Tag: holidays

Reality Scoop: Holiday Stress Relief

The holiday season is upon us and it can be a very stressful time for many teens and their families.  Some families may have financial problems and the hustle and bustle of holiday shopping can heighten teens stress to an uncomfortable level.  Or they may have divorced parents and have split holiday plans. Worrying about where they will spend the holidays can actually put quite a strain on teens.12-28-09 ornaments148.jpg

It’s important to understand the amount of stress that teens are under during the holidays.  The majority of their usual stress centers around social issues like peer pressure, bullying and homework, and then there’s the money issues that arise when parents and caregivers don’t have enough to get through the holidays.  A recent survey done by the American Psychological Association showed that as many as 45% of teens reported that thy were under a lot of stress during the holidays.  Unfortunately, less than 1/3 of the parents did not even notice that their teens felt stressed.  Sadly, their stress does affect the quality of their lives as it was noted that 42% of teens complained of headaches, 49% mentioned difficulty sleeping, and 39% expressed that they have issues with eating properly. Continue reading Reality Scoop: Holiday Stress Relief

Celebrate Victoria Day with YA Lit!

Queen_Victoria_by_Bassano
Image by Alexander Bassano, via Wikimedia Commons

Today marks Victoria Day (Fête de la Reine), a Canadian national holiday to honor Queen Victoria’s birthday. It’s celebrated on the last Monday before May 25. Much like Memorial Day weekend in the U.S., this long weekend is viewed by many as the official kickoff to summer.

Victoria hasn’t gone unnoticed by today’s authors, either. Here at the Hub, take a moment of this holiday to peruse a few of the titles about this fascinating monarch and her times!

victoria rebelsVictoria Rebels, by Carolyn Meyer – In this intriguing installment of the Young Royals series, Meyer’s always well-researched fiction draws directly from Victoria’s journals to reveal her thoughts and dreams from as young as age eight.

The Agency series, by Y.S. Lee – There are plenty of the agency teen books set in the Victorian era, such as this series about a girls’ academy that is actually a cover for an all-female detective agency. In book 3, however, Queen Victoria herself plays a part, when she hires protagonist Mary Quinn to investigate recent thefts at Buckingham Palace. Continue reading Celebrate Victoria Day with YA Lit!

The Twelfth Day of YA

The Twelve Days of YAThis year on the Hub we are celebrating the Twelve Days of YA with a series of posts loosely based on the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas gifts. We have converted each gift into a related theme common to YA and paired it with a list of relevant titles. You may use the Twelve Days of YA tag to read all of the posts in the series.

Special thanks goes to Carli Spina, Faythe Arredondo, Sharon Rawlins, Geri Diorio, Becky O’Neil, Carla Land, Katie Yu, Laura Perenic, Jennifer Rummel, Libby Gorman, Carly Pansulla, Anna Dalin, and Allison Tran for their help creating the booklists and organizing this series.

On the twelfth day of YA, my true love gave to me twelve drummers drumming.

For our final day of YA we are returning to a musical theme. Day four included a wider variety of music themes, but today we are focused entirely on YA lit that includes musicians. We’ve gone a little bit country and a little bit rock-n-roll, so there should be something in here for everyone. We hope you enjoy the rock stars that we picked and encourage you to share your favorites in the comments!

      

      

Drums Girls and Dangerous Pie   Open Road Summer   The Scar Boys

Being Friends with Boys    Where She Went    The Piper's Son

– Jessica Lind, currently reading The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

The Eleventh Day of YA

The Twelve Days of YAThis year on the Hub we are celebrating the Twelve Days of YA with a series of posts loosely based on the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas gifts. We have converted each gift into a related theme common to YA and paired it with a list of relevant titles. You may use the Twelve Days of YA tag to read all of the posts in the series.

Special thanks goes to Carli Spina, Faythe Arredondo, Sharon Rawlins, Geri Diorio, Becky O’Neil, Carla Land, Katie Yu, Laura Perenic, Jennifer Rummel, Libby Gorman, Carly Pansulla, Anna Dalin, and Allison Tran for their help creating the booklists and organizing this series.

On the eleventh day of YA, my true love gave to me eleven pipers piping.

Rather than try to round up a list of YA lit about actual pipers, we decided to expand our theme to cover all stories set in two main homes of bagpipes: Ireland and Scotland. We hope you enjoy the piping good books that we picked and encourage you to share your favorites in the comments!

   The New Policeman

         Carnival at Bray

– Jessica Lind, currently reading Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins

The Tenth Day of YA

The Twelve Days of YAThis year on the Hub we are celebrating the Twelve Days of YA with a series of posts loosely based on the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas gifts. We have converted each gift into a related theme common to YA and paired it with a list of relevant titles. You may use the Twelve Days of YA tag to read all of the posts in the series.

Special thanks goes to Carli Spina, Faythe Arredondo, Sharon Rawlins, Geri Diorio, Becky O’Neil, Carla Land, Katie Yu, Laura Perenic, Jennifer Rummel, Libby Gorman, Carly Pansulla, Anna Dalin, and Allison Tran for their help creating the booklists and organizing this series.

On the tenth day of YA, my true love gave to me ten lords-a-leaping.

When looking for lords-a-leaping, there was only one place to turn in YA lit – high fantasy. These lords are often doing a lot more than leaping and pretty frequently they are actually ladies out there kicking butt. We hope you enjoy the high fantasy adventures that we picked and encourage you to share your favorites in the comments!

       

      

       

– Jessica Lind, currently reading Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins

The Ninth Day of YA

The Twelve Days of YAThis year on the Hub we are celebrating the Twelve Days of YA with a series of posts loosely based on the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas gifts. We have converted each gift into a related theme common to YA and paired it with a list of relevant titles. You may use the Twelve Days of YA tag to read all of the posts in the series.

Special thanks goes to Carli Spina, Faythe Arredondo, Sharon Rawlins, Geri Diorio, Becky O’Neil, Carla Land, Katie Yu, Laura Perenic, Jennifer Rummel, Libby Gorman, Carly Pansulla, Anna Dalin, and Allison Tran for their help creating the booklists and organizing this series.

On the ninth day of YA, my true love gave to me nine ladies dancing.

No surprise here, day nine of YA is all about dancers. We hope you enjoy the dance-filled stories that we picked and encourage you to share your favorites in the comments!

        

    

to dance a ballerina's graphic novel sienna cherson siegel mark siegel   princess_midnight_ball   Don't Look Back

– Jessica Lind, currently reading As You Wish by Cary Elwes

The Eighth Day of YA

The Twelve Days of YAThis year on the Hub we are celebrating the Twelve Days of YA with a series of posts loosely based on the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas gifts. We have converted each gift into a related theme common to YA and paired it with a list of relevant titles. You may use the Twelve Days of YA tag to read all of the posts in the series.

Special thanks goes to Carli Spina, Faythe Arredondo, Sharon Rawlins, Geri Diorio, Becky O’Neil, Carla Land, Katie Yu, Laura Perenic, Jennifer Rummel, Libby Gorman, Carly Pansulla, Anna Dalin, and Allison Tran for their help creating the booklists and organizing this series.

On the eighth day of YA, my true love gave to me eight maids-a-milking.

Day eight seemed like a pretty simple one to translate over to a YA lit theme since maids tend to be servants or service workers for the wealthy and this can be found in many books. While this list could have been expanded a bit to cover all characters for whom work was a requirement, such as The Boy in the Black Suit (Jason Reynolds) and The Distant Between Us (Kasie West), we decided to keep it a bit more limited. We hope you enjoy the stories of characters-a-workin’ that we picked and encourage you to share your favorites in the comments!

  

  

– Jessica Lind, currently reading As You Wish by Cary Elwes

The Seventh Day of YA

The Twelve Days of YAThis year on the Hub we are celebrating the Twelve Days of YA with a series of posts loosely based on the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas gifts. We have converted each gift into a related theme common to YA and paired it with a list of relevant titles. You may use the Twelve Days of YA tag to read all of the posts in the series.

Special thanks goes to Carli Spina, Faythe Arredondo, Sharon Rawlins, Geri Diorio, Becky O’Neil, Carla Land, Katie Yu, Laura Perenic, Jennifer Rummel, Libby Gorman, Carly Pansulla, Anna Dalin, and Allison Tran for their help creating the booklists and organizing this series.

On the seventh day of YA, my true love gave to me seven swans-a-swimming.

Remember when I mentioned that there were a lot of birds in the original song? Yep, we’ve got seven more here with the swans. So, we converted this one into an ugly-duckling-to-swan theme. Rather than focusing only on make overs for this theme, we looked mostly at books that included characters that were non-traditional beauties, but others saw that they were beautiful all along. We hope you enjoy the stories of lovely swans that we picked and encourage you to share your favorites in the comments!

EleanorPark_cover2-300x450 FANGIRL_CoverDec2012-300x444 The DUFF

Girl-of-Fire-and-Thorns-US Princess Ben The Sweetest Spell

– Jessica Lind, currently reading My True Love Gave to Me edited by Stephanie Perkins

The Sixth Day of YA

The Twelve Days of YAThis year on the Hub we are celebrating the Twelve Days of YA with a series of posts loosely based on the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas gifts. We have converted each gift into a related theme common to YA and paired it with a list of relevant titles. You may use the Twelve Days of YA tag to read all of the posts in the series.

Special thanks goes to Carli Spina, Faythe Arredondo, Sharon Rawlins, Geri Diorio, Becky O’Neil, Carla Land, Katie Yu, Laura Perenic, Jennifer Rummel, Libby Gorman, Carly Pansulla, and Allison Tran for their help creating the booklists and organizing this series.

On the sixth day of YA, my true love gave to me six geese-a-laying.

For day six, geese-a-laying, our theme is teen pregnancy in YA books. Whether a main topic or a side-story involving a secondary character, we were able to come up with quite a few titles. We hope you enjoy the stories of teen pregnancy we picked and encourage you to share your favorites in the comments!

First Part Last     Gabi a Girl in Pieces     How to Love

Someone Like You Bumped The Dear One

 

– Jessica Lind, currently reading My True Love Gave to Me edited by Stephanie Perkins

The Fifth Day of YA

The Twelve Days of YAThis year on the Hub we are celebrating the Twelve Days of YA with a series of posts loosely based on the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas gifts. We have converted each gift into a related theme common to YA and paired it with a list of relevant titles. You may use the Twelve Days of YA tag to read all of the posts in the series.

Special thanks goes to Carli Spina, Faythe Arredondo, Sharon Rawlins, Geri Diorio, Becky O’Neil, Carla Land, Katie Yu, Laura Perenic, Jennifer Rummel, Libby Gorman, Carly Pansulla, and Allison Tran for their help creating the booklists and organizing this series.

On the fifth day of YA, my true love gave to me five golden riiiiiiiings.

Marriage! Marriage is what brings us together today. In honor of five gold rings, we give you five golden stories of marriage in YA. We hope you enjoy the marriage-related stories we picked and encourage you to share your favorites in the comments!

   The Story of Us         

  • The Selection series by Kiera Cass
  • The Story of Us by Deb Caletti
  • Twilight series by Stephenie Meyers
  • The Chapel Wars by Lindsey Leavitt
  • I Now Pronounce You Someone Else by Erin McCahan

– Jessica Lind, currently reading My True Love Gave to Me edited by Stephanie Perkins