Recently, I’ve been using an amazing new Middle Grade novel entitled The Boy At the Back of the Class by Onjali Q. Raúf. Raúf is the founder of Making Herstory, an organisation mobilising men, women and children from all walks of life to tackle the abuse and trafficking of women and girls in the UK and beyond. The Boy At the Back of the Class is a novel about a young boy named Ahmet who flees Syria with his family and ends up in the UK....

Most YA books tend not to hyper focus on whether or not the protagonist wakes up with a painful zit on their chin, or the rate at which hair seems to grow out of places you definitely don’t want hair, and that is okay by me. After growing up in the late ‘90s and early 2000s where it seemed like a lot of teen media was unhealthily obsessed with “ideal” appearances, there’s a part of me that is grateful…but also, for real, where are the teens in YA that deal with this stuff in a non-toxic manner?...

During the first lockdown, independent bookshops did everything they could to ensure they didn’t have to close their doors permanently. They offered delivery and online ordering to ensure they could bring great books to your door and not get swallowed up by the aforementioned giant online shops. Some of these bookshops even took orders over the phone. They did what they could: some did not make it, some are hanging on by a thread....

However, if you are reading all this and are unsure what I am talking about, fellow Book Rioter Alice has a great guide to help you. Alice has provided some simple steps on How to Create an Awesome D&D Character. Or you can let the dice choose the character for you. What could go wrong with that? Once you have the right D&D dice set to match your character, make sure to find a suitable case to protect them....

It made what should have been a mild and pleasant stay for five visiting English folk a blustery and unseasonably foul June. A particularly bad stretch led them to come up with some alternative entertainment, one now familiar to modern campers: telling ghost stories. But these weren’t the ghost stories we know now of hitchhikers and chainsaw-wielding loners: these were German ghost stories collected and published for the sole purpose of scaring the pants off educated capital-R Romantics....

We got a trailer for a 3D movie featuring this quirky household, complete with the finger snapping and an epic version of the theme song. A married couple engages in kinky hijinks and raves over them, while the kids play with explosions and electricity. We know this household: the Addams family. The cast includes Oscar Isaac, Charlize Theron, Chloe Grace Moretz and Finn Wolfhard. The Addams Family was originally a comic strip by Charles Addams that ran in the New Yorker starting in 1937....

There’s been a lot of buzz surrounding Descender #1. It’s been getting a lot of praise from the industry and its already been optioned for a film. That’s a lot of hype for a book that hasn’t even come out yet! Thats enough to entice most comic book readers, but I was a little skeptical, it’s ANOTHER sci-fi book from Image. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some good science fiction, but it seems like theres a new Image sci-fi series popping up every other week....

Bonne MamanⓇ, makers of your favorite premium preserves and jellies, are celebrating NEW Bonne Maman Herbal Tea, available in five distinct blends tailored for special moments throughout the day—like curling up with a really good book. Find a flavor to match your current read at BonneMaman.us and other retailer outlets. Too Soft For This Sweatshirt ($40): A sweatshirt for book, tea, and TSwift lovers? Yes, please! Literary Mug and Tea Bundle ($13): Try a new tea in a fabulous literary mug....

Be Prepared by Vera Brosgol In this middle-grade graphic memoir, Vera tells of the summer she spent at a Russian summer camp. The child of immigrants, she struggled to fit in with her more affluent suburban friends, but being surrounded by other Russian kids at camp didn’t automatically make things easier like she imagined. This book reminded me a lot of Shannon Hale’s Real Friends in its portrayal of how messy and mean childhood friendships and power structures can be....

Retellings have so much ground to play with in thinking about how best to reinvent a classic story, but one of my favorite aspects is the ways in which retellings play with gender. Especially for fairytales and stories that have been passed down from long ago, the gender roles depicted can be very normative and sometimes even problematic by our modern standards. The evil stepmother and wicked witch (in addition to the sometimes antisemitic connotations of the latter) feel overdone....

But isn’t that what villains do best? Top 12 (Totally Subjective) Best Spider-Man Villains 12. Chameleon Chameleon was the first villain ever to grace a Spider-Man comic, making his appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man #1 (March 1963). Originally, it was all about the disguise: Chameleon relied on his smarts and skills in deception while taking on the look and mannerism of anyone he desired. Over the years, this villain has evolved and grown to be a staple in Spidey’s rogues’ gallery across many issues and story arcs....

That’s the thing about comic book superheroes: when you’re onto a good thing, you want to spread the love around and make sure the good times keep going. Does this get a bit confusing? Oh, most certainly! But when, in the history of Marvel, have the best stories ever been boring? After all, Thor may be a god but more importantly, Thor is an ideal. This gives far more power and opportunity to your storytelling....

Perhaps the best works created for children are the ones rife with layers discoverable later in life. That quality encourages intergenerational sharing. It makes the works enduring. Maybe, like me, you’ve read hundreds (or thousands!) of books and generally soaked up a lot of culture in the time since you last visited our spiky-haired boy and his tiger friend. If so, here are some literary references you can pick up on a Calvin and Hobbes reread....

Because YA book trends come and go, so do the design trends in those very covers. As with many things in YA, we can thank Twilight for bringing much more attention (and money) to the category. That extends to cover design. We had dark covers in the 2009–2011 era, which brought about nonsense commentary and critique in places like The Wall Street Journal. Then we had the trend of white girls in big and billowy dresses....

This announcement comes on the heels of the 2019 Hugo Awards, during which Jeannette Ng won the Campbell Award and gave a speech calling out Campbell as a fascist, as well as one of the architects of the genre’s long-running focus on white male colonialist narratives. The irony that a Hong Kong–born author who is actively diversifying science fiction won an award named for Campbell was not lost on them, and their speech garnered a great deal of attention....

“‘The first half of 2020 presented tremendous challenges for China Literature,’ said Cheng Wu, CEO of China Literature in a statement. ‘The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and a complex and changing macro-environment had a negative impact on our business. The Company recorded a loss for the first time in many years. The disappointing results made us realize that the lack of resilience of our underlying business model and our structural issues that have piled up over the recent years....

Martin has always said that the Wars of the Roses, a series of battles fought among English nobles between 1455 and 1485, served as inspiration for his plot. There’s even a TED-Ed talk exploring the connections. I’ve investigated some of the real history behind Game of Thrones and suggested books about the real people that might help cure your GOT withdrawal. First, a few disclaimers: I’m not a historian, just an enthusiastic nerd....

“Let’s call a spade a spade. The Covid-19 crisis has created a hard time for all of us. At this point, we could all use a change of scenery. The great thing about books, though, is that they can offer that very escape you might need – without even leaving the comfort of your own home. So here’s a list of things I particularly miss along with some book recs that are basically about people doing those exact things....

“You’re a librarian? You must know a lot about books!” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard declarations like these when people find out I’m a public librarian. Books are the first thing that come to mind for most folks when they think about libraries and librarians. This is a generalization, of course, since public libraries offer much more than just books these days. Plus, there are myriad different kinds of librarians, some who don’t handle books on a regular basis at all....

Bonus: most of these kits are well below the retail value of buying the products individually. Sweet! Make your lips super soft with this Laneige lip kit of sleep masks in candy and mint chocolate flavor. $24. Slinky smooth hair something you’re wanting? You can grab a mini straightening brush set. $35. The names of these lip and cheek Milk kit are great: Glimmer and Halo, a mauve and bright pink shimmer respectively....