Hi all! Today I'm so excited to be part of the blog tour for
by Katie Kennedy
Guys, I've only just started this one, and I'm already loving the writing style and humor and the main character's mix of guts and awkwardness. Check back soon for my full review, but I've got a good feeling about this one! :D Today I have an excerpt for you, and a great tour-wide giveaway for a chance to win a copy and some fun swag!
Learning to Swear in America
by Katie Kennedy
♦publisher: Bloomsbury USA
♦release date: July 5th, 2016
♦hardcover, 352 pages
♦intended audience: Young adult
♦stand-alone, contemporary
Brimming with humor and one-of-a-kind characters, this end-of-the world novel will grab hold of Andrew Smith and Rainbow Rowell fans.
An asteroid is hurtling toward Earth. A big, bad one. Yuri, a physicist prodigy from Russia, has been called to NASA as they calculate a plan to avoid disaster. He knows how to stop the asteroid: his research in antimatter will probably win him a Nobel prize--if there's ever another Nobel prize awarded. But Yuri's 17, and having a hard time making older, stodgy physicists listen to him. Then he meets Dovie, who lives like a normal teenager, oblivious to the impending doom. Being with her, on the adventures she plans when he's not at NASA, Yuri catches a glimpse of what it means to save the world and save a life worth living.
Prepare to laugh, cry, cringe, and have your mind burst open with questions of the universe.
An asteroid is hurtling toward Earth. A big, bad one. Yuri, a physicist prodigy from Russia, has been called to NASA as they calculate a plan to avoid disaster. He knows how to stop the asteroid: his research in antimatter will probably win him a Nobel prize--if there's ever another Nobel prize awarded. But Yuri's 17, and having a hard time making older, stodgy physicists listen to him. Then he meets Dovie, who lives like a normal teenager, oblivious to the impending doom. Being with her, on the adventures she plans when he's not at NASA, Yuri catches a glimpse of what it means to save the world and save a life worth living.
Prepare to laugh, cry, cringe, and have your mind burst open with questions of the universe.
{excerpt}
“How
old are you, anyway?” she asked, peering at him.
“Seventeen.”
“Huh. And you’re a science guy? Really?”
“Um, yes.”
He was
silent for a moment, tensing as he saw her flip her turn signal on, waiting for
the next challenge to the axle, then realized he should show an interest in
her.
“And
yourself?”
“Sixteen,
high school student. Not a science guy.” She drummed her fingers on the
steering wheel. “It’s nine days till summer break. I was going to apply for a
job at the video store, but if California’s going splat by the time school
starts up again, I should probably spend the summer doing something else. So.”
She
looked at him. “What do you think?”
They
rocked up and slammed down from the curb. The crystals hanging from her key ring clinked softly.
“Pardon?”
“Should
I get a summer job?”
He
looked at her for a moment. She was what they were working to save. This girl,
with flecks of paint on her knuckles and the troughs around her fingernails,
and all the Dovie Collums in California. While he was printing flight schedules
and scheming to get home, while he was sitting on a bridge, thinking about
jumping. He felt a stab of shame. She had no chance to help shape the work that
would guide the rockets. How helpless did she feel? How out of control?
“Yes,”
he said. “Get summer job.”
Dovie
smiled widely. It was a great smile, and he stopped feeling the scrapes. She
nodded, and her bangs waved to him. She drove on for another ten minutes,
careening around corners, testing the limits of modern metallurgy as the car groaned
and clicked in unsettling ways. It made him think of submarine movies, with all
their menacing creaks.
“Do
you have papers to drive?”
“A
license? I’m sixteen,” she said, and had nosed the car into a residential
neighborhood of small postwar houses by the time he realized she hadn’t
actually said she had a license.
Dovie
turned into the driveway of a small purple house with a wheelchair ramp, and
the car rocked to a stop.
“Home
again, home again, jiggity jig.”
She
pulled her key ring from the ignition and got out of the car. The door
clattered as it shut. Yuri sat alone for a moment, bewildered.
“This
isn’t my hotel.”
She
pointed to her ear.
He got
out and pushed the door shut, afraid the impact would make the car collapse.
“This
isn’t my hotel.”
It sounded
stupid. Of course it wasn’t. How would this girl know where he was staying?
Maybe he was too accustomed to limo services.
“Yeah,
but it is my house.”
She waved
her hand and, without waiting to see if he would follow, walked up the ramp.
Yuri hesitated for a moment, swiveling to look at the row of small dwellings,
identical in size and orientation to lot, and at this one, the only purple
house on the street. The only purple house he’d ever seen. Attached to the siding
was a metal rivet for a flagpole, which held a rainbow-hued peace-symbol flag.
Only one of those on the block, too.
Dovie
opened the front door and motioned to him. He hesitated a moment, absolutely
sure that he was dangling as loose as he had been at the bridge, and then he
followed Dovie Collum up the ramp and into her house.
* * * * * *
•ABOUT THE AUTHOR•
Katie Kennedy is a college history instructor. She used to teach in a fire station. When the alarm rang, the entire class jumped up and ran out of the room. She became an LPN in order to write more accurate medical scenes. She has been lost in Moscow, and rousted by the KGB for sitting in Red Square to eat her ice cream. She has been bitten by a fish.
Katie lives in Michigan's Upper Peninsula with her husband, daughter, and son, in a town with a million bats. LEARNING TO SWEAR IN AMERICA comes out July 5, 2016, from Bloomsbury.
*GIVEAWAY*
The lovely folks at Bloomsbury are giving away a copy of Learning to Swear in America and a great swag pack!
•US mailing addresses only
•Ends 7/16
•Ends 7/16
Be sure to stop by the rest of the tour stops to find out more about
Learning to Swear in America!
0 comments :
Post a Comment