Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing

Posts tagged “Andrew Smith”

Bay Area Book Festival

Posted on May 1, 2019

What I am doing these days? Getting ready for an exciting, if not thrilling Bay Area Book Festival, for which I put together the children’s and young adult program. A stellar lineup of authors and illustrators, from the quirkiest picture books to the most gripping young adult novels: Cindy Derby, Andrea Tsurumi, Tania De Regil, Mylo Freeman, Rana DiOrio, Andrew Smith, Benny Lindelauf, Gennifer Choldenko, Innosanto Nagara, Laura Atkins, Steve Bramucci, Justina Ireland, Lee Wind, Cindy Pon, Zoraida Córdova and many many more. Two days of amazing panels and interviews and hilarious contests. New this year? Most of our middle grade and young adult panels moderators and interviewers are all local students! They come from Malcolm X Elementary School to Albany Middle School to…

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, Children's books, YA books

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33 1/3 – Swordfishtrombones (via erik at booktunes)

Posted on September 16, 2011

Don’t you just love Tom Waits? I know I do, and so does Booktunes. Booktunes is about to publish the next batch of great books with music, starting with Harstad’s Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? and — Yay! One of my favorite writers — Andrew Smith’ In the Path of Falling Objects. Two epic novels with epic playlists! Stay tuned! Awaiting the new Tom Waits album I put his Swordfishtrombones on the recordplayer and took David Smay's booklet by the same name from the ever growing Booktunes pile. The book is part of the 33 1/3 series, a collection of books each focusing on one more or less legendary album.  The book is divided by chapters titled the same…

Categories: A Bit of Everything

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Boys Don’t Read! Boys Don’t Read?

Posted on July 21, 2011

There is a lot of buzz going on about boys not reading. Authors, publishers, librarians, booksellers, they all rack their brains to find ways to get them to read. Particularly young adult boys seem to have fallen in a deep and dark literature-less pit. I’m an inveterate optimist if it comes to reading, even when it concerns boys. They do read. But there are some preconditions. First of all the book needs to be good. It needs to be a stories about stuff they’re interested in. Young adult boys have a vast range of topics that appeal to them: girls, scooters or cars, experimenting, hanging about… Not necessarily in that order. Just kidding. There are way more issues that grab them. The young adult…

Categories: Books, Thrillers, YA books

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Psychosis… Or not — The Marbury Lens

Posted on June 30, 2011

The Marbury Lens. I’m not sure anymore who recommended it to me, I think it was on the Kobo site. In any case: I bought the book and read it. Wow! I love scare and horror, but this was way beyond scare and horror. This was like ending up in your very own nightmare, never to wake up again. Sixteen-year-old Jack Whitmore celebrates the end of the school year at a party thrown by his best friend Connor, who will also join him on a two week vacation to London. It is a good party and Jack gets blind drunk. Staggering the six miles back home — that’s when you’re still happy that he didn’t take the car — he falls asleep on a…

Categories: Books, YA books

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