7 Things You Don't Know About Ellen Emerson White

In November 2008, we selected Ellen Emerson White's novel Long May She Reign to represent that month's theme, Persistence.  If you love thoughtful stories you can really sink your teeth into and you have yet to read Ellen's series of books about Meg Powers, the daughter of the President of the United States, immediately proceed to your local library or bookstore and pick them up! Make sure to read them in order:


- The President's Daughter
- White House Autumn
- Long Live the Queen
- Long May She Reign 

While you're preparing to read (or re-read) those 4 books, here are 7 personal factoids that Ellen shared with us, to share with you: 


1)  I can play the saxophone.  Prefer tenor to alto.
2)  I used to work in a factory making computers and burglar alarms, and am surprisingly good with complicated tools and machinery
3)  Can't stand seafood in any form, to the point of not even really liking those goldfish crackers
4)  I waste much too much time mired in writers' block and deep uncertainty
5)  I secretly love almost all of Shelley Long's movies
6)  I think Dispatches and The Things They Carried are possibly the two best books to come out of the Vietnam War
7)  I meant to be a lawyer and work in the Manhattan DA's office, but I guess I forgot, somewhere along the way.

Bonus: readergirlz roundtable: Long May She Reign by Ellen Emerson White

November Resilience Roundup: Featured Books and Discussions!

In case you missed it, here's what we've discussed this month with authors and rgz. Jump in!

Resilience:
Before I Fall with Lauren Oliver

Before I Fall: Do you like the narrator?

Hold Still with Nina LaCour

Hold Still: Balancing Grief With Hope

Hate List with Jennifer Brown

Hate List: Characters Who Face Tragedy

If I Stay with Gayle Forman

If I Stay: Powerful Emotions

The River with Mary Jane Beaufrand

Some Girls Are with Courtney Summers

Some Girls Are: What did you think of Regina?

Featured Title: SOME GIRLS ARE, by Courtney Summers

Full disclosure: Courtney Summers, along with fellow readergirlz diva Melissa Walker, is one of twenty one authors including yours truly who've banded together to promote our own and others' contemporary YA fiction. Our blog is called The Contemps, and we while spotlight our own contemp titles releasing in 2011, most of all, our aim is to celebrate the value of "keeping it real" for young adult readers. BUT I've been a huge fan of Courtney's writing long before we "met" via the blogosphere. In fact, students in my writing workshop have cited her debut novel, CRACKED UP TO BE, as one of the strongest-voiced narratives they've read of late, so I was thrilled to pick up SOME GIRLS ARE over the summer. The book did not disappoint.

Climbing to the top of the social ladder is hard--falling from it is even harder. Regina Afton used to be a member of the Fearsome Fivesome, an all-girl clique both feared and revered by the students at Hallowell High... until vicious rumors about her and her best friend's boyfriend start going around. Now Regina's been "frozen out" and her ex-best friends are out for revenge. If Regina was guilty, it would be one thing, but the rumors are far from the terrifying truth and the bullying is getting more intense by the day. She takes solace in the company of Michael Hayden, a misfit with a tragic past who she herself used to bully. Friendship doesn't come easily for these onetime enemies, and as Regina works hard to make amends for her past, she realizes Michael could be more than just a friend... if threats from the Fearsome Foursome don't break them both first.

If you haven't read Courtney's work, I urge you to check it out, stat - no sophomore slump for this writer! But first, here's what Courtney has to say about resilience:

I really love the definition of resilience. Check it out (from dictionary.com):

1. the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc.,
after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.

2. ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyancy.

Resilience is something that is never far from my mind when I write my novels. My characters kind of need to be resilient, what with the things I put them through. Some Girls Are was a novel that moved forward due to the resiliency of certain characters. Without Michael's ability to get up every day after the death of his mother and both Liz and Regina's determination to overcome the torment heaped upon them by their peers, there wouldn't be much of a book. I think all of my books would be A LOT shorter if my characters weren't at all resilient!

And THEN I was thinking resilience is also something that was never far from my mind in my pursuit to become published. You get rejected a lot in the writing game, and not always in the nicest or most encouraging ways. You HAVE to be resilient to put your work out there and take the rejections on the chin, and then send your stuff back out there again--all without any guarantees. The resiliency of my writing peers was an inspiration. Watching them put their work out there and keep plugging away in spite of any rejection they might have received kept me going too. It still does. Resiliency is also, apparently, contagious! So I was thinking we should maybe petition all dictionaries to include its contagiousness in their definition of the word?

I am drafting up a proposal now.

I love that so much! As a writer, we do face so much rejection, and knowing that others somehow find the resilience to persist can be just the inspiration that we need with our own work. Thanks so much for joining us, Courtney!

So, readers - whose resilience inspires YOU?

November Feature: The River by Mary Jane Beaufrand

Are you ready to wade across The River? This intriguing novel by Mary Jane Beaufrand is one of this month's recommended titles. Take a peek:

Veronica Severance feels cut off from the world. Forced to move from the city to rural Oregon with her parents, she is haunted by loneliness and by the chilling sounds of the Santiam, the river that runs through her backyard.

Through the fog of isolation, Ronnie finds herself becoming close with Karen, a young girl who she babysits. But when she discovers Karen's body on the banks of the Santiam, the victim of a supposed accident, Ronnie feels compelled to uncover the truth.

As she becomes increasingly obsessed with solving Karen's death, Ronnie is led deeper and deeper into the woods surrounding the river and to the dark secret hidden within its midst.

Mary Jane Beaufrand, the author of The River, shared this deeply personal story with us:

My sister Ann is a breast cancer survivor. She was diagnosed in 2007, has been in remission since 2008. But recently, a full two years being pronounced healthy, she had herself a good freakout.

Here’s the sitch: she wanted to swim laps at the Open Swim Hour at her local high school, and didn’t want to be seen changing in the girls’ locker room. The problem? The scars from her bilateral mastectomy. Don’t get me wrong—she had reconstructive surgery, so from five paces away she looks perfectly normal. But that scrawny hairline scar still stretches from one side of her ribcage to the other. Uber-dramatic up close. Like in a locker room.

“Girls that age just don’t understand,” she told me. “They still think you can be perfect.”

I nodded and made noises like I agreed, but five minutes after I left her, realized that she was dreading the judgment of teenage girls as much as she dreaded chemo. Huh. Something was definitely off.

I kept going back our conversation when Readergirlz asked me to blog about resilience. Believe me, I’d much rather write about things that invoke a different kind of response, like moose drool. Or donuts. (Or, as my daughter would add, moose drool *on* donuts. She gets a kick out of stuff like that.)

But it seems to me there’s a nugget in my sister’s dread that’s worth exploring. Because I think the issue of teenage judgment—both real and imagined—has more to do with resilience than it would first appear. I’m thinking of my sister’s scars, but I’m also thinking of Spirit Day this past October 20, and the glut of teen suicides in the wake of bullying. When I was listening to NPR last week, a commentator was talking about this subject and mentioned that, while some of the bullied suicides were gay, not all of them were. The common denominator was that they were perceived to be different.

It seems to me that a major component of resilience is tolerance, both in yourself and the people around you. If you’re going through an episode in your life where you have to be strong, it’s important to find someone who, if they can’t identify with what you’re going through, can at least imagine going through it. Those tolerant, understanding buddies? They may not be the ones you think.

In The River, my heroine, Veronica Severance, makes a series of mistakes along those lines. At the beginning of the book, she’s judgmental of the people around her, thinking that since she’s a transplant from the city, she’s better than her neighbors in the country. Ya-huh. You just know attitude can’t continue.
Secondly, she’s drawn to people based on the way they dress and their taste in music. And yes, in real life those things can really endear someone to you, but they don’t go deep enough to tell you about their true character. It’s no accident that, in order to see the truth about the people around her, Veronica has to be submerged in something that’s much more treacherous than it looks on the surface. Surfaces can lie.

So that’s about it. If you’re in need of resilience, I’m with you. Stay strong. Practice tolerance and seek out tolerant buddies. Veronica’s mother would also tell you that comfort food helps, and to be sure to enjoy a donut now and then.
But please, for my sake, hold the moose drool.

- Mary Jane Beaufrand

Now we want to hear from you. What did Veronica learn about truth and treachery? Have you ever heard a secret that you wish you hadn't? If you were in Veronica's shoes, would you have acted the same way she did? Leave your comments below!

If I Stay: Powerful Emotions (+ Win the Paperback!)

This week's focus is on Gayle Forman's If I Stay, and it's a near-perfect representation of this month's theme: Resilience. Mia is faced with a terrible tragedy -- her parents and little brother are gone, possibly dead, and she lies in a coma, critically injured in a hospital, weighing her options... to live, or to die.

For discussion: If you've read If I Stay, what emotions did you come away with? I laughed, I cried, I hoped, I doubted. You?

And, in general, what books have brought out the strongest emotions in you, as a reader?

3 commenters will win a copy of the new (gorgeously covered) paperback! Be sure to include your email with your comment.

November Feature: The Struggle to be Strong: True Stories by Teens About Overcoming Tough Times

Our November non-fiction featured title is The Struggle to Be Strong, a compilation of true stories from teens. This book was edited by Al Desetta, M.A., of Youth Communication, and Sybil Wolin, PhD, of Project Resilience. When I got in touch with Youth Communication, I met (virtually) with Loretta Chan. When she was a teenager, Loretta wrote for New Youth Connections, one of Youth Communication's magazines. Now Loretta is the marketing director of Youth Communication, and she has something she wanted to share with you readers:

How can young women overcome tough times, media stereotypes, and even abuse? The resilient girls whose true stories appear in The Struggle to Be Strong know what it takes. Danielle stops being stuck up and learns that beauty really is more than skin deep. So does Tonya, after she gets suckered by a beauty school, which just takes her money. Artiqua stands up to people who criticize her dating a boy from another race. Tamara describes how taking long walks helps her deal with the anger and rage that she feels. Tameka learns how to stop feeling sorry for herself and succeed in college, even though she grew up in foster care and doesn’t get any care packages or other support from home. Shaniqua overcomes her shyness and her fears to perform at a poetry slam. Paula, whose mother abused and neglected her, finds it in her heart to forgive her mom as she is dying. And Terry-Ann, like all of the girls in this book, used writing to learn about herself and become more resilient.

The girls who wrote stories that appear in The Struggle to Be Strong participated in Youth Communication's intensive teen writing program, which has helped thousands of teens explore their lives and improve their writing. Notable alumni from the program include the novelist and National Book Award finalist Edwidge Danticat, Glamour editor Veronica Chambers, New York Times reporter Rachel Swarns, and "Life Hacker" author and blogger Gina Trapani.

How do our teens write their stories? Watch this short film.

- Loretta Chan

Now we want to hear from you: Which of the stories in The Struggle to be Strong reminded you of your own life? How did you relate to the real-life experiences which were shared in this book? Who is the most resilient person in your family or household? Leave your thoughts below in the comments!

Hate List: Characters Who Face Tragedy

This week's focus is on Jennifer Brown's Hate List, and it's an amazing representation of this month's theme: Resilience. Valerie faces doubt and and derision at every turn--from friends, family, teachers--but somehow learns to get up every morning and make it through her senior year after the terrible tragedy of a school shooting perpetrated by a boy she loved.

For discussion: If you've read Hate List, did you understand why people doubted Valerie? Was she an easy-to-love character for you? Did you see her as sympathetic? Complicated?

And, in general, what books have you read where a character comes out on the other side of a tragedy and has to deal with the aftermath? Which are your favorites, and why?

November Playlist

Hey readergirlz! We asked you to suggest songs suitable for this month's theme, Resilience, and here's what you came up with:

(If you can't see the playlist above, you need Flash.)

Note: Not all of the recommended songs were available at the Project Playlist website. Here's the full list of tracks suggested by readergirlz:

Promise To Try by Madonna
Unprofessional by Katy Rose
Got Dynamite by Demi Lovato
Dark Carnival by Vanessa Carlton
Nobody by Amy Studt
Change by Taylor Swift
So What by Pink
Voldemort is Going Down from the soundtrack of A Very Potter Musical
Breakaway by Kelly Clarkson
Superwoman by Alicia Keys
Stronger by Britney Spears
Fighter by Christina Aguilera

NOVEMBER Featured Title: BEFORE I FALL, by Lauren Oliver

Hello! Welcome to November at readergirlz!

The new month brings with it a new format for all of our amazing featured titles; with this new approach, we'll be able to spotlight more books than ever. So please help me celebrate our first title - which was one of my absolute favorites of last year: BEFORE I FALL, by Lauren Oliver!

Here's what School Library Journal had to say about this breathtaking book: 

Samantha Kingston has worked her way up the popularity ladder; now a senior, she and her three best friends rule their school. On Cupid Day, Sam expects to receive Valentine roses, to party with her friends, and to finally (maybe) have sex with her equally popular boyfriend. The last thing she expects is that she will die, but in the final moments of her life, as she hears "a horrible, screeching sound—metal on metal, glass shattering, a car folding in two," everything turns to nothing. Only, it is not the end for Sam. She wakes up to start the same day over again, and again; in fact, she relives it seven times....Moving and cathartic.

Just reading the book description gives me the chills! 

Lauren was kind enough to offer up some thoughts on this month's theme, "resilience." Here's Lauren: 

Hey hey! Lauren Oliver here, author of BEFORE I FALL and the forthcoming DELIRIUM. I’m so psyched to be featured on the awesomeness that is readergirlz. I’m particularly honored to have been selected to participate during a month in which resilience is being celebrated. Resilience—the ability to recover from being wounded, to pick yourself up after stumbling, and to strive constantly for betterment and happiness, no matter how often you are confronted by difficulty and pain—is such a critical quality to cultivate, both in a general Life-Sense and, in particular, for a writer.

Writers, of course, need to be tremendously resilient. So much of the life of a writer is unfortunately about rejection and frustration. Almost every writer can tell you stories about failed novel attempts (I, for example, am now on my FOURTH ATTEMPT to write a particular middle-grade that keeps devolving into nonsense at about word 15,000); and rejected manuscripts; and unhelpful or critical teachers, peers, and sometimes parents. There is the infamous (perhaps apocryphal) story of the Harry Potter books, which were allegedly rejected some insane quantity of times before finding a home and changing the landscape of children’s books forever.

You must be resilient as a writer, because as a writer, you will be confronted every day with at least five or six excellent reasons to give up.

More specifically, the theme of resilience plays a big part in Before I Fall. One of the messages I most wanted to convey in my first novel, particularly in the character of Juliet and her developing relationship with Sam, is that it’s important never to give up: not on other people, and certainly not on yourself. No matter how much bleakness and difficulty there is in your life or in the world you are confronting, change is possible, hope is out there, and help will come. As Sam discovers in the book, it is never too late.

So well-put, Lauren, and definitely something I personally responded to when reading BEFORE I FALL. And I can't wait for DELIRIUM!

I love, too, that Lauren mentions resilience as it pertains to the writer's life - I'm sure most of us writer-types would agree that without resilience, very few books would ever see the light of day!

Thanks for joining us, Lauren! And now, we want to hear from you - how has resilience helped you in your life? Maybe like Sam, you've reached out to a friend even after a fight or fallout that seemed hopeless? Or maybe it's simply a case of pursuing your passion in the face of lousy odds, heavy competition, or the fear of rejection? Resilience is what keeps us moving forward!

Suggest Songs for Our November Playlist

Hey rgz!

We are building the playlist for November. Our theme is Resilience. Give me your suggestions in the comments below, and I'll compile the list for us to rock our November reads.

Suggestions so far:
Unprofessional by Katy Rose
Got Dynamite by Demi Lovato
She Floats by Vanessa Carlton