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Ty Cobb’s life­time bat­ting aver­age is .367.  In the world of agent queries, SOUL TACO, is bat­ting a cool .500, which means that out of the twelve agents who have responded to my equeries, six have requested fulls or par­tials.  I know bet­ter than to get excited by these early num­bers.  It’s still Spring train­ing …

Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios has announced that it’s build­ing the world of Harry Pot­ter in Florida.  http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=20731 Can you imag­ine what it would be like to walk down streets that once existed only in your mind?  To see street signs with names that you cre­ated?  To be hugged by a half-giant with a car­pet for a beard?  …

One of my favorite pre-school mem­o­ries is cook­ing Jiffy-Pop on the stove. First, unwrap­ping the pan with the lit­tle wire hand and a swirly of alu­minum foil on top. It took for­ever to get it to pop, but when it did, man! The pop­corn forc­ing the foil up like metal cocoon until it was about …

Please join us for an ALAN Online BookChat to dis­cuss DEAD GIRLS DON’T WRITE LETTERS with the author, Gail Giles. Date: Wednes­day, 5/23/07 Time: 9:00 PM East­ern URL: http://alan-ya.org/bookchat/flashchat.php Here’s more about DEAD GIRLS DON’T WRITE LETTERS: When Sunny Reynolds’s beau­ti­ful and flam­boy­ant older sis­ter, Jazz, dies in a fire, the fam­ily falls apart. But …

Wow, it’s been two week since I posted.  Time flies when you’re over­whelmed.  For awhile, I’ve been mean­ing to blog about Gail not­jazz Giles’ lat­est, RIGHT BEHIND YOU, the dark story of a fire­bug who is arrested for set­ting his neigh­bor on fire.  After spend­ing most of his life in an insti­tu­tion, Kip is finally released.  …

Any time there’s more than one main vil­lain, the story’s going to suf­fer. Wasn’t this movie Spi­der­man 2 with the addi­tion of one embar­rass­ingly long scene of PP doing a John Tra­volta? I kept expect­ing the Bee Gees to break out in song. If I ended up dan­gling from a building/crane/web as often as Mary Jane …

Cather­ine Balkin, Chair of the 2007 ALAN Award Com­mit­tee, has announced that the ALAN Award Com­mit­tee has voted to honor Teri Lesesne with the 2007 ALAN Award. Lesesne, (aka pro­fes­sor­nana ) author of Mak­ing the Match and Naked Read­ing, is a renowned advo­cate of Young Adult lit­er­a­ture.  She is an active leader in ALAN, NCTE, …