2012 Week 1

I realize this is a week late. Apparently, my school reading is going to be a bit more time-consuming than expected this semester. I'll try to do better about posting over the weekend, but no guarantees.

Title: Hatchet
Author: Gary Paulsen
Publishing Date: 1987
Reason Read: required for YA Resources (previously read in 6th grade)
Awards: Newbery Honor 1988

I remember reading Hatchet for my 6th grade English class and hating it, so when it was on the syllabus for my YA Resources class, I cringed a bit, but decided that as an adult maybe I'd better enjoy the book. I was wrong.

The story of Brian, a thirteen year old who survives a plane crash after the pilot of the single-engine plane has a heart attack, has the potential to be captivating, but not enough details of Brian's civilian life are given. All we are told is that his parents are divorced, and Brian unwittingly was privy to the reason why: his mother's illicit affair. Additionally, the writing is extremely repetitive, using the same words and phrasing ad nauseum to the point where I questioned if Mr. Paulsen owned a thesaurus. I understand that the writing is meant to mimic Brian's thoughts, but I'd like to think that even a teenager lost in the wilderness is a bit more sophisticated than this.

Grade: C

Title: Annie on My Mind
Author: Nancy Garden
Publishing Date: 1982
Reason Read: required reading for YA Resources
Awards: N/A

The quintessential lesbian romance novel for young adults, Annie on My Mind tells the story of two New York girls, Annie and Liza, who have a chance meeting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The girls quickly become best friends, and the relationship evolves into something more.

Although this novel was written thirty years ago, it is still as poignant and believable today. While Annie has acknowledged that she is gay for some time, Liza's feelings are frightening and new, and she struggles to come to terms with them, as so many others do. And on top of the main romance plot, there is a major plot point involving two teachers at Liza's school who are lesbians and how the school administration reacts to this. While the acceptance of gays has certainly made strides since 1982, the events that unfold in this novel are still extremely plausible, especially in more conservative parts of the country. Highly recommended for any girl questioning her sexuality.

Grade: A

Title: Weetzie Bat
Author: Francesca Lia Block
Publishing Date: 1989
Reason Read: required reading for YA Resources
Awards: Phoenix Award 2009

Despite being only slightly longer than 100 pages, Weetzie Bat manages to cram non-traditional families, gay relationships, and AIDS in its plot without weakening it. Often described as a pop fairy tale, the story follows teenage Weetzie, her friend Dirk, and the life they build through the results of three wishes Weetzie makes via a genie in a magic lamp. I suppose it's a bit precious, but the writing is so ethereal and poetic, I found myself easily sucked into the story. My only real complaint is that more time is spent on surface details instead of building really deep characters, but that goes along with the fairy tale concept, as do the bizarre names (i.e. My Secret Agent Lover Man).

Grade: A-

Title: Monster
Author: Walter Dean Myers
Publishing Date: 1999
Reason Read: required reading for YA Resources
Awards: National Book Award finalist 1999, Printz Award 2000, Coretta Scott King Honor 2000

Written as a screenplay by the main character, Steven Harmon, Monster is a courtroom drama concerning a murder trial of a convenience store owner in New York City. While we are told that Steve served as a look-out of sorts, checking to see that no customers were in the store prior to the botched robbery, throughout the course of the trial, the defense tries to prove his innocence and save Steve from a life behind bars. A number of witnesses are criminals themselves, somewhat discrediting the case of the prosecution. And the entire trial both the jury and we the readers are left wondering if Steve is really innocent.

Given Steve's penchant for filmmaking, the screenplay concept is a nice touch. Had Mr. Myers chosen to write in a traditional format, the story easily could have become bogged down with legal jargon, but as a quick-moving screenplay, such terminology is dealt with much more easily. That the format fits the character so well is a credit to the author.

Grade: A

Title: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Author: Stephen Chbosky
Publishing Date: 1999
Reason Read: required reading for YA Resources (previously read senior year of high school)
Awards: N/A

Maybe this was just something we did at my high school, but I remember reading Perks in my senior year and passing the copy around to people and having them leave comments in the margins. My own copy was just between my best friend (now husband) and myself, but I had friends who also did this with larger groups of friends. I think the epistolary format and confessional tone of the letters is conducive to this.

I think I'm a bit biased toward this book, not only because of how nostalgic it makes me feel, having grown up in the 90's and come of age soon after the millennium, but also because the book is set in the Greater Pittsburgh metro area. All the places that are mentioned in this book are familiar to me, so it ends up having a special place in my ya collection.

Despite this personal connection to Mr. Chbosky's novel, the issues presented, including homosexuality, teen pregnancy, and abuse are rather universal issues faced by teenagers everywhere, which is why it's such an appealing book. I truly feel that it's my generation's Catcher in the Rye.

Grade: A

Title: Gossip Girl
Author: Cecily von Ziegesar
Publishing Date: 2002
Reason Read: required reading for YA Resources
Awards: N/A

By far the worst book I've read in some time, Gossip Girl is about as mindless as I expected it to be. And while the writing is decent, at least if one likes the style used in gossip columns, what really irritated me was that the characters are almost described in terms of what brand-name they are wearing. If one has no concept of what a certain Prada dress looks like, he'll have little idea what to visualize.

Even worse than the lack of poetic description is the sheer lack of positive characters in the main cast. Nearly all of the major characters drink, smoke, and do recreational drugs. The only girl at the school that I can tolerate is the artistic misfit, Vanessa, but aside from attending a concert with the flighty Serena, she's a peripheral character at best.

I'm glad that these books are getting teens reading, I suppose, but there's so much wrong with them that I really worry about the negative influence the books could potentially have on young readers.

Grade: C-

Free to Be

Luna
by Julie Anne Peters
National Book Award finalist 2004, Stonewall Honor Book 2005, Lambda Award finalist 2005

Regan's brother Liam has always been a bit different. His best friends have always been girls and he's always had an interest in fashion. His father suspects that he might be gay, but only Regan knows the truth. Liam is transgendered. Every night she keeps Regan up at odd hours while she dons her dresses, wigs, and make-up, permitting her true self, Luna, to emerge.

This novel is essentially the story of Luna's transition, as seen through Regan's eyes. Unfortunately, with its contemporary setting in the western United States, that story is not a very pleasant one. In addition to a male chauvisnist father and a pill-popping mother who refuse to accept the reality of the situation, Luna has to deal with the taunting of her classmates and local townspeople. With the lack of support and understanding presented to her, Luna contemplates suicide numerous times, and without Regan, who, despite her selfish wish that Luna was not so different, provides the only moral support in this difficult period of Luna's life, she may well have done more than contemplate.

Ms. Peters does a good job of explaining a complex and somewhat controversial topic in terms that a younger audience can understand, though I feel that the book would have been more powerful if told through Luna's point-of-view, rather than Regan's. The decision to use Regan as narrator has ensured that the audience remain outsiders incapable of understanding the problems of a transgendered youth first-hand. While Regan is sympathetic of Luna's plight, she can never truly understand the thought processes that go through Luna's mind, and thus, neither can the readers. True, some readers may be alienated by a book told from the perspective of a transgendered individual, but if so, this book was not written for them in the first place.

I found Regan to be a rather selfish character, more concerned with how her classmates and potential boyfriend would view her as Luna's sister than with how Luna was coping with her situation. Also, I felt that the characterization could have been stronger. Some aspects of the characters, such as their interests and hobbies, seemed like they were just tossed in as an after-thought. For example, Luna apparently is a manga fan, as exemplified by a scene in which her friend Aly returns a copy of Love Hina. But this interest is never explored, which makes me think the author was merely trying to retain the contemporary feel without any knowledge of the pop culture she mentions in passing.

Also, I realize that I am probably ridiculously naive and idealistic, but I seriously had to keep reminding myself that such biased individuals as Jack, the father of Regan and Luna, actually exist. I know that discrimination is still a major issue, especially in the transgender commmunity, but I can't fathom why. People are people. It's very simple. And we should all be free to live our lives however we may choose, provided that no one else is harmed.

I am glad this novel exists so that it might provide some understanding to people who otherwise might fear or mock transgendered people. While there were some minor flaws, I would still gladly recommend this novel.

Grade: A-

Secret Identities

Hero
by Perry Moore
Lambda Literary Award for Children's & YA 2008


Thom Creed is every parent's dream child. He's the star of the basketball team, a good student, and the winner of a volunteer award for his work at a local youth center. He also has two rather large secrets: he has super-powers and he is gay. Add to the equation the fact that his father is a disgraced former superhero (he caused numerous civilian casualties in a World Trade Center type attack, where the terrorists were replaced by a planet-destroying alien) and you have the formula for a by-the-books coming-of-age novel with a few twists here and there.

When I first heard of Hero earlier this year after a member of my book club nominated it to be read, I was intrigued by the premise. I have always liked superhero fare, having grown up on Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League, and I was sold on the gay perspective. However, once I borrowed a copy from my local library, I was quickly disappointed, as it simply did not live up to my expectations. To begin with, the writing was very uneven. I realize that this was Moore's first novel, and as such, it may not be as polished as other works that I have read recently, but I seriously have to wonder if he had an editor. I frequently noticed typos (the worst being when an exclamation point was incorrectly referred to as an explanation point), and there seemed to be some inconsistencies (at one point Thom encounters a group of villains he's never seen or heard of, but they are all referred to by name in the narration). To be perfectly honest, I considered putting this book aside after the first fifty or so pages, but I kept chugging along because of its award.

I am glad I kept reading, as the last third of the book is much tighter than the other two-thirds and the world destruction plot was interesting. This is not to say it was original, though, as I figured out most of what would happen long before it did, from the identity of Dark Hero to that of the assassin haunting the league. The characters were likable, but generic, and I found the bigotry against Thom to be a little unbelievable. Taunts from peers made sense, but graffiti on his house? The latter certainly never happened to my gay friends, and we lived in a pretty conservative town.

All in all, Hero is something to recommend to nerdy teens who might otherwise have no fictional GLBT role-model, and it's a decent effort for a first-time author.

Grade: C+

Two Mini Reviews: Ash and The Book Thief

Before I ever had a blog or decided to start reviewing YA and juvenile fiction, I read Ash and The Book Thief for my book club in April and June, respectively. Since it has been a short while since I read these two particular novels, I'm just going to put up a couple of mini reviews. For books I've read more recently, I'm hoping to do more detailed reviews in the near future. If you have any suggestions for format or reading selections, please let me know!




Ash
by Malinda Lo
William C. Morris Debut Award Finalist 2010
A retelling of the fairy tale “Cinderella,” Ash follows the titular character (short for Aisling) in her quest for belonging after the death of both her parents. Treated as a servant by her stepmother due to her father’s outstanding debts, her only solace lies in reading the familiar fairy tales of her childhood. Longing to escape to the fairy world, she is eventually approached by the fairy Sidhean who offers her the opportunity to make her dream a reality. However, she also meets and befriends the king’s huntress, Kaisa, and must choose between the two disparate worlds.

Labeled a lesbian Cinderella story by many reviewers, I expect that a number of conservative parents will be upset by their teens reading this book. It is for that reason that I would like to clarify that there is nothing explicit regarding the relationship between Kaisa and Ash. It is a simple, old-fashioned romance, and I imagine that if the two persons involved were of the opposite sex, no one would think anything of it.

Written with clear, simple prose reminiscent of the fairy tales that directly inspired it, Lo’s debut novel is an enjoyable, albeit brief read. The world in which the novel takes place is fully developed, complete with its own holidays and fairy stories. My only complaint with the book is that the ending was much too neat and predictable. I had hoped that Kaisa would need to sacrifice something in order to prevent Sidhean from taking Ash to live with him in the fairy realm, but no such event occurred. With the vast number of stories relating various quests into the fairy realm to retrieve those taken by the fairies, Sidhean’s willingness to remove his claim upon Ash seemed to be a bit out of character.

While I had my qualms with the work, I am greatly looking forward to Lo's next novel, which is to take place in the same world, albeit a century or two before Ash. I would certainly recommend this to any fans of shoujo ai or of fairy tale retellings.

Grade: B+

*****
The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak
Michael L. Printz Honor Book 2007
When I first started reading this beautifully melancholy book, I was put off considerably by the writing style. The narrator of this particular WWII story is Death himself, but Zusak portrays him as being far more human than the typical scythe-wielding reaper. He has an annoying tendency to stop in the middle of the exposition to focus on one particular word or event, which is always written in bold face. It reminded me quite a bit of Alvy in Annie Hall and his frequent destruction of the fourth wall. And, while it might be perfectly acceptable to have such a narrator in a Woody Allen film, it didn’t suit the mood of this novel at all. It really felt to me like Zusak was somehow trying to be hip, or to connect with his teenage audience.

Literacy and the power of words figure prominently in the work, and not merely because Liesel, the novel’s protagonist, learns to read via the books she steals (or more often, rescues). What amounts to one of the most beautiful scenes in the book occurs when Max, the Jew hiding in Liesel’s basement, presents her with a picture book entitled “The Word Shaker,” in which all the hateful rhetoric of the Fuhrer and the Nazi party is embodied in the form of a forest. One day, a girl lets a single teardrop fall for a man, later planting the seed of friendship that had formed from it. Though the two tend to the tree until it is one of the tallest in the forest, it ultimately falls to the axes of hate and discrimination. Even lovelier than the symbolism of the story itself is what Max uses to write the story: a copy of Mein Kampf that had its pages painted white.

Instead of presenting a tale specifically about the Holocaust and its victims, Zusak instead chose to focus on the lives of everyday German civilians and how the war affected their way of life. Through incidents involving various characters, readers see what became of those who refused to join the Nazi party or for their children to be sent to special academies. I greatly appreciated the author’s efforts to create sympathetic characters in an environment and era that, all too often, are demonized by the US; it is important to remember that not all Germans were the enemy and that many of them were simply trying to go about their lives as normal.

Ultimately, though I disagreed with a few of Zusak’s choices regarding style, I highly recommend this book and can easily see why it has won so much praise. I grew to be very attached to the characters, and as I expect you all to be, as well, I warn you to be prepared for quite the tragic end.

Grade: A