I am planning to write a feature in the August issue of Bookslut on political books with appeal to teenagers. I don't have a list yet, although I imagine Little Brother will be front and center, but there is a stack of books, both fiction and non, that I'm considering. (David Levithan's amazing Wide Awake which I've already reviewed and the charming but slightly crazy Under My Roof by Nick Mamatas will be included for sure.)

I also plan to include a couple of nonfiction titles that will hopefully make YA readers think a bit about American foreign policy and how we need to be more careful about what we do around the world and the long reach our decisions can have. (Gerald Caplan's The Betrayal of Africa, one of the Groundwood Guides, is looking like an excellent choice.)

The point with this project is that I can't expect a sixteen-year old to run out and read Samantha Power's latest book, but I can certainly get him or her primed to read Power a little later. It has not escaped most of us that young voters are heavily involved in the Democratic primary in ways that they have never ever been engaged in the past. As someone who was utterly and completely nonpolitical through college, I am thrilled to pieces to see seventeen and eighteen year olds so jazzed about presidential primaries. I voted as my parents did for years - I voted (and that's something I'm proud of) but I didn't put a lot of thought into who I was voting for. It honestly did not occur to me to care too much. I figured if my parents felt the guy was good, then that was good enough for me. When I moved out of state and didn't have any guidance I had to work it out on my own and I did, plus the older I got the more I read about world events and the more I paid attention. But I was easily in my late 20s before I really had a handle on every election I voted in.

Figuring out the political process when you are nearly 30 is way too late and it is part of what has gotten our country in such a huge mess. We trusted generations who had gotten complacent (and I say this with all the love and respect in the world for people who worked hard and did their best to keep America strong) and we didn't voice our opinions. We didn't make suggestions, we didn't come up with alternatives, we didn't think.

We just haven't been thinking for a long long time.

So. I'm doing a feature on political books (my column in August will eco-titles, both fiction and non). And while that is all well and good I'm thinking it is not nearly as huge a deal as it should be. It's not just teenagers that need to be reading books of political importance it is ALL OF US. We all need to be reading about foreign policy, the environment, civil rights, Iraq, Guantanamo, renewable energy, coal mining, the polar bear, trading with China, oil policy and on and on and on.

We all need to be getting smarter about what we want for our country and ourselves.

Last August we did Recommendations Under the Radar week and it was pretty awesome. As we all know, August is a pretty slow month for literary news so what if we spent the month blogging about political books? What if we did a concentrated effort across the lit blogosphere to write about books that make us think, make us consider new ideas, make us commit to becoming politically involved. They don't have to be nonfiction - Jo Walton is one of the greatest political writers I know - so go with what works for you. But if enough of you are excited about this, then I'll run a master schedule here and the only thing I ask is that every review you post on a book that fits the political description you let me know about and you link to the schedule in your post. That way your readers will be able to find out about other political books and by the end of the month we will have an absolutely killer list to spread around.

You can just do one book in the month - or five or whatever. Your choice. And genre is wide open (graphic novels are great, etc.) and this is NOT an YA only deal. Any age you want to target would work - I'd appreciate it if you could let me know if it's a little kid book though, so I could note that in the schedule. And please don't cover a ton of historical titles...we all know there are a bazillion books on the American Revolution for 4-8 year olds; I'd rather aim a bit more at books relevant to modern times. This doesn't mean a historical book wouldn't work (again with Jo Walton!) but it has to transcend the period it is written about, if that makes any sense.

Oh - you guys know what I mean. Just write about great books!

There you go, that's my plan. I'm committed already but if anyone else wants to join then that would be fabulous. This is an incredibly significant election year; we are in a lot of trouble in a lot of areas and whatever change happens in November, it's going to be significant. Let's not take this one for granted; let's all participate in fixing the country. One way to start is to learn about options and in order to do that we need to start reading.

This will be cool, (in a remarkably current events geeky kind of way), I promise.

UPDATED: If I wasn't clear, adult book are excellent for this - we're talking an all ages event here, so books from 4-100. Don't be held back thinking it's only for kids.