Fame, Glory, and Other Things On My To-Do List by Janette Rallison is among ‘ Choices list.
“This is a great honor for me because it’s actually the kids who vote on this award,” Rallison says. She is an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, currently living and writing in Chandler, Arizona.
Fame, Glory, and Other Things On My To-Do List was published by Walker and Company, a division of Bloomsbury Publishing, in 2005. It was just released this month in paperback.
Among other plot lines in the book, the characters are putting on a school production of West Side Story – but the principal, concerned with political correctness, wants to change it into a gang-free, violence-free production. “As it turns out, (the play) West Side Story is having its 50th anniversary this year,” Rallison adds. “My, how things have changed since then.”
The Young Adults’ Choices list is an annual project of the International Reading Association. Each year, approximately 4,500 students in grades 7 to 12 throughout the United States read and review books, and vote for their top choices. The votes are tabulated by IRA. Those books with the most votes appear on the annual Young Adults’ Choices list of approximately 30 titles.
The Young Adults’ Choices list is used by teachers, librarians, parents, and students to encourage youth to read. According to the IRA website, “the books are selected by the readers themselves, so they are bound to be popular with middle and secondary school students.”
Janette Rallison is the author of several other nationally released books for young adults, including It’s a Mall World After All, How To Take the Ex out of Ex-Boyfriend, and her latest release, Revenge of the Cheerleaders. Before moving to the national market, she wrote several books for the Latter-day Saint market, both under her own name as well as the name of Sierra St. James.
