Regency England like you’ve never seen it before: A book trailer for ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’

My second foray into video booktalks and trailers… Jane Austen’s classic text (well…85% classic text) with some added zombie mayhem – including a plague of undead terrorizing Hertfordshire, Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s ninjas terrorizing Elizabeth Bennett, and the Bennett sisters fighting back against all this with their finely honed combat skills. Pride and Prejudice and [...]

The Austen re-invention continues: Sense and Sensibility…and Sea Monsters

After the runaway success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Quirk books just announced last night a new title in its collection – Sense and Sensbility and Sea Monsters to be released this coming September. According to an interview with EW.com, book co-author Ben H. Winters promises, “a giant rampaging mutant lobster. Octopi with glittering [...]

The book trailer you won’t forget: Jake Wizner’s ‘Castration Celebration’

…yes, that is the title. Even better? The book trailer is set to a song entitled, “I saw my parents having sex” — a musical number right from the pages of Castration Celebration. Jake Wizner’s previous YA novel, Spanking Shakespeare (2008) tackled the horrors of senior year for one uniquely named, Shakespeare Shapiro and won [...]

YA (and local) author Kelley Armstrong coming soon….

…to London, ON. She is doing a series of readings and book signings in early May for her YA ‘urban fantasy’ trilogy Darkest Powers – about a teenage necromancer and ghost whisperer who is coming to terms with her powers (when she first tells people that, like the movie, ‘I can see dead people’ she [...]

Goldie the booktalking dog

So funny that I couldn’t resist posting…also the book sounds really interesting!

The Dead and the Gone: Video Booktalk

And the deleted scenes….

The Dead and the Gone: Booktalk Card

OR, all you need to know about the book in 550 words or less… Susan Beth Pfeffer, The Dead and the Gone, Harcourt Children’s Books, 2008. 336 pgs., $22.95 (CAD) ISBN: 9780152063115 Plot Summary: In the near future, an asteroid strikes the moon, knocking it out of its normal orbit and moving it closer to [...]

The Dead and the Gone: The Travails of Video Booktalking

Technically speaking, video booktalking was a lot harder than I might have predicted. Early on I had an image of how I would booktalk The Dead and the Gone. I envisioned graphic images of the moon, the asteroid crash, and the disasters that followed – as these were the most vivid images that I took [...]

Notes on Tonight’s Reading: How to ‘Speak’

Laurie Halse Anderson’s novel, Speak, is about the sexual assault and subsequent trauma endured by a young teen girl. The novel, however, does not reveal this at its onset, but rather builds to this startling conclusion. All that the reader knows initially is that Melinda has entered high school an outcast, a social pariah – [...]

In honor of tonight’s video booktalk discussion…

Meg Cabot talks about her book, She Went All the Way, and the movie, Pretty in Pink — with dolls and accessories.