You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2008.
Wow aren’t we special, two posts in one day! Just don’t get used to it. And I’ll make this super fast, gotta jet to class.
Reviews for the weeks YA Mats
Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison
So I’ve read this before and wasn’t overly impressed but since that was ages ago I felt I should give it another go. Not so obnoxious this time around and also I was reading it from a different state of mind. I can totally see why girls go nuts over this book. Super funny, very sassy and its British. I hate to say it but foreign stuff is instantly more awesome. But more so I wasn’t annoyed with Georgia as I was the first time around. Rennison makes these characters very human and very interesting, you just have to see past the melodramatic “Why me/I hate my parents/school/life” moans and groans that are part of going up. Gets a Cool for sure. Probably look at the rest of the series.
The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean
Um…so I think I like this. At first I was resistant, but I can’t really put my finger on why. It’s an interesting subject, girl’s uncle takes her on an adventure to Antartica. Girl survives ordeal by taking to a dead Polar explorer named Titus. For all of it’s odd and scifi like elements, it was still very much a realistic book. Which might be the reason for the conflicting thoughts. For not meant as fantasy it was very fantastic. And not that books need to fall into one slot or genre but it makes it harder then to place the book in someone’s hand. I can’t just say White Darkness is about this… The best parts are oddly when the main character is talking to her “imaginary friend.” It seems more real than the real events that she goes through. A very icey Cool.
A Step From Heavan by An Na
Well, this was the most boring of the 3. I mean that mostly in a good way. There is really only two ways to do the “immigrant coping in a new culture with family issues” story. Straight and poinant or funny and amusing. This was the former. A well done former for sure. I like that the book encompassed her whole story 4-18 and didn’t focus too closely on one part. And the 1st person voice changes as our girl Young Le develops and grows. Sentences are longer and more complex, implying that her thinking and emotions are changing similarly. So a Cool as well.
Just wanted to share this with ya’ll.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/136961
A great article in Newsweek by Jamie Reno called “Generation R (R Is for Reader)” about the resurgence of YA Lit and its role in YAers lives. What most struck me was David Levithan’s (author of one of my favs, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, soon to be movie) comments about teen books as apart of pop culture with TV, movies and videogames. Look at Gossip Girl, Harry Potter and the slew of the fantasy/adventure movies that have come out/are still coming out/optioned to come out on film. Eragon, The Dark is Rising (alternately known by the ridiculous title The Seeker), Twilight, City of Ember. And these aren’t small productions either. On the lower end Hannah Montana has her own series of books that tie to the TV show. So although the article lays out the premise of YA Lit being popular is surprising, it really isn’t.
What is surprising is how libraries haven’t overwhelmingly gotten on the YA mothership. There are great programs out there like Los Angeles PL’s Teen’Scape with it’s overwhelmingly awesome website (http://www.lapl.org/ya/) and gorgeous space dedicated to teens. But then there is Michael Casey and Michael Stephen’s recent article in Library Journal “Embracing Service to Teens” (http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6556178.html) . Stephens has been following the story of Mishawaka PL which has banned MySpace and Facebook in response to teen behavior issues. It’s troubling to me because many people still see teens as troublemakers and rule breakers. Libraries should be welcoming places for everyone of all ages. We’ve gotten very good at programing for youngsters, storytimes and the like. But what are we doing to keep those readers past preschool? Elementary? Junior High? High School? As more libraries look to gaming and graphic novels there is beginning to be a trend towards getting the YAers in the library at any cost. It’s a trend that’s starting in places like LA, Oak Park IL and other places that I hope to see continue and become a standard for libraries.
Not as catchy as last weeks huh? Oh well, three’s all I got!
This week begins my summer of YA marathon reading. Yes, the start of my YA Materials class is here. So now this blog will have a useful purpose besides just passing time. The plan is to get a few lines down about each book I read so I’ll have a handy archive to look back on at the end. So although I have five books this week to read at the press time (always wanted to use that) I’ve only read three.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
And yes, I have read the classic YA text from before there was even such a thing as YA. But it was all the way back in high school so I needed a refresher. I recalled the book, messed up kid wandering around 1950’s New York after being kicked out of a preppy boys full of phonies. I remember thinking that it was very moving and spoke to me on some level. It must be that teenage, no one could possibly understand the lonely-life-questioning-feelings I’m having. Oh woe. Not to say I’m old and all, but I am older and I saw things differently this time. I felt sorry for Holden more than I identified with him. I felt like he needed a hug and a good friend to talk to. That’s really all he’s doing the whole time, trying to find people to connect to. I one time had a conversation with some other book readers about Kerouac’s On the Road and how you had to be at a certain age in your life to really get into that book. The same here with Catcher, some people are at a time that they are moved by Holden’s story. I also keep thinking of the Catcher Cult from Frank Portman’s King Dork and how that character hated the book. Perspective I guess. No rating, can’t rate a classic.
Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block
Another book I felt needs to be read at a certain time, although I don’t feel its shelf life is as limited. Weetzie Bat lives in a wonderland of LA that is filled with free-spirits, liberal lifestyles and LA-centric sites and sounds. Not to say I didn’t like that, but being a thoroughly Midwest gal I felt like a visitor, an alien studying another species. But part of this might be intentional on the writer’s part. The story is at its core about love and overcoming fear. It’s also about acceptance of others as they are, faults and all. That’s the story that is the hardest to understand. So often we want black and white in our fiction, good characters win and get what they want, bad characters lose and get what they deserve. True Weetzie Bat gets her happy ending, but she also gets dusted up a but. I’ll say a Cool.
ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool by Elisha Cooper
Author Elisha Cooper followed a set of Peyton HS seniors around for a year and chronicled their lives. I like the tone, like this book could be a newspaper report. These kids have more than enough drama in their lives that any fictionalization would be overkill. The straightforward reporting style works incredibly well in telling the separate but connected stories. It was also fun to read because its a Chicago book. I was student teaching when the author was at Peyton, in fact I had a friend teaching there. The little illustrations were a great style add to the story. What kills me about high school accounts is how similar they are to other accounts of high school. As much as times change, I have a feeling, high school never will. This too gets a Cool. It almost got an Awesome but that would have been based solely on it being a Chicago book.
As for the other two, Martyn Pig which I’ll devote some quality time to at lunch and the What’s Happening to My Body? Book for Girls, which I’ve read. Well not so much as read as flipped through when I was 12 and giggled with my friends at the pictures. I remember in high school my friends were at my house and were stunned we had that book. Yeah, my mom’s kinda liberal like that.
Confession: I started my last set of reviews yesterday but didn’t post them til today, so technically not Twofer Tuesday.
Reviews for Does My Head Look Big In This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah and Hush: An Irish Princess’ Tale by Donna Jo Napoli.
Well it was bound to happen so I figure why not do it as one. My first set of nonAwesome books came back to back. And I read both of these. I tend to be more critical if I just listen to something unless the performer works some crazy voice magic. Not to say these were horrible books, they have their merits. But one left me underwhelmed and the other intensely frustrated. Which brings me to a point, what I am looking for when I read a book.
First I’m looking for characters. I don’t really care what they look like or what they are doing. But if I don’t know the characters like I know one of my own friends then I don’t care what happens or what they have to say. Hush sounded good as a blurb, medieval Irish princess gets kidnapped by slave traders and must learn to survive. Wow, I thought. Not so wow as I began to read. At the end I did not know enough about the main character to care whether she got home or stayed a slave. Why did I not care? Because nothing that happened in the book seem to matter to her. The events were just things that happen. The reader never gets to see how she changes, grows because of these things. We never know her enough. And since the point of view is through her eyes we get description of her world but never a feeling, emotion, perception. Hence even the setting feels flat and dull. It’s medieval Eruope!! I’m giving it a Whatevs (2 of 4) and that’s being generous.
Second I need a good plot. Something must happen and then something else must happened because that thing happen and so on. I don’t need epics, pretty bow endings or even a linear story line. So Does My Head had great characters. Amal makes the decision to wear the hijab full-time even though she attends an ultra-conservative and snobby Australian prep school. I like Amal, I like her family, and I love her friends. It was easy to see Amal’s world and those she interacts with. What bugged me was that I felt much of the story was a lesson on what it means to be a young Muslim growing up in a non-Muslim society. I get this story is somewhat autobiographical and I know the name calling, the ignorance, the outright discrimination happens and far more than it should. But at times it was like reading Intro to Modern Muslim Culture. Which might not be bad for some readers who have no interaction with this culture or its people. But I felt the plot wasn’t there to show us the characters’ lives, but rather episodes designed to teach something. Yes, it felt preachy. There I said it. But maybe this lesson needs to be preached. It gets a solid Cool (3 out of 4) but I still highly recommend it. I would not recommend Hush.
Double Down!! It’s a review for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz and Jesus Land by Julian Scheeres.
So I do this crazy thing where I’ll be listening to an audio book that will in someway echo the book I’m reading at the same time. Like when I was listening to The Ghost Map, a nonfiction account of the cholera epidemic in London and YA gothic lite The Sweet Far Thing. Both mentioned the muckrackers of Victorian London and how they eked out their life on the garbage and filth of others. It was kinda weird to read two accounts of basically the same period. So is the some phenomenon with these two titles.
On the surface these books have little connection, Oscar Wao about a Dominican immigrant and his nerdy life growing up shunned by girls and friends alike and Julia’s memoirs of her adopted brother and their crazy religious upbringing. I did start to link these two until Julia is sent to Christian Reform school in the Dominican Republic in the 80’s while Oscar’s story has as much to do with his family’s past under Dominican dictator Trujillo as his own experiences. Where Oscar Wao’s voice comes from a ghetto and sometimes vulgar world, Jesus Land invokes the anger, fear and disappointment of a rebellious teenager. But what really connects the two worlds is the underlying theme of families and their legacies.
What makes Oscar Wao such a big, epic, Lord of the Rings story is the included histories of Oscar’s cursed family, his martyred grandfather, his much abused immigrant mother and my favorite, his rebellious sister. I love Lola’s story, possibly because the performer who read her was awesome, but also her story helped to explain Oscar’s more than the others. Besides stringing the idea of shared curse the story also shows the legacy parents leave unintentionally to their children.
Oppositely Julia’s story is more intimate and personal but no less moving. The book is focused tightly on her and her brother David’s relationship. As much as it is about their being raised devout Calvinist it is also about their struggles growing up in Indiana and dealing with racism they faced. I found it amazing, reading this and also Oscar Wao, the damage and violence we can inflict on other people. All for a cause or a leader or an escape. The way people can be used and discarded. It makes for very moving and heartbreaking reading.
An Awesome to both titles. Wish I would have read Oscar Wao though instead of just listen to it. I feel it is one of those fiction books that is not just read, but studied.
