First Silksinger review! A giveaway, and the auction for Bridget Zinn

Thank you, thank you, Jen Robinson, for being the first person to review Dreamdark: Silksinger! Reading a first review like THIS ONE is the best possible medicine for my nail-biting anxiety :-) Jen also did a lovely review of Blackbringer last year.

Jen Robinson is a blogger who's passionate about children's literacy, more so than anyone else I can think of. Besides doing book reviews, she uses her blog to promote and educate about literacy, including great round-up posts that collect reading-related material from all over the web. She also blogs for Booklights, the new PBS Parents blog, and creates the Growing Bookworms Newsletter, focused on raising readers. (You can e-subscribe HERE.)

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You can enter to win an advance readers copy of Silksinger in this GoodReads giveaway. I didn't even know this existed at GoodReads -- publishers posting book giveaways. There are quite a few up there. Of course, there are so many requests for each book that the chances of winning are slim, but I still put my name into a hat or two :-) A surer way to get Silksinger is in the auction below. It's not posted yet, but it will be soon:

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Have you heard yet about the auction for Bridget Zinn? If you don't know Bridget, she is a lovely YA writer and youth librarian who has had quite a full year so far. First, she signed with an agent (the awesome Michael Stearns), then she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, and then she got married. Yeah, you might have noticed that the middle thing is a truly terrible and terrifying thing. Bridget lives in my neighborhood; we first met at the Kidlit Blogger's Conference last fall. I was so excited about her agent news, and when another email came around about more news, I expected it to be more good news -- not cancer. I'm still stunned by it. It seems impossible. Not to mention deeply unfair. An ultra-health-conscious 31-year-old nonsmoking vegetarian, getting cancer? Very little freezes my blood like news of young people with cancer. There ought to be somebody to argue with about his, doesn't it feel like? To make a case and persuade that this ought not happen? Ever? If only.

Bridget has started chemo and has a wonderful care-taker in new-husband Barrett (they were high school sweethearts and have been together for years, but were married by the hospital chaplain right before her surgery), and some local Kidlit folks have started an online auction to help raise some money for Bridget's medical expenses.

There are some great items posted so far, not just signed books but some specialized services like consultations and critiques. (For example, a manuscript critique by Newbery-Honor winning author Cynthia Lord!) Please take a moment to peruse the offerings. Think ahead to Christmas gifts, or start a collection of signed children's and YA titles. It'd be a great time to do so.