Yeah! It’s almost time for the Something Wicked Tour. We’ll be looking at Alan Gratz’ book next week, from October 27th to the 29th. Great dates because this might be a good book to give away in a Halloween contest.
I’m really looking forward to seeing what you all have to say about this book. I have to admit that I was a little shocked at the amount of sex in the book–not that it was graphic, or titillating, but that it was there. It was a given. I didn’t mean to mislead any of you in the tour invitation–the first Horatio Wilkes mystery, Something Rotten, had some sexual thoughts in it, but Something Wicked went much farther.
So I’m looking forward to seeing what you all thought of that. Particularly I’m wondering what our younger bloggers thought of it–or did they even notice it. Is this common for YA books now, or is Gratz something of an envelope pusher?
He’s a great writer–I know that much. His characters are well developed and he writes with great wit. So I’d love to see more from him, and less at the same time, I guess. =0)
Anyway, I hope this works out to be a great tour with much discussion and even those of you who opted out of the tour, thinking the book might not be what your readers are looking for, are welcome to join in the discussions on participating blogs and even to comment on your own blogs about the book.
So here’s the info you need for this tour:
Something Wicked: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0803736665
Something Rotten: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0803732163
But be sure to tell everyone if they want to read Something Rotten before Something Wicked (or after, and it doesn’t matter all which order you read them in) they can read it for free, from now until November 30th, by going here: http://www.alangratz.com/rotten_promo.htm
Samurai Shortstop: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0142410993
And if you want to mention his next novel to release, it’s called The Brooklyn Nine and it’s coming out in March 2009. Here’s the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0803732244
Alan’s Website: http://www.alangratz.com/index.htm
Alan’s Bio:
Alan Gratz was born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee. After a carefree but humid childhood, he attended the University of Tennessee, where he earned a College Scholars degree with a specialization in creative writing and later a Master’s degree in English education. In addition to writing plays, magazine articles, and a few episodes of A&E’s City Confidential, Alan has taught catapult building to middle schoolers, written more than 6,000 radio commercials, and lectured as a Czech university. Currently, Alan lives with his wife Wendi and daughter Jo in the high country of western North Carolina, where he enjoys reading, eating pizza, and, perhaps not too surprisingly, watching baseball.
Blurb for Something Wicked :
The Scottish Highland Festival in Tennessee is all set to begin, but there’s one problem: Duncan MacRae, founder of the games, has just been murdered. The police arrested Malcolm, Duncan’s son, but is he really the killer? Horatio Wilkes, for one, has doubts.
Horatio is attending the festival with his childhood friend Mac, Mac’s super-hot yet controlling girlfriend Beth, and geeky sidekick Banks. Once there, he quickly finds himself caught up in the cutthroat world of the Scottish games, where fair is foul and foul is fair . . . and his best friend may yet turn out to be his worst enemy.
Join Horatio as he navigates the sinister world of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in this fun and clever follow-up to Something Rotten.
The book cover can be found here: http://kidzbookbuzz.com/pictures/wicked.jpg
The author’s picture can be found here: http://kidzbookbuzz.com/pictures/gratz.jpg
The following blogs are participating in the tour:
the 160acrewoods, A Christian Worldview of Fiction, All About Children’s Books, Becky’s Book Reviews, Book Review Maniac, Cafe of Dreams, Dolce Bellezza, Hyperbole, KidzBookBuzz.com, Looking Glass Reviews, Maggie Reads, Never Jam Today, Reading is My Superpower
You should be able to copy the list from the box below to paste it into your posts. If the links don’t work you can copy the list below into notepad and then copy it from there into your html on your posts. That should change the curly quotes to straight quotes and the links should work. Let me know if you have trouble.
1 response so far ↓
1 Bellezza // Oct 23, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Thanks for such an exciting opening post about this book! I can’t wait for the tour to begin.