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| Martina Boone |
YA author Martina Boone is very busy; she serves on the board of the Literacy Council of Northern Virginia , debuted the second novel in her Heirs of Watson Island series and organizes a book drive campaign to help educators get book into the hands of teens.
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| Boone’s debut novel |
Earlier this month Martina took the time to share with us how she got involved in YA and the beginnings of the Compulsion for Reading campaign.
Martina’s debut novel Compulsion was published by Simon & Schuster last year , and since then Martina has been working to solve a problem that can exist between teens and their next favorite book. Access. She started The Compulsion for Reading Campaign to bring book to teens across the country. Each month a nominated teacher or librarian is chosen to receive a set of books donated by bloggers, authors or readers.
Martina says books can be transformative for teenagers and she witnessed it first hand in her own family. Her daughter struggled with reading fiction because of a learning disability until a certain popular vampire novel.
“Everyone was reading Twilight, so [my daughter] struggled through it. That started her on a different vampire series, and she ran into my room at two in the morning telling me I had to read Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith. When I finished it, we went down to the bookstore and bought an armload of books—and by the time we had both finished those, she was a reader and I was plotting my first YA book.
Twilight is…. the reason that she is a reader and doing well in school, and it’s the reason I’m a published YA author. “
At Books and Sensibility we also believe in the importance of getting great books in the hands of teens and look forward to participating in the campaign. We want to spread the word to the book blogging community. So take a look at the 2015 books you never got around to, or those finished BEA copies on the bottom of your TBR pile. Check out this page to learn more about donating.
To learn more about Martina Boone’s Heirs of Watson Island series check out what she has to say about it in her own words !
The Heirs of Watson Island series is about building bridges. I basically started off to write something like the guilty pleasure that is Twilight but with some vitamins (in the form of history and some issues) thrown in. It’s about a girl finding herself, finding a family, and finding love, but it’s also about rediscovering some of the history of Native Americans, African Americans, and women that too often gets left out of the history books. The Lowcountry of South Carolina is a unique and magical place, and it’s made of the blend of cultures from the Native American, African and European traditions, belief systems, and magic. It’s rich in both history and tragedy, and that’s delicious fodder for a writer. But what I hope that people will take away from it is that we are all stronger together than we are apart, and that it doesn’t matter what a bridge looks like as long as we go across it to stretch our hand toward each other. That’s also what the Compulsion for Reading campaign is all about. We can lift each other up. The YA community is all about that, and I’m honored and proud to be a small part of it. : ) – Martina Boone
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1/2 of the blogging duo at Books and Sensibility, I have been blogging about and reviewing books since 2011. I read any and every genre, here on the blog I mostly review Fantasy, Adult Fiction, and Young Adult with a focus on audiobooks.