It's Meg. I'm in the library.

When a librarian is making outdoor and indoor signage for the U.S. Solar eclipse, including how to tell if your glasses or viewing materials are safe choices (via whenalibrarian)

Totally putting this on a shelf one of these days.

There is big news today for prospective college students and their parents. It comes from Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who is in Iowa with President Obama for his annual Back to School Bus Tour.

“Today, we’re lending a hand to millions of high school students who want to go to college and who’ve worked hard,” Duncan said. “We’re announcing an easier, earlier FAFSA.”

That’s the Free Application For Federal Student Aid. With more than 100 questions, it’s a gatekeeper for students hoping to get help paying for college.

“It’s really a win-win for everybody,” says Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. “Ultimately, this is gonna mean less work for [students] and less work for schools.”

Obama Makes College Aid Application Earlier And Easier

This month (well, roughly — we mean Sept. 7 - Oct. 7, 2015) we are doing something special here at Diversity in YA: focusing on fantasy and science fiction with main characters who are non-white, LGBTQ, and/or disabled. What does it mean to have diversity in fantasy and science fiction? How do you do that in a secondary world fantasy that isn’t set in our real world, or in a novel that’s set in the future on a distant planet? Some authors this month will be writing about these questions, and others will be sharing the stories of how they came to write their fantasy and science fiction novels.

To kick it all off, we’re starting with a giveaway of five new and upcoming YA fantasy and science fiction novels that present worlds filled with diversity:

Wonders of the Invisible World by Christopher Barzak (Knopf)

Trail of the Dead by Joseph Bruchac (Tu Books)

Sound by Alexandra Duncan (Greenwillow)

Court of Fives by Kate Elliott (Little, Brown)

Serpentine by Cindy Pon (Month9Books)

Here are the giveaway rules:

Five winners will be drawn; each will receive one book.

Winners must have a U.S. mailing address; we are unable to ship internationally.

Each person can have one free entry.

Teachers and librarians are allowed an extra entry.

Additional entries are available if you’d like to signal boost. (And thanks!)

The deadline to enter is Oct. 6, 2015. Winners will be contacted shortly afterward.

To enter, fill out this Rafflecopter form: (Note: If you’re reading this on Tumblr it may not show up on your dashboard. Go here instead.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Cover Reveal >> Consider by Kristy Acevedo

Great YA books deserve great YA covers - and the cover for Kristy Acevedo’s Consider, which won the 2015 Pen New England Susan P. Bloom Children’s Book Discovery Award, is great.

Alexandra Lucas’ anxiety was problematic enough with the stress of senior year. But when mysterious holograms appear in the sky, heralding the end of the world and giving orders to step through a portal to safety, it’s at an all-time high. The holograms claim to be humans from the future, but with no proof, Alex has to figure out whether to stay or go - and if whether something even worse is on the horizon.

Consider is the first in the HoloSeries and will release on April 18 from Jolly Fish Press.

There’s no mention of the unemployed man, the family, the senior citizen or the kids “not getting into trouble” by being at the library- they’re all doing obviously positive and productive things, and only teens can (and definitely do) get into this unnamed and threatening “trouble.” Furthermore, it’s also implied that all this particular library has to offer teens is some generic “after-school program” that keeps them off the streets. No mention of what positive or productive thing the teens are doing in this program, no mention of how it’s bettering their lives, just a focus on how this library is keeping teens out of trouble and therefore keeping the teens from annoying/frightening everyone else in the community.

July, 2015: Some Girls Are is removed as an optional title from West Ashley High School’s summer reading program after one parent complains that the book is ‘trash’ and ‘smut.’ (The full story + my response.)

August, 2015: catagator and Andria Amaral of the Charleston County Public Library organize an effort to get Some Girls Are into the hands of as many teenagers who want it–for free–as possible. Thanks to your amazing generosity nearly 1,000 copies of the book were donated.

September, 2015: The Some Girls Are book project is underway! The photos above are the result of your fight against censorship and your advocacy for teen readers. As I said before in the wake of this incident: books provide us with an opportunity to empower teens by giving them a say and choice in what is relevant to their lives. I am deeply grateful to you all for giving that say and that choice back to them.

Thank you.

Library Week WPA Gov Docs: Be Kind to Books Club Posters (1936-40)

To celebrate passing 30,000 followers here on Tumblr, it’s time for a Tumblr-only giveaway.

Up for grabs is the bookish t-shirt of your choice from the Book Riot Store.

Entering is easy: like or reblog this post through Monday, August 31 for the chance to win. We will randomly select a winner then and notify them via their ask box. You must be a follower to collect your prize but new followers are welcome. And yes, this one is open internationally.

New book award alert!

Announced in April, the Mathical award, sponsored by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and the Children’s Book Council, honors “the most inspiring math-related fiction and nonfiction books” for youth. This year’s winners, pictured above, were all published in 2014 and feature an array of books incorporating many different mathematical concepts in interesting ways - there’s not a dry book among the lot.

Have You Seen My Dragon? by Steve Light

One Big Pair of Underwear by Laura Gehl

Really Big Numbers by Richard Evan Schwartz

Nearly Gone by Elle Cosimano