GUEST POST & GIVEAWAY - Ellen Hopkins - Fallout - BIR2010

Fallout by Ellen Hopkins was chosen as one of our Best I've Read 2010 selections.

Fallout
By: Ellen Hopkins
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry
Author website

Book Summary:
(from Goodreads)
Hunter, Autumn, and Summer—three of Kristina Snow’s five children—live in different homes, with different guardians and different last names. They share only a predisposition for addiction and a host of troubled feelings toward the mother who barely knows them, a mother who has been riding with the monster, crank, for twenty years.

Hunter is nineteen, angry, getting by in college with a job at a radio station, a girlfriend he loves in the only way he knows how, and the occasional party. He's struggling to understand why his mother left him, when he unexpectedly meets his rapist father, and things get even more complicated. Autumn lives with her single aunt and alcoholic grandfather. When her aunt gets married, and the only family she’s ever known crumbles, Autumn’s compulsive habits lead her to drink. And the consequences of her decisions suggest that there’s more of Kristina in her than she’d like to believe. Summer doesn’t know about Hunter, Autumn, or their two youngest brothers, Donald and David. To her, family is only abuse at the hands of her father’s girlfriends and a slew of foster parents. Doubt and loneliness overwhelm her, and she, too, teeters on the edge of her mother’s notorious legacy. As each searches for real love and true family, they find themselves pulled toward the one person who links them together—Kristina, Bree, mother, addict. But it is in each other, and in themselves, that they find the trust, the courage, the hope to break the cycle.

Told in three voices and punctuated by news articles chronicling the family’s story, FALLOUT is the stunning conclusion to the trilogy begun by CRANK and GLASS, and a testament to the harsh reality that addiction is never just one person’s problem.

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~ ~ ~ GUEST POST ~ ~ ~

Given the subject material of many of Ellen's books, we asked her about her thoughts on bullying:

Bullying has become so common. It’s something so many kids face, and are often harmed by. So much negative is already out there. I’d like to hear your version of my dream for the future…a world where we live and let live.

What’s missing in our world is compassion. Much of our current divisiveness is fear-driven. We fear that which is different, those who don’t look or worship or love the same way we do. This fear is daily driven into us by faux news organizations, shock jocks and the like, and on an even larger scale, parent to child. Where has our humanity gone? Where, the ideal that we should care for those not like us, help those in need? We must stop living in fear. Stop listening to those who get richer and richer by telling out-and-out lies to keep us afraid. Stop already!

I hope my books help young people develop empathy for those not like them. I hope they question the ugly things they hear, sometimes even from their parents. Youth should be all about idealism, about progressiveness (root word “progress). About striving to create a future better than the present. About NOT LIVING IN FEAR. It’s your world. Your future. Create a bright one.

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~ ~ ~ GIVEAWAY ~ ~ ~

We're very excited to have one (1) copy of Fallout as well as some swag to give away! The winner will be chosen by random.org.

Open to US addresses only.

YOU MUST BE A BLOG FOLLOWER TO ENTER.

This giveaway ends December 15, 2010 at 12:00 midnight EST.

Please fill out this form to enter.