Teen Talk Tuesday (10/20/14 Edition)

Teen Talk Tuesday (10/20/14 Edition)

Holy cow! St. Martin’s Griffin has a TON of new teen fiction JUST FOR YOU! Check out the goodies, then join us and @earlyword later today at 5pm EST for Early Word YA Galley Chat, hashtag #ewyagc. MY TRUE LOVE GAVE TO ME, edited by Stephanie Perkins with contributions from Rainbow Rowell, David Levithan, Holly […]

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Macmillan Library Presents: Tips from Grammar Girl #2

Macmillan Library Presents: Tips from Grammar Girl #2

grammar girl cartoonGrammar goddess Mignon Fogarty (a.k.a. Grammar Girl) has agreed to teach us the proper way to talk to librarians about the books and genres we love. We'll be posting her monthly tips here on the blog. Take it away, Grammar Girl!

Ali, a sci-fi nerd from planet 645 asked, "I have trouble with verb tense in our present timeline, but when I time travel, I get especially confused. Can you help?"

Ah, the complexities of time travel. If you think the hazards of disrupting the space-time continuum are daunting, consider the grammar. Time travel requires some of the trickier tenses:

Simple Future

Tomorrow, I am going to be born. [going to + verb]

Future Progressive

The robots will already be waiting to kill me. [will be + present participle]

Past Perfect Progressive

Ali had been lying unconscious for three days before she was able to locate herself and surreptitiously attach the  beacon that would send her home. [had been + present participle]

Past Perfect

She had made this trip before, so she knew how it would work out. [had + past participle]

I hope that helps, Ali, and stay safe in the future. It can be a dangerous place.

Thank you, Grammar Girl! Unfortunately in my time traveling experience there's no such thing as a simple future or a perfect past, but one can always hope! 

See Grammar Girl's previous column in which she taught Talia how to talk about her favorite gory mysteries! Look for 101 TROUBLESOME WORDS YOU'LL MASTER IN NO TIME available now from St. Martin's Griffin. Visit her at Grammar.QuickandDirtyTips.com.

Also, we're giving away one full set of her latest Quick and Dirty Tips books (this set includes four signed(!) books and one unsigned audiobook). 

giveaway

UPDATE: This contest is now closed.
The winner is Ramona L. Grimsley of the Berkeley County Library System!

Enter to win these signed books by sending your name, your library, and your full mailing address to Library-at-MacmillanUSA.com (subject: Grammar Girl) by Monday, July 23rd.

This sweepstakes is open to librarians in the United States. More eligibility details below.

[...]

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Of Love, Zombies, and Time Travel

Of Love, Zombies, and Time Travel

It's Valentine's Day. Maybe that makes you swoon. Maybe it makes you gag. Maybe you took the day off work to sit by the mailbox. Well, forget "real life"! Today is the perfect day for a little escapist fiction. I advocate that tonight, just for a little while, you crawl in between the covers of a splendid and strange romance. I sure will be. 

I spent the morning browsing Macmillan's shelves for a romantic adventure unlike anything I've known. I narrowed my options down to two books that feature extraordinary love stories that I just don't think I'll ever experience:

Option 1, THE MISTS OF TIME by Susan Squires. 

I couldn't resist this lone title listed under the category Romance > Time Travel. That's right. Tonight I may just be going back in time to the days of King Arthur for a chance encounter with the blush/flush/giggle-worthy knight, Gawain. 

Option 2, HUNGRY FOR YOUR LOVE edited by Lori Perkins.

This collection of undead romance stories seduced me with its indiscriminate and trans-mortality courtships: zombies crush on humans, humans fall for zombies, and zombies yearn for one another. Obsessive desire! Undying love! Sleepless torments! This is passion at its best. [...]

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