Congratulations John Green: Winner of the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award!

I was elated to wake up this morning and see on my news feed that John Green's The Fault in Our Stars had won the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award!

Seeing as how I know a few people on the Walden committee this year and how devastated I was that TFiOS didn't get a Printz nod, I have to give them a standing ovation for picking such a deserving title.

The books that were honored are equally as worthy:

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz
Ask the Passengers by A.S. King
Endangered by Eliot Schrefer

The Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award has been in existence since 2008 and is given annually by the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the NCTE (ALAN). The criteria for this award is that the winners must be works of fiction, "[exemplify] literary excellence, widespread appeal, and a positive approach to life in young adult literature."

I went to the ALAN workshop last year and wasn't going to go again this year, but now that John Green has won the Walden Award and might possibly make an appearance to accept it, I'm seriously reconsidering my decision to just attend NCTE and not ALAN. I heart John Green, what can I say? :)

If you're interested, the committee is currently seeking applicants. They are looking for one teacher, one librarian, and one university educator. If you're interested, all applications are due by September 15, 2013.

A Letter to John Green Re: The Fault in Our Stars

Dear John Green:

This is not a book review. This is a letter to thank you for writing one of the most brilliant books to ever grace the literary world.

I spent the entire day reading The Fault in Our Stars yesterday. I never do that. I don't have time anymore. I read upwards of 100 books a year, but it is done so in little pockets of time: listening to audiobooks while I cook dinner, reading as a passenger in the car while my husband drives us to Home Depot, finding a miniscule moment of time in my hectic day as a teacher to sit down at my desk and read a few pages while my students are taking a test.

So when I started to read the first pages of Hazel and Augustus's story on Friday evening, I wanted to stay up all night: I was that sucked into their world. But alas, my body does not allow me to stay up all night anymore, so upon awakening Saturday morning, I continued with their story. I did not move from my chair until I finished.

I don't even know how to express my feelings in words. Hazel and Augustus were real people to me. They were two of the most wonderful teenagers ever to have graced this planet, even if only in the pages of a book. So as their tragic story unfolded, I grieved for them, as I'm sure you did as you wrote their story. As I sat there reading, a pile of sodden tissues in my lap, my thoughts ping-ponged between sadness and joy. Conversations that were supposed to be tragic ended up making me laugh out loud at their light-heartedness and humor. Scenes that would have been cliche and caused me to roll my eyes in any other book made me weep at their tenderness and romanticism.

I planned to write a review for this book. I marked pages. I wrote notes. But the closer to end I crept, the more I realized that this book can't be reviewed. It can't be intellectualized. It must merely be felt. Don't get me wrong, there are so many great moments worthy of discussion in any book club or literature class, but to sit here, only 24 hours after turning the final page? All I can do is marvel.

In my 32 years on this earth, I have yet to declare one favorite book. When people ask, my students especially, what my favorite book is, I always tell them, "I have lots of favorites. I can't choose just one." Today and from here on out, whenever anyone asks me what my favorite book is, I can tell them, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it is The Fault in Our Stars. So thank you John Green. Thank you for Hazel and Augustus and Isaac and for all of the other amazing characters to grace this brilliant story. When I turned the last page yesterday, I grieved. Not just for the characters and for the end of the book, but also for the fact that I don't know if any book I read from here on out will ever live up to this one. You have made my reading life from this day forward a much more challenging endeavor. So thank you for that.

Recap of John Green's NCTE anti-censorship session and Giveaway: SIGNED chapter sampler of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

One of the highlights (i.e., THRILLS) of going to the NCTE conference was getting to meet John Green and hear him speak. He did a session on defending intellectual freedom and it was incredibly exciting and enlightening.

Some of the thoughts he shared from that session:

• The work of intellectual freedom is mostly done by teachers and librarians and very little with authors.
• When he wrote Looking for Alaska, he actually thought that critics were going to tear it apart for having too much of a naive Christian message. Which is why he was shocked when  people tried to ban it from schools, in particular because of one awkward sex scene that he wrote to juxtapose the contrast of empty physical encounters vs. emotional intimacy.
• Public schools shouldn’t exist for parents or even students. It’s for the benefit of the social order and a more educated work force (in response to the teachers who offered another reading option when they assigned LFA)
• When books are challenged, the easy thing for teachers and school boards to do is to just choose another book that won't cause uproar, but that is allowing ignorance to win. Teachers, librarians, and administrators need to keep fighting for intellectual freedom (which he recognizes is easier said than done).

Oh! And if you didn't already watch it, you can see me in the audience of his intellectual freedom session in one of his recent Vlogbrothers videos. I'm the one in the second row in the red sweater around the 0:11 mark.



Anyway, a little while after his session, John did a book signing at the Penguin booth and I got both of my books of his that I own signed (Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns), BUT they were also giving away chapter samplers of The Fault in Our Stars which he also signed one of those for me. 

I have read the chapter sampler and I can't even begin to describe how amazing this book is going to be. In the first two chapters, you immediately laugh, cry, and fall in love with the main character, Hazel. She is battling terminal thyroid cancer, which metastasized into her lungs, when she meets Augustus Waters at a cancer support group. What you expect to be a sad, downer of a narrative, has already managed to be hilarious and irreverent (as well as sad and tragic) in two short chapters. I already know this is going to be one of those books that makes me cry so hard I give myself a headache. I already managed to shed tears of sadness and laugh out loud in a mere two chapters.

With that, I bet you probably want to win my one and only signed copy of the chapter sampler of The Fault in Our Stars, right?

Just do the Rafflecopter thing and you are entered to win. 

Cover Reveal: John Green's The Fault in Our Stars

I'm surprised there's not more posts about this in the blogosphere right now. Unless you've been living under a rock, you probably already know that John Green's upcoming novel, The Fault in Our Stars, is set to be released in January. And you'd be living further under that rock if you didn't know that all pre-orders of this book will be autographed by John himself. To say this is a hugely anticipated book of 2012 is an understatement.

Well this book now has a cover!

My opinion? They definitely took a different approach with this book than the current trend of YA literature. When I look at this, my immediate thought is that they're trying to appeal to adults. The simplicity of this cover is very much indicative of the covers of literary fiction that currently grace the shelves of bookstores today. John Green has very much been a pioneer in the YA literature world. It may sound presumptuous of me to say this, but I think this cover is another example of his presence and his novels forging new trails.

What are your thoughts?

Other Blog Mentions

I've recently been following along with the blog Lavender and Limes. I found it by perusing through other people's blogrolls and was fascinated with all of the pictures from India. I have always been fascinated by India. One of these days I would love to go there to see the Taj Mahal and the opulent palaces of Rajasthan.

Right now Christine, the blog's creator, has an amazing giveaway going on that I thought I'd share because it's so great it bears mentioning and, well, if you link it to your blog, you get two entries instead of one. (*grins*)

*****

John Green is one of my favorite YA authors. Not so much because I think his books are brilliant (though I did absolutely adore Paper Towns) but because he and his brother Hank completely entertain me every week with their "Nerdfighter" videos they post on YouTube.

If one brother does not abide by the rules they have created for each other, the other gets to punish the rule-breaker, which is always videotaped for posterity.

Last week Hank broke one of the vlogging rules and was made to spend 15 hours in a Target for his punishment. I laughed the entire time:



If you're a fan of YA lit and you haven't checked out their vlog, you must.