Our Mission
Flamingnet's mission is to promote reading; making reading more fun by highlighting
books that readers may enjoy and fostering literacy through charitable work.
Background
Flamingnet LLC is a nonprofit limited liability company that owns and manages Flamingnet.com, a website dedicated to promote reading.
Flamingnet.com features student reviews of preteen, teen, and young adult books for you. Who better to tell you if a book is
worth reading than those for whom the book is written?
Flamingnet was created in 2002. When I was in fifth grade, I read many different books.
This led me to combine my reading with my father's hobby, computer programming. Gradually I wrote reviews on the books that
I read, and my father posted these reviews on the Internet at Flamingnet. After seeing our
website, national publishers and authors of young adult literature began asking us to review their books. These publishers include Penguin Books, Scholastic, Random House, Simon & Schuster,
Time Warner, and HarperCollins, as well as many other publishers and individual authors. As we received more books to review, we
began to accept student reviewers from all over the United States to help with the reviews. Flamingnet is currently a growing young
adult book website, and my father and I are kept very busy spreading the word about our site and working with all the reviewers,
authors, publishers, and publicists that have become part of our Flamingnet community. My grandfather in Florida is also very busy sending out
letters to libraries telling them about my web site.
The Website
My website is for students between 8 and 18 years old, their parents, grandparents, teachers, and librarians who are
looking for books to recommend or buy for their children, grandchildren, or students. We have listed current and classic
books that this age group may find interesting and enjoyable.
There are two separate book sections to my website, Flamingnet Book Reviews and What's New.
The Flamingnet Book Reviews section includes books that I have read and recommend. You can get to this section from the navigation
bar on the left. I briefly describe each book and rate them on a scale from 0 - 10. Although I have read all of the books in this
section, it is impossible for me to write all of the reviews. Any of the reviews I have not written in this section come from
Amazon.com, but all of the ratings are mine.
In the What's New section, we list new and advance books. Flamingnet is an advance book reviewer. We regularly receive new
and advance books from publishers and authors. These books are reviewed for you by our Flamingnet Student Reviewers. Our student
reviewers range from middle school to college and are from all over the United States (some are even from other countries). I also
review some of these new and advance books, along with working with my father managing Flamingnet.
After a student reads and reviews a book, we ask them to rate each book they review on a scale from 1 - 10 (10 being the best).
One of our newest additions to the What's New section has been our TOP CHOICE AWARD. Flamingnet's TOP CHOICE AWARD is given to books
based on this student reviewer rating. We also ask our reviewers about language and the content (drugs, sex, and violence) in the book and rate
books for content using the Flamingnet Content Rating. Hopefully, their reviews and ratings will help you decide on your choice of books.
Many student reviewers from all over the United States have received new and advance books from us. This relationship has helped
us promote reading and critical reviewing among young adults. Flamingnet also is an Associate
member of Amazon.com. This means that for every item purchased on Amazon.com through my website, I receive credit (about 15 to 25
cents per item) from them. I use this Amazon.com credit to buy books to donate to charity, and for schools and libraries that do
not have money to purchase books for their collection. We have donated hundreds of books to victims of Hurricane Katrina, public
schools in places such as West Virginia, Virginia, New York, and the Virgin Islands, and to Baltimore inner city schools through a
local charitable organization, Helping Hands. Therefore, please buy items on Amazon.com through Flamingnet and help us to help others.
If you would like to suggest any students or libraries in need that could benefit from a gift of books from Flamingnet, please email me
at webmaster@flamingnet.com. We also offer links to places where you can donate books.
Once a month we send out an enewsletter to our membership. Our enewsletter highlights new and advance books that our student
reviewers have liked during the preceding month. Furthermore, our enewsletter and website offer low-cost advertising opportunities
for authors and publishers to tell an interested audience about their new books. Flamingnet also regularly holds book giveaway contests
for our members.
My bulletin board ("The Board") encourages you (especially authors) to comment on books or on any other topic, even on my site.
The Resources section of Flamingnet has a list of books linked to study guides and other materials. Furthermore, I have a Civil War
section that has a quiz, word find, and information on the Battle of Antietam. This is all part of a project I did in fifth grade,
and for years it has been a very popular part of Flamingnet.
How To Submit Book To Flamingnet For Review
If you have questions, please send us an email or call us.
(Here are links to awards
that have been received by Flamingnet and comments
from users about my site.)
