Summer Madness: Multi-Book Giveaway!

One of the best things about summer is curling up with a good book and a glass of ice tea. And at Color Online, it's also about color. Yes, lets' get brown in the sunshine. Let me help you out with a good summer read. The following authors have donated a copy of their books. Tell me which book(s) you'd like to win and why and your name is entered in Color Online's Summer Madness Giveaway. Commit to review the book and you earn 5 extra entries. Yes, this is a promotion. These authors don't get enough exposure. Blog about the contest including Twitter or linking on your sidebar and you earn an additional 2 entries. I use random.org to select winners. Contest is open until July 30th. Winners announced July 31st. Books will be mailed immediately. Enter for one or all books. Repeat, you can enter for all, but you can only win one. You can respond in a single comment. Just do me a favor and list the points you rack up and do include your email address. If you tweet or link, provide the link in your post. Happy reading. Pick among these:

Children In The Waters by Carleen Brice.
...Billie, an earthy type who communes with her ancestors through the aid of herbs and essential oils, suffers from Lupus, an autoimmune disease that she keeps in remission with healthy eating, exercise, acupuncture and meditation. She’s just found out she’s pregnant but knows that her long-time partner—a marginally employed jazz musician—doesn’t want kids. Mall cops single out Trish’s son and accuse him of shoplifting, evidently because he’s biracial, sending him into an adolescent identity tailspin, complicated because he has a white mother. Trish, a junk-food eating homebody who is lonely and yearns for family, wants to make Billie into her instant sister when she discovers her, but Billie is taken aback, not wanting to accept a white person as a relative. Read more at Multi-Cultural.

A Wish After Midnight by Zetta Elliott
Any book where a black teenage girl travels back to the time of slavery is likely to face comparisons with Octavia Butler’s Kindred. Elliott is telling a very specific story here though -- one about Brooklyn and what it faced during the 1863 draft riots and also what it would mean to be a young black person alive in that specific place and time. Genna does suffer horribly when she travels back and Elliott doesn’t flinch from the realities of slavery. But more importantly, readers will find not a historical tale so much as a story about how a very contemporary teen would see that time and how she would react to it. Read more at Bookslut.

Shine, Coconut Moon by Neesha Meminger
As Samar gets to know her uncle, she begins to learn about Sikhism and gets to know her grandparents. She even visits a gurdwara, Sikh temple, for the first time in her life. This prompts her to start questioning her mother’s decision to raise her to think of herself “like everyone else.” She begins to question her identity; wondering whether she is a coconut — someone who is brown on the outside and white on the inside—someone who may physically appear to be Indian but doesn’t know who she really is. Read more of this review at Literary Safari.

Down To The Bone by Mayra Lazara Dole
...a wickedly funny and smart LBGT teen novel. It is a welcomed and needed addition to a genre that is sorely under represented in the media, libraries and book blogs. The issue of who we love is front and center here, and the writer doesn't deviate from the issue. That said this book isn't for gay teens only (I really wish we wouldn't overlook books just because they address a marginalized group). It is for everybody who knows and loves someone who is LBGT and I hope that people who judge members of this community will read it, too.
Read more of my review at Black-Eyed Susan's.

Apologies to An Apple by Maya Ganesan
Maya Ganesan’s poetry reveals a sensibility keen with joy at the world around her and of being alive in it—the changing of leaves on the trees, the sudden meeting of eyes through the window of a crowded restaurant, the sense of being in motion alone through the streets when nobody else knows where you are, the need to apologize to an apple sitting on a desk. Her perceptions are oblique and unexpected—her delightfully quirky worldview bespeaks great promise as a poet.
~ Carolyne Wright, Author of A Change of Maps and Seasons of Mangoes and Brainfire

White Bread Competition and The Throwaway Piece by Jo Ann Hernandez
Fiction. Latina American Studies, This novel takes place in the picturesque city of San Antonio, Texas, with its rich Mexican-American culture providing the ideal backdrop for the interconnected stories in this intriguing novel for young adults/teenagers. Luz, the young Latina protagonist, will represent her state in the upcoming national spelling bee and her participation signifies a substantial milestone of her community's sense of pride and achievement. However her success triggers a variety of emotions from her family and community as they come to terms with how they feel about Luz as a Latina participating in a national spelling bee. from Small Press Distribution.

The Rock And The River by Kekla Magoon
When they were children, Stick would reread Sam’s favorite story about the rock and the river. As a boy, Sam was certain who was the rock in their relationship, but when Stick joins the Panthers, Sam is no longer sure about anything. The more Stick closes him off, the more Sam pushes back. Sam is driven to prove he is his brother’s peer, that he, too, can affect change. But Sam struggles to find his way. In fact, his growth comes at significant costs. Read more at Black-Eyed Susan's.

First Daughter: An American Extreme Makeover by Mitali Perkins
Sameera, known as Sparrow, is the adopted daughter of diplomatic parents. She has lived all over the world but now she is headed back to America because her father is running for president. However, Sameera's Pakistani origins are seen as a bit of a headache for her father's entourage, who are determined to accentuate her American-ness, with the result that she becomes a cardboard cut-out of herself, a simpering pawn for the media - some of whom nevertheless continue to use her origins as food for negative publicity. Read full review at Paper Tigers.

Kinky Gazpacho by Lori L. Tharps
Review
From a young age, Tharps became infatuated with Spain; knowing that Spain was her destiny and that she would someday live there. While in college, she traveled to Morocco with the American Field Service, but later studied abroad in Spain, where she came face to face with the culture she never knew Spain to have. See review at MenstrualPoetry.


*Regrettably, contest is limited to US and Canada.