August Book Giveaway Winner!

The winner of Star in the Forest by Laura Resau is: Kimberly!

You have 30 days to claim your prize, Kimberly. No later than September 16, email me at marcia at marciahoehne dot com, giving me your postal address, and I'll acknowledge receipt and get that right out to you!

Micro-Trends in Fiction?

Enter the drawing for Star in the Forest by Laura Resau by midnight August 15! Scroll down one. :)

Writers can't help but look at trends in fiction, even though we're often cautioned not to chase trends as we write. The types of trends we usually mean are those of genre and structure: Is dystopian rising? Is YA paranormal about over? Can I hope to sell a historical in this market? Does my YA have to be in first person? Can I use present tense in MG? These might be called macro trends. But I've been noticing small, micro, trends too. Have you ever read a number of books in a row and, different though they may be, they all do an obvious something? Two related examples I've found recently:

First, the "heavily dependent on another book/author" trend, found in When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (A Wrinkle in Time), Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine (To Kill a Mockingbird),Also Known as Harper by Ann Haywood Leal (Harper Lee, Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor), and Bruiser by Neal Shusterman (Tennyson and at least one Bronte). I know some ideas seem to "float out there in the spirit" and more than one writer can "catch" them, but I wonder -- is this an attempt to shore up a type of literacy we're afraid kids are losing? I don't know that it's deliberate didacticism, but authors make their choices for a reason. I'm curious about that reason. And I'm not sure how I feel about this trend. I like all the books I've named above, but, particularly when it's another novel that's featured (or a poorly educated mom who just happens to love major American authors), there's something about the dependence that subtracts. Any thoughts?

Second, a recent penchant for vocabulary building.Reference again Mockingbird, whose MC, ten-year-old Caitlin, is going through bereavement, has Asperger's, and her best friend is the dictionary; Bruiser, in which the parents, both literature professors, have alternated giving one vocabulary-building word a day to their kids all their lives; and also Love Puppies and Corner Kicks, by RW Krech, in which soccer-playing Andrea often has her nose in her favorite book (hmm, not unlike trend #1): Word Power: Enhancing and Extending Your Vocabulary. Using vocabulary words and pronunciations/meanings as chapter titles is a fairly common, though not universal, feature of these books.

Any ideas about what's going on? Have you noticed any other micro-trends in recent books you've read? Have you found any you'd like to continue? :)

August Book Giveaway

Star in the Forest by Laura Resau: When eleven-year-old Zitlally's father is stopped for speeding, discovered to be illegal and deported to Mexico, life becomes harder than ever for her family. Mama, always worried, must work all the time to support her and her sisters. Zitlally gradually makes friends with neighbor Crystal, a girl who makes up wild stories to cope with problems of her own, and together they adopt Star, a skinny abandoned dog they find chained up in the "forest" surrounding their trailer park -- which is not trees but heaps of rusted car parts. But the dog is more than just a friend and comfort. Zitlally comes to believe he's a special animal like the ones from Papa's stories, an animal whose fate is tied to a human's. In this case, Papa's. When Star disappears, the two girls must find and save him because Zitlally is certain this will mean a favorable outcome for Papa as well. This well-written book would make a good classroom choice and is truly accessible to mid-graders. Includes a note about Mexico-to-US immigration and two glossaries.

To be entered in the drawing:

• Comment on this post anytime from now through Sunday, August 15.
  
• For an additional entry, become a follower of this blog and mention that in the comment. Ditto if you already are a follower.
• For an additional entry, post a link to this contest and give the URL in either the same or a separate comment. In this category, you can enter as many times as you have cyber-places to post the contest.

Winner will be announced Monday, August 16.

So, come one, come all--and meanwhile have a great day in the world of books.