Hope you’ve noticed MUF’s big 2nd anniversary giveaway. On June 14, someone will win a Nook and a $25 Barnes & Noble gift card to fire that baby up! There’s still time to enter–see the post below.
Meanwhile, the five lucky winners of the new Worst Case Scenario novel are:
C. Lee McKenzie, Heather Temske, Bruce Luck, Pragmatic Mom and Jennifer Malone
Congratulations! You’ll be getting an e-mail from us shortly.
I have a confession to make.
As a child, every year, I signed up for the Summer Reading Program at my town’s library.
I wrote my name on the contract. I received my little chart or check list or fill-in-the-blank card. I checked out a stack of books.
And I never got further than half-way through the chart. Never. Ever.
Why?
Part of it could be lack of follow through. I was the type of child who would start something with a great frenzy of enthusiasm but then get distracted after a few weeks.
It could have been the lure of the pool, where my friends hung out daily, smelling of chlorine and Jays Potato chips.
But the largest fault, I believe, lay with the library’s mystery section. You see, I could never get enough of them. I would have a historical fiction book in my hands, or a required biography or science fiction, when I’d spy a title like “The Hidden Staircase Mystery” or “The Clue of Black Lake” and I’d be gone. The biography was tossed aside and I’d be ten pages into the mystery before The Life Of Benjamin Franklin hit the carpet. Before I knew it, poor Mr. Franklin was propping up a table leg while I was walking out the door with a stack of spine-tinglers.
Did I have a narrow reading interest? Yes.
Did reading only mysteries limit my vocabulary? Probably.
Did all those mysteries make my reading life suffer? Not necessarily.
While I am a big fan of library reading programs as a parent (yes, my kids all completed them!) and I am in favor of introducing young readers to different genres of writing, I also know, as a reader, there is no better feeling than being chest-deep in a book you just looooove. I read every Nancy Drew I could afford or borrow. I checked out every book in the library mystery section. Reading became something I did, a lot. It became a habit. I would forgo the pool. I would not answer the phone. I would pretend I was sick, all to finish my current book. Those little mysteries made me into the reader I am today.
When my first born started eating pureed food, I gave her pretty standard fare – pears, peaches, green beans – whatever we happened to be eating. But on the store shelves, I’d see jars of sweet potatoes and beets and prunes and I worried that I wasn’t giving her enough variety. I brought this up to my pediatrician who shrugged and said, “Some kids in other countries eat the same food every day. And they grow just fine.” My daughter grew up healthy and strong. In fact, she now towers over me. She also eats a wide variety of foods now that she has matured.
The same is true for my reading. Though I grew up on a diet of straight mysteries, I now enjoy a variety of books, and enjoy reading across the genres. I became a Reader.
A reader who just may, one day, actually finish a summer reading program.
Beverly Patt has just finished writing the first draft of her third historical fiction novel – which also contains a mysterious twist, to satisfy the young reader still inside. Visit her at www.beverlypatt.com.
Today marks two years since we launched From the Mixed-Up Files…of Middle-Grade Authors. It’s been a busy two years for us. We’ve seen dozens of Mixed-Up Authors come and go. We’ve published 486 posts on various topics, including author interviews, book lists, writing tips, giveaways, and behind-the-scenes info on the children’s publishing industry. We’ve created 48 pages of resources for writers, teachers, librarians, parents, and kids. We’ve added 175 news items to our OhMG News sidebar. We’ve given away hundreds of books donated by authors, editors, publicists, and our own members. We’ve connected 25 authors and schools together through our Mixed-Up Middle-Grade Skype Tour. And we’ve read every single one of the 6,389 comments our readers have left us.
It’s those comments we treasure the most. Thank you, dear readers, for joining us in this great middle-grade conversation. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.
To celebrate two fabulous years, and as a thanks to our readers, we here at From the Mixed-Up Files would like to give one lucky reader a NOOK Simple Touch and a $25 Barnes and Noble gift card to purchase a few e-books. (May we recommend A View From Saturday; The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World; Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth; and/or our namesake, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, all by E. L. Konigsburg?)
To be considered for this giveaway, simply leave a comment below. You may earn extra entries by blogging, tweeting, or sharing a FB update about this giveaway, following us on Twitter (@MixedUpFiles), or liking our FB page (http://ow.ly/bp5GB). Please add each entry as a separate comment below. This giveaway is open internationally. The winner will be chosen Thursday, June 14th.
Looking forward, we do have plenty we are hoping to accomplish in the coming year. Right now our members are hard at work updating and revamping our resource pages. We are also working on adding links to other MG blogs that have popped up since we started this site. In addition, we are in the process of creating a place here to list book bloggers who review middle-grade books. And we will be branching out through Goodreads and Tumblr as well.
We’ll be rolling out these changes in the coming months. We hope they’ll make this site more useful to those looking for information about middle-grade books, and we hope they’ll bring our middle-grade book community closer together.
Here’s to another great year at From the Mixed-Up Files! We hope you’ll stick around to share it with us.
