My YA Novel GOOD ENOUGH debuts in Paperback Today! May 8, 2012!

GOOD ENOUGH by Paula Yoo (HarperTeen paperback edition May 8, 2012)

I am proud to announce that my YA novel GOOD ENOUGH (HarperCollins 2008) has just been released in paperback by HarperTeen. The paperback release date is TODAY! (May 8, 2012)

GOOD ENOUGH was also chosen as one of the books for the New York Public Libraries SUMMER READING 2012 list! For more info on this program, go here: http://www.summerreading.org/index.html

The entire summer reading list for 2012 is here (just click on the Teens link): http://www.summerreading.org/content.html

(Keep reading after the break to find out more about the GOOD ENOUGH paperback release, as well as other updates and breaking news…)

Other GOOD ENOUGH awards/nominations include the following:

• 2009 Honor Book of the Youth Literature of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature (APAAL) for its excellence in the literary quality and the promotion of Asia/Pacific Americans and their heritages
• 2009 Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choice
• 2009 Most Humorous YA Novel List by the New York Public Library Stuff for the Teen Age
• 2009-10 Young Adult Book Award nominee by the South Carolina Association of School Librarians (SCASL)
• 2010-11 Missouri Gateway Readers Award nominee
• 2011-12 Nebraska Golden Sower Award nominee

I received the complimentary author’s copies box of my paperback edition yesterday in the mail. I was so excited!

The box of GOOD ENOUGH paperbacks arrived!

I was also excited because this edition also includes an author photo taken by my friend Rob See. Yippee!

My first author photo on a novel! 🙂 (Photo credit: Rob See)

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In other news, May is the annual ASIAN-PACIFIC AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH. This month features nation-wide festivals and events celebrating the contributions of Asian-Pacific Americans to our country. (For more info on that, go here: http://asianpacificheritage.gov/) I will be one of the panel speakers at the Japanese American National Museum‘s family festival, “Target Free Family Saturday: Celebrate Asian Pacific Heritage” on Saturday May 12, 2012. The festival is all day from 11 AM to 4 PM.

The panel I’m speaking on is called, “Fact to Fiction: API Authors Panel.” It will be held at 2 PM.

The panel description: “Join a remarkable panel of novelists featuring New York Times bestselling author Jamie Ford (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet), Kristina McMorris (Bridge of Scarlet Leaves), Margaret Dilloway (How to Be an American Housewife), and Paula Yoo (Good Enough). Topics will include the influence of Asian American history on today’s literature, weaving true and personal accounts into fiction, and cultural education through storytelling.”

I’ll post more info on the event in a special blog to be posted on Friday May 11th, so come on back for that! Until then, for more info, please visit the Japanese American National Museum website here: http://www.janm.org/

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As you know, I’ve been busy from May 1-7, 2012 hosting my annual National Picture Book Writing Week, AKA “NAPIBOWRIWEE.” It’s a fun event where I encourage both newbies and veteran authors to write 7 picture books in 7 days so we end up with rough FINISHED drafts that we can revise later in the year. It’s my way of battling procrastination! 🙂 If you missed NAPIBOWRIWEE this year, you can relive the event from my daily blogs that were posted here: https://paulayoo.com/napi

Now that NaPiBoWriWee 2012 has wrapped, I’ll be back to posting regular blogs at this site (https://paulayoo.com/blog) so keep checking out my YOO INK headlines on my main page for future blog schedules and other updates.

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"Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak

Finally, May 8, 2012 is also a sad day because I just found out beloved and influential children’s book author MAURICE SENDAK passed away today. The news story is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/books/maurice-sendak-childrens-author-dies-at-83.html

From The New York Times article, “Maurice Sendak, Author of Splendid Nightmares, Dies at 83” by Margalit Fox:

“Maurice Sendak, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche, died on Tuesday in Danbury, Conn. He was 83 and lived in Ridgefield, Conn.

“Roundly praised, intermittently censored and occasionally eaten, Mr. Sendak’s books were essential ingredients of childhood for the generation born after 1960 or thereabouts, and in turn for their children. He was known in particular for more than a dozen picture books he wrote and illustrated himself, most famously ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ which was simultaneously genre-breaking and career-making when it was published by Harper & Row in 1963.”

A friend posted this brief clip of an interview between Terry Gross and Maurice Sendak on Facebook today. I thought I’d share it with you:

TERRY GROSS: “Can you share some of your favorite comments from readers that you’ve gotten over the years?”

MAURICE SENDAK: “Oh, there’s so many. Can I give you just one that I really like? It was from a little boy. He sent me a charming card with a little drawing. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters – sometimes very hastily – but this one I lingered over. I sent him a postcard and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, ‘Dear Jim, I loved your card.’ Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, ‘Jim loved your card so much he ate it.’ That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”

RIP Maurice Sendak. You will be greatly missed in the children’s book world.

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Stay tuned for more blogs in the future. Until the next blog, remember… HAPPY WRITING! WRITE LIKE YOU MEAN IT! 🙂