GreenBeanTeenQueen

Rating: 4/5 Stars Genre: Contemporary/Romance Release Date: 9/29/2011 Add to Goodreads About the Book: Lola loves dressing in unique costumes. The more elaborate, the better. She has an awesome wardrobe, a rocker boyfriend, and awesome dads who are loving. Her life is pretty perfect-until Cricket Bell moves in next door. Cricket Bell, who broke Lola's heart a few years before. Lola is over Cricket, isn't she? But with Cricket so close, Lola has to decide where her heart truly lies and what she really feels for the boy next door. GreenBeanTeenQueen Says: OK, here's the thing, I loved Anna and the French Kiss . Adored Anna. So when I heard about Lola, a companion novel to Anna, I was nervous. How would it live up to the first book? How could I not compare the two? And would Cricket be as crushworthy as St. Clair? The answers were yes and no. In some ways I really enjoyed Lola and in others it didn't quite live up to my expectations. It's still a great novel

photo_credit Jenni Howell Photography Please welcome Tess Hilmo, author of With a Name Like Love, to GreenBeanTeenQueen. Today is the official launch day of Tess Hilmo's debut! To celebrate, I asked Ms. Hilmo to write about libraries because, you know, I'm a librarian and all and I always love hearing about everyone's library experience. I hope you like it too! Built in Friends Growing up, I lived in ten different places by the time I was 14. Ten! It was a challenge to make new friends with each move. But there was one friend I never had to worry about. My librarian. See these chairs? They are bright and welcoming and a perfect place for an uncertain girl who needed somewhere to hang out. This was my favorite refuge during my high school years–the Newbury Park California library branch–but there were many inviting chairs and many kind librarians that helped me long before I found this particular spot. Wherever we happened to be, I knew I could go into my local

Tween Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted at GreenBeanTeenQueen to highlight great reads for tweens. Join the fun and add your link below. For today's Tween Tuesday, I'm excited to sharing debut author Tess Hilmo's novel, With a Name Like Love. Today is the official launch day of the book, so I hope you find this one at a library or bookstore near you in the wild today! You can follow the blog tour to Mother Daughter Book Club . And check out Tess Hilmo's website for a discussion guide , because you'll be wanting to use this one in book club-just saying!:) Rating: 5/5 Stars Genre: Mystery/Historical Release Date: 9/27/2011 Add to Goodreads About the Book: Olivene " Ollie" Love is the eldest daughter of the traveling minister, Reverand Everlasting Love. While Ollie appreciates her father's ministry, Ollie longs for a house with indoor plumbing and to stay in a town longer than three days. When the Love's come across Binder, Arkansas, Ollie me

Banned Books Week is here! I hope you will celebrate the freedom to read this week by reading a banned book. ALA is hosting a virtual Read Out  so I decided to join in the fun and celebrate by reading one of my favorites, A Wrinkle In Time . I also wanted to re-post my review of Sarah Ockler's novel, Twenty Boy Summer , since it was recently banned in my community and Sarah will be visiting my library this week. Rating: 4/5 Stars Genre: Contemporary Release Date: 6/1/09 About the Book: Frankie, Anna and Matt have always been inseparable.  Then one summer changed everything-Matt and Anna become something more.  They spend a month sneaking out and sharing a summer romance-until the tragic accident that Matt dies in. Now, a year later, Anna is joining Frankie and family on their first summer vacation without Matt.  Frankie is convinced if they find a boy every day, Anna will have a summer romance.  Anna still keeps her and Matt a secret and she's not sure she's re

I'm a big fan of The Drake Chronicles series by Alyxandra Harvey, so of course I was excited to hear about Bloomsbury's new bind up of the first three books in the series. Hearts At Stake , Blood Feud , and Out for Blood have all been repackaged into one new volume titled Ruling Passion. Check out the gorgeous new cover! All the Drake brothers are very crush-worthy (my favorite is Nicholas-love him!) This series is such fun and the characters are all awesome and kick butt with just a bit of snark, which I always enjoy. So I'm thrilled to share the love. One lucky winner will recieve a copy of Ruling Passion thanks to Bloomsbury Teen. -US Shipping Address Only -One Entry Per Person -Contest Ends Sept. 27 at midnight CT Leave a comment below to enter-good luck!

Tween Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted here at GreenBeanTeenQueen to highlight great reads for tweens. Join the fun and post your link below. Rating: 4.5/5 Stars Genre: Fantasy/Science Fiction/Graphic Novel Release Date: 09/01/2011 Add to Goodreads About the Book: (from publicist): Kazu Kibuishi's thrilling, NEW YORK TIMES bestselling series continues! Emily and her friends think they’ll find the help they need in Cielis, but something isn’t right.  Streets that were once busy are deserted, and the townspeople who are left live in fear.  Emily is soon escorted to the Academy, where she’s expected to compete for a spot on the Guardian Coucil, a group of the most powerful Stonekeepers.  But as the number of competitors gets smaller and smaller, an awful secret is slowly uncovered – a secret that, if left buried, means the certain destruction of everything Emily fights for. GreenBeanTeenQueen Says: I first came across the Amulet series when I first started working in the l

Next month, I will be presenting a session at my state library conference on Keeping Up With YA. The goal for the session is to present titles that are "must know" books and books that be paired with those titles to help keep up YA collections. My session is only 45min. long which is not a lot of time to talk books, so my goal is to provide attendees with handouts that will have even more titles in the categories I'll be talking about. I'd love some help putting together a list of "must know" YA reads-I'd like books from the last three-five years that librarians should know and have in their collection. The genres I'd like to cover are: Contemporary Romance Contemporary Fiction Mystery Science Fiction Dystopian Paranormal Issue-driven YA Humor Fantasy Historical Audiobooks What books would you say are "must know" YA titles that librarians should read and know about? And what books would you say are "must reads" for teens?

I used to participate regularly in In My Mailbox. But lately, I've stopped posting this meme for a couple of reasons. -I somtimes feel that In My Mailbox is a bit show-offy. I like how I see what people are getting and what's really being promoted, but for me, I don't want to appear as though I'm bragging about what books I got. So at times I had a hard time posting my mailbox posts. It didn't bother me as much if it was library books or books I bought, but I kind of disliked showing the books I was mailed-either by request or not. It just felt a bit selfish to show off advanced reader copies. Because that's not what blogging is about for me-who got the most coveted ARC. Blogging isn't about ARCs and making people jealous, it's about sharing books. I felt like showing off a pile of ARCs was a bit like saying "look, I'm cooler than you" and I really hated that. I know not everyone feels that way and some people really like mailbox posts an

Trivia Judge Rita Skeeter I love trivia! Any chance I get to use trivia in a program, I add it because I'm such a trivia nerd. Add in my love for Harry Potter and a Harry Potter trivia contest sounded like the perfect library program! The idea for a Harry Potter trivia contest came from my cousin-in-law, who is one of the most Harry Potter obsessed teens that I know. She spent a year working on trivia just for the fun of it. Kaylee went through each book and came up with easy, medium, hard, and ridiculously hard questions for each chapter. (Told you she was obssessed!) With the trivia question work already done for me, I transformed it into a program. I browsed through Kaylee's questions and pulled out ten for each book with a variety of easy to ridiculously hard since we had all ages. I tried to pick the most ridiculously hard questions because I knew we would have some hardcore fans who would know everything ! I took the questions and added them to a powerpoint. I requir

Author Kathleen Churchyard, author of the middle grade novel, Bye for Now, has a lot of Hollywood experience! So when she came up with the idea for a guest post about how books get made into movies, I knew she had to write it! You know I love my book to movie adaptations-I post weekly movie news here on the blog. So if you've ever wondered what exactly is involved in a book to movie, you'll want to check out Kathleen's post! What happens when my book hits Hollywood? Guest Post by Kathleen Churchyard Despite 16 years working as an executive in LA, there’s no job I ever held that’s as conversation-sparking as my very first secretarial job in the West Coast Book Department of William Morris and subsequently ICM. I get asked the above question all the time, so today’s blog is my answer to all. My boss was a co-agent. That meant she didn’t sign many author clients of her own. Predominantly, she was responsible for selling the film and television rights to every book, of e

Tween Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted here at GreenBeanTeenQueen to highlight great reads for tweens. Join the fun and add your post below. Rating: 3.75/5 Stars Genre: Contemporary/Fantasy Release Date: 8/23/2011 Add to Goodreads About the Book: Robin's 11th birthday is not going well. She bumped into her sister and got a black eye, she can't win at her swim meet, and her sister has head lice so now she has to spend the evening having her head checked instead of having a sleepover with her best friend. It's so bad in fact that Robin wishes to be someone else. The next thing Robin knows she's Fiona from London, England. Robin has taken over Fiona's life and it seems pretty glamorous-Fiona is set to star in a professional production of Peter Pan ! Robin discovers that there's a whole network of wishers-11-year-old girls who wish to be someone else. As fun as Fiona's life is, Robin misses her own home-so how can she make it back? GreenBeanTeenQueen Says

Please welcome Cinda Willams Chima to GreenBeanTeenQueen! Cinda is the author of  The Seven Realms Series which just released book three with The Gray Wolf Throne . The Seven Realms Series is one of the most talked about fantasy series at my library-seriously, my teens love it! They've been talking about it since book one, which made Mr. GreenBeanSexyMan and I both have to pick it up! The series is an engaging adventure with wonderful descriptions, kick butt characters, and magic-what's not to love? Seriously, if you work in a library that has avid fantasy readers, you need to add these books to your shelf! I'm happy to share her thoughts on writing magic-and hopefully this inspires all you aspiring fantasy writers out there! Magic 101 Magic is the element that distinguishes fantasy from other types of fiction. But what is magic? And how much of it do you need to call your work a fantasy? What are the keys to developing a coherent magical system of your own? First a

Please welcome Tami Lewis Brown to GreenBeanTeenQueen! Tami is the author of the middle grade novel, The Map of Me . Tami has a great post about libraries that warms my heart! I hope you love it too! Why I Read Dangerously—or How the Sidney Eline Library Saved My Life The motto on my website says READ DANGEROUSLY. It’s a directive I take seriously—both as a reader and a writer. Read with open eyes and an open mind. Seek out new writers, new genres, new ideas. Read to foster life long learning. For me reading dangerously isn’t about reading books with “bad language” or drugs or promiscuous behavior. It’s REAL danger. It’s reading books that make you think. But I wasn’t always an adventurous reader. In fact, the odds were against me being any kind of reader at all. Decoding came hard. By second grade I was barely keeping pace with Dick and Jane and the Sparrows reading group while the Bluebirds and Cardinals soared into chapter books. No one in my family was an enthusiast

Tween Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted here at GreenBeanTeenQueen to highlight great tween reads! Join the fun and add your link below. This week, I have a blog tour stop for Tami Lewis Brown's debut middle grade novel, The Map of Me . Check out the next stop on the tour at The Book Monsters . Rating: 3/5 Stars Genre: Contemporary Release Date: 8/30/2011 Add to Goodreads Find out more about Tami and download an activity kit at her website About the Book: When Peep and Margie arrive home to find a note on the fridge from Momma that says only "I have to go" Margie is convinced that she knows where Momma went. Momma has to be at the International Poultry Hall of Fame to find the Henny Penny Coin Bank to complete her chicken collectables. It's up to Margie to find her and bring her home. So Margie finds an extra key to Daddy's Faithful Ford and Margie and her younger sister are off in search of Momma. As Margie sets off on a trip to find Momma, Margie dis