Nice long weekend, lovely weather and lots of gardening. Here's some thoughts on books and other topics for your Tuesday morning:

My friend Eliza is looking for info on a book from her childhood. Here's the description from her note to me:

okay. sometime in the mid-late 80s, i checked a paperback out of the school library called "the power." it was a teen horror novel. and it scared the living crap out of me. all i remember is that someone got his / her throat cut. (sorry to be graphic.) for some reason i am obsessed with finding out who wrote this book. i found something called "the power" that was the third in a series but it was published in 92 so that can't be it.

Any of you book loving types who recognize this book, please leave a note in the comments so I can let Eliza know.

In my entry on boy books vs girl books, Hope left an comment that has really gotten me thinking. We were going back and forth on how to get the word out to boys (or girls) on books they might like and she related that she was just asked by a mother how to find book recs for her son. Hope mentioned the web but the mother was unaware that the kidlitosphere even existed. So, in light of the many things recently written about book reviews I'm thinking we really need to come up with some way to spread the word about this incredibly rich reviewing resource to folks who don't know. It seems to me that the thing we in the lit blogosphere in general, but kid lit bloggers in particular, should be concerning ourselves with is getting the word out beyond the blogosphere. I love mining the blogs for reading and reviewing ideas, but I really want parents and kids to know about the books I find and love. The question is how to do that exactly - how do bloggers reach people who aren't blogging?

My initial thought is that we must reach kid/teen librarians - both school and otherwise - and make them aware of places they can refer their patrons to for reviews. It wouldn't be necessary to bombard them with 100 or 200 blog lists, just a few key sites that provide plenty of links (like the Carnival) would do. They could start there and follow the links. But right now I don't know what kind of plan we need to do this most effectively - I'm mostly just sending the question out and asking all of you what you think. Should we get a master list of libraries, split them up by state and start emailing librarians with links? It would be a big project, but if we could define it by sections, it could become manageable. And the goal is an admirable one - letting readers know about places to learn about good books. That's why we're doing this after all, so let's figure out a way to do it even better.

Feel free to comment here or send me an email.

My most patient agent, Michele, has let me know that she is still trying to sell my book but short story collections are tough. What's frustrating is that my book is not really a short story collection it's a story cycle - those of you familiar with Margo Rabb's Cures for Heartbreak will know what I'm talking about. All the stories are in sequence, they involve the same set of characters and although I have been able to let some of them standalone and run in lit magazines, you have to read them collectively in the book to know what happens to everyone. But on the surface - yeah - it looks like a short story collection and that is apparently very scary to editors. So I'm practicing my patience mode some more. Michele is very dedicated to the book and I believe in her abilties to sell it, but still - I really wish editors would give it a long enough look to see what it is. (I mean really - it's about Alaska and flying! How much more macho does a damn book have to be?!)

I just sent the big column to Bookslut for June - thrillers, mystery, romance, historical drama, coming-of-age, SF - a little bit of everything this go-round. I hope it makes some girls happy and gives them many summer reading choices. I also reviewed a memoir on returning to Ramallah and a biography of Alfred Wegener (the guy who came up with the theory of continental drift!)

There's also an interview with the lovely Cecil Castellucci on all of her books and being creative and what she hopes to accomplish with her characters. Very cool stuff.

For the next issue of Eclectica (deadline this week) I have a piece on mysterious houses (several YA books to choose from there), one on teenage romance (I'm writing up Dream Factory right now...most highly recommended!) and a review of James Prosek's The Day My Mother Left, which I still think is not a YA book but a book for adults remembering their childhoods. I'll let all of you be the judge when my review goes up.

I also think I'll do a short picture book round-up for over there of fun summer reads - I've got about a half dozen that fit the bill and it seems silly to wait until my regular big picture book review in the fall to write about them.

I also read the new Anita Blake - The Harlequin and found it pretty good. LKH seems to be mellowing out a bit on the sex and getting more into the politics of the vamp/furry world and this go round makes a huge foray into everyone's personal relationships. You have the typical Richard meltdown, but also a kinda Edward meltdown, a big conflict with Anita's cop world and multiple problems among the lycanthropes. Oh - and the bad guy is pretty crafty and totally bad.

So all Anita Blake fans, consider that one recommended.

I'm also catching up on the Buffy comics and if you love the show and you're not reading Season 8 then you are a fool - A FOOL! It's awesome and I'm loving it.