Smugglers’ Stash and News

Welcome to another Sunday edition of our Smugglers’ Stash & News.

We shall start with some excellent news:

The Mysterious Benedict Society covers to be “Adjusted”:

The School Library Journal reported on the 26th that Little, Brown Books for Young Readers will be adjusting the covers of The Mysterious Benedict Society following complaints that the character Sticky Washington, which is described as having brown skin appear as white in the covers:

“We are adjusting the covers of all three titles immediately as they reprint in order to offer a more faithful rendering as soon as possible,” Melanie Chang, Little, Brown’s executive director of publicity and communications, told School Library Journal.

We couldn’t be more delighted with the news and as we said last week, proud to be a part of this awesome, vocal, dedicated group. However, let’s not forget that this has been going on for a long time and as awesomely urged by The Rejectionist in their post last week: No Retreat, Baby, No Surrender!

In Other News:

From the series: Things That Mystify and Baffle Us.

The Guardian reported that

Dictionaries have been removed from classrooms in southern California schools after a parent complained about a child reading the definition for “oral sex”.

Yeah, you heard us right. The Webster Dictionary was pulled from shelves because a parent thought it was not age appropriate for her child. The Dictionary. What comes next? A ban on the alphabet?

Because who knows what those perverted little minds can spell? We are seriously considering creating a special tag for archiving surreal news such as these, like “Aliens” or “Snow in Rio de Janeiro”. Perhaps “X-files”. Anyways, the ban was (somewhat) overruled and the parents can now opt out whether their child can or can not have access to the Dictionary.

In other more, uplifting news:

The Nebula Awards are the annual awards by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America to celebrate excellence in science fiction and fantasy writing. The 2009 Awards will be held May 14-16 at Cape Canaveral, Florida and nominations will start soon and be open till February 15th. Tor.com has a list of interesting titles for consideration.

In similar news, The British Science Fiction Association Award shortlist has been announced this week. We are ecstatic to see in the Best Novel category Ark by Stephen Baxter which was one of Thea’s top 10 books of 2009. Also, included are The City and the City by China Mieville and Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin, both books in our TBR piles – we must really get to read them soon!

The “Don’t Let Your Dream Fade” Contest:

Lisa McMann, author of the Wake trilogy and Simon & Schuster are running a really cool contest. Offering $1000 to a teen to further his or her dreams, whether it be for college, something arty, or even just not having to work a second job to have more time to focus on high school: they’ve asked teens to do a video blog (2 min or less) comparing their dreams to Janie’s, the main character in the Wake trilogy. You can read more about the contest here or check an example of one of vlogs already created for the competition on youtube.

A Teaser:

And finally, coming from Harper Teen this February:

28 Days of Winter Escapes

28 Fabulous Books. 28 Fabulous Authors. 28 Fabulous Blogs.

For 28 days this February, Harper Teen is offering up a book-a-day giveaway on its Winter Escapes website. For every day of the event, a different book will be featured and up for grabs on the official site – but also, the author of that particular book will be at a different partner blog to talk about their book. We are thrilled to announce that we Smugglers are part of the event, and will be having author Delia Ephron here on February 17th to talk about her featured book, The Girl With the Mermaid Hair.

It all starts tomorrow, with The Amanda Project: Book 1: Invisible I. Make sure to stop by the Winter Escapes website for a chance to win autographed copies of the books, and also be entered for a chance to win an iTouch.

Giveaway Winners:

We had two giveaways that ended yesterday!

Molly Harper Giveaway:

The two winners of an autographed set (each) of all three Jane Jameson books by Molly Harper are:

Wish Giveaway:

The winner of an autographed copy of Wish by Alexandra Bullen is:

Congratulations! You know the drill. Please send your snail mail address to contact (at) thebooksmugglers (dot) com and we will get the books to you ASAP.

This Week On The Book Smugglers:

On Monday, Thea finally gets a chance to read and review, post apocalyptic novel Veracity by Laura Bynum, a book she has been eyeing for some time.

On Tuesday, Ana reviews highly anticipated Fantasy novel The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin.

Wednesday sees Thea reviewing the sci-fi thriller Impact by Douglas Preston.

And then on Thursday Ana finally resumes her Historical Romance reading with a review of The Bride and The Buccaneer by Darlene Marshall.

Finally on Friday, we post a joint review of a book we both have been wanting to read for a long time and which comes highly recommend from several sources. The YA/Fantasy novel, Blackbringer by Laini Taylor.*

And that’s it from us today.

Have a nice Sunday, folks!

~ Your Friendly Neighborhood Book Smugglers

* EDITED above from Silksinger. We are reviewing the FIRST book in the series, titled Blackbringer.