Blog Tour (Guest Post/Review): UNCLE JOHN'S BATHROOM READER FOR KIDS ONLY! (Collectible Edition) by Gordon Javna (A/MG)

UNCLE JOHN'S BATHROOM READER FOR KIDS ONLY!

by Bathroom Readers' Institute (Gordon Javna)

Release date: April 8th, 2014

Published by: Portable Press

Genre: For all ages

Format: Hardback, eBook

Format read: Hardback from the publisher/tour host for an honest review.

SUMMARY 

Here is an exciting chance to own the very first Uncle John's Bathroom Reader For Kids Only! in a hardcover edition with all new illustrations! 

When our younger readers demanded a Bathroom Reader of their own, Uncle John put together this brain-boggling easy-to-read collection of facts, fads, quotes, history, science, origins, pop culture, mythology, humor, and more! Plus it's full of wacky and fun illustrations and Uncle John's famous "running feet" — those fun and fascinating facts on the bottom of every page. 

Curious young readers will learn about the real Dr. Seuss, baseball superstitions, the birth of The Simpsons, how carnival games are rigged, the history of dining on scorpions and tarantulas, shocking truths about thunder and lightning, and disgusting bodily functions like ear wax production and digestion (and why they're important), and much, much more!

GUEST POST by Gordon Javna

How do you narrow down what facts are important enough to go into a “Bathroom Reader?”

We're very discerning. We don't mind sharing a fact that will make {you} groan, or go, “Eww!” but we don't want to include any facts that might make you barf on the book. 

Other criteria: It should make you say, “You've GOT to be kidding me!” 

We like to include information that you haven't heard before — 

odd history, strange science, unusual origins. 

The only exception: jokes, because who doesn't want to know how to tell when an elephant’s been in the fridge? (By the footprints in the butter.) 

Or what you call a fly with no wings. (A walk.)

MY REVIEW

This book was so much fun to share with my kids! It is truly more than just a 'bathroom reader' - filled with so many wonderful facts that most people would never even think of, let alone wonder. This book kept us entertained for a very long time, and in just one sitting. It is a great book to just pick up and read randomly - just skip around and pick a page. Even more fun if you read out loud with your family and friends - quite a lot of these 'random facts' are funny and will set you all into a fit of giggles. But, and I assure you, you will also learn a lot. Some may be trivial, but a quite a lot are historical facts that is quite useful information. Definitely a fun way to learn new things.

There SO many fun and odd facts! A few of our favorite are:

- Creepy Cuisine: "People have been eating strange food since... well, since people first felt hungry. How hungry would you have to be to try some of these delicacies?" page 15.

(Ewww... who would have thought to make a meal out of these... things!)

- More Gross Stuff: "Essential (but nasty) information about your body." page 119.

(And he wasn't kidding, SO gross!)

- Travel Guide to Imaginary Lands: "Let Uncle John be your guide to some fantastic places that can only be found in books. Forget the movies - there's nothing like a great novel." page 260.

(LOVE that he tells us how to get to Narnia, Never-Never Land and a few other magical places!)

And at the bottom of every single page, throughout the entire book, there are additional miscellaneous facts! Like...

"Kid power: On average, a child laughs 400 times a day; an adult laughs about 15." page 131

"In one day, your blood will travel nearly 12,000 miles." page 136

"When dogs and humans sleep together, they dream at the same times." page 204

Over 280 pages filled with amazing knowledge - I know that my kids and I will continue to pick this book and read odd bits and will definitely share the knowledge with each other and others too! Definitely a fun book to gift, to all readers and nonreaders! To kids and adult too!
We look forward to picking up more of Uncle John's books soon!


(I received a hardback from the publisher/tour host for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.)

TOUR SCHEDULE

Monday, June 30th - Candace's Book Blog
Tuesday, July 1st - Cindy's Love of Books
Wednesday, July 2nd - Proud Book Nerd
Thursday, July 3rd - Bumbles and Fairy-Tales
Friday July 4th - Cassandra M's Place

 Monday, July 7th - Sweet Southern Home
Tuesday, July 8th - Confessions of a Book Addict
Wednesday, July 9th - Little Red Reads
Thursday, July 10th - Me, My Shelf and I
Friday July 11th - Bewitched Bookworms

Monday, July 14th - Kindle and Me
Tuesday, July 15th - Snowdrop Dreams of Books
Wednesday, July 16th - Hott Books
Thursday, July 17th - alwaysjoart
Friday July 18th - Captivated Reading

ABOUT THE AUTHOR - Gordon Javna

The life of Gordon “Uncle John” Javna, editor-in-chief and publisher of the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader series, reads like one of his books. There’s a lot of fun, intriguing—often odd—information lurking around every corner. He went to art school, and then went on to become a musician, real-estate developer, writer, restaurateur, president of a pre-school, brew pub owner, and editor—not all at once, mind you, but he has been all of these things.

Eventually, though, he realized that because of his love of fascinating facts (and being a bathroom reader himself), he was naturally suited, perhaps even destined, to bring the joy of trivia to the world in a fun, informative way. He assumed the pseudonym Uncle John for the Bathroom Reader series and since then, Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader has become the longest-running, most popular series of its kind in the publishing industry.  To date, there are more than 15 million Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers in print and his fanatical flock of followers span from Australia to the United Kingdom and beyond.

Guided by their obsession with unusual trivia, amazing origins, and forgotten history, Gordon “Uncle John” Javna and his staff at the Bathroom Readers’ Institute have made Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers a must-have for book and gift stores worldwide for over two decades.  Gordon continues to expand his porcelain province from his throne room in Ashland, Oregon.

Website / Twitter / Facebook / Pinterest / Google+

Kismet Book Touring

Blog Tour/Guest Post: THE NINJA LIBRARIANS: THE ACCIDENTAL KEYHAND by Jen Swann Downey (MG)

THE NINJA LIBRARIANS: THE ACCIDENTAL KEYHAND

The Ninja Librarians #1

by Jen Swann Downey

Expected release date: April 15th, 2014

Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky Kids

Genre: Middle Grade - Mystery, Adventure

Format: Hardcover, eBook

SUMMARY

Just a little story about your average sword-swinging, karate-chopping, crime-fighting ninja librarians.

Dorrie Barnes had no idea an overdue library book would change her life. 

When Dorrie and her brother Marcus chase her pet mongoose into the janitor's closet of their local library, they accidentally fall through a passage into Petrarch's Library - the headquarters of a secret society of ninja librarians who have an important mission: 

protect those whose words have gotten them into trouble. 

Anywhere in the world and at any time in history.

Dorrie would love nothing more than to join the society. 

But when a traitor surfaces, she and her friends are the prime suspects. 

Can they clear their names before the only passage back to the twenty-first century closes forever?

GUEST POST

Why mix Ninjas and Librarians???

Ah yes. Why mix ninjas and librarians? Even as a child, I thought of librarians as fulfilling a sort of sacred magical duty. They were the keepers of the books! The keepers of stories, legends, and great fat tomes full of history's unplumbed secrets. As I got older, I began to also appreciate librarians as important players in the long-term struggle by many to nurture and protect notions about the need for citizens to have access to freely flowing information. They understand well the need to protect books and other writings from those who would suppress or destroy them, and the need to protect the authors of such writings from censorship or punishment.

Once I realized that I wanted my story to revolve around a secret society of librarians, it was terrifically easy to imagine librarians not just as intellectual warriors, but literal ones as well, with only a slightly expanded job description, and only a slightly altered typical day. Hm...something like:  1p.m. - catalogue new arrivals: 2 p.m. - assist a patron to find a book when said patron knows only one word in the title, and the author's middle initial;  2:30 p.m. - excuse one's self from colleagues in order to slip through time in order to help break out an imprisoned "heretical" writer in a different century, an hour before he was scheduled to be burned at the stake. 

The lybrarians of Petrarch's Library are not literally ninjas. They don't wear black hoods (unless that works for a particular mission), and are not members of a feudal Japanese society of mercenaries. They do, however, share with historic ninjas, a high degree of training in secrecy, stealth, and specialized skills useful to attaining their goals. That similarity suggested the strangely elastic modern qualifier of "ninja" for librarian.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR - Jen Swann Downey

Jen Swann Downey's non-fiction pieces have appeared in New York Magazine, the Washington Post, Women's Day, and other publications. 

Her first middle-grade novel, THE NINJA LIBRARIANS, will be published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, April 1, 2014. 

Jen divides her time between libraries and other places, and will never stop looking for lickable wallpaper.

Goodreads / Website / Twitter

http://www.sourcebooks.com/

Blog Tour: THE FELLOWSHIP FOR ALIEN DETECTION by Kevin Emerson (Guest Post & Giveaway!)

I am so very thrilled to be a part of The Fellowship For Alien Detection's Blog Tour today

hosted by Walden Pond Press!!! 

The cover of this middle grade book says it all! It's one of my favorites for this year!

Take a look below for Kevin Emerson's magnificent guest post!

And, if the alien's don't get to you, there's a great giveaway going on too :) 

GUEST POST

On Road Trips, Parents, and Roswell

There is a point about 300 miles from home, when suddenly you feel it: you’ve crossed some kind of barrier, and you are officially on an adventure. You could go anywhere, and anything could happen. Your senses sharpen, and everything that seemed so important just a few hours ago is suddenly the past, more distant than the rearview. You are in the now. You are on new map.

A year before I started writing THE FELLOWSHIP FOR ALIEN DETECTION, this happened to me in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. It was a dreary April day, everything soaked and gray, and we were listening to Tom Petty’s Wildflowers album, on day one of a three-week drive to move from Boston to Seattle. I made a little video, just a view out the window, as the song “Time to Move On,” was playing. We were far enough that we wouldn’t turn back. We’d planned on camping but it was pouring. We had a road atlas, no smart phone, no GPS. We didn’t know where or what would happen next. And it ruled.

This was one of the feelings I wanted to capture in FAD, not even the sense of exhilaration, but the sense that such a feeling was possible. My characters were going to be middle graders, so this would be the first time the road and its potential captured their imagination.

The only problem, for Haley and Dodger, was that unlike grown-up me, who was driving with my wife in our own car with our own money, Haley and Dodger were thirteen, and so their trip was going to, at least at first, look a little more like I do in this picture:

See the slumped shoulders? The sulky expression? These are the signs of a teen that has been trapped in the car with his family for two weeks. It was actually a great trip, but at that age this kind of thing is also a cruel test of will: You want so badly to be on your own, a hero on the road, yet you are supposed to be part of a family adventure.  And besides you can’t drive or even get a hotel room.

That’s a tension I think I’m still dealing with as a grown up, but thirteen is where we can really see the possibility of our own journey, and the desire to get there is nearly unbearable. And yet, whenever we do leave home, whether for camp or college or to move out west, it’s still sad. Somewhere along the way, hopefully we find balance, or maybe it’s always that way.

Back to the drive: Things really got good when we went here:

I never gave Elvis all that much thought until I spent an hour in Graceland. Besides being kitschy, and giving me a firm respect for The King’s talents, I found it to be a sad place. Here was a man who started out on an incredible journey but went too far, who maybe by the end had lost track of who he really was, at least that’s what those 70’s Vegas costumes seemed to indicate. A cautionary tale for any would-be adventurer, and in a way, the template for a key character in FAD: The Alto. It’s no coincidence that he makes his appearance in the book just across the street from Graceland.

After this we drove west and south, through Mississippi:

Made a stop for Gumbo in New Orleans:

Then headed into the wilds of the west like Haley and Dodger do. And after Big Bend…

The monolithic cliffs of Guadalupe…

The spooky dark of Carlsbad (complete with bathrooms)…

…there was no question that we were going to Roswell. Not just because we were both huge X-Files nerds. But also because, after a week in the big west, the concept that aliens might be lofting along behind those high clouds, tending to their secrets, somehow seems completely plausible. It’s always felt like, out there, you could really get that far, to aliens, even other worlds.

I don’t think if a weather balloon (so says the air force) crashed in a town in Connecticut, anyone would go alien-crazy about it. But here:

Definitely.

The thing about Roswell is that it’s a sad town, too. There’s not much going on. Even in 2004, many of the stores and shops were vacant. Other than the Denny’s (prominently featured in FAD), the only places that have any verve are the alien stores, and of course, this Mecca of alien folklore:

Where you can see stunning evidence, like this:

And of course, this:

Regardless of how convinced we were by the museum, we wanted to believe (get it?), and when we left, the bug for a story about alien adventures was firmly planted. We got a copilot, too:

We spent two more weeks on the road, visiting places that later became settings in FAD: Chiricahua National Monument (the Alto’s spires and site of Project Bliss), the Oregon High Desert (where Dodger attends the Heavenly Frequencies convention), and of course, Juliette’s primary inspiration: the lovely town of Flagstaff, Arizona.

I think part of the reason I wrote this book was to spend more time in these places, as well as in that time out of time, when we were in between lives, when any adventure seemed possible. For Haley and Dodger, their long journey through the west (and further than that…) makes them realize that for as much as they want to break free, to get out on their own, there’s time, and maybe the life they often feel stuck in isn’t actually all that bad. At least for now.

I like to think of Haley and Dodger as older teens someday, college students, twenty something’s, and even married with kids (not to each other! Though I could see them reuniting later in high school to meet up at Burning Man, where they might just so happen to uncover a nefarious plot! [not a sequel! I just thought of that now!]) out on the road, driving the wide miles of the west, finding new map, and still feeling that yearning, that sense of freedom, only this time, with their own credit cards, and hopefully a cool electric car.

________________________________________________

A very big thank you to Kevin Emerson for stopping by with an eye-opening trip! 
And a thank you to Walden Pond Press for hosting 
and letting me be a part of The Fellowship for Alien Detection's tour!

You can find MY REVIEW right here!!!

________________________________________________

The Fellowship For Alien Detection

by Kevin Emerson

Release date: February 26th, 2013

Published by: Walden Pond Press

Genre: Middle Grade - Fantasty, Sci-Fi

Format read: ARC

SUMMARY

Two kids from opposite sides of the country find themselves on a road trip to save the world from an impending alien attack - and bolster their middle-school transcripts in the process. 

First came the missing people, missing time events, and untraceable radio signals. Then came Juliette, Arizona, a town that simply disappeared from existence. Suffice it to say, something strange is going on. Enter Haley and Dodger, two kids from opposite sides of the country who both think they can prove that these unexplained phenomena have a very real cause: aliens, and they are about to discover that their fledgling theories about extraterrestrial life are one-hundred-percent accurate.

Having each been awarded a Fellowship for Alien Detection (a grant from a mysterious foundation dedicated to proving aliens have visited earth), Haley and Dodger and their families each set off on a cross-country road trip over summer vacation to figure out what is happening in towns across America. They soon realize that the answers to many of their questions lie in the vanished town of Juliette, AZ, but someone, or something, is doing everything in its power to ensure they never reach it. If Haley and Dodger don't act quickly, more people may go missing, and the world as we know it may change for the worse.

Take a peek at The Fellowship For Alien Detection's first chapter here!!!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR - Kevin Emerson

Kevin Emerson has never been abducted by aliens, at least not that he remembers. He has been to Roswell, but all he found there was a cool key chain. Kevin is the author of a number of books for young readers, including the Oliver Nocturne series, Carlos Is Gonna Get It, andThe Lost Code, the first book in the Atlanteans series. Kevin is also a musician. His current project is the brainiac kids’ pop band the Board of Education. He lives in Seattle with his wife and two children.

Official Website/Blog, Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter

GIVEAWAY

Enter to win a hardcopy of The Fellowship For Alien Detection 
AND a Signed Bookplate from Walden Pond Pres!!!

Rules:
- U.S. and Canada only, sorry!
- Must be 13yo and older to enter. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Undertakers Takeover Blog Tour: How "The Undertakers" Came to Life by Ty Drago

Today, I have the pleasure of welcoming author, Ty Drago, to the blog!

He is going to share with us how he came up with his middle grade 

"rag-tag teen army vs. zombies" series, 

THE UNDERTAKERS.

How "The Undertakers" came to life.

by Ty Drago

"When I was a kid, I drew a lot of poorly drawn comic books, most of which centered around an army of child superheroes called "The Kid Kidets". I was eight, you see, and didn't yet know how to spell "cadets". Sue me.

The Kid Kidets were captained by a brother and sister team Tom and Sharyn Jefferson. This army possessed a broad variety of superpowers, from flight to telekinesis to weather control, and their secret headquarters was an installation below the Antartic ice. Whenever trouble brewed somewhere in the world, this installation would rise up from the ice and the Kid Kidets would sally forth into the world to right all wrongs. 

Their adventures continued for a long time until, at last, my superheroes faced an enemy they couldn't defeat. I grew up. And I forgot about them. 

For thirty years. 

Then, when my son was twelve, he asked me to consider writing a novel for his age group. And, while thinking about it, I suddenly remembered the Kid Kidets. A child's army. An interesting notion, but still only half of a story. I needed a villain. 

Comic book bad guys have never appealed to me. Take, for example, the Joker. He never wins, yet he's always so sure he's going to! I feel like taking him aside and saying, "Dude! It's Batman: 672, Joker: 0. Where's the confidence coming from?" So those guys were out.

Then I turned to the classics. Vampires. Did we really need another vampire novel? I didn't think so. How about werewolves? Thing is: I'd always seen werewolves as good guys. As a kid, I wanted to be a werewolf. I used to stand under the full moon, straining up at the sky, all the while thinking, "Come ON!" Of course, it never happened. I did get hairier as I got older, but I'm pretty sure that's something else. 

Finally, I considered zombies. Zombies are cool. They're scary. They've got parts falling off of them and have bugs and worms crawling under their skin. Good gross appeal. But an army of children fighting a zombie invasion that no one knows about? Really? True, grown-ups are thick, but I couldn't help thinking that if waves of the walking dead were attacking, even the adults might pick up on it after a while. 

All of which demonstrated the big problem with zombies as villains: zombies are really, really stupid. They are. If anyone reading this is a zombie and I've offended you, I'm sorry. But zombies are moaning, shuffling morons. 

But what if they weren't? What if they were smart, and fast, and organized? What if they had the means to disguise what they were, to project an illusion to the world that they're just normal men and women? And what if the only people who could penetrate this illusion were kids, rare kids, "lucky" kids? 

And so the Undertakers were born. They don't have superpowers. They can't fly worth a darn. And they certainly don't live in a secret base in Antartica. 

But they are still captained by a brother and sister team named Tom and Sharyn Jefferson." 

"Just goes to show you: you're never too old to have a happy childhood!" 

__________________________________________

ABOUT THE SERIES - The Undertakers

Rise of the Corpses (The Undertakers #1)

Release date: April 1st, 2011

"On a sunny Wednesday morning in October, a day that would mark the end of one life and the beginning of another, I found out my grouchy next door neighbor was the walking dead. When you turn around expecting to see something familiar, and instead see something else altogether, it takes a little while for your brain to catch up with your eyes. I call it the 'Holy Crap Factor."

Forced to flee his home and family, twelve-year-old Will Ritter falls in with the Undertakers - a rag-tag army of teenage resistance fighters who've banded together to battle the Corpses. 

Queen of the Dead (The Undertakers #2)

Release date: October 1st, 2012

"Twelve-year-old Will Ritter and his rag-tag army of teenage resistance fighters may have triumphed over the Zombies last time, but that's the thing about the dead: they keep coming back.

A new Corpse leader has crossed the rift and taken command on the invasion: The Queen of the Dead is even more brilliant and ruthless than her predecessor, and her ambitions are even deadlier. Will and the crew must somehow rescue his mother, prevent an assassination, and show FBI Agent Ramirez the truth about the Corpses - and the danger the world faces. 

But how do a bunch of kids prove to a grown-up that monsters are real?"

ABOUT THE AUTHOR - Ty Drago

"I'm a twice (soon to be THRICE) published novelist who makes his home in Southern New Jersey with my beloved wife and son. I also have a beautiful daughter, but she makes her home elsewhere these days (sniff!).

My short fiction has appeared in SPACE AND TIME MAGAZINE, HAUNTS, AFTER HOURS, PANDORA, MIDNIGHT ZOO, PLANET MAGAZINE and AMAZON SHORTS. Another story snapped up the Grand Masters spot in Fortress Publishing anthology titled "Yesterday, I will." I've also published articles on the craft and business of writing, in such venues as WRITERS DIGEST. 

Sounds halfway impressive, doesn't it? Well, I wish I could tell you that I write for a living. Sadly, I don't; at least - not yet. I'm actually a business analyst for a large pharmaceutical company. What's a business analyst you ask? Sorry. Not a clue. 

Writing has been my passion for as long as I can remember. I've authored no less than a dozen novels and scores of short stories. Most of these have found homes as bound manuscripts on my office bookshelf, waiting for their moment in the sun. That's the way it is for most authors, I'm afraid." 

Ty Drago's Website, Goodreads, Facebook 

A huge thank you to Ty Drago for stopping by my blog today! 

And a thank you to Sourcebooks for making it happen :) 

Guest Post: Marissa Moss, Author of Mira's Diary

I am very happy to welcome Marissa Moss to the blog today :)

Marissa Moss is most popular known for Amelia's Notebooks, Daphne's Diary of Daily Disasters and Max Disaster books. She has been writing and illustrating children's books for a very long time now - she submitted her first picture book when she was only nine year old! It didn't get published, but it didn't discourage her either.

For today, Marissa shares with us on how she creates her characters...   

"The Me I Wish I Could Be"

             

"There's a little bit of myself in every character I create.  Partly, that's how I get to know my characters, by drawing on my own quirks and those of people I know (one of the dangers of being friends with a writer!).  For main characters, like Amelia and Mira, these characters also become stand-ins for how I'd like to be, showing traits I wish I had. 

            Amelia is heavily based on me as a kid and the notebook I used to keep.  Except where I was gawky and awkward, Amelia uses her sense of humor to define herself.  She embraces the weirdness that I tried to hide.  When I get fan mail from girls saying they're just like Amelia, I think, “Where were you when I was a kid?”

            Mira shares my love of history and art, my compulsive need to draw everything, but she's much braver than I am.  She thinks quickly on the spot where I usually come up with the perfect come-back the next day, not the next second.  She has the same curiosity, the same willingness to experience other cultures, other times, but where I time-travel by reading and writing, she gets to do the real thing, meeting the people I'd love to meet, having the adventures I can only experience on paper.  That's one of the magical things about writing.  You can create whole worlds and people them with characters you want to know.  And those you want to be."

____________________________________________________

Thank you so much for vising Bumbles and Fairy-Tales today, Marissa!!!

You can find out more about Marissa right HERE!!!

And on her Official Website and Goodreads.  

*You can see my REVIEW 

and enter to win a copy of MIRA's DIARY right here!!!

Thank you for stopping by...

and happy reading :)