I have had the honor of serving on the Editorial Team for The ALAN Review for the past year with my dear friends and colleagues, Wendy Glenn and Dani King. We are very excited about the giveaway that Ruta Sepetys is offering—a free classroom set of her books (either Between Shades of Gray or Out of the Easy), and I wanted to share it here. Both are phenomenal books.
When I was a high school teacher, I loved teaching Between Shades of Gray (Out of the Easy is also excellent, but it came out in the last year that I was teaching, so I didn’t have time to order multiple copies). Between Shades of Gray was remarkable in that it touched the lives of so many of my students. That book inspired two of my sophomore boys (who swore they hated reading) to walk over to my bookshelves (together…because it is scary) to look for other books “just like that one.” One boy’s mother called me to thank me for getting her son to read. I highly recommend both books for classroom instruction. They make history very accessible!
Ruta Sepetys wrote a beautiful article that will be published in the next themed issue of The ALAN Review: “(Re)membering and (Re)living: Probing the Collective and Individual Past.” In honor of her article, she is offering a giveaway of a classroom set of books! (I know. We were also stunned by her generosity.) The winner will receive 30 paperback copies of Between Shades of Gray or Out of the Easy. Ruta’s article, “Historical Fiction: The Silent Soldier,” will be featured in the Summer 2015 issue of The ALAN Review. The winner will be selected on June 15, 2015 and *must be an ALAN member*. To enter the giveaway, please go to: http://goo.gl/forms/YWF7VFYfyX.
If you like young adult literature and are not an ALAN member, I highly recommend you consider joining ALAN. Check out the Facebook page or ALAN website. It is $30 to join, and you get three journals per year (filled with articles about young adult literature—these articles are written by teachers, librarians, teacher educators, and young adult authors). I love being an ALAN member. #IamALAN
