Link Roundup

Here is what caught my interest this week in the blogosphere:

 

• This visually captivating blog post starts off  with a collage of the "darkness" of YA covers . Then it moves into more sobering ground; how ethnically diverse/dark is YA based on covers alone? Turns out, not very.

• Awful Library Books. The few and the dedicated do us all a favor by sorting through library stock to weed out gems like these. For a YA angle, scroll to the post from 7/21/2011 with the heading 80s Teen Fiction. One sketched cover shows what I think is supposed to be a teenager but looks more like a 40-yr-old jazzercize clown...

• Lit Agent Rachelle Gardner did a series this week about pitching your novel, inlcuding a verbal pitch, which I thought was interesting (I took NOTES, y'all). Sometimes we lack focus when talking about our projects, so imagine pitching your work to a room full of agents. SCARY. Here's more on crafting an elevator pitch (a pitch short enough for an elevator ride).

• Somewhat related, the blog Love YA hosted a contest (now closed) for a twitter-length pitch to an agent. I didn't participate but I read through every single pitch in the comments. For a voyeuristic look at what everyone else is writing or to get an idea of what works and what doesn't in a 140 character summary, check it out.

• This last one is not writing or reading related, but if you're a sucker for kitties (like me), then you have no choice but to click: The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee