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I am on quite the rampage lately. This just makes me boggle. Yes, I know it's old for a blog post, but I just saw it so here I am. It damn near made my head explode. You know, I don't even write original fiction, and I know that most of it requires some degree of research. If I write a book that's set in a hospital, I'm going to visit hospitals. If I'm writing a novel in which the main character extols the virtues of In-N-Out Burger, I'm not going to set it in New Jersey. And one would think that if I wanted to write an urban fantasy novel, I'd read some urban fantasy and get a picture of the genre. Regarding this blogger's recent reading of YA, I'm shocked by the "I'm shocked" factor, too. Maybe that's my emotionally disconnected librarian talking, but the stuff of YA novels does not faze me. It all stems from SOME reality. Yes, it's easy to make smaller truths into huge issues in a book, or on TV, or in a movie, but I really think that's okay. That's the point of art, isn't it, to make us think differently? This passage: Now, I was not expecting Nancy Drew. But... surely this sort of behavior isn't very common? Is it something you'd want your ten-year-old reading? (YA is supposedly for 12-15-year-olds, but in fact younger kids who are good readers consume most of it.)just shows ignorance. 1. No, if it were common behavior the book would be really boring. Who wants to read books where common behavior happens? 2. I've never met anyone who recommended Valiant to a ten-year-old. If you have, please send them my way so I can smack them one. 3. Younger kids who are good readers consume most YA? First, define "younger." Second, where did this statistic come from? It's not like Nielsen Bookscan asks you for your age when you buy a book. I can only speak for the libraries I've worked in, of course, but I found that most of the people checking out books from the YA section are, um, teens. 4. YA is supposedly for 12-15-year-olds? Geez, you better tell YALSA, then, because their "Ages 12-18" service plan is all wrong and most of the books on BBYA are too old. Also, please send that memo to John Green, M.T. Anderson, Nancy Werlin, Robert Lipsyte, Chris Lynch, Sonya Hartnett, and all those other authors that write YA for the 14-and-over age range. Clearly, no one is reading their books and they need to quit writing. So my question overall is: Why on earth is this writer talking about putting together a proposal for a YA novel when she doesn't read YA and hasn't kept up on the genre in years? How could you even think about writing YA fantasy and not know ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) blackholly's work? The number of adult authors writing YA is climbing every day. In some ways this is good: We got Sherman Alexie, Carl Hiaasen, Alice Hoffman, Nick Hornby, Benjamin Alire Saenz, and other authors who have remarkable talent and wrote terrific teenage voices. But on the other hand, we get people like James Patterson, who I'll discuss in Part II: Stop Biting the Hand That Feeds. -- In other news, this is just wrong. Way to ruin my childhood. Sometimes movies are best left alone. You know one thing about Hollywood I never could stomach? All the damn sequels. -- Today in a meeting, someone's cell phone went off. Instead of silencing the phone immediately, she picked it up, answered it, and proceeded to have a short conversation. In front of a very crowded room. Those of us with manners damn near had heart attacks. -- ANTM: I know this makes me unpopular, but TEAM LAUREN! (Not opposed to teams Katarzyna, Claire, or Aimee either.) -- Who wants to beta the SPN fic I'm writing for heidi8's belated birthday? gwendolyngrace? titti? emmademarais? Anyone? Bueller? Tags: i work with crazy people, rants, ya
126:  cranky
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slytherincess and heidi8 are asking about personal theme songs. I don't have mine available for downloading thank you, lauriegilbert! "Extraordinary" by Liz Phair: I am extraordinary, if you'd ever get to know me
I am extraordinary, I am just your ordinary
Average every day sane psycho
Supergoddess
Average every day sane psycho--- Our home modem died. That was not fun. But I have a new one, yay! Only now I'm behind on email, boo! --- Work has not let up, and on top of all that I have to do on a daily basis I had the Office Plague last week. I will be very happy as of July when one of my biggest time-sucking commitments will come to an end. Normally I'm one of those people who isn't happy unless I'm way too busy, but this is kind of ridiculous. --- fasterthanlight asked me if I was still writing fanfic and the answer is YES! A more detailed answer is, "When I have the time, which is not as often as I'd like for it to be." --- Been following the fap over Orson Scott Card winning the Margaret Edwards Award and I have to say...I agree wholeheartedly with the Edwards committee. Card's personal views should have no bearing on receiving the award. Ender's Game absolutely fits the criteria of the award. Applause to the Edwards committee for doing a great job this year. I know one of the members fairly well and I know how hard she worked and how much serving on that committee meant to her. Like this, only it's not Amy Winehouse. --- Reading: Prey by Lurlene McDaniel. I wanted to read this the minute I heard about it. Basic plot: A high-school freshman begins an affair with his thirty-two-year-old history teacher. It's done in three voices: The boy, the teacher and the boy's best friend, who is the one who breaks the secret. It's a great premise and fabulous fodder for discussion written with terrible dialogue, superficial character development, and a predictable ending. Too bad, really. I didn't expect it to be Boy Toy, which was my favorite book of 2007, but I did expect that the teacher wouldn't sound like some professional seductress/evil overlord, and that the best friend would at least be likable (and not in the way where you like a person because you feel sorry for them). Tyrell by Coe Booth ( coebooth). DAMN. This book is STUNNING and I suggest that everyone go out and read it right now. This is easily one of the best first-person novels I've seen in a long time. Normally I like well-done first person because they show how unreliable narration can really drive the story, but in Tyrell's case I liked the first-person narration because it voiced not only Tyrell, but his friends and family and even his physical environment. I love that Booth didn't try to make Tyrell into some kind of Upstanding Teen Novel Hero, whose greatest aspiration was to go to Harvard and Make Something Of Himself. Tyrell wants to be a DJ like his dad and protect all the people he loves. More than anything Tyrell is honest and vigilant, and that makes the reader want to see him succeed at what he sets out to do. The only thing? I wish this were available on audio. A Drowned Maiden's Hair: A Melodrama by Laura Amy Schlitz. I should have read this book when it first came out. I avoided it, I confess, because it's historical fiction and really long, and I'm no good at history. Doesn't matter with this book. Schlitz's writing is sublime. She has this incredible gift for writing settings so that the reader gets a clear view of what's going on but never once does said reader get bogged down in adjectives. Basic plot: a girl is adopted to help with the schemes of women who make their living as fraudulent psychics. But it's more than that. There's an overlying theme of morality and moral ambiguity, and cruelty and love. Melodramatic? Sure! But it's supposed to be, and it's amazing. Airhead by Meg Cabot. Dead people and famous people are all the rage in YA lit, so how long was it going to be before we got a book about a dead famous person? This is a different turn for Meg Cabot. It's got her breezy, fast-paced edge but it's not fun and fluffy. Basic plot: Completely average high school student Emerson Watts takes a blow to the head while saving her sister from a falling plasma TV at the opening of a Stark Megastore. When she wakes up, she can't figure out why she's got a manicure and a craving for wasabi peas, and why everyone is calling her Nikki, as in supermodel Nikki Howard. This is definitely a fun and intriguing read, and I'm curious as to where Cabot will take the rest of the series. She's set us up to know that all is not right in Nikkiland, but we don't know how not-right, or who's behind it. Next on the pile: He Forgot to Say Goodbye by Benjamin Alire Saenz; The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart...which I've had for seven months and still haven't read because I suck...and also I can't find mine :( ; Debbie Harry Sings in French by Meagan Brothers (good so far, but I'm only on page 10); Skin Deep by E.M. Crane, lots of others. -- and now...back to work Tags: books 2008, books i'd pay retail for, memes, ya
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On a YA lit listserv I mostly lurk on, someone expressed great dismay and anger that One Whole and Perfect Day by Judith Clarke got a Printz honor this year while Mistik Lake by Martha Brooks did not. Now, I have not read One Whole and Perfect Day so I have no opinion on it whatsoever, but I'll tell you the reason why I think the Printz committee shut out Mistik Lake: It's because Mistik Lake is a seriously flawed book in many, many ways. First, the writing is very thin and overly ambitious. The author introduces a lot of characters but never fully develops any of them. The...I guess you'd call her the main character, Odella, has a lot of the markings of a Mary Sue: She has an unusual but never explained name, she is always heroic in the face of tragedy, everyone seems to love her. Brooks gets so busy explaining the effect of Odella's mother's life on everyone that no one character's reaction ever really comes to fruition. I have absolutely no problem with books where the life of a character who never appears on screen affects everyone who appears on-screen. In fact, I find those books fascinating if they're done well. Here, Sally's (the mother's) tragedy affects everyone in the book, but everyone around her is such a saint that she's always viewed as poor, poor Sally. Sally packs up when Odella is a teenager, moves to Iceland to be with her lover, later husband, and dies in a car accident a few years later. At the end of the book (SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS) the reader learns that Sally and her husband (whose name I can't remember because I borrowed the book and had to return it, sorry) had a baby. That almost made me throw the book across the room. Tinhattery to follow. First, Odella and her sisters Janelle and Sarah were supposed to love this little baby they'd never met, who was flown from Iceland to Canada not long after her mother's death. Because everyone knows that babies have the magic power to bring destroyed families together. Second, because Sally had a baby I really believe that the author wanted us to see her as a Truly Good Person, because you can't speak ill of a dead mother. Third, the introduction of the baby in the very final pages seemed to send a message to the reader that Sally must have found True Love, because having a baby with someone else must mean it's True Love and you have a Forever Bond. Because Sally found True Love, Odella has to forgive her for her abandonment. Not forgiving her for the abandonment might hurt the baby, because Baby can't think bad thoughts about her mother. I'm not saying that Sally didn't truly love her new husband. That's entirely possible, but you'll never know because the book doesn't cover it. I guess the reader is just supposed to understand all that because of the presence of the baby. But the message I really think Odella got in the end? Mommy loves the baby more than she loves you. The secondary plotline (and oh yes, there was a tertiary plotline, too) about Odella's great-aunt Gloria being a lesbian was nice, but the book could have survived just as well without it. I know there are supposed to be parallels between Odella's falling in love and Gloria's falling in love with a woman named Violet, but it's an apples-and-pineapples comparison. Gloria was a pretty cool person, probably the one person in the book with any idea of what it means to love, but she couldn't save the underdeveloped, melodramatic, whiny disasters that were all the other characters. In short, a book where the setting is the best character in the book does not deserve an award. It'll probably get a spot on BBYA for reasons I'll never understand, but it was rightfully shut out of the Printz. Another big complaint I've seen centers on Shaun Tan's The Arrival being shut out for the Printz. To that I reply, Well DUH. Maybe I'm a snob who doesn't understand the truly progressive nature of the graphic novel but The Arrival, as beautiful and moving as it is, is not literary because it's got no words in it. Graphic works that incorporate words can certainly be literary, because the words and pictures depend on each other to move the story along (see American Born Chinese). But because there are no words in The Arrival, it misses the chance to paint its picture for the reader in words. I'm sorry it wasn't eligible for the Caldecott because it certainly could have given ...Hugo Cabret a run for its money. It's a fascinating book I'd recommend to those who love graphic works, but again, it's not literary and didn't deserve to be honored at the Printz. I have a headache that makes me want to rip half my brain out, so the Happy Galley Post of Midwinter 2008 will have to wait. I will say, though, that I'm really looking forward to reading a lot of what I picked up. Tags: 2007, books, ya
126:  discontent
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Oh, ALA, why do you insist on holding Midwinter a week earlier than usual this year? I am sprinting to read everything I need to read. But, on to my 2008 Printz predictions. Disclaimer: I do not serve on the 2008 Printz committee and although I know people on that committee, this post does not contain any of their opinions, only mine. Also, I have yet to predict a Printz winner. The closest I've ever come was 2007, when I picked two of the four honor books. That said, on to my picks for the 2008 Printz Award: The book most likely to win: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. It's received more critical acclaim this year than any other YA book, and deservedly so. And how amazing would it be for a funny book to take The Big Award? The books I don't think will win, but that I think deserve honors: A Swift Pure Cry by Siobhan Dowd, Boy Toy by Barry Lyga, The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt, Click by Linda Sue Park, et.al. If Part-Time Indian doesn't take it: The New Policeman by Kate Thompson. The books I still have to read: Before I Die by Jenny Downham and The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean. Why this post is so short: Because I'm back at work after two weeks of vacation and I can't find my desk. Also it is really cold in my office and my fingers hurt. I did go to see Sweeney Todd and although the singing could have been better, I was extremely impressed by the acting. Tags: books, ya
126:  cold
780: I'm not here for your entertainment
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I don't know why I bother reading anything Slate writes about YA literature. All it ever does is get my blood pressure up. Their latest offering is no different. Her Dark Materials: Should children read Philip Pullman's trilogy—or the incest classic Flowers in the Attic?Why does it not surprise me that this article is written by the same woman who completely missed the point of one of last year's Printz honorees and the National Book Award winner The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation? At least she had the smarts to not compare Pullman's writing style to Andrews's. To start on what bothers me about this article, here's a list of the books the author mentions: Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews the His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman Forever by Judy Blume One of these things is not like the others. Can you guess which one? That's right, it's Flowers in the Attic, and that's what makes me the most angry about the article. Bazelon is comparing apples and pineapples. Flowers in the Attic, unlike HDM and Forever, was never intended to be sold or marketed as a young adult novel. I can't expect that much from Bazelon, who appears to have never read an actual YA novel in her life, or at least talked to a YA librarian (given that she mentions Sula, Black Boy, and Huck Finn as "classics of YA literature" rather than The Chocolate War, The Pigman, and The Outsiders). Every YA librarian...well, this YA librarian, anyway...will tell you that two of the most popular authors among middle school students are V.C. Andrews and Stephen King but I sure as hell wouldn't put them in the YA section of the library. If Bazelon is going to call FitA a "preteen classic" then it only seems fair to me that she give Stephen King's work the same label and compare HIS books to Pullman's. Fact is, though, FitA is not a preteen classic. It's a book written for adults that has been co-opted by the preteen audience. One cannot call it a preteen book just because it has a preteen main character. If that's the case, then we're going to have to call The Kite Runner, The Lovely Bones, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, etc. YA, and the authors wouldn't like that because, well, YA books don't normally get the big sales and publicity of adult titles. I get asked a lot what separates a YA novel from an adult novel with a YA main character, and this is the answer I give, one that I believe applies to the FitA/HDM comparison: In a YA novel, the main character is describing the events as they happen with only as much wisdom and insight as he or she has at the time. In an adult book with a teen main character, an adult is looking back on events of his or her adolescence and writing them with some degree of adult wisdom, however small. YA books concern "today" and "tomorrow" and adult books with teen main characters concern "yesterday." This is why I don't consider Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep a YA novel; it's told from the perspective of an adult who is describing her teenage years. FitA is not a YA novel because (and please correct me if I'm wrong; it's been a while since the reread) Cathy is telling the story at the time of the end of Seeds of Yesterday. The series is a retrospective, not a narration of the events as they occur. The second paragraph of the article reads: But the depth of my Pullman devotion doesn't make me want to give his books to my two boys, who are near his intended audience. Pullman's work is a hybrid: It's sold to adults as complex fantasy, and to the 12-year-old crowd as Harry Potter-plus. In some ways, the trilogy is part of the coming-of-age tradition of literature for young teens (and inevitably, somewhat younger kids, too). It tells the growing-up story of Lyra and Will, Pullman's wild and enterprising child characters. But it's a complicated and dark and unsettling coming-of-age.... Maybe this is an idea that's more horrifying to read about as a parent than as a child, but giving Pullman to my still-small sons, even a couple of years from now, is an experiment I'm not about to conduct.1. Harry-Potter-plus? It's all about comparing the apples and pineapples today, isn't it? Not all fantasy works for a YA audience are good next reads for Potter fans, and Rowling and Pullman set out to accomplish two entirely different things in their works. I'd be kicked off CHILD_LIT for saying this, I know, but I don't think the two should be compared. 2. A complicated and dark unsettling coming-of-age? Really? The YA world doesn't have any of those! Okay, that was mean, but I couldn't resist. 3. Part of this rant is tied into something that Bazelon is not responsible for, and that's what I like to call the My Child Is A Genius Because He Read Harry Potter Effect. In my personal and usually not humble opinion, Harry Potter was often marketed to too young an audience. It's a YA series if I ever did see one but parents for years have been pushing it on their second- and third-graders. After all, if their kids can get through that big book, they must be smart! But the thing is, Harry Potter was never intended for eight-year-olds any more than FitA was intended for twelve-year-olds. Consequently, two things happened. First, more fantasy series for the middle-grade crowd got published. YAY! There is no bad in that. Second, YA fantasy suddenly became the desired purchases/library checkouts by those parents with genius children who did not understand the idea that YA literature is about content AND vocabulary. I think that might be some of the reason behind my annoyance over the HDM media frenzy. Those books, despite the look of the movie, do not belong in the children's section of a bookstore or library. Your child is not a genius because he read HDM at eight. It just doesn't work that way. A book is more than the words on its pages. 4. The plural of anecdote is not evidence. And I'll leave that at that. And yes, I understand that the point of the article is about the secrecy and defiance of the preteen reading experience, but that doesn't change the fact that the basic comparison is flawed. I really don't see kids reading Pullman with the same "OMG I know I'm not supposed to be reading this" savor that they read Andrews and King. Chances are, most middle-school students will not try to shock or impress their classmates by reading HDM because, yeah, that's what Stephen King and V.C. Andrews are for. Tags: books, rants, ya
780: been caught stealing once when I was five
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