, I like that the book explores our reality TV culture and how it might affect us, and not just the people on these shows. Sure, the book is about a boy who appeared on reality TV as a young child, and whose reputation was molded by that appearance, but I hope it pushes readers to explore their own realities and ask questions like: What, on TV, do I believe? Why do I choose to believe what I believe? What shows on TV are real? How do I know when I can trust a source?
And last, I think my real favorite thing about REALITY BOY is that like many of my books, it attempts to show a way out to anyone who is in pain. Through Gerald’s struggle it illustrates that there is life after something that seems insurmountable. And who knows? Maybe a reader might understand that the lies people see and hear on the Internet, TV or even though gossip are not all that entertaining after all.
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YA BOOK GIVEAWAYS LAST WEEK: WINNERS
Friends and Traitors
by C. J. Hill
Hardcover Giveaway
Feiwel & Friends
Released 10/15/2013
Winner: Em Lee
The Slayers — teens who have powers to fight dragons — are back by popular demand in this high-octane sequel, now with a new cover package!
Tori is at a White House dinner party when she hears a horrifying sound: dragon eggs hatching. It means in less than a year, the dragons will be mature and dangerous. The Slayers are well-trained, but their group is not yet complete, and Tori is determined to track down Ryker Davis, the mysterious Slayer who has yet to surface.
What Tori doesn’t bargain for, however, is the surprising truth about her powers: she isn’t a Slayer after all, but a Dragon Lord, with a built-in predisposition to protect dragons, not kill them.
How will she overcome this to save the lives of her friends?
Author Question: What is your favorite thing about Friends and Traitors?
My favorite thing is that I got to write about three characters having an air-chase in downtown DC. DC has lots of cool monuments that just beg for someone to fly around them. (The Washington Monument, all those towers on the Smithsonian Institute building, the golden angel on top of spires of the Mormon temple. Come on, you know you’d like to fly around there yourself.) It’s Halloween and so my main character, Tori, is dressed up as Supergirl at the time. As you can imagine, there’s lots of fun reaction from the pedestrians who witness the fighting.
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Pretenders
by Lisi Harrison
Hardcover Giveaway
Poppy
Released 10/15/2013
Winner: Olivia Hinebaugh
My picture is on page eighteen of Noble High’s Phoenix yearbook. I am one of the Phoenix Five. You nominated me. You thought I was one of the most outstanding students in our freshman class. You were wrong.
Still, I accepted my award. I acted special. But I couldn’t help wondering what it was like to be that way for real. So I broke into Ms. Silver’s safe in the faculty lounge and stole all five of our journals. I’m not exposing them out of jealousy or anger. I’m doing this because I am tired of the lies. The bar is too high, and cheating is the only way to reach it. Instagrams are filtered, Facebook profiles are embellished, photos are shopped, Manti T’eo’s girlfriend was a fake…is anything real anymore?
I found the answer in our journals. These are 100 percent real and 100 percent unedited. The proof is in the pages:
We’re all pretenders.
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MORE YOUNG ADULT FICTION IN STORES NEXT WEEK WITH AUTHOR INTERVIEWS
Teardrop
by Lauren Kate
Hardcover
Delacorte Press
Released 10/22/2013
Never, ever cry. . . . Eureka Boudreaux’s mother drilled that rule into her daughter years ago. But now her mother is gone, and everywhere Eureka goes he is there: Ander, the tall, pale blond boy who seems to know things he shouldn’t, who tells Eureka she is in grave danger, who comes closer to making her cry than anyone has before.
But Ander doesn’t know Eureka’s darkest secret: ever since her mother drowned in a freak accident, Eureka wishes she were dead, too. She has little left that she cares about, just her oldest friend, Brooks, and a strange inheritance–a locket, a letter, a mysterious stone, and an ancient book no one understands. The book contains a haunting tale about a girl who got her heart broken and cried an entire continent into the sea. Eureka is about to discover that the ancient tale is more than a story, that Ander might be telling the truth . . . and that her life has far darker undercurrents than she ever imagined. From Lauren Kate comes an epic saga of heart-stopping romance, devastating secrets, and dark magic . . . a world where everything you love can be washed away.
Author Question: What is your favorite thing about Teardrop?
When I lived in rural northern California, the nearby lake was a flooded valley that had once been the site of a small village. Imagined ghosts of this underwater town haunted me, leading to an obsession with flood narratives, from Noah’s Ark to Plato’s Atlantis to Mesopotamia’s Gilgamesh. To research Atlantis, I began with Plato. He wrote two strange, unfinished texts called Timeaus and Critias, which are the earliest (and, many scholars say, the only “true” accounts of Atlantis. Plato gives compellingly exact descriptions of the place–down to the measurements of the land and the types of metals found in the ground–so we know he had a very clear vision of what Atlantis looked like. What we don’t know is whether or not Plato believed in Atlantis. For those who do believe–from the occultist writers whose strange books I devoured while preparing to write Teardrop, to the Turkish and Greek graduate students who led me on an Atlantean research-scavenger hunt through Athens, Greece and Ephesus, Turkey–Atlantis’ existence is historical fact. For me, there is an important poetic truth in Plato’s writings. They were the foundation of my research and the backbone of the series.
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MORE YOUNG ADULT NOVELS NEW IN STORES NEXT WEEK
Allegiant
by Veronica Roth
Hardcover
Katherine Tegen Books
Released 10/22/2013
What if your whole world was a lie?
What if a single revelation—like a single choice—changed everything?
What if love and loyalty made you do things you never expected?
The explosive conclusion to Veronica Roth’s #1 New York Times bestselling Divergent trilogy reveals the secrets of the dystopian world that has captivated millions of readers in Divergent and Insurgent.
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Freakboy
by Kristin Elizabeth Clark
Hardcover
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Released 10/22/2013
From the outside, Brendan Chase seems to have it pretty easy. He‘s a star wrestler, a video game aficionado, and a loving boyfriend to his seemingly perfect match, Vanessa. But on the inside, Brendan struggles to understand why his body feels so wrong–why he sometimes fantasizes having long hair, soft skin, and gentle curves. Is there even a name for guys like him? Guys who sometimes want to be girls? Or is Brendan just a freak?
In razor-sharp verse, Kristin Clark folds three narratives into one powerful story: Brendan trying to understand his sexual identity, Vanessa fighting to keep her and Brendan’s relationship alive, and Angel struggling to confront her demons.
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Indigo
by Gina Linko
Hardcover
Random House Books for Young Readers
Released 10/22/2013
A gift?
A curse?
A moment that changes everything. . . .
Caught in an unexpected spring squall, Corrine’s first instinct is to protect her little sister Sophie after a nasty fall. But when Corrine reaches out to comfort her sister, the exact opposite occurs. Her touch–charged with an otherworldly force and bursting with blinding indigo color–surges violently from Corrine to her sister. In an instant, Sophie is dead. From that moment on, Corrine convinces herself that everyone would be better off if she simply withdrew from life.
When her family abruptly moves to New Orleans, Corrine’s withdrawal is made all the easier. No friends. No connections. No chance of hurting anyone. But strange things continue to happen around her in this haunting, mystical city. And she realizes that her power cannot be ignored, especially when Rennick, a talented local artist with a bad-boy past, suggests another possibility: Corrine might have the touch. An ability to heal those around her. But knowing what happened to her sister, can Corrine trust her gift?
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