Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for something to listen to, and noticed that Overdrive was announcing it was Banned Books Week, and had a separate section for books that had been banned. I leafed through, being taken aback at some of the books people have seen fit to object to, and noticed this book. I could tell it was about lesbian teens, though I was a bit slow to register that it was published in 1982, making it something of a classic. Title: Annie On My Mind Author: Nancy Garden; read by Rebecca Lowman Publisher: Listening Library, 2008. Original, Farrar Strous Girroux, 1982 (234 pages). Source: Library digital resources Blurb (from Goodreads): This groundbreaking book is the story of two teenage girls whose friendship blossoms into love and who, despite pressures from family and school that threaten their relationship, promise to be true to each other and their feelings. The book has been banned from many school libraries and publicly burned in Kansas City. Of the author...

Title: Going Over Author: Beth Kephart Publisher: Chronicle Books, 2014 Source: Library Publisher's Summary: In the early 1980s Ada and Stefan are young, would-be lovers living on opposite sides of the Berlin Wall--Ada lives with her mother and grandmother and paints graffiti on the Wall, and Stefan lives with his grandmother in the East and dreams of escaping to the West. My Review:  I debated about how to classify this book. I found it in the juvvy section of my library, but I hadn't read very far before I realized that it fits much more in what I consider YA. It's not so much that there is a love story at the heart of it, as that there are too many "adult situations" as they say. There is a pregnancy, a strongly implied rape, spousal abuse, and a lot of death as well. Nor are the politics behind the story all that easy to understand. So: YA. Not for children. That taken care of, this was a good book. It highlights a part of history that doesn't get a l...

Last week, Chuck Wendig collected a whole lot of titles from his readers. This week, he presented us with his 10 favorite and told us to pick one and write the story. He gave us the usual 1000 words; I used 918. I'm In Love With A Zombie But He Doesn’t Even Know I’m Alive Look, I’ve been crushing on Armand since the sixth grade. We’re graduating next spring, so that’s pretty much a whole lifetime, in teen years. He’s never liked me back, of course. Why should the cutest guy in the school pay any attention to a geek with pimples? Even if I do have the best brains in our class. Plus I don’t even know if he likes boys. So I guess I have the best brains except when it comes to crushing on beautiful boys with no brains and 17 girlfriends. I have to admit that’s pretty stupid. After last month, it’s even more stupid. You know all about that, of course. There hasn’t been much else on the news besides the virus that spread into every community in North America, turning about ten percent o...