April's book

For those interested, the April pick is A Curse Dark as Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce.

Dance on my Grave

Skip this post if you haven't finished the March pick yet....

I spent yesterday afternoon reading Dance on my Grave. I thought it was fantastic. It was funny, sad, honest, and awkward. I sometimes found Hal and Barry's banter so obtuse (the unknown to me Britishisms didn't help) that I would lose the thread of what they were even talking about, but that didn't detract from my interest in them. I feel like Chambers really captured that initial whirlwind-like feeling of dating (especially as a young adult) so well. This book feels so distinctive to me, so unlike almost anything I've ever read before.

Beyond really just loving the book and the unique characters, I don't have much to say. What I did find myself looking at as I read were little details about being a gay teen in a YA novel written in 1982. We all know that most gay teens ended up dead (or suffering some other awful fate) in YA written many years ago. For a great article summing up GLBTQ books for young adults, see Michael Cart's piece "What a Wonderful World: Notes on the Evolution of GLBTQ Literature for Young Adults." Some things that stood out to me: Barry has a slight lisp; Barry's mother tells Hal that he killed him--that she knows about his crimes against her son; Hal is stereotypically "arty"--his guidance counselor talks about him avoiding sports at school, writing "twitty" stuff for the literary magazine, etc. I'm sure there were other little details that made me nearly raise an eyebrow. If this book were written in 2008 and included little details like that (and, you know, one of the main characters had to die because he was gay), I wouldn't be having it. But, as it is, especially for a book published more than 25 years ago, I think Chambers created a very complex, honest relationship that didn't judge, moralize, or preach. It almost felt like the fact that Hal and Barry were gay was incidental. They were two boys caught up in a crazy, adventurous relationship, just happy to have found a kindred soul.

Now, my few questions. Do you think this book would appeal at all to modern teens? Did you, like me, feel there was something particularly unique about the book (tone, characters, setting, humor, etc)? What do you make of Barry (his larger than life mother, the fact that he slept with Kari, and so on)? I think there is probably a lot more to talk about, but I just wanted to post my initial reaction and get the ball rolling.

Dance on My Grave -- partway through

So, I'm not done reading yet, but I've got to ask, why couldn't this have won the Printz Award? I mean, besides the fact that it was published in 1982 and written by a Brit?

Loving this hysterical and sad book....

April pick

Here we are again, needing to choose a book for next month before we've even talked about this month's book (it's now at the top of my library pile, so there's hope I'll get to it soon). I keep hearing about A Curse Dark as Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce. It's a Rumpelstiltskin retelling. It's also nearly 400 pages long. Too long? It sounds interesting, and I know people wanted to read more than just realistic fiction. Any other suggestions? Anything else going on, YA-wise, that you want to post about, discuss, rant about?

A marketing question

Here's a question for y'all, which (1) kind of involves me hijacking the blog for personal reasons and (2) won't surprise those of you familiar with my personal psychoses. I apologize in advance for (1) and (2).

Does anyone have an opinion about how much the tendency to appear at events / signings / etc. affects a YA writer's career?

As a debut YA writer I am approaching the scary "marketing months" and trying to figure out the best way for a painfully shy person to respond to her publisher's requests for attending events without losing the plot (no pun intended)...

i don't wanna have to shout it out

Who said this?

"Whatever whoever chooses to read is their business, of course, but adults whose taste in recreational reading ends with the YA novel need to grow up."

Would you believe this came from Roger Sutton's blog? I like that he often writes sort of off-the-cuff things that create lots of discussion on his blog. This sentiment, however, raised my hackles. Yes, I do read adult literature, but for the most part, my recreational reading absolutely stops at the YA novel. And I have no intention of outgrowing that/growing up/etc. From the looks of many of the comments to his post, there were many other people who took issue with this statement. What do you think? Are you surprised to hear this sentence from the mouth (well, from the hands-typing-on-the-keyboard) of the Horn Book's editor?

Brainstorming

As some of you know, my mother teaches junior high English classes. She is looking to add a new book to her syllabus, one for 8th graders that would appeal to both boys and girls. She is considering the Alexie book, and I recommended The Trap by John Smelcer (another Native American title). She wants something that would hold the kids' interest and have a wide appeal. Does anyone have any great suggestions?

Voice in YA

After reading The White Darkness, I started thinking a bit about narrator voice in young adult literature. I think Sym had a pretty distinctive voice...and I think the world of YA is full of distinctive, unique voices. Some are funny, some are angry, or depressed, or completely unreliable. I remembered Elvin in Slot Machine, Harriet in Harriet the Spy (not quite YA, but definitely distinctive), all the way back to Holden in The Catcher in the Rye. Just for fun, what are some of your favorite YA narrators (or "voices")? Which ones don't you like? I'd have to think some more before I could decide my favorite and least favorite, but I'm interested in what you all love (and maybe hate)!

March

It looks like the March pick will be Dance on my Grave, by Aidan Chambers. Thirteen Reasons Why just showed up at the library for me, so I plan to chime in on that discussion sometime next week. The blog is sort of quiet lately. Anyone reading anything great/terrible, or know any interesting YA news? If so, please share with us! Do you have websites that you frequent to keep up to speed on YA? Also, it's not too early to think about April's pick. Some of us tossed around the idea of reading a classic in conjunction with more modern equivalents. Let us know if you have any ideas on that, or would like to suggest anything else (especially you folks who had wanted to read something other than just realistic stuff).

Two months on

So, look who's chiming in two months on. Sorry for the delay, but now that I'm caught up, I'll just comment on a couple of things that have long since been addressed.

Part Time Indian
The most striking thing to me about Part Time Indian, what kept running through my mind as I knew I was reading it by the suggestion of this group specifically, was the role that sports played in this book. Remember the discovery and discussion we had years ago on the artistic outlet of all YA protagonists? Was it device or coincidence or both?
Well, I've always taken issue with the villification of sports in YA books, (which is one reason that I was so pleased with Tangerine, as a matter of fact.) I was particularly encouraged then to see it used more symbolically/realistically/therapeutically in Part Time Indian. Then to see Alexie make reference to Tangerine later in the book - well, it was refreshing.

Was I reading YA books when I was YA?
My response to this mirrors Leo's almost exactly - the hating to read things for school at that age and choosing to read Stephen King and such, instead. (I think it was my form of rebellion, so in some weird way I was motivated to read, if only to show that I was "too grown up" for what they were feeding us in high school.) The books to which I was introduced in junior high school were GREAT, but then the high school list came, and I definitely thought I was ready for more.
I'm sure that this was a reflection of the era, as well. Being a teenager in the 80's, the YA books were few and far between and, (as the person who mentioned the mud room placement of her local YA books,) physically marginalized, as well, in the libraries and bookstores where I lived.

I definitely think that the recent and current boom in YA publishing, though, is totally market-driven. There is certainly more readership, now, as well as the tactic to cross-publish/cross-market, creating and maintaining awareness and insistence on the genre. I also think that the content itself is more accessible and familiar than what was out 15 or twenty years ago.

Reminder

Jump down a few posts to see suggestions, and leave suggestions, for our March book. February is flying by!

The White Darkness

If you haven't read The White Darkness yet, and don't want to know what happens, skip this post.

Okay? Okay.

I honestly don't have much to say about it beyond saying it was gripping, terrifying, but not really believable. With each step of Victor's plan, I kept thinking, really? He's really pulling all of this off? But once I let go of that factor, I gave in to the awful breakneck speed of the events and could hardly read fast enough, not so much to find out what happened, but to get it over with. The vastness of all of that endless snow and ice in Antarctica managed to feel totally wide open and endless, yet completely claustrophobic. I found myself not caring who died, or what they found or didn't find, but only caring that the book would end and I could get out of all that awful snow. So, good on McCaughrean for creating such a vivid and frightening setting.

At first, having not read the flap copy or even any reviews of the book, I had no idea what would really happen. I was certain there was something unseemly about Victor, but I really thought he was maybe molesting Sym or something. He came off as creepy right from the start, to me. With Victor taking Sym away from her mother to a hotel clearly set up for just the two of them, with Sym's need to clutch so tightly to Captain Oates when she needs to "get away", and with her poem on pages 90 and 91 where she says, "secrets hidden are all/forbidden," I just thought that was where it was going. When it quickly became obvious that Victor was totally insane, cruel, awful, etc, I found myself getting so frustrated with Symone. She never seemed as "slow" or "dumb" (for lack of a much better word) as she sometimes claimed to be, or was made out to be. So for her to repeatedly get swept up in Victor's plans, to continue to think of Victor as brave and herself as gutless and spineless, was so frustrating. Victor turned out to be such a monster; I was really gunning for Symone to brain him with that ice pick!

That's just lots of random rambling. I don't have anything especially critical to say about the book. I'm not even sure I could say that I liked it. It was certainly compelling and unusual. I'm interested to know what others thought.

Looking ahead

Though we haven't talked much yet about this month's picks, does anyone want to start throwing out titles for next month's book? If we come up with a few books to choose from, we can vote on them as we did last month.

13 Reasons Why...

...I hated this book. Spoiler alert, as well, for those of you still reading it... I'm not sure I can muster the energy to come up with 13 reasons, so I'll go with the biggest ones:

• Narrator who overreacts at every turn. (I ditched the book in the library's book drop the other day, so I will be creating some of the dialog from memory.) "Hm, I just got a box of tapes from a dead girl. I listened to 5 minutes of them. OH MY GOD WHY DID I EVER GET THESE TAPES???? WHAT CAN IT MEAN??? WHY AM I CURSED??? HANNAH, WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME???"
• Bad writing. Don't even have any examples of this. Didn't want to keep it in my house.
• Horribly manipulative main character - I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this: she's teased, she's groped...and she kills herself? I don't have a daughter (yet) or a son, for that matter, but what am I supposed to do with this? What kind of message is this sending - the subtext implies that the only path for Hannah is a permanent exit. Sure, a few teachers don't listen to her, which would be awful, but then she kills herself? Because the some of her classmates are sexist and bullies (although one does sound like a bona fide sex offender)? I'm not sure it hangs together logically (perhaps I've blocked Hannah's main motivation for suicide - I was just pissed at her more than anything for hiding in the closet during the rape scene) and if it does, it's a really disturbing message.
  

Ranting is fun. Although it does make me wonder if it's clouded my mind for any redeeming messages from the book. If you read it, what do you think?

Update on Looking for Alaska

Click here for an article updating you on the situation with John Green's novel, Looking for Alaska, and the challenge it's facing in New York.