The Kids Are All Right
What began as a first-grade class project has become a best-selling book! Last year, Nia Mya Reese of Birmingham, Alabama wrote a book about how to deal with an troublesome sibling. She and her parents turned it into a summer project and recently published the finished product, How to Deal With and Care For Your Annoying Little Brother, and it has flown up the charts. At this writing, Nia Mya holds the #1 and #3 spots in the “siblings” and “school-age children” categories respectively. We’re not sure how many copies have sold, but we do know this: Nia Mya, you’re our hero of the week.
Black Eyed Peas to Publish Original Graphic Novel
Entertainment Weekly reported this week that the Black Eyed Peas (yes, Fergie and the gang) have partnered with Marvel to write an original graphic novel. Masters of the Sun – The Zombie Chronicles follows hip-hop fan Zulu-X and his crew as they take on an alien God who attacks Los Angeles and turns the residents into zombies. Aside from the fact that this whole shebang sounds like it was spit out of the Comics Industry Mad Libs Engine (and Marvel Editor in Chief Axel Alonso’s dubious claim that “Few artists have done more to embed hip-hop in popular culture than will.i.am and the Black Eyed Peas”), this one is weird and interesting enough that my curiosity might overwhelm my extreme side-eye. The cover is pretty rad, too.
Pride and Prejudice and Neo-Nazis
Speaking of unexpected combinations and extreme side-eye! Members of the alt-right movement have begun quoting Jane Austen and referring to her novels as “blueprints for a white nationalist “ethno-state.” (Whatever the hell that means.) Anyone who has actually read Austen knows that she wasn’t really about that white male patriarchal system, so I guess the real headline here is (shocker) neo-Nazis don’t read.
Thanks to Things I Should Have Known by Claire LaZebnik for sponsoring This Week in Books.
From the author of Epic Fail comes the story of Chloe Mitchell: a girl on a quest to find love for her autistic sister, Ivy. Ethan, Ivy’s classmate, seems like the perfect match. It’s unfortunate that his older brother, David, is one of Chloe’s least favorite people but Chloe can deal, especially when she realizes that David is as devoted to Ethan as she is to Ivy. Winsome and witty, this is a novel about sisterhood, autism, and first love. Things I Should Have Known will steal readers’ hearts and remind us all of a different kind of normal.