Have you felt a distinct lack of Pushing Daisies in your media rotation? Are you guilty of looking for Magic in Everyday Places? Do you want a romance NOT like all the other YA romances? In this episode, Carey and Marie discuss under-the-radar gem We Won’t Feel a Thing by J.C. Lillis, touching on weird Americana, forbidden romance, scifi versus magical realism, and the inevitable outcome of all those weird self-improvement programs you’re advertised on Facebook: love. Or a mad scientist showing up on your door yelling about manic pixie dream lab assistants AND WHO DOESN’T WANT THAT.

We Won’t Feel a Thing: Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Website, Goodreads

J.C. Lillis: Website, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook (Superhero M/M romance You First is out May 23, so why not add it on Goodreads?)

There’s not siblings, she’s the adopted kid of his mom’s college professor.

Heads up for dead parental figure and neglectful textual parents. Also a DEEPLY creepy dude and his creepy actions, up to attempted assault.

Lissa Treiman kitty comic

The Order of Oddfish (by friend of the podcast James Kennedy!)

Anastasia Krupnick series

Alice McKinley series

Barbie Made-to-Move Curvy Yoga Barbie

I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

The Love & Lies of Rukhsana Ali by Sabina Khan 

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol. 7: I've Been Waiting for a Squirrel Like You by Ryan North &  Erica Henderson

Tell Me Everything by Sarah Enni 

Happy 2019, Wayfinders! January was a heck of a year, but we still want to celebrate some sunshine and self help and return to a favorite author. It’s going to get meta up in here, while we talk KonMari, the Unicorn Club, writerly obsessions, playing 12 Questions with our WIP, and self help writer gossip. In this episode

This is a book about the oeuvre of Francesca Lia Block, so everything present in her books is present here: parent death, grief, eating disorders, mental and physical illness, miscarriage, terrible boys and terrible men, rape culture, antisemitism. There’s also a long rumination on David Bowie and his influence on the author’s writing and art, so caveat lector.

Parasol Protectorate Fan Group

Heavenly Creatures

Francesca Lia Block’s 12 Questions to Help Structure Your Novel, around which the book itself is structured

Julia Cameron Wants You to Do Your Morning Pages

Happy Birthday Judy Blume!

Best Babysitters Ever by Carolina Cala

Racefail ‘09

Writing for Your Life: Discovering the Story of Your Life's Journey by Deena Metzger

Foolsgold: Making Something from Nothing and Freeing Your Creative Spirit by Susan G. Wooldridge

Everything's Trash, But It's Okay by Phoebe Robinson

The Belladonna University series by Tansy Rayner Roberts

Happy new year readers and listeners! Tonight we visit a grand fall and winter-y read with spooky Ouija parties, nerd girls uniting against the patriarchy, astronomy in abundance and, of course, the worst boy. (There’s a really excellent New Year’s Eve party in this book!) What dangers lurk when the neighbor asks us to build a time machine? Should we really read our sister’s journal? In this episode, there are several thousand words about a slumber party.

Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary: Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Worldcat

Pamela Dean: Website, Twitter, Patreon

Bras and Broomsticks: Goodreads, Worldcat, Indiebound, Author Website

Sarah Mlynowski: Website, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Wattpad, Facebook

Our first (and sadly not last) appearance of the Unfortunate Transphobia Bear—it’s a couple lines, but a couple lines that would do well to be edited out in 2018.

This is a book that gets REAL about relationships with step-parents, conflict between adults and kids, and kids seeing their parents as human for the first time. We appreciate it, good to know going in.

Love, loss, and the surprising aphrodisiacs of the band locker room. That’s what the Dulaney High marching band has in store for Meghan Riggins. Like her Gram, who’s been her biggest fan since that first trombone lesson, Meghan’s always loved making music. So marching band should be easy, right? Wrong. It’s hard enough staying upright during the halftime show, avoiding the worst of the upperclassmen, or remembering the difference between a cummerbund and a dickie. But then she falls for Jonah, an adorkable fellow trombone nerd who just happens to be her best friend’s brother. Meghan may need to rethink everything she knows about herself, in and out of band, with and without her family and friends, and in and out of love. Both witty and poignant, Forward March will have you laughing, swooning, and cheering from the stands. 

Find Forward March by Carey Farrell at your favorite online bookseller!

Source: BBC Two

The very spookiest bat

Per our query in the podcast: Sarah Mlynowski has two sisters—she’s in between the two!—and Bras and Broomsticks takes a lot of inspiration from real life.

Betsy Bird comes up a lot in this episode. She’s our hero.

Wendy Mass

Cynthia Rylant

Read When the Letter Comes by Sarah Fox online for free!

All the Halloween Episodes of Bob’s Burgers

The Infamous Vibrating Nimbus 2000

Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in Love by MaryRose Wood

The 11:11 Wish by Kim Tomsic

The Holy Wild: A Heathen Bible for the Untamed Woman by Danielle Dulsky

What if This Were Enough? and How to Be a Person in the World by Heather Havrilesky

Carey talked Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret on Unspoiled! Book Club

Thanks Podscure for always shouting us out!

We’re back, minus a few cup sizes! (The opposite of a lot of YA trajectories, but such is life.) Discussion Alice, I Think by Susan Juby was super fun, especially since Carey and Rie had radically different stances…that shifted over the course of the episode. Just like a good mood ring. Oh, Canada, my Canada, did we mention the fashion in this one? The small-town snark? Oh, and the moose? Wait, that’s book three.

Alice, I Think: Goodreads

Susan Juby: Website

Happy 30th Episode everybody! Our scrappy little episode enters the decade of wine, Netflix, and cats/dogs with a Hometown Read from Host Rie. Take the Staten Island Ferry and actually disembark for a tale of two ungrateful teenagers and the sweetest old man in the world. We talk high school shenanigans, kids these days, and assigned reading while lamenting the fate of the Pigman. Oops. Unless you had it as assigned reading. 

The Pigman: Goodreads

Paul Zindel: Website

Oh boy. Terrible parents, elder abuse, grief, horrible 1960s zoos, casual and not-so-casual homophobia. Host Rie also rags on her hometown a bunch. It deserves it. 

Tiger after getting mama back from the evil recording studio

The Pigman's Legacy by Paul Zindel

The Pigman and Me by Paul Zindel

Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on their Toes by Ernestine Gilbreth

Lizabeth Zindel

The Vanderbilt Tomb

Turn your cremains into a sparkly orb or a puppet but maybe not a pie

Rie's 8th grade curriculum: Zlata's Diary, Letters from Rivka, Behind Rebel Lines, Farewell to Manzanar 

Shelf Discovery by Lizzie Skurnick

Chemistry by C.L. Lynch

The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson

A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg

We love you Podscure!

Scarlet Epstein Hates it Here by Anna Breslaw

We Won't Feel a Thing by J.C. Lillis

Sitting on Saturn by Joe Beine

Finding Yvonne by Brandy Colbert

Are you out there? Can you hear us? We kick off our Hometown Series with Carey's Baltimore read, How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford. A boy, a girl, and a bond over weirdos calling into a radio show to laugh, live, and ride a magic carpet over Ocean City while surviving some very harsh truths about growing up. We discuss the strangeness of big cities and small fandoms, as well as solving the public transit problem in Baltimore (see: title).

How to Say Goodbye in Robot: Goodreads

Natalie Standiford: Website (visit this, cause there's great background material on the book!)

Mental illness, mistreatment of the disabled, parental death, emotional abuser (parent/child), shitty teenage boys

Daniel Pinkwater (he has a podcast too!)

How to Say Goodbye in Robot 8tracks mix

Fifi the Kinetic Poodle

Coast to Coast AM

WFMU

The Cotton Candy Road Trip

Everything Goes Book Cafe

The Secret Tree by Natalie Standiford

Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters by Natalie Standiford

The Only Girl in School by Natalie Standiford

The Secret Apartment by Natalie Fast

We collaborated with Fuse 8 n' Kate on Kay Thompson's Eloise, and it was super fun!

Foster of the Podcast Sweet Pea who found a forever home last week!

How Maryland's Enchanted Forest Got Its Own Storybook Ending

Land of Make Believe

Storybook Land

Gingerbread Castle

Sleep With Me Podcast

Lizard People's call-in episode

How to Repair a Mechanical Heart by J.C. Lillis

Radio Silence by Alice Oseman

Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choy

The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds by Diane Ackerman

Somebody put a bra on the library dome! It's not a 90s comedy middle grade book; it's The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. Join us for chat about art as protest, why girls should treat girls with respect, and what YA character we think will head the CIA. 

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks: Goodreads

E. Lockhart: website

This is a book that deals with internalized misogyny, textually, and gender essentialism. There's a lot of both. There are teen boys dressing femme as a joke, and a lot of humor circling around what genders have what configurations. It can be a heavy read. We would love to see a 10th anniversary edition with an intro from the author on how things have changed...and how they haven't.

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

Shelf Discovery by Lizzie Skurnick (the Harriet the Spy essay is in this one!)

We did an episode on The Boyfriend List

Frankie Landau-Banks on neglected positives and imaginary neglected positives

The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

You can get your own light up basset hound!

Persons of Consequence by K.D. Hume

Shrill by Lindy West

There's a Mystery There: The Primal Vision of Maurice Sendak by Jonathan Cott

The Summer of Jordi Perez  by Amy Spalding

Ostensibly this is an episode about the excellent Brigid Lowry and her excellent book, Juicy Writing. In real life, this is an episode about fatalism, childhood writing dreams, and the end of the world. Wayfinders, hold us to that poetry prompt!

Brigid Lowry: New Zealand Book Council , Interview at The Starfish

Juicy Writing: Inspiration and Techniques for Young Writers 

Guitar Highway Rose

Abbacadabra

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

Things You Either Hate or Love

Joanne Horniman

Still Life With Teapot

Anastasia Krupnick

Harriet the Spy

The Betsy-Tacy Series

Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself

The Magic Attic Club

Natalie Goldberg

Judy Blume's teaching a writing class!

Our episode on Cassandra Golds' book, The Museum of Mary Child

Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge

Turn Not Pale, Beloved Snail: A Book about Writing and Other Things by Jacqueline Jackson

The Thorn Necklace: Healing Through Writing and the Creative Process  by Francesca Lia Block

The Creative Tarot: A Modern Guide to an Inspired Life by Jessa Crispin