Readers on Reading – Page 3

Let’s Take Queer YA Out of the Closet

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:41:40-05:00May 22nd, 2015|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs, Readers on Reading|Tags: Booktube, Representation|

by Vee S. Authors, editors, and readers are important to the Queer YA community, but there’s another group that matters too: reviewers. We are lucky that there are so many fantastic reviewers reading, loving, and reviewing Queer YA books. But a growing number of reviewers have adopted a “code of silence” around queerness in the YA books they review. They are well meaning, but that code of silence is putting queer YA in the closet. thingslucyreads posted this excellent video on what she calls Booktube's "code of silence." Luce says in her video that she's noticed that in reviews [...]

Comments Off

Tumblr Teens: BookMad for Diversity

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:41:40-05:00May 20th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs, Readers on Reading, Teen Voices|

by Manda/BookMad “People talk about coming out as though it’s this big one-time event. But really, most people have to come out over and over to basically every new person they meet. I’m only eighteen and it already exhausts me.” – Everything Leads to You by Nina Lacour This ongoing call for diverse characters—of all races, of all genders, of all sexual/romantic orientations, anything you can name under the sun—isn’t so widespread because readers are hungry for new and interesting characters to paint the ever-changing, complex fictional worlds they’ve built inside their heads. It runs much, much deeper [...]

Comments Off

I’ve got a girl in the war

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:41:48-05:00May 13th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Guest Blogs, Readers on Reading|Tags: asexual, Non Binary, Representation|

by Marieke Nijkamp “The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons. But children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children the dragons can be killed.” With these words, the late, great Terry Pratchett famously misquotes G.K. Chesterton’s Tremendous Trifles. It’s not a misrepresentation of Chesterton’s ideas though. For Chesterton, too, stories were St. Georges, dragonslayers. But I’d like to think it goes further than that. Stories tell readers dragons come in many ways and many forms—from false friends to overwhelming dystopias. Stories do not just tell readers dragons can be [...]

Comments Off

Booktube Needs You!

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:41:49-05:00May 5th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Book Review, Guest Blogs, Readers on Reading|Tags: Book Community|

by Danika Leigh Ellis If you're a bookish person, and especially if you're a fan of YA, you should be exploring the wonderful world of Booktube by now. Booktube is the bookish community of Youtube. Hundreds of people make videos about books, from reviews to bookish tags to provocative discussion topics. It's similar to the book blogosphere, but feels more interconnected. Being able to see people's faces as they discuss book they're passionate about makes it a much more personal interaction, and you quickly begin to feel like you really know the people you follow. Booktube is also [...]

Comments Off

I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It but not in a Vapid Katy Perry Way

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:00-05:00May 2nd, 2015|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Guest Blogs, Readers on Reading|Tags: Bisexual, Queer Girls|

by Justina Ireland The first time I kissed a girl I was fifteen. It was at one of those awkward boy/girl house parties where everyone wants something (beer, weed, sex) but the parents are too near to properly get at it. We played spin the bottle, since this was before the Internet and that’s what we did for fun in the old days, and mine happened to land on a girl I barely knew. For a moment we hesitated, while everyone in the room collectively held their breath. Then I shrugged. “We don’t have to if you don’t [...]

Comments Off

We Want More Gay YA

By Maria|2020-03-28T13:43:21-05:00April 10th, 2011|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs, Readers on Reading|Tags: Representation|

By Maggie Hira I’d like to think I wasn’t quite eavesdropping on them. But I was. I totally was. And what I heard was extremely enlightening. It happened a few weeks ago at my local Barnes & Noble. I was in the YA section, as usual, not looking for anything in particular, but browsing for something that would catch my eye or pique my interest. That’s when I heard them chattering in the other aisle—two teenage girls also on the hunt for an interesting read. I didn’t want to listen in on their conversation, but I couldn’t help [...]

2

The Gay Gamut

By admin|2020-03-28T13:43:24-05:00April 2nd, 2011|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs, Readers on Reading|Tags: Representation|

Today's guest post was written by Charlotte Johnson of Lady Charlotte's House of Delirium. Enjoy! Admittedly, my exposure to LGBT characters in young adult fiction has been less than desired. Perhaps the first gay character I met was in Holly Black’s second novel, Valiant, which of course was Ruth (and eventually Luis, but only in retrospect…actually, I wasn’t even sure Ruth was a lesbian because Jen, a girl who did not approve of Val, had called her so). Then, when I read Tithe, I met Corny. Oh dear, Corny, those scenes between him and Nephamael were almost [...]

3