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| imaged used with permission |
I'm going to start a new feature here on the blog called Sword & Laser Kids. Sword & Laser is an online book club and podcast dedicated to science fiction and fantasy. They have a vibrant discussion group over on Goodreads and every so often there are questions on the forum concerning kids books in the genres. I've actually met the hosts at Dragon Con and asked for permission to something like this and was given the okay.
It's been rolling around in the back of my head how best to go about this. Right now I don't have the time for a video or audio show (even though I'm sure I could pull it off and still might someday). I thought about starting a thread in the forum but wasn't sure how to begin with that. So I've finally decided to write posts on the blog which I will link to on Goodreads, G+, Twitter, etc. and we'll see how that goes.
The official S&L show picks a different SF or Fantasy book each month, rotating the genres month to month. Tom is the Laser guy and Veronica is the Sword lady. I'll do the same. Fantasy for February, SF for March, etc. I will primarily be discussing books for kids from K-8 with only the occasional YA book. This is because I'm an elementary school librarian and also YA is getting plenty of exposure right now.
I plan on covering some "classics" (Harry Potter, Ender's Game) and new stuff the kids are excited about (Land of Stories), and things I just think are generally good books for the acre and feeding of the young geek mind.
Now I'll try to stick to the every other month SF/Fantasy schedule but there is a lot more Fantasy than SF for this age group. I might be stretching the genre definition pretty thin some months and may even cross over into geeky science nonfiction at times for the Laser months.
In the spirit of the whole book club thing I'll try to grab other people's views from reviews posted online and even some comments from my own students. And of course, as always, your questions and comments are very much encouraged.
