YA Community Thanksgiving

I'm British, so I don't get to join in the awesomeness that is the American holiday of Thanksgiving. That makes me sad. No turkey, no cranberry sauce, and no sweet potato pie? No fair.

So when I saw that Adele from Persnickety Snark was declaring today an international YA Community Thanksgiving, I decided to jump right on that bandwagon. After all, I love blogging. I do.

Adele has suggested that we share the things that make us thankful in our community. I'm a big sharer, so here goes...

• New bloggers. Whether they're brand new, or just brand new to me, I love discovering an amazing blog. (New-to-me and fantastic: Voracious YAppetite and Girls Without A Bookshelf.)


• The British contingent. It's possible I'm not familiar with every British YA blogger, but I know a lot of them and they are all lovely. It's like a community within a community, and I started to write a list here of what I'm thankful for about each one but it got really long and sentimental... so I'll save it for another time, and just say that I'm thankful for all of you.


• The non-British contingent. Adele pretty much covered this one, but I also love the fact that there are YA bloggers from all over the world and that as a result I get the most amazing variety of book recommendations. Without you guys, I would never have read anything by Isobelle Carmody or Maureen Johnson or Jacqueline Woodson. It makes me happy to receive a comment from Audrey in France or Japan or Shweta from India or Steph or Ari in America or Nina in The Netherlands. Or a tweet from Rhiannon in Australia berating me a little for not having read Patrick Ness yet. Even that makes me thankful! It really does.


• The fact that you guys get my Time Travel Tuesday posts. I can write up a post about how much I loved Sweet Valley Twins back when I was the lamest high schooler that ever walked the Earth, and you guys get that. We know how important books are to each other. We know how they've made us all who we are. We know that they can change the way we see the world. We know that a book doesn't have to be published in 2010 or even this century to be worth a look.


• Authors. You are my inspiration. You're why I do this. I love that you occasionally stop by my blog or drop me an email. Very occasionally, but I love it.


• YA bloggers. You know, YA bloggers who are actually YAs. I am amazed and impressed by bloggers who are still in their teen years and writing way better than I was back then. Or better than I write now. Maybe I should be envious, but I'm not. I'm thrilled. I know how much work blogging is. The fact that teenagers work this hard at blogging when I could barely manage my homework at that age makes me thankful. Because if they're the authors of tomorrow, we're in for a treat.

I'm going to stop gushing now. :)

Adele has also asked that participants in this little community event make a promise to comment on five blogs that we're unfamiliar with. Now, this is hard... because I am familiar with a lot of blogs. So if you happen to know of a great new one, please feel free to comment giving me the heads up.

Happy Thanksgiving! I've always wanted to say that.