Last week, Joyce Moyer Hostetter at The Three R’s—Reading, ‘Riting and Research posted about the 2011 YA Historical Fiction Challenge. Sab Horande at YA Bliss is hosting the challenge, and you can read all about it here and sign up to participate.

Basically, the challenge is to read 5, 10, or 15 historical fiction novels (depending on the level of challenge you pick), and they  have to be either middle-grade or young-adult. Then you blog about them–with a few basic thoughts or a full review–and each post enters you for all sorts of fun giveaways. The books do not have to be published in 2011, and Sab has thoughtfully included a few book lists to help us get started.

I’m going in at Level 1, which means I will read and blog about 5 books. Honestly, I’m going to use her list to totally stock my to-read pile, but I don’t want to commit to more than 5 review posts. I like to talk about books that really excite me as a story or that show me a wonderful example of some piece of writing craft, so I want to save the review slots for books I really want to share with you. Plus, I’m going to try and focus my search on books with protagonists who are at least 16 years old, at the older end of the YA spectrum. Don’t worry. If I fall in love more than 5 times, you’ll most likely hear about it–if not here, on Facebook & Twitter.

I’m a big believer in reading what you’re writing, so I’m excited and grateful to Sab for setting this up. I can’t wait to see the reviews that everyone else in the challenge comes up with. 2011 is going to be a great year for reading!