Michael Northrop

My debut novel, Gentlemen, was just named to the New York Public Library’s Stuff for the Teen Age 2010, a circumstance that is made of amazing and frosted with awesome. This list was known as Books for the Teen Age for 80 years. The NYPL changed it to Stuff last year, so they could add movies, video games, and other cool things, and I changed it to Double Stuff just for this headline. I just like cookies; I hope you aren’t too disOREOnted.

I just got back from the awards ceremony, where ultra-cool author Libba Bray (winner of this year’s Printz Award for Going Bovine) gave a truly kick-ass speech. (It is unseemly to brag about going to brunch at Bryant Park Grill beforehand with Maggie Stiefvater and her husband, who once built a two-foot-long model SR-71 Blackbird, David Levithan, Lynn Weingarten, and Natalie Standiford, so I will modestly put this part in parentheses.)

But back to the list, which is put together by a panel of librarians and a cadre of NYC teens. If the teens don’t like it, it doesn’t make it. This results in some surprising selections, high-profile omissions, and really just an incredible mix of Stuff. It’s an honor to be included, and I can honestly say: I am thrilled to get Stuffed. (Just like I was at brunch.)

Woohoo! GENTLEMEN has just been named one of the American Library Association’s “Best Books for Young Adults” for 2010. It’s an amazing list and I’m thrilled to be included (along with fellow Scholastic S-crew gangstas Siobhan Vivian and Natalie Standiford).

When Micheal, Mixer, and the boys made the TAYSHAS list, I used a picture of Walker, Texas Ranger. I wasn’t sure what to use this time so here’s a highly stylized picture of the clock tower at the Scoville Memorial Library, where I spent countless hours growing up. (In the library I mean, not the clock tower: I am no hunchback!)

From DigitalPretzel.com (hunchback not shown)

Personal deformities aside, I’m proud to be on the list and deeply appreciative of all the hard work and voluminous reading that went into compiling it. I’m also hopeful that this will help get the book into the hands of reluctant readers and huge nerdballs alike. What can I say? I’m a Dewey-eyed optimist.

The pinkest thing I will ever post on my site…

I just finished How To Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford. Before I started this book, I was pretty sure that robots said goodbye in one of two ways:

1) “Ah’ll be back.”
2) 01101010110

Now I know that is not the case. The truth is, sometimes robots are not really robots, and ghost are not really ghosts. In those rare cases, they don’t ever really say goodbye at all.

That may sound cryptic, and being human, I mean it to. Because I really think you should read this book. It is quirky and original and packs an emotional punch that really surprised me. It’s like when you think you’ve reached the bottom of the stairs but there’s really one more step. There was that little moment of disorientation when I realized how much the collection of misfits in this book affected me. Really, I think it’s the mix of the odd and the everyday, both in terms of the details and the characters, that creates such a poignant and effective novel.