Even more than Reeve who is lying in a hospital bed – his intended college football career probably shattered – Lillia, Kat, and Mary are the ones who need to recover from the shocker that was Homecoming. Guilt, for now, is as paralyzing as any cast...
Aaarrrggghhh! These days, I seem to be in the wrong place all the time. Lucky DC-area folks: Do NOT NOT NOT miss Canadian Korean graphic artist Michael Cho at SPX 2014: Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland, tomorrow and Sunday, September 13 and 14, 2014. Make your...
Ellen Oh, author of the acclaimed Prophecy trilogy – starring a third-century, yellow-eyed, teenage supergirl demon slayer – is channeling her own colorful fighting spirit. Two-thirds of her series, Prophecy and Warrior, are available now. King hits shelves this coming December. In the meantime, Oh herself has gone...
Ellen Oh’s Prophecy Trilogy and Why #WeNeedDiverseBooks For Ellen Oh, good things seem to happen in threes. She’s the proud mother of three daughters. She’s had three careers – lawyer, professor, and finally a published writer (after 40!). The third book she wrote got her a three-book...
The first of a trilogy (#3 debuts next month; I'm arriving on Jar Island a little late), Burn is inarguably shocking, but it definitely sets the stage for more chills to come. Mary, who left Jar Island in 7th grade, is back in 11th completely transformed. Lillia, once...
OH. MY. What a tiny world. Although I don't personally know first-time kiddie book author Anna Kang, I could definitely recite and/or impersonate (badly) parts of her graduate thesis film, not black or white, on command as I've used it some 148 times in classrooms over the...
Check out this toothsome battle-cry: "The kimchi revolution: How Korean-American chefs are changing food culture" by Paula Young Lee for Salon.com. The article's first paragraph introduces a bi-coastal feast: Momofuku's NYC bad-boy David Chang (his signature cookbook is posted here) and L.A.-based Roy Choi. [The...
A few months ago when I came upon this fascinating article, "The One Thing White Writers Get Away With, But Authors of Color Don't" by PolicyMic's Gracie Jin, I started trolling around for authors venturing into unexpected 'color'-ful fictional territory. I was fascinated to find two bestselling writers...
Okay, so both Book 1 and Book 2 of this intergalactically stupendous series start out almost the same (Book 2 has an extra, well-placed, close-up "Gyaaaaah!" thrown in), but don't be misled into thinking you've already read it, done that, check! "What's next for Andy Go?" the...
In case you haven't planned your Turkey Dinner coming up in exactly a week (who, me? menu? what's that?), here's a collection filled with irreverently toothsome suggestions. Having grown up eating kimchi with every chestnut-stuffed bird or surreally spiraled pink ham (or both), I couldn't...
*STARRED REVIEW Once revealed in context, this book's title alone is an astonishing feat of encapsulated genius from the inimitable Chang-rae Lee. Control, individuality, nature, perfection, reality, society – all that and more fill this dystopic treatise about a not-so-futuristic, ruined America. At the beginning, 16-year-old Fan simply...
I haven't seen Patti Kim’s name on a book cover in quite a while ...
So I've been mulling over this book for a month-plus, and still remain rather conflicted. The one solid conclusion I can offer is this – if I were to rank Susan Choi's titles, my list would read thusly: American Woman, based loosely on the Patty Hearst...
Wow, I sort of wondered ...
* STARRED REVIEW After surviving the Korean War, Yohan spends another year in a prisoner-of-war camp south of the new border that splits the country in two. Rather than return north, where no one awaits him, Yohan begins life anew in a faraway coastal Brazilian village as...
With his eyes and body still “bleary from post-windsurfing and traveling,” Don Lee nonetheless graciously agrees to be grilled yet again – we’re going on a decade-plus of various interviews through four books! He’s tired, he’s rambling, but he’s always entertaining … and once more...
When Don Lee’s first book debuted in April 2001, he probably didn’t know that he was the forerunner of a colorful trend – literally. His collection, Yellow, had the shortest of subtitles, simply Stories. Three months later, in July, another yellow-tinted cover appeared: Yell-Oh Girls!: Emerging...
What do you do when your most cherished friend isn't real to anyone else but you? For Melody and her bestest buddy, "[t]hey had fun together every day and every night ...
As the mother of three young girls, Ellen Oh is constantly on the lookout for good books that showcase female empowerment. She's found a few here and there – say, The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, The Girl of Fire and Thorns trilogy by Rae Carson, The Hero and the...
At 18, Andy Go "had life all figured out," but then so much for best-laid plans: "None of it came true, of course. Not a single damn thing." One morning he wakes fully clothed on his bed, in his room, in his (parents') house ...
