Lauren Takes Leave!

I am thrilled to announce that my novel, Lauren Takes Leave, is now available for purchase at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com.  Click HERE to go to the book's page on Amazon!

IMPORTANT!  In other news, my blog has been moved to my new website, www.juliegerstenblatt.com.  I will not be updating this On the Verge site after July, 2012.  All new content -- plus the older posts -- can now be found at one convenient cyber-location.  I'd love to have you follow me there!

Interview with Annabel Monaghan, author of new YA novel, A Girl Named Digit

You know that feeling you get from holding a new book in your hands, excited by the promise of the first few pages?  That’s how I felt when I first read A Girl Named Digit by Annabel Monaghan.  It was a Saturday morning.  My Kindle and I crept downstairs in the dim morning light and hid under a blanket on the far end of the couch in the sunroom, pretending that we were still asleep.  In that way, I disappeared from my family’s radar for the better part of the morning, and by the time they found me and begged for breakfast, I was already hooked on Digit.

            

And that was good news, because before reading her novel, I was already hooked on Annabel Monaghan.

Annabel and I met in a novel writing workshop at Sarah Lawrence College in the Fall of 2010.  She was there to workshop a project called Digit, and since her novel was completed and the rest of ours were not, we read her manuscript first.  In person, Annabel is funny and self-deprecating and humble and smart.  She’s the one you want to sit next to in class so that you can pass notes back and forth and give each other meaningful eye rolls, as if a continuing education course at a local college is the same setting as your high school biology lab.  (Which, in a way, it is.) By week two, we had our own little inside jokes. As I sank into my couch, I desperately hoped that her book would live up to the real her. Continue reading here.

Up Close and Not so Personal With 50 Shades of Gray author E.L. James

When I heard that the author of 50 Shades of Gray was going to be speaking at Willow Ridge Country Club in Harrison, NY, I immediately emailed my friend, writer Annabel Monaghan.  “You’ve got to come with me to hear E.L. James,” I begged. 

            

Annabel and I met in a novel writing workshop at Sarah Lawrence College about a year and a half ago.  On the first day of class, we went around the table and introduced ourselves.  It was instant kinship.  In the oft-recycled words from the film Jerry Maguire, she had me at “I wrote a YA novel about a math genius that falls in love with the FBI operative hired to protect her from terrorists,” and I had her at “my main character is a teacher and mom who lies to her family and her employer and takes off for a much-needed vacation.”

            

Who else to sit next to at a 50 Shades luncheon than one another?

            

“I’m going to have to think about it,” she wrote back.  “On the one hand I want to attend, and on the other, I fear it might suck out my soul.”

          
Understood.  Continue reading here.

How to Get a Book Deal: Tiger Mom, Diet Mom, and Me

Amy Chua, also known as The Tiger Mother, received a high six-figure advance for her 2011 memoir.  In this book, she recounts in great detail the ways in which she uses traditional Chinese parenting methods to drive her daughters towards perfection in the arts.  This is old news, of course.  But now there’s Dara-Lynn Weiss, aka the Diet Mom.  In the April issue of Vogue magazine, Dara writes honestly and openly about the strict parenting methods she employed to help her overweight seven-year-old daughter slim down.  Within a few weeks, she, too, had a book deal.

            

What do these women have in common?  The publishing world would say that Chua and Weiss are both exemplars of the new “damned if you do/damned if you don’t” parenting genre.  If you push your kid too hard, you get called out.  If you act too lax, you are scrutinized for not demanding more.  Either way, if you are willing to throw your daughters under the bus, there’s always something to write about.

            

It’s not so much about the children in these scenarios as it is about the mother.  The secret to securing a book deal these days is to expose one’s inner bitch to the world. Go to The Huffington Post to continue reading...

Loved the Hunger Games? Other Great YA Books that Adults Should Be Reading

Confession: I read children’s books. For fun. Like, all the time. Did you get hooked on Harry Potter? Torn apart by Twilight? Did you Hunger for more of The Hunger Games? Did you think, well, I’ll only do it this one time, because they’re making the series into movies and everybody’s reading them? Well, that’s nothing.

When I‘m on a YA bender – and, hello world, I’m on one now! -- I read at least one teen title a week.

For me, reading YA is like having a candy bar in the middle of my lifelong diet. Filled with nougaty goodness, it’s easy to digest and damned satisfying. And, when I’m done, I don’t have to discuss it with my book club.

Reading YA is like temporarily leaving your grown-up, responsible day job to cut class and hang out in the food court at the mall with your new BFF.

It’s, like, totally ahmayzing.

So, without further ado, here are some of my top picks for grown-ups who sometimes wish they could recapture their teen years or who just like reading about adolescence. Maybe you have an adolescent in your house and you can share titles. Maybe you don’t. It doesn’t matter to me either way. I’m a book pusher and this is just good stuff.

Read the rest on the Huffington Post...

Pornography for Mommies

Originally posted on the Huffington Post on January 18th.  Read it here or below.

Let me get one thing straight here, oh Moms In Desperate Need of Erotica: I am not joking. This is not about getting hot and bothered by watching your husband clean the kitchen. It’s not even about getting turned on by hiring a sexy electrician to boss around your kitchen.

I have done both of these things in the name of love, but I no longer need to, thanks to E. L. James and her erotic romance novel, 50 Shades of Grey.

I heard about this book from a friend, who spoke in hushed tones over the tops of her children’s heads as we waited in line for tables one Sunday at the local diner. That’s how you know a book is really dirty, by the way, because of the hushed tones. That’s how I found out about Judy Blume and Francine Pascal and V. C. Andrews, the holy trinity of early 1980’s soft porn. Granted, I was 11 at the time, and I didn’t know squat about sex, so I thought reading about it was amazing. I turned down pages where Something Happened (He put his hand into her pants! Shit, he’s her brother!) and re-read them over and over, just enjoying the feelings these words created in me.

“Everyone in Armonk is reading 50 Shades of Grey,” my friend Deena insisted, her hushed tones becoming less hush and more hysterical. “Moms are forgetting to pick up their kids at school! You can’t even get it! It’s sold out at bookstores everywhere!”

Since when are there bookstores everywhere, I wondered? I haven’t seen one for two years. This book is making people cookoo for cocoa puffs. And it’s not like this is the first time erotica has infiltrated the suburbs. What about Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty series? Or Blume’s Wifey? Or every Harlequin Romance since the beginning of Fabio?

And, since when is the phrase “everyone in Armonk” an endorsement for anything, except perhaps…Armonk?

So, naturally, after leaving the diner, I downloaded the book on my Kindle and began having virtual sex in under a minute.

(That’s an exaggeration because it doesn’t really get good until 20% in. But after that, the sex doesn’t stop. Sorry about the ridiculous Kindle math – I have no idea what this equals in realtime pages.)

Is the book cheesy and awful? Yes. In order to get to the good stuff, you will have to sit through a British author who sometimes forgets her characters are American (“marquee,” by the way, means “tent”) and who likes her adjectives in triplicate, since the author couldn’t trust us (or herself) to think we could picture the image with only one descriptor. Therefore, Grey’s personal office is “palatial, swanky, sterile,” while the rest of the office space is “cold, clean AND clinical.” (Now that I’ve pointed this out, it’s going to drive you crazy.) And I’ve never read about a character that moves his features quite so much. In one scene alone, Grey’s mouth “quirks up,” “his lips curl in a wry smile,” and “a ghost of a smile touches his lips.” His grey eyes “alight with curiosity” or turn “dark” and “distant” within seconds.

As one would expect from a good romp, there’s a lot of overtly suggestive writing to laugh at. I mean, this guy “cocks his head” five times in the first few scenes of the book. Gee, I wonder what that means? Oh, naturally, that he’ll end up showing us his penis! (Excuse me, I mean his “impressive length.”) Duh. And, for the record, Christian Grey has the longest index finger of any character in the history of literature. It starts out as a “long-fingered” handshake when they meet, but follow it as you read, because eventually, that long finger is literally everywhere. And you will admire him all the more for it.

What is Anastasia doing in this pre-sex dance of theirs? “Squirming uncomfortably under his penetrating gaze,” of course. And tripping, and blushing nonstop. It’s hard not to blush when a man (hot, long-fingered, or otherwise) says, “first I’m going to spank you and then I’m going to have my way with you.” Oh, sorry. Did I give too much away?

Here’s the fun (funny? strange? uncomfortable to admit?) part: when you put the book down, you will actually want to have sex with your husband. Like, a lot.

After 13 years of marriage, it’s a damned revelation.

“Matt’s exhausted,” my friend, Sarah, told me.

“Jim’s excited that there’s a sequel!” another friend said.

“It’s actually a trilogy,” Sarah said, slightly awe-struck. With over 900 pages of E. L. James on our bedside tables, we could all be having sex with our husbands…indefinitely.

“Jeff and I are going away this weekend – should I bring this book?” Amy asked.

“Yes!” We told her.

Yes, I tell you. Yes, and yes, and oh, baby, yes.

Battle Hymn of the Mouse Mother

A lot of people wonder how it is that Jewish parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many doctors and lawyers, so many rabbis and Hollywood producers, one Itzhak Perlman and the occasional Madoff. They want to know what it’s like inside the suburban minivan of a Mouse mother’s world, to see whether they, too, could drive a perfectly normal child into years of psychotherapy.

Well, I am here to say that they can, because I am doing it.

People see me out with my daughter in public and comment at how well behaved I am, even as she is brow-beating me and publicly humiliating me. So many people wonder why, when my children call me stupid, I am able to remain calm and not smack them upside the head. They say, Mouse mother, how can I emit calm like you, even while raising independently-spirited, self-directed, emotionally strong children? How is it that your children are bright even though you got a D in 8th grade Latin and attended a college known more for its fraternity system than for academic rigor? Mouse mother, please, they beg, tell us your secrets. And so, after generations of protected silence, I am here to squeal the truth.

With a little practice, you, too, can be a Mouse mother like me.

Not sure why you’d want to, but that’s for another memoir with a high six-figure advance entirely.

Anyway! Back to my battle hymn, which is really much more of a whine.

Anyone can be a Mouse mother; you need not be Jewish to lack Tiger skills. So, please understand that for legal purposes, I’m using the term “Jewish mother” loosely. So loosely, in fact, that when I say “Jewish Mother,” I mean absolutely anyone except for Amy Chua.

Here are the things that I, as a liberal Jewish mother have allowed my children to do and/or done for them:

• Skip 2 months of Hebrew school in order to perform in a local performance of The Nutcracker
• Bribe them to play piano, practice the violin, make their beds, brush their teeth, and to be nice to me and others – oh, what
the heck, let’s just say “bribe them constantly” and leave it at that
• Talk them out of playing any and all contact sports for fear of them breaking their noses
• Talk them out of playing any sports that involve running because of the funny way they run
• Allow them to watch no less than 2 hours of television a day and to not let them stop until they had both committed to
memory a complete episode of iCarly
• Suck their thumb until the age of 7 and/or carry around a dirty, beloved shmatte like Linus from The Peanuts
• Write notes to a teacher excusing their inability to do homework because American Idol was on
• Choose all their own extracurricular activities, including fencing, Lego robotics, and a class in which my 5-year-old daughter was taught how to sing karaoke like a drunken idiot at a bar.

Now I know some of these seem unconventional, but if your goal is to have a human child like mine, as opposed to an automaton, for example, then you’d do well by following my example of mediocrity and a little dose of who-gives-a-hoot.
To prove that this type of parenting can achieve the desired results, I would now like to share a few success stories.

A Tiger mother might spend two complete chapters of her memoir explaining how to get one’s children to perform at Carnegie Hall, or at the very least, how to obtain an audition to the Pre-College program at Julliard. But a Jewish mother can boil the answer to that down for you in a few simple words: by kicking and screaming. As a Mouse mother, I prefer to regale you with impressive stories of just the opposite, and so I shall call this instructional section of my writing “How To Ensure That Your Child Never Achieves Much of Anything in The Arts.”

I recently took my daughter, Zoe, for a trial class at a ballet studio where some of her friends were enrolled. After the class, we discussed what she thought about it and tried to decide together whether or not she would be signing up. Being a Mouse mother, I didn’t really care either way. The signature move of the Mouse mother is the shrug, which I did repeatedly as we spoke. I wrote down our conversation verbatim because I thought it was so emblematic of our mother-child dynamic.

Me: So, what did you think of this ballet class?
Zoe: I didn’t see any machines there.
Me: Huh?
Zoe: You remember that place where Andrew took a class once? They had candy and drink machines.
Me: Oh.
Zoe: And ice cream. We used to eat ice cream before his class.
Me: You mean, that hip-hop class on Central Avenue?
Zoe: Yes! And they had stuffed animals to buy and also dance clothes. And a TV to watch.
Me: Uh-huh.
Zoe: That’s the kind of dance class I want to take.

It’s clear to any Jewish mother out there that this girl understands her culture. Zoe knows that professional ballet is just not in her future, so why even try? How smart of her to know that, come puberty, her Polish genes will betray her, ensuring a body so low to the ground that it’s better constructed for potato farming than arabesquing. The closest she will ever come to doing a split is with her Barbie doll’s legs. And that’s so totally cool with her, as long as she can buy stuff and enjoy snacks.

It was one of the proudest moments of my life.

My firstborn, Andrew, proved to be another story entirely. He actually seemed to have some drive beyond the candy-and-shopping aspects of the theater. In fact, he tried out for and was given the coveted role of Fritz in last winter’s production of The Nutcracker at SUNY Purchase. Now, a Tiger mother would have spent weeks, days, and hours preparing her child for such an audition and would then feign modesty and humility but secretly take credit for the child’s success when he did well. But not me. I merely got Andrew a nice haircut and told him to smile a lot in front of the choreographers. Like the Mouse mother I am, I believe a nice Jewish boy with dimples can get ahead in this world merely by knowing his left from his right and by following his own interests.

Seeing that her child has a passion and talent for something of worth, a Tiger mother would certainly push and squeeze and prod and threaten to the point that a) the child got really freaking amazing at the skill and b) the child really hated both the activity and the Tiger mother. Where a Tiger mother values perfection, a Mouse mother values diversification above all else. Why stick to just one thing and become the best at it when you can try so many fun activities and be mediocre at all of them? Which is why, once Nutcracker season had passed, I did not take Andrew to The New York City Ballet. Instead, I took him straight to rec basketball.

Call me naïve, but so far, this renegade technique really seems to be working. And by “working,” I mean its produced children who, at the ages of 8 and 5, are pretty happy doing their job…of being kids.

Once Bitten

Do you know what makes me feel old? Vampire books.

Betcha didn’t see that coming. Truth is, neither did I.

A few weeks ago, I walked into Borders and started browsing. I made my way through the “New and Noteworthy” paperbacks, beyond The New York Times bestsellers, and past the 3-for-2 sale table. But nothing was calling my name.

I ended up wandering into the back where the YA/Teen section lives, realizing I hadn’t done that for a while. You see, my love for teen fiction runs almost as deep as my love for my own offspring. And it’s been around a lot longer.

But it’s hard to be completely faithful, you know. I’m a very busy person, and I can’t make room in my life for everyone all the time.

I swear, I only turned my back on it for a moment. A few months, at the very most.

And now I’m feeling guilty. Because, based on what I witnessed in Borders, it appears that I have been paying too much attention to my young children and not enough time to my first love. In the short time that I have been away from her, my teenager fiction has grown angry and dark.

In bookstores like Borders and Barnes and Noble, the brightly-covered “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” series and tartan-plaid and striped “Clique” titles have been shelved, along with anything else that might be considered “too cute” to teens. Instead, Goth-like paper candelabras hang theatrically over a huge new section of tables and displays promoting all things…vampire.

Almost every book in the section has a black cover (or blackish purple, or purplish black, give or take a touch of midnight blue) and uses what I can only describe as vampire font (something Vlad the Impaler and Dracula might choose were they to email each other). The craze started by Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight” has picked up speed at an alarming rate. The proliferation of teenage vampire serials is bloody frightening.

To begin, there’s the Christopher Pike “Thirst” series, promoting “Human urges. Fatal consequences.” There’s Richelle Mead’s “Vampire Academy” (five books in all, so far), “The House of Night” novels by Kristin and PC Cast, and Smith’s “The Vampire Diaries.” In Alyson Noel’s “Immortals” series, it appears that the main characters are not vampires themselves, but I have a feeling they run into some, since they have “traveled through countless past lives – and fought off the world’s darkest enemies – so they could be together forever.”

Isn’t that sweet?

My personal favorite is “Intertwined” by Gena Showalter. The cover art is cool, and just check out this blurb: “Most sixteen-year-olds have friends. Aden Stone has four human souls living inside him. One can time-travel. One can raise the dead. One can tell the future. And one can possess another human.” I mean, talk about over-scheduling your teenager! Really. Someone has to tell this guy that he doesn’t have to be all things to all people. These days, I hear The Ivy League is looking for kids who excel at one thing.

Like just being a vampire.

Moving on.

As far as I can tell, there are at least six “Vampire Kisses” novels by Ellen Schreiber, who used to write fun, peppy things like “Teenage Mermaid” and “Comedy Girl” before realizing that what teens want these days are not fishy teens or funny teens but dead and/or possessed and/or ghost teens. So she wisely jumped on the bandwagon and is probably making a lot more money by doing so, if you don’t mind me saying.

In short, vampires are to teens what Chick Lit was to housewives a few years ago: an overnight publishing sensation.

I’m totally and completely out of the loop on this phenomenon. It’s not like I didn’t know about the “Twilight” series, it’s just that I sooooo didn’t care. I read the first 250 pages of “Twilight” and put it down, much to the (vocal and somewhat hostile) displeasure of my 6th grade students (and even some of my grown-up friends). Team Jacob or Team Edward? Whatever. And that’s the part that makes me feel disconnected, because I just don’t care about these vampire books, nor about the vampire blockbuster movies that spin off them, nor about the teens that become famous for playing vampires and werewolves in these movies.

Which brings me to “People” magazine.

Who are these supposedly-famous people in “People?”

I even asked my husband, Brett, if he could identify anyone in the latest issue. We had flipped through half of it without recognizing a single face.

“I recognize him,” Brett pointed with satisfaction.

“Yeah, but…” I began.

“What? He counts.”

“That’s the president.” I said. “Of the United States.”

“He’s in the magazine and I recognize him.” He smiled. “I passed your little test.”

“Ugh!” I groaned, turning the page and seeing fangs.

“What?”

“There are even werewolves in “People” magazine!”

“What do people see in such creatures?” Brett wondered, adding, “I wonder if the Obamas let their daughters read those types of books and see the “Twilight” movies.”

Good questions, actually.

Ones that I was now on the verge of calling them to ask. Right there from the teen section of Borders. With all these vampires staring at me, canines exposed.

Until I saw it. On the display shelf.

VC Andrews’ “Flowers in the Attic.”

Amidst the new millennium’s immortals and other, dark netherwordly creatures, there was a repackaged, black-covered homage to my youth. Hands trembling, I picked it up to find that it was actually the complete, 5-book Dollanganger series, including “Petals on the Wind” and “If There Be Thorns.”

The first of these books, published in 1979, was so popular that it shot to the top of the bestseller’s list in only 2 weeks and remained there for almost 4 months. So much pressure was put on the author to meet demands for a sequel that the publication date for the second was pushed up by several months. These books caused a stir. They were a teen sensation.

There was even a movie version, back when I knew who the people in “People” magazine were.

I loved theses gothic horror novels.

They made my heart beat fast.

As I sat there on the floor of the YA section in Borders, clutching one of my favorite teen series of all time, the world became whole again. Because, it turns out that I’m not out of touch with what’s hip and cool with teens. I just experienced it already, three decades ago, with a different sort of hero and heroine and a different sort of forbidden love.

Remember getting swept up like that?

Let’s hope that every teen experiences that sensation, of reading something so exciting, so fundamentally nourishing in its content that she cannot tear herself away. For a few stolen moments, the real world becomes less important than the world inside those pages.

Teenaged vampires. Huh.

It’s a trend I can really sink my teeth into after all.

Bookstalking 201: Summer Reading for Adults

Last week, in Part I of this summer reading guide (written for pre-teens and teens), I confessed that I am a bookstalker. This is a person who follows people around bookstores and tells them what to read. Since writing this, several other bookstalkers have come out of the woodwork to tell me that I am not alone and that they, too, bookstalk strangers.

Why would someone do this? I can’t speak for the others; after all, they just might be crazy. However, I bookstalk because I am a little bit bossy and also pretty passionate about reading. I like to think that I can make the world a slightly better place, one book recommendation at a time.

I tend to use my superhuman book sense on kids, since they are less likely to harm me for butting into their reading life than adults are. Also, they are cuter than grown-ups and get excited about reading in a jump-up-and-down kind of way. However, with summer just around the corner, I sense some grown-ups are jumping up and down too. I figured you might as well do it with a good book in hand.

Ladies, I just read Kelly Corrigan’s memoir “The Middle Place” and I cried like a baby. Now that may not sound like a glowing recommendation, but it is. Oh, what a nice little read. Moving, real, and deeply personal, this one has it all. Do yourself a favor and read the essay about the power of female friendship included at the back of the book in the privacy of your own home. Unless you want to blubber in public, that is. My sister-in-law heard Corrigan read the essay in her own voice through an online version that I can’t wait to listen to myself.

Now, here’s the rest. “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” is set on a small English island occupied by the Germans during World War II. In this poignant and witty tale, readers get to meet a wide variety of quirky and charming characters who pass the time of their occupation by forming a book group. This is not a traditional holocaust tale, but rather an interesting look at what life must have been like on the periphery of war.

For more historical fiction, try Geraldine Brook’s “Year of Wonders,” and Lisa See’s new novel, “Shanghai Girls” (to be released May 26th). For lighter, contemporary reading, grab Elin Hildebrand’s “A Summer Affair” (comes out in paperback June 1) and Jane Green’s “The Beach House,” both set in Nantucket. Can’t get there this summer, thanks to the economy? Sit at the town pool with a big straw hat and pretend you are out in ‘Sconset with these characters. And if you’d like to read about (and hopefully also be in) the Hamptons this summer, try Jane Green’s newest, “Dune Road,” to be released on June 16th. Read anything by Jodi Picoult and then give her books to your high school or college-aged daughter.

If you want to read along with me, I’m reading “The Help” by Katherine Stockett because, if for no other reason, a book that gets 5 stars based on 275 reviewers on Amazon deserves my attention. I’m also going to try and get my adult book club out of our leper-and-plague-infested-reading-rut (otherwise known as our “Great Books About Awful Things” phase) by suggesting that we read “Secrets to Happiness” by Sarah Dunn. This novel, about a New York City writer and divorcee, got a nice review in The New York Times Book Review last weekend. Also, according to Amazon, it contains “witty prose” and, although, bordering the chick-lit genre, “it's smarter than the usual single-in-the-city fare, and funnier, too.”

If you want to read along with my husband Brett this summer, try the new Elmore Leonard book, “Road Dogs,” which came out earlier this month. “And, because we live in the suburbs, I’m interested in reading John Cheever’s new biography,” Brett adds.
“You know it’s 800 pages long.” I interject.

“Revise that: I’m interested in reading some of “Cheever: A Life.””

Also on his list is “The Watchmen”, the graphic novel that inspired the movie and Micahel Chabon’s “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh,” which Brett calls “the sleeper hit of the summer.” It has also been turned into a movie, “though the book is much better than the movie is going to be, trust me,” Brett adds with uncharacteristic swagger. It’s about a recent college grad who does something to cross his gangster father. Hey – you can give it to your recent college grad!

Our friend Dave is reading “The Best Nonrequired Reading 2008,” put together by Dave Eggers, which he calls “a compilation of random nothing, actually,” and has just finished Adiga’s “The White Tiger,” a sarcastic critique of the inequity in Indian society, about a taxi driver and the corruption surrounding him. “All fiction. I used to read a lot of nonfiction but have lost the vibe recently,” he added. I can’t imagine why – reality these days being such fun! Escape, much?

There is also “City of Thieves,” about a man’s survival in Russia during World War II, based on stories told to the author by his grandfather, and “The Book Thief,” also set during World War II, which is already considered a modern classic. Anyone and everyone over the age of 14 should read it. No pressure. You just have to.

I’d like to take a moment to thank all the people who give me advice when I’m looking for my next great read, from my book groups to local librarians and booksellers to my mom and my friends. To be a good bookstalker, you have to know when to give advice and when to take it. You have to keep lists. You have to be open to the possibility of trying different genres and new authors. You have to have what I call a “balanced reading diet.” Sometimes you have a full meal and sometimes you just have a snack. Sometimes, you skip the protein altogether and just go straight to dessert. And that’s what summer reading is all about, if you ask me: sugary beach reads. Yum.
So please, read something delicious, something you just want to devour. I think we all deserve a little indulgence this summer, don’t you?

If you want a more personalized list of titles, either for you or your children, just ask. After all, I’m always happy to bookstalk you.

Bookstalking 101: Summer Reading for Kids

Are you ready for summer reading, boys and girls? Moms and dads? Children of all ages? I am. And I’m going to tell you what to read this summer, because I’m pushy like that. And also because I care.

First of all, let’s start with the kids. The school summer reading lists are coming out, marking my favorite time of year. There’s nothing I like better than a slightly clueless 12 year old roaming a bookstore with his or her mom or dad in tow. Why is this? Because I love books. And I love giving advice. Combine the two, and you’ve got my favorite pastime: giving people advice about what to read.

I’m a little bit embarrassed to admit this, but I actually stalk families at Borders.

“Don’t say that you stalk them,” Brett told me while reading a draft of this article. “That’s kinda creepy.”

“But that’s what I do! Like, in a friendly, helpful kind of way. I’m a bookstalker.”

“Yeah. See, that’s creepy. Call it something else. Like Booktalker.”

“I don’t like that. It sounds too much like horse whisperer.”

So, what I mean is that, occasionally, I “follow” families around the aisles in the back of the store and listen in just to get a sense of whether or not my services are needed. And if so, I pounce.

Imagine me hiding behind a copy of the latest Secrets of My Hollywood Life by Jen Calonita (a must read if you are a 10-14 year old girl, btw. So good!). I am pretending to be absorbed with the text, like Clark Kent with his newspaper, on the verge of fighting crime as Superman. Only I’m a female, and I don’t wear glasses. Plus, I would look weird in all that spandex. But you get the idea.

“I think this one seems good,” a mom might say to her son, clearly exasperated after ten minutes of failed attempts with different titles. “Get this one.”

The child crinkles his nose at it, as if the book smells like moldy cheese. He’s not convinced that this is what he wants to read during rest hour at camp.
Besides which, “this one” is a 400 page monster of a classic with words printed so closely together that even I might fall asleep by page 7. This boy must be saved! It’s time for the Bookstalker.

“Hi, there,” I’ll begin, putting on my most friendly, wide-eyed facial expression. “I know a lot about these books. Maybe I can help. Tell me what you like to read.” It’s usually as easy as that.

The mom smiles and relaxes as she hands me the school’s summer reading list. The child is so stunned that he drops the tome that he was holding onto my toes. But that’s the price you pay as a bookstalker. Sometimes, matching kids with appropriate texts can hurt just a little bit.

Now, I must admit that I am pretty well-read in the YA genre (young adult, natch), having spent over a decade as a middle school English teacher. And although I am no longer teaching middle school, I do meet regularly with a bunch of enthusiastic (and by that, I mean loud) 13-year old girls for a monthly book group. We eat home-baked goods while throwing jellybeans at each other, and I try to get them to talk about the book. It’s fun. Really.

And when I’m not reading YA lit with them, I’m reading it with my grad students. As professor to these 25 teachers and teachers-to-be, I lead discussions each week about new, noteworthy and classic titles in the genre. The adults don’t throw jellybeans like the kids do, surprising as that may be. But they do have just as strong opinions about the Twilight series.

If you are a middle schooler, or a parent of such a creature, listen up, because I’m only gonna say it once.

Obviously, read the entire Lightning Thief series. The fifth and final installment just came out on May 5th, and the movie version of the first book will be released next year. The author, Rick Riordan, spoke at the Scarsdale Middle School in March, so he’s become a bit of an institution already around here. It’s what we in the business of bookstalking call a “no-brainer.” If you like those, read Kiki Strike or The Mysterious Benedict Society. Read Susan Beth Pheffer’s Life as We Knew It because my teen book group loved it. If you are interested in questions about life and death, read Elsewhere and Heaven Looks a lot Like the Mall (both of which I would call Lovely Bones lite). Read Diary of a Wimpy Kid for laughs and The Graveyard Book if you want to get spooked.

If you are a girl going into 8th grade, read Dairy Queen by Catherine Murdoch, and when you finish it, read the sequel. Read anything and everything by Sonya Sones. Read Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. (Not my book group girls – please, read it with me in September! Wait! Don’t cheat! I’m serious! And don’t throw that at me!) Read Wintergirls or Thirteen Reasons Why if you like to get depressed, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. And if you are an older boy (8th -9th grade and up), read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian because Sherman Alexie rocks, or Cory Doctorow’s Litle Brother (a sort of play-on-words of Orwell’s Big one).

And, yes, I know I sound ridiculous saying “rocks” about an author.

If you want to read along with me this summer, I am going to read The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. It’s destined to be the next runaway hit for teens. I can’t wait to put on the sunscreen, lie on a beach chair, and dig in to this futuristic, dystopian tale.

Don’t worry, grown-ups. It’s your turn next week.