BBAW 2011 Day 1: Highlighting Our Community

Welcome to BBAW 2011

This year's BBAW's theme is Cultivating a Community of Bloggers and Readers.

Today's topic encourages us to highlight a couple of bloggers who have made blogging a unique experience. This is my second year blogging, and while there are lots of wonderful bloggers who deserve my applause for the fabulous reviews they write, the memes they create and host weekly, and the fantastic job they do promoting authors, this post is about a couple of bloggers who I have had to say goodbye to this year.

Mrs. Deraps of Deraps Reads last posted in April of this year. I loved reading her insightful reviews and gravitated to her blog because she was a high school teacher who talked about her students and often shared their  love of books she wrote about. She created this one post format last year called Book 2 Book where she compared a YA book with a classic (or at least on older book) and I was always blown away by her ability to get to the nitty gritty and tell exactly how theses books complimented each other in story, character, and theme. She was also very active in the book blogging community, participating in a number of challenges, reading other bloggers reviews and leaving comments.

While I know a little about why she stopped blogging, I have high hopes that she will return some day in the future and once again share her special love of books.

Misha of My Love Affair with Books always made me smile, she frequently visited my blog and left comments that made my heart sing. I was continually amazed at her eclectic taste in books, and loved to read about the books she read. Many of the books were in genres other than YA, and I got a strong sense of what I was missing since I concentrate only on YA  and middle school books. Her reviews were honest, perceptive, and intelligent, so I was greatly sadden last month when, due to health and personal issues, she said goodbye to blogging. The hole she has left is huge, but I can only hope and pray that her decision is one that will make her well. 


The blogging community has definitely gotten smaller from the loss of both Mrs. Deraps and Misha. I wish them both good reads and best wishes for a happy healthy future!