Welcome to the 15th weekly I HEART YA Blog Carnival! I HEART YA is a Blog Carnival for readers, writers, and lovers of young adult fiction. Every Tuesday there will be a blogging prompt that celebrates my favorite reading genre --YA fiction. Bloggers are invited to write their own take on the topic and post a link in the comment section, or if you prefer just put your thoughts in the comments. Either way, if you own a blog, grab the button to show your pride, and add your link to the list below. If you're not sure what to do, go to the I HEART YA tab for more details.


I'm so excited to be resuming the carnival (and apologize to anyone I put out by my absence). The ExtraNormal Blog Tour was incredible, but I'm really glad to resume a normal writing schedule. As I'm sure you know, the tour started at about the same time that the YA blogging community had a small implosion. I don't think I need to go into details. I've gone back and forth since then on whether to go with the topic of plagiarism for this carnival. I like to keep topics upbeat, and that is definitely not an upbeat topic.


However, I don't feel right about ignoring the subject all together. I believe that for the community to heal, we need to agree on two things: 


1.That plagiarism will not be tolerated 


AND 


2. That personal attacks are just as unacceptable. 


With those two goals in mind, I want to tell my plagiarism story. Several years ago I agreed to grade and critique my son's 5th-grade-class creative writing assignments. It gave the teacher a break from grading, and they thought it was cool to have an author critique their work. The papers ranged in quality, but they were all entertaining. That is, until I got to one that was a complete regurgitation of 'Call of the Wild' by Jack London. The boy didn't even bother to change the character's names. 


Before thinking, I scribbled 'Plagiarism is NOT cool!' across the top of the paper. When I finished I realized that probably wasn't the best way to handle the situation. I wrote a note to the teacher with an apology for my knee-jerk reaction, and a suggestion that he might want to talk to the boy.


I never heard back from the teacher. I don't know if he even saw my note or talked to the boy. I kind of hope he just handed him the paper with my angry scribblings across the front. And I kind of hope he didn't. Because a personal attack is never a good solution to a problem. But ignoring a blatant wrong isn't the solution either. 


So for today's blog carnival I'd like to invite a civil discussion on the topic of plagiarism. I hope we all agree that it's bad, wrong, totally unacceptable. Do you agree that it can never happen on accident? Have you seen it personally? Had it happen to you? Do you have a story? An opinion?


Share! (Nicely.)


And don't forget: 1. Add your link to the linkytool (Only once is necessary. Links will be removed after two months of not participating.) 2. Add your link to the comment section so we know you participated this week. 3. Grab the button if you haven't already. 4. Check out the other blog posts. Ready...set...go!