http://chavelaque.blogspot.com/2013/05/a
- Some of the realest kid characters I've ever read in a novel, with dialogue that exactly captures the way kids can switch from snarkiness to sensitivity in a turn.
- With that, a terrific sense of humor and jokes that made me laugh out loud more than once.
- A 12-year-old heroine -- Dahlia Sherman -- who loves performance magic and math more than popularity and fashion, and who holds herself a little apart from her peers in part because of that lack of shared interests, and in part because she fears their rejection. (This was probably my real point of identification with the book, I do confess it.)
- A totally original combination of elements: A contemporary Jewish summer camp story set in Pennsylvania and starring Dahlia, crossed with a story about a yeshiva student named David in the Lower East Side of New York City in the 1930s, both shot through with fantasy and mystery.
- This completely lives up to the definition of "new" I offered a couple weeks ago.
- A terrific title.
- A kind of magic I had never seen before in a fantasy novel -- and when you've read as many fantasy novels as I have, that's saying something.
I'm delighted to welcome Ari Goelman to my blog for a Q&A.
What novels were the biggest influence on you when you were a young reader (ages 8-18)? As a middle-grade reader I loved the Susan Cooper ‘The Dark is Rising’ series, especially the novel The Dark Os Rising. I also loved the book The Silver Crown, and (as I got older) pretty much any high fantasy I could get my hands on, starting with The Lord of the Rings trilogy and ending with ... whatever the latest high fantasy was. As a slightly older teen reader I discovered Steven Brust and Roger Zelazny – especially loving Brust’s To Reign In Hell and Zelazny’s Lord of Light. Which, now that I think about it, were both pretty centrally concerned with magic and religion, albeit in a totally different way than The Path of Names.
There are so many interesting ideas packed into this book -- summer camp, Kabbala, magic (real-world and fantasy), mazes, Lower East Side history. . . . Where did it start for you? How did these other elements develop in it? I think it started with a summer camp story, and evolved from there. Once I decided to set the story in a Jewish summer camp, I thought, “Hmm. Jewish summer camp – Jewish magic. That seems to make sense.”
Then, once I started thinking about Jewish magic, that naturally led to Kabbala and the rest. I’ve always been interested in the somewhat forgotten elements of Jewish folklore. I was raised as a conservative Jew where the party line was, ‘We don’t believe in magic. Or the afterlife. Or demons. Or witches...’ I was a young adult before I started to come across references to all the Jewish superstitions that saturated the Jewish world for centuries before the Enlightenment.
Described in that way, it might make me seem a little smarter than I am. Here is the way it actually worked: I’d be in synagogue for a cousin’s bar mitzvah or such, and there’d be a mention of an anecdote in the Talmud about a rabbi hurling lightning at another rabbi. The lesson would supposedly be something about tolerance or arrogance. But I would sit there thinking, ‘A rabbi hurling lightning? That is so cool! I would love to read a fantasy story about that.’
As far as the parts set in the Lower East Side, my grandfather grew up in the 1930s Lower East Side, and I always loved the stories that he and my great uncles would tell about their boyhoods in the tenements. When I was older I discovered that he had visited the spot in rural Pennsylvania which ultimately became my summer camp some fifty years before I was a camper there. I loved the thought of somehow combining those two milieus.
The fantasy magic in the book is based in what I understand to be a very esoteric Jewish religious practice – the Kabbala – but the book isn’t religious at all. Dahlia and the other kids spend very little time contemplating God. You also have a provocative epigraph where you quote Bernie Cloud: “Religion is just magic, but with more words.” How do your own relationships with religion and magic emerge in The Path of Names?I think I very much share the ambivalence towards Judaism (and organized religion in general) that is evidenced in The Path of Names. It was fun to write a story where all the Jewish magic works. The world would be so much simpler if you could verify religious belief systems with some sort of physical manifestation ... say, calling down lightning on your enemies. Religion aside, I find magic and the supernatural creeps into most everything I write. I’m not totally sure why this is. Like I mentioned before, I’ve always been an avid reader of fantasy literature. Maybe it comes from my general interest in ideas of power and resistance, especially when they’re operating in ways that are secret, or at least hard to see. I have this sense (which I think is pretty broadly shared in contemporary society) that power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few in ways that are hard for the rest of us to see, let alone to resist. Also -- let’s face it -- magic is fun. It would be fun to be a thirteen-year-old with the power to change things, even if the odds seemed stacked against you.
http://www.unshelved.com/2013-5-18
http://www.unshelved.com/2013-5-18/
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This classic Unshelved strip originally appeared on 5/17/2003 .
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Starting Monday is a week of celebrating YA books! Summer reading! Smart reads! You can make video book recommendations or tweet them to #IReadYA all week and see what everyone is reading. It is started by http://thisisteen.tumblr.com -- and if you make a video, tell them! Change your icon/avatar by stealing this cute red circle.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/05/18/a-m
http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=21883
Me and Jay Lake at the Nebula Mass Signing yesterday. I taste of executive power. For another few weeks, anyway.
Picture borrowed from jay’s site, here.
http://www.theboyfriendlist.com/e_lockha
Come join me and a great crowd of YA writers on Monday, May 20th at:
YA Icons
Books of Wonder is thrilled to welcome 5 NY Times bestselling authors of exciting teen novels.
6pm Monday May 20th!
NY Times bestselling author MARGARET STOHL delivers Icons, the first book in a heart pounding series set in a haunting new world (and the inspiration for this event's name!)
NY Times bestselling author GAYLE FOREMAN unveils Just One Day, the first book in a sweepingly romantic duet of novels
NY Times bestselling author TONYA HURLEY gives us chills with The Blessed, the start to a haunting and captivating new trilogy
National Book Award finalist E. LOCKHART shares Real Live Boyfriends, the fourth hilarious episode of Ruby Oliver's high school career;
NY Times bestselling author BARRY LYGA presents Game, the sequel to his hit thriller I Hunt Killersand National Book Award finalist ELIOT SCHERFER shares Endanged, his harrowing tale of one girl's struggle to save a group of bonobos.
The authors will present their novels, answer questions and sign copies of all their titles.There will be light refreshments served.
In other news, there is a cover for We Were Liars and I adore it hugely. They tell me they are blinging it up, which I think means the lettering will be puffy or embossed, so I don't have the image to share yet. But Squee. I love getting a cover and I will show it to you guys as soon as I can.
I've just been in Portland for school visits and my new book for little kids, Water in the Park, came out this week. It's a Brooklyn book. A water book. A times of the day book. An inclusive, friendly, neighborhoody book with really cute babies and dogs drawn by Stephanie Graegin. Details of our appearances this month are here, if you're local and have a little one.
http://www.theboyfriendlist.com/e_lockha
Come join me and a great crowd of YA writers on Monday, May 20th at:
YA Icons
Books of Wonder is thrilled to welcome 5 NY Times bestselling authors of exciting teen novels.
6pm Monday May 20th!
NY Times bestselling author MARGARET STOHL delivers Icons, the first book in a heart pounding series set in a haunting new world (and the inspiration for this event's name!)
NY Times bestselling author GAYLE FOREMAN unveils Just One Day, the first book in a sweepingly romantic duet of novels
NY Times bestselling author TONYA HURLEY gives us chills with The Blessed, the start to a haunting and captivating new trilogy
National Book Award finalist E. LOCKHART shares Real Live Boyfriends, the fourth hilarious episode of Ruby Oliver's high school career;
NY Times bestselling author BARRY LYGA presents Game, the sequel to his hit thriller I Hunt Killersand National Book Award finalist ELIOT SCHERFER shares Endanged, his harrowing tale of one girl's struggle to save a group of bonobos.
The authors will present their novels, answer questions and sign copies of all their titles.There will be light refreshments served.
In other news, there is a cover for We Were Liars and I adore it hugely. They tell me they are blinging it up, which I think means the lettering will be puffy or embossed, so I don't have the image to share yet. But Squee. I love getting a cover and I will show it to you guys as soon as I can.
I've just been in Portland for school visits and my new book for little kids, Water in the Park, came out this week. It's a Brooklyn book. A water book. A times of the day book. An inclusive, friendly, neighborhoody book with really cute babies and dogs drawn by Stephanie Graegin. Details of our appearances this month are here, if you're local and have a little one.
for Cynthia Leitich Smith's Cynsations
This week 6000 people attended Canada’s largest children’s literature event, the Forest of Reading, Festival of Trees—two days of award ceremonies, writing workshops, author signings, and other exciting activities that celebrate the shared experience of reading.
Child readers from participating schools across the province of Ontario chose the winning books. The awards in each age category are named for a different Canadian tree, and the winner plaques feature original art by a child reader.
 |
| Blue Spruce award winner Martin Springett |
2013 Blue Spruce™ Award Winner (K-grade 2): Kate and Pippin by Martin Springett and Isobel Springett (Puffin Canada/Penguin Group)
2013 Silver Birch® Express Award Winner (grades 3-4): Margaret and the Moth Tree by Brit Trogen and Kari Trogen (Kids Can Press)
2013 Silver Birch® Fiction Award Winner (grades 5-6): Making Bombs for Hitler by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch (Scholastic Canada)
2013 Silver Birch® Non-Fiction Award Winner (grades 3-6): No Shelter Here: Making the World a Kinder Place for Dogs by Rob Laidlaw (Pajama Press)
2013 Red Maple™ Fiction Award Winner (grades 7-8): The Vindico by Wesley King (G.P. Putnam’s Sons/ Penguin Group)
 |
| Red Maple Non Fiction winner Bill Swan |
2013 Red Maple™ Non-Fiction Award Winner (grades 7-8): Real Justice: Fourteen and Sentenced to Death by Bill Swan (James Lorimer & Company)
 |
| White Pine winner Jeyn Roberts and nominee Lena Coakley |
2013 White Pine™ Award Winner (grades 9-12): Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts (Simon & Schuster BFYR)
Le Prix Tamarac 2013 (French language fiction, grades 5-6): Le mystère des jumelles Barnes by Carole Tremblay (Bayard Canada Livres)
Le Prix Tamarac Express 2013 (French language fiction, grades 3-4): Billy Stuart: 1. Les Zintrépides by Alain M. Bergeron and Sampar (Éditions Michel Quintin)
Le Prix Peuplier 2013 (French language fiction, grades K-2): Le zoo de Yayaho by Geneviève Lemieux and Bruno St-Aubin (Bayard Canada Livres)
Cynsational Notes
She became interested in young adult literature when she moved to Toronto, Canada, and began working for CANSCAIP, the Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers, where she eventually became the Administrative Director. She is now a full-time writer living in Toronto.
Witchlanders, her debut novel, was called “a stunning teen debut” by Kirkus Reviews. It is a Junior Library Guild selection and an ABC new voices selection.
See also New Voice: Lena Coakley on Witchlanders.
 |
| Read the novel by Suzanne Collins |
for Cynsations
From the promotional copy:
"'The Hunger Games: Catching Fire' begins as Katniss Everdeen has returned home safe after winning the 74th Annual Hunger Games along with fellow tribute Peeta Mellark. Winning means that they must turn around and leave their family and close friends, embarking on a 'Victor's Tour' of the districts.
Along the way Katniss senses that a rebellion is simmering, but the Capitol is still very much in control as President Snow prepares the 75th Annual Hunger Games (The Quarter Quell) - a competition that could change Panem forever.
"'The Hunger Games: Catching Fire' is directed by Francis Lawrence, and produced by Nina Jacobson's Color Force in tandem with producer Jon Kilik. The novel on which the film is based is the second in a trilogy that has over 50 million copies in print in the U.S. alone. 'The Hunger Games: Catching Fire' opens Nov. 21."
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/05/18/rt-b
http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=21880
Welcome to Saturday.
First: Look! A video interview with me from RT Book Reviews, taken during the Booklover’s Convention a couple of weeks ago in Kansas City. I talk about The Human Division, the RT convention and some SFWA matters:
Second: Jamie Todd Rubin reviews The Human Division in Intergalactic Medicine Show, and has nice things to say about the book. For example:
The Human Division is not just John Scalzi at its best, it is science fiction at its best.
Yup, that’s a jacket blurb right there.
Third: Nebula Weekend fabulous so far. Wish you were here.
It rained today. Still is raining. Well, it did stop for about an hour, but mostly it’s been raining all day. Girlie had to play soccer in it and frankly it was cold. In the 40s. But we really need the moisture. We’re in a drought and this will help all the fields and the feed for animals. Not to mention we’ve already had fires here. Didn’t do my walking though. Slugged out. More soccer tomorrow and possibly Iron Man 3.
Working on something that isn’t coming together very well. It’s very shiny though. So I keep stirring it to see what will turn up. Trouble is, I have to break outside my own expectations for a particular place. Normal behavior in this place doesn’t apply, nor do typical motivations, or typical laws. It’s upside down in a lot of ways, for a good reason, but I keep falling into traditional mental patterns and I have to get out of that. If only it were that easy.
All the purple has vanished from my hair and I need to put it in again. I’ll try to work on it this weekend.
Doing some research for my current WIP. Not sure if I’m getting anywhere. I’d like to go visit the location.
Originally published at www.dianapfrancis.com. You can comment here or there.
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Page Summary
cherylklein : All About THE PATH OF NAMES: Behind the Book, Q&A, & Giveaway! [+0] - unshelved_comic :
Unshelved on Saturday, May 18, 2013
[+0]
- elockhar : [no subject] [+0]
- scalzifeed : A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste [+0]
- elockhar : Monday May 20th, Books of Wonder. [+0]
- elockhar : Monday May 20th, Books of Wonder. [+0]
- cynleitichsmith : Canada’s Forest of Reading Winners [+0]
- cynleitichsmith : Movie Trailer: "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" [+0]
- scalzifeed : RT Book Reviews Video Interview; IGMS Review of THD [+0]
- difrancis : Rain [+0]