Thursday Afternoon Visits: April 16

Here are some posts from around the Kidlitosphere that have caught my eye in the past few days.

Today is drop day for Readergirlz Operation Teen Book Drop. I'm a bit late, but here's the scoop: "It's time to grab a readergirlz bookplate and take a book somewhere in your town--donate it to a library, a school, or a lonely park bench. Leave it anywhere in honor of Support Teen Literature Day!" You can also find more about Teen Literature Day at ForeWord Magazine's Shelf Space blog, in a detailed post by Carlie Webber.

Today is also the launch of Eric Berlin's Winston Breen puzzle party, in honor of the second book in the series: The Potato Chip Puzzles. In honor of the launch, Eric has created a puzzle-themed blog tour. If you solve all of the puzzles, you can win prizes. You can find the first puzzle, and the full schedule for the tour, at A Patchwork of Books. My review of the first Winston Breen book is here.

Liz Burns repeats a thought-provoking post at Tea Cozy (originally from 2006, but still quite relevant today) about a trend featuring teen interactions with senior citizens in young adult fiction.

Laini Taylor reveals the gorgeous cover of her upcoming book: Lips Touch. She also shares the story about how blogging inspired the book, which might be of particular interest to the writers among you.

Speaking of blogging, Natasha from Maw Books and Amy from My Friend Amy will be speaking on a panel at the upcoming Book Expo America about book blogging. Natasha has asked for feedback from other bloggers on topics that would be useful to discuss.

Also speaking of blogging, Sarah Miller shares some pros and cons of blogging at Reading Writing, Musing. I sense a round of blog focus angst flu going around. But I do think that Sarah nailed both pros and cons - several of hers resonated with me, even though I'm not an author.  

Elaine Magliaro rounds up Week 2 of National Poetry Month in the Kidlitosphere at Wild Rose Reader. And this week's Poetry Friday roundup is at Becky's Book Reviews.

Fans of Sallie Wolf's Truck Stuck (which I reviewed here) will enjoy this real-world story from Unabridged, the Charlesbridge blog.  

And last, but definitely not least, people all over the Kidlitosphere have linked to a recent video of President Obama reading Where the Wild Things Are at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll last weekend. Here's the video, with some context, at 100 Scope Notes.

And that's all for today!