Double Review! The Duff and Zombies vs Unicorns

Wow, two winners in one week. Of course, even though one has nothing to do with the other, they will be forever entwined in my mind.

So what can I say that has not already been said about two titles the literati has been chomping at the bit to read for months?

I found The Duff to be completely honest, and I'll be honest here. I loved this book, I loved the voice, I loved the story, and I found it to be completely real. Hats off to Keplinger for doing something no one else has done before: admit that teen girls want sex just as much as teen boys. It's true (not for everyone, but nothing is true for everyone) BUT now I have this moral/ethical problem of recommending it to my teen library patrons. Some of the sex scenes are graphic and even though the characters are careful to play it safe it still amounts to luck that nothing bad happens to Bianca. Even level headed and smart girls make mistakes (not that they make them on their own, mind you).

I can think of quite a few grown "girls" who I will be giving this book to.

After careful thought and much research, I have decided to come out of the closet. Team Zombie, you are me and I am you. The unicorn stories did not rock my world (don't read that as they were poorly written or uninteresting-they are not). The zombie stories just made me so much happier. I can't get the Maureen Johnson story out of my head. This is good stuff! What's next? I nominate Lawn Gnomes vs Selkies! Then Mermaids vs Dragons. Bring it on!

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Nebula Award Nominees 2017- Short Stories

This post is my progress report on my self-challenge to read all of the 2017 Nebula nominees! So far, I have completed the short story category and most of the the novelettes. I have 3 novellas and 3 novels to go.

Nebula Award Nominees 2017- Short Stories

What fun! I would never have read any of these stories on my own, although I expect some of these will show up in some future anthologies.
I have one personal gripe, and this will come up again in another category, and that is the death of the horror genre. Because they have just killed "horror" and lumped scary stories in with science fiction and fantasy, we get stories like SabbathWine trying to compete with Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies and it's not fair. It really is apples and oranges. Don't believe me about horror? Go find the horror section in the Barnes and Noble. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Griping over, this selection of stories was AWESOME and heavy on the fantasy stories. Seasons and Wardrobe are fan…

Reading Challenge: Read all of the Nebula Nominees

I am on a mission to read all of the Nebula Award Nominees before the awards are presented on May 20th. This was prompted by the fact that I see these awards all of the time and I have only recently gotten hooked on science fiction so I think it is important to understand what the community thinks is the best of the best. I plan to do the exact same thing for the Hugos, but I have time.
Unlike childrens' book awards, in which awards do not in any way equal popularity, readers seem to like to award favorites.

It's no secret I am just crazy about N.K. Jemisin and her writing. Honestly it is because of she and Kameron Hurley and Becky Chambers and Jacqueline Koyanagi and Charlie Jane Anders and John Scalzi and James S.A. Corey (both of them) that I find myself absolutely loving this genre. I have NO desire to go back and read early science fiction with dorky cartoon covers featuring sexy aliens and white dudes holding Jetson-esque blasters. I want to read forward. I like where …

Seize The City

I'm about to hit you with a group game that 1. costs very little money to make 2. sounds a lot harder than it actually is. Ready? Okay!

This summer we will be playing Seize the City. It's modeled after my game Seize the Castle. The only thing changing here are the trivia questions will now be super hero themed and instead of a castle in the center, there will be a "city". Something akin to this:
Image borrowed from Etsy for visual aid purpose only. My teen volunteers will actually be making the city from scratch and it will look however they want it to :)

Because this game already exists in castle form, you will just have to use your imagination.
And because NO Thing is really original here is what started me on the path to Seize the Castle greatness: http://www.ellenjmchenry.com/homeschool-freedownloads/math-games/stormthecastle.php

The Game:

You will need:

Up to 20 players
2 mats with grids taped out on them
1 cardboard/foam core castle (or city, for summer)
Thre…

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