Dimanche!

I was running out of ways to announce Friday in English, so I've announced it in French.  Practice makes perfect!  And I'm going to need plenty of it before Spring Break... which is quite a while off.

Cool.  Let's get into the questions!

The Blog Hop is brought to you by Jennifer at Crazy for Books, but this week, her friend Lori is helping out and hosting it for her.

What is the one author that you are dying to meet?

Seriously?  Just one?  I think I have a three-way tie with John Green, Gabrielle Zevin, and J.K. Rowling.  So whichever decides to come to my city first, I'll attempt to meet!  But I think John Green seems more likely at this point because my understanding is that he and his brother Hank are planning on doing a tour of the U.S. to promote the charity foundation This Star Won't Go Out to help families with children who have cancer.  

Follow Friday is brought to you by Parajunkee at Parajunkee's View.

The magic book fairy pops out of your cereal box and says, "You and your favorite character (from a book of course!) can switch places!"  Who are you going to switch with?

Hmm... I would switch places with Liz from Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin.  I feel like I could be less annoying than she is and I would love to take advantage of living a backwards life.  What a great afterlife!  The cycle is just so amazing!  My only condition is that she never leave my house when she switches places with me.  I don't want her to be a jerk and complain all the time to the people that I know and love.

TGIF is brought to you by Ginger at G-Reads!

How do you feel about the "dark" books filling the YA shelves these days?

I appreciate those "dark" books that are filling the YA shelves these days.  One of the top five things that I appreciate in any book is honesty, and that means little to no fluff.  It shows that the author truly wants to bring the issue between the pages to the surface because they don't dance around the subject or ignore it all together saying that it happened but not exactly going into any kind of detail for the sake of the reader (even if the detail is implied).

I don't think what's on the shelves today is dark, it's just life.  You can't ignore the tragedies and the scary things that make up life, because in a way, that's censorship, which I do not believe in.  Who is one person to say that a certain age group can't read a certain genre or a particular book?  They don't personally know the other children that are looking at this material.  Their child might be ready, but my neighbor's child might be mentally mature enough to handle what's in between the pages.

Really, I could go on and on about this, and I kind of have already right HERE.  But for the sake of brevity (or what I can scavenge of brevity), I'll stop here.

If you'd like me to visit your website, leave a comment below with your web address in it and I'll try my best to come by and visit you!

Have a happy weekend!

--Jude