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June 2011 Book of the Month: Nominations

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boswellbaxter
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June 2011 Book of the Month: Nominations

Post by boswellbaxter » Tue March 29th, 2011, 2:38 am

Time for nominations for the June BOTM! This month's theme will be historical fiction for young adults. Please limit your nominations to novels that were published specifically for young adults.

If you have the publisher's description of the book, it would be helpful if you included it. Thanks!

Nominations close April 4.
Susan Higginbotham
Coming in October: The Woodvilles


http://www.susanhigginbotham.com/
http://www.susanhigginbotham.com/blog/

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Divia
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Post by Divia » Tue March 29th, 2011, 3:30 am

This is gonna be fun, well fun for me anyway. :p Nominations close on my b day. Nifty. The only problem I face is picking a book. hmm.
News, views, and reviews on books and graphic novels for young adult.
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Vanessa
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Currently reading: The Farm at the Edge of the World by Sarah Vaughan
Interest in HF: The first historical novel I read was Katherine by Anya Seton and this sparked off my interest in this genre.
Favourite HF book: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell!
Preferred HF: Any
Location: North Yorkshire, UK

Post by Vanessa » Tue March 29th, 2011, 9:23 am

Wildthorn by Jane Eagland
Dark secrets and deep betrayals haunt this extraordinary debut set in a Victorian madhouse

Seventeen-year-old Louisa Cosgrove longs to break free from her respectable life as a Victorian doctor's daughter. But her dreams become a nightmare when Louisa is sent to Wildthorn Hall: labelled a lunatic, deprived of her liberty and even her real name. As she unravels the betrayals that led to her incarceration, she realizes there are many kinds of prison. She must be honest with herself - and others - in order to be set free. And love may be the key . . .
currently reading: My Books on Goodreads

Books are mirrors, you only see in them what you already have inside you ~ The Shadow of the Wind

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Divia
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Post by Divia » Tue March 29th, 2011, 10:01 am

Wildthorn was a good novel. I had an issue with one aspect of it though. Still, I think it could lead to some interesting discussions. I want to read the author's other book, but it isn't out yet. ..or not out here. :(
News, views, and reviews on books and graphic novels for young adult.
http://yabookmarks.blogspot.com/

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Vanessa
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Posts: 4378
Joined: August 2008
Currently reading: The Farm at the Edge of the World by Sarah Vaughan
Interest in HF: The first historical novel I read was Katherine by Anya Seton and this sparked off my interest in this genre.
Favourite HF book: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell!
Preferred HF: Any
Location: North Yorkshire, UK

Post by Vanessa » Tue March 29th, 2011, 10:35 am

The author's second book is Whisper My Name. It is out in the UK, but I can't find anything about when it will be published in the US. It's nominated for the Lancashire Book of the Year. I would imagine that it will be published in the US eventually - according to Jane Eagland's website, Wildthorn reached the finals of the Lambda Awards so you would think if that book was well received, the next would be too.

I haven't read either but they look good! :)
currently reading: My Books on Goodreads

Books are mirrors, you only see in them what you already have inside you ~ The Shadow of the Wind

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Ludmilla
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Post by Ludmilla » Tue March 29th, 2011, 1:34 pm

Does WWII count as historical these days? If so, I'll nominate Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys, which promises to be another novel along the lines of The Book Thief.

Summary:
Sepetys' first novel offers a harrowing and horrifying account of the forcible relocation of countless Lithuanians in the wake of the Russian invasion of their country in 1939. In the case of 16-year-old Lina, her mother, and her younger brother, this means deportation to a forced-labor camp in Siberia, where conditions are all too painfully similar to those of Nazi concentration camps. Lina's great hope is that somehow her father, who has already been arrested by the Soviet secret police, might find and rescue them. A gifted artist, she begins secretly creating pictures that can--she hopes--be surreptitiously sent to him in his own prison camp. Whether or not this will be possible, it is her art that will be her salvation, helping her to retain her identity, her dignity, and her increasingly tenuous hold on hope for the future.

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Divia
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Post by Divia » Wed March 30th, 2011, 7:49 pm

Two girls of Gettysburg


In 1861, the Confederacy has just declared its independence from the Union, but life goes on much as usual in the quiet town of Gettysburg. Fifteen-year-old Lizzie Allbauer and her cousin Rosanna, recently arrived from Virginia, have big plans to attend the Ladies' Seminary together in the fall. Then Lizzie's father and brother enlist in the Union army and she must stay home to help her mother run the family butcher shop. Rosanna flees back to Richmond after a Gettysburg beau is killed in one of the early battles. Torn between her romanticized view of the war and her parents' conservative rules, Rosanna impulsively agrees to marry a former beau, John Wilcox. Within a month of marriage, he is injured, and Rosanna rushes to meet up with the Virginia Infantry so that she can care for him. Realizing that she has a gift for healing, she stays on with her husband's company as a nurse. Chapters alternate between Rosanna's journal entries of her life as a Confederate nurse and Lizzie's accounts of the events leading up to the July 1863 Battle of Gettysburg. While Klein's extensive research is evident, the alternating voices have only limited success: readers will be drawn to Lizzie's genuine warmth, but frivolous Rosanna's leap to the ultra-responsible wife and nurse and the stilted dialogues in her journal entries stretch credibility. Still, Klein's weaving of the young women's stories to a shared conclusion gives a fresh perspective on the complexities of the Civil War
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boswellbaxter
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Post by boswellbaxter » Thu March 31st, 2011, 1:54 am

Booth's Daughter by Raymond Wemmlinger (available on both Amazon US and UK). No publisher's description
Booklist

"[My] last name had a great problem attached to it," says Edwina Booth; in this historically inspired first novel, her complaint applies both to her uncle's years-past assassination of Lincoln and to the burden of living in the shadow of her famous dad, actor Edwin Booth. The curator of New York's Hampden-Booth Theatre Library, Wemmlinger focuses primarily on the father-daughter relationship, which is shaken as Edwina contemplates marriage and begins to question whether her egocentric parent has her interests at heart. The first-person narrative often bogs down in historical details, but elements reminiscent of an Edith Wharton novel--the mannered social interactions, Gilded Age settings, and matrimony-bound momentum--will draw many romantically inclined readers, who will delight in the sweet inevitability of Edwina's love match as much as in the closing message: "Grab your own chance at happiness. You can make others happy only if you're happy yourself." An afterword offers a list of sources that can help readers negotiate the underpinnings of the story. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Susan Higginbotham
Coming in October: The Woodvilles


http://www.susanhigginbotham.com/
http://www.susanhigginbotham.com/blog/

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Matt Phillips
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Post by Matt Phillips » Thu March 31st, 2011, 9:35 pm

Stonewall's Gold by Robert Mrazek

From Publishers Weekly
Echoing The Red Badge of Courage, Treasure Island and Morte D'Arthur, this tenderly rendered first novel, which takes the form of a manuscript "discovered in the archives of the Rockingham County courthouse in Harrisonburg, VA," irresistibly combines the classic motifs of Civil War, buried treasure and romantic heroism. With money running out and her husband gone to fight under General Lee during the final winter of the Civil War, 15-year-old Jamie Lockhart's mother is forced to take an ominous-looking boarder into their war-ravaged home in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. Jamie is driven to kill the blackguard to save his mother from rape, and in the dead man's belongings they find a crude, encrypted map marking "the Mouth of the Devil" as the site of buried gold. On his way to consult a distant tavern owner about the map's legend, Jamie is saved from a thieving, gargantuan deserter by Major de Monfort, a one-armed, knife-throwing Cajun. Six of the giant's cronies pursue Jamie, but he insists on going behind Yankee lines to find the treasure; the Major leaves him, advising the boy to commit the map to memory and destroy it. Seized by the renegade gang, Jamie escapes with Katharine Dandridge, the feisty daughter of an elderly plantation owner murdered by the thugs. Hounded through raging storms by the murderous band, the pair finally reunite with de Monfort, and the trio trudges on in search of the gold. Told by young Jamie, Mrazek's story possesses a compelling narrative drive. His sense of landscape is expert and his cast of heroes and villains is complete, down to a horse, Jamie's Jupiter. Mrazek's exceptional coming-of-age tale will equally delight young adult and adult readers.

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Post by annis » Fri April 1st, 2011, 1:00 am

Have to nominate Jennifer Donnelly's Revolution - loved this book. Time slip set in the present and during the French Revolution.

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