Flamingnet Student Book Reviewers

Over the past year, we have been lucky to have some excellent middle and upper school students read and review many of the new and advance books sent to Flamingnet. Recently we also extended an invitation to review books for Flamingnet to college students either to fullfill an English course requirement or in order to advance their portfolios (especially if they are interested in doing reviews of books, magazines, and movies as a career). The response has been excellent and these reviews should be appearing soon on Flamingnet. If you are a school teacher or college professor who would like to offer this opportunity to your students, or a student who would like to review books for Flamingnet, please email us at webmaster@flamingnet.com. As Flamingnet has grown so have the requests we receive for book reviews. We, therefore, will appreciate your help.

DOUBLE HELIX

I had heard several librarians on the YALSA listserv praise Double Helix by Nancy Werlin. This is supposedly a preteen contemporary mystery. I read it this summer to my own kids who are both in middle school and was shocked at the sexual references in the book. We have had several preteen and young adult books sent to Flamingnet for review this past year that have also been sexually explicit. I feel all of these books are inappropriate for my 12 and 13 year old kids, yet this is the age group their publishers and authors are targeting. But, like movies, shouldn't authors and publishers be encouraged to use some sort of rating system to tell parents and young readers if the book includes references to sex, violence and drugs? I think a publisher that voluntarily adopts such a system would become very popular with parents, teachers and librarians interested in making appropriate reading recommendations to their preteens and young adults.

UNDER THE SUN

Today we were very excited to learn that The McDonogh School in Baltimore, Maryland has purchased and distributed 150 copies of UNDER THE SUN to its seventh grade. The students have been encouraged to read this book prior to Mr. Dorros' visit to the school in November. Flamingnet had brought this book to the middle school librarians' attention. After reading it and seeing our student reviews, they recognized it as a new and important book about ethnic diversity.

Welcome

This is the first post on our new blog. Welcome to the Flamingnet Book Blog where "Dad of Flamingnet" can add his two cents about the books my son and his friends have reviewed for our site and about books that I have read to my kids. I will also be commenting on other books we have been sent that we have elected not to review.