Friday Five: smile-worthy YA book news

1. Events: All the talk about ALA2011 has gotten me pumped for book events. I won't be in NO this weekend (the association I work for has our big convention in San Antonio), but it got me thinking about the National Book Festival, which isn't until the end of September, but they're already announcing authors who will be participating. Sherman Alexie, Cassandra Clare, Susan Cooper, Tomie dePaola, Sarah Dessen, Gordon Korman, Toni Morrison, Katherine Paterson, Brian Selznick, Chris Van Dusen and Rita Williams-Garcia will all be there. (David McCullough will also be there, but as he's an author of history books for adults, I didn't include him in my totally-excited-for list.) Do you know how long I'll be willing to wait in line to get my copy of The Adventures of Hugo Cabret and my Dark Is Rising books all signed? Yeah, you'd better bring a sleeping bag, is all I have to say.
2. Audiobooks: It's been a good year for Katherine Kellgren, who was recently named Booklist's Voice of Choice, has yet to miss an Odyssey Honor from the ALA's YALSA audiobook awards, and is a 16-time AudioFile Earphones Award winner. Now The Washington Post listed her narration of The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin as one of their three Summer’s best audio books.
3. Releases: Together again for the very first time. The 2009 Debs officially announced the release of their anthology The First Time. It will only be released as an ebook, but with fantastic authors like Sydney Salter, Carrie Ryan, Jenny Moss, Kurtis Scaletta and Jon Skovron, I'll have my ereader ready for download come October.
4. Blogs: I'm a big fan of my library's YA blog TATAL, and this week they really outdid themselves. They got a panel of four guys to discuss what attracts/detracts them in a book cover. It should come as no surprise that they prefer action shots to pictures of girls with no heads holding shoes, kissing couples are also taboo, orange is a much cooler color than pink and bold fonts matter.
5. Personal: I'm officially caught up on all the Jacky Faber books by L.A. Meyer. As I started the series Thanksgiving weekend, that means I've averaged one book a month, and now I'll have to wait until the fall for The Mark of the Golden Dragon. (To tie in to #2, I'll be sure to listen to Katherine Kellgren's audiobook version). Instead of being bummed about the long wait, which really isn't that long of a wait, I've been listening to my sea chanteys and heading over to the Jacky Faber website to get some recommendations from Louis (whom I probably shouldn't refer to so familiarly as I've never met the man, but he does have great taste in music).