YA Books - Week 2

Hey, it's read the classics week in YA Lit! Hooray!

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton - A teen written book about teens. I think this book has stood the test of time despite its flaws. It is amazing to think that a teen had the insight to write this, even with its sometimes very obvious themes, images, and characters. Love the names - if anything shows that a teen wrote it, the names do that.... Ponyboy, Sodapop, etc. Interesting to think that the crowd in one book (16th Summer) could be the villains in the other (The Outsiders). I wish I'd read this as a teen. I think I really would have liked it. Today some of its conventions feel cliched partly because some of them were already conventions and partly because it has had such an impact that it has become part of our cultural baggage. I really LIKE that there is no complicating romance for Ponyboy. Too bad our teachers were too busy cramming Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Hawthorne and D.H. Lawrence down our throats, even though we couldn't possibly have the life knowledge to understand them.

The Pigman by Paul Zindel - A book that seems almost innocent now in the antics that the teens get into. Trashing a house and drinking? Child's play! Interesting to think that these kids aren't far from legal drinking age in this book, and that teen drinking was probably more acceptable then than it is today, i.e. had to be less hidden. Lorraine and John feel like regular teens to me. Bored, confused, not much guidance and they disreagard the guidance they do get. They're not super smart or dumb, they have no huge crises or handicaps. They're just ordinary run of the mill kids. It is still in print, so it must still speak to today's kids.

The Chocolate War by Robert Cromier - another classic of the genre I managed to not ever encounter as a teen, and I think this one has been on the top ten of the most challenged books pretty much from its inception. The reason given is most likely its depiction of the corrupt Catholic brothers who run the school, but I think the REAL reason in many cases may be its almost unremittingly bleak view of the world. This is a hard, brutal book, and the good guy doesn't just lose, he GIVES UP, which is practically the worst thing you can do in our culture; after all, William Wallace may have died at the end of Braveheart, but he died shouting "FREEDOM!" How could we let teens see Jerry go out in the ambulance urging his friend not to fight the system, not to think for himself? As much as I don't want to live in the world this book depicts, I fear I do. I really think this book shouldn't be banned - it should be required (which actually probably is the kiss of death for getting kids to read it - maybe we should go on banning it.)

The Contender by Robert Lipsyte - I like sports books. I like their conventions, I like their action, I like their style. This story of a boy who finds boxing for the wrong reasons, then pursues it for what we might call the right reasons, then gives it up because he hasn't got the killer instinct is a good, solid sports book. The action is compact, descriptive, and propulsive. Our main character Alfred is likable, human, and pretty real. The surrounding characters, while sometimes not entirely round, feel like they could be real. I think this would be a terrific book for the older boy (maybe 14/15 and up) who likes sports books. The action will keep the reader who doesn't care about nuance, while the detail and emotions will appeal to the reader who wants more than action.

Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block - Oh dear, I hated it, I really did. I understood it more and found it less annoying when I viewed it as a contemporary fairy tale, as one review suggested, but I still didn't like it. I think the thing that most annoyed me was that back in the day when this was being conceived and written and published (1989), I was a YA. I knew girls who wanted to live like Weetzie Bat in a kind of Cyndi Lauper/Madonna/new wave hippy kind of world with 50's tulle party dresses and black eyeliner and blue hair and torn fishnet stockings where everyone was cool and you could define your life by your cool car with the name and everything was surfacey and glittery and cool, like a video by a really edgy cool alt college rock band. And frankly, most of their lives were a hell of a lot more like Colleen's in Stoner and Spaz (see Week 5) than Weetzie Bat's. I hated thinking of those girls getting hold of this book and thinking somewhere in our nasty little Chocolate War world, there might be a way to live like this. And what does that say about me? Cynical, unhopeful, doom-saying, disapproving, bad-tempered naysayer!!!

YA Books - Week 3

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Alexie Sherman
Cartoon images decorate this diary of Junior, a Spokane Indian boy who leaves the reservation to attend a high school in a nearby farm town. The only non-white boy in school, Junior must battle crushing poverty, alcoholism, and a parade of deaths to make it through his first year. The illustrations in this book are so seamless to the narrative that I only realized on my third reading that Sherman didn’t do the illustrations himself. Funny and heartbreaking, this is a YA book that is suitable for adults. Sherman manages to make me feel at the end that Junior will be OK, without making me feel like the ending wraps everything up in a sunny little package.

Store-Bought Baby by Sandra Belton
This book about a Chicago girl adjusting to a world without her “perfect” adopted brother felt like YA-lite to me. The structure and style reminded me of children’s lit, particularly the relatively sunny ending, and the way that everyone seems so self-aware and sane. Leah’s brother Luce has died in a car accident and Leah’s family seems to be drifting apart rather than pulling together to cope. Leah decides to start investigating Luce’s “real” parents in an attempt to draw the family back together. The dialog is sometimes stilted, particularly between the kids (p. 102-103 just seems really “tinny” to me). I think this book would make a decent sell to younger YAs who are avid readers and who need a transition between children’s and YA. I don’t know that the average reader would stick with it.

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
Colin and Hassan go on a road trip as Colin tries to get over the breakup of his relationship with the 19th girl named Katherine who has dumped him. Now this book has an ear for dialog! These kids sound like smart kids talking to each other – natural and easy. I just loved the way Hassan interrupts Colin with his quick assessments of Colin's digressions as "Not interesting!" Funny story of a somewhat Asperger’s seeming boy learning to reach out of himself as he learns how to get beyond his need to be a genius rather than a prodigy. This book feels a little gimicky with its footnotes and appendix, but it really is funny and affecting.

The Arrival by Shaun Tan
This didn’t really feel like a YA book to me – it felt more adult. I feel like this would have a very narrow audience. But then, I’m really bad at wordless books.

Finding H.F. by Julia Watts
What I liked about this book was the way the Bible loving, God fearing grandmother wasn’t a caricature, and how H.F. didn’t just rebel – she saw the love and the care that were under her Memaw’s strict Bible ways, and how much her Memaw was shaped by the narrowness of her world. It has rough edges (poor Bo), but it’s mainly a ultimately sweet and hopeful story about first love that just happens to be lesbian love.

YA Books - Week One

Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly - from my limited reading I found that this is widely viewed as the first YA novel. A hugely sheltered girl who has just graduated high school has her first love in this chaste and rather flowery novel. Much of the story is too stilted and virginal for today's standards, and the class delineations (Angie's family is the right type - they eat in the dining room and use top sheets. Racy Dollie meanwhile lives in a loud house with a sagging porch with an old car seat on it and a door made of cardboard and screening) are really almost offensive in their smugness. But, viewed from within its time, its importance is probably huge. Plus must remember the author was between 17-20 when she wrote it, which likely accounts for the somewhat stilted and rather mentally thin Angie, the cardboard characters, and the overly flowery descriptive passages. I would argue that the story isn't about much until about page 240, with a passage about the teenage protagonists yearning to be something more than she is on pp 243-244 probably the heart of the story. All in all, I ended up skimming much of this one - it was just too slow for me, and I really did not like the main character. She seemed almost ridiculously stupid at times.

Forever by Judy Blume - another seminal work in YA - no pun intended. Sometimes called the "how-to" manual for teen sex, the book is often fairly graphic but not prurient. I think what people most object to isn't so much the sex as the way the characters in the book TALK about sex, openly. I think Blume definitely set out to write a how-to for kids - how to get invovled in a sexual relationship, how it may happen, how to do it without getting pregnant, and how to break it off. I respect it most for the way it works at showing girls (and boys) how no matter how intense that first love is, it may really be fleeting, and could end, and that is OK.

Guys Write for Guys Read edited by Jon Scieszka - a collection of very short essays by male writers mostly about being a boy or reading or both. The most cliched was Darren Shan's Guyifesto, which read kind of like a cliche'd look at all things you "have" to do to be a "guy." As a mom of 2 boys who will be adolescents soon, I think the most overtly useful was "Training the Bear" by Will Weaver. I think my reserves of patience and forebearance will get a big workout soon. For entertainment, I liked Peck's "1928 Packard" because I recognized it as a scene that he put into his book "On the Wings of Heroes" which I really liked.

The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan

I actually just read the entire Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, although I would say that I really only skimmed #2. I think for me Titan's Curse wasn't as strong as it may be for others, simply because I read the books one after another in quick succession, and I was a bit tired of the story by the time I got through to #3. That said, Riordan writes a fast, funny adventure fantasy with lots of intelligence built-in. Yes, yes, his narrative involves a whole secret world that exists alongside ours, a world where gifted students attend a secret school to train and hone their skills, and that there is a trapped but almost all-powerful bad guy desperately trying to manifest himself and take over. Hmmmmm.... sound familiar? Well, the truth is that this book is more original than it appears on the surface, and that Riordan makes it work. His use of Greek and Roman mythology as his frame slips in educational content that is funny and easy to digest. I.e. readers won't even know they're learning as they learn about Greek mythology along with Percy. Like Rowling's work, Riordan's works on many levels and slips in allusions that only adults will "get." Percy Jackson, like Harry Potter, is an accidental hero whose personal bravery and loyalty are amazing and whose big heart often carries him beyond his actual skill. These books would be quite appropriate for boys or girls starting in about 4th/5th grade (strong readers) up to 8th or 9th grade. I actually think the content would go even higher, but sometimes those kids might consider themselves "above" the books. Oh, and these books would make AWESOME graphic novel adaptations! Hope someone gives them the Artemis Fowl treatment!

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Ooooh, an adult book! This book contains a series of linked stories set in Maine, among the people who live in Crosby, Maine. Olive Kitteridge is a woman in her seventies who moves through the stories - sometimes as a main character, sometimes only in the periphery. It should be noted that Olive is at times unlikeable and other times almost monstrous in the things she says, particularly to those who love her the most. The writing is precise and spare. The stories mainly concentrate on the personal tragedy that dwells in the ordinary occurences of our lives, and the ways that the bad things that happen to all of us are no less horrible and scarring just because they are mundane. It is when Strout concentrates on the power of the ordinary tragedy to stun and horrify that these stories are at their best. Occasionally, Strout wanders into the realm of sensation. She gives a glimpse at a family whose son killed someone (a lover? a friend? an acquaintance? the relationship is never delineated) by stabbing her 29 times. In another story, she catalogs the birth of a pyromaniac. It is in these stories that the collection falters. These sensational stories jarred me out of the book, reminding me that I was reading fiction. Otherwise, Strout's people are very real, with each story generally revealing the characters layer by layer. There is a devastating story that shows us the rot that lies behind the marriage of the sweet little old man and woman who always hold hands and do everything together. Another story shows the very real pain of a man raised by a temperamental and sharp tongued mother while simultaneously showing the bewilderment of the mother who cannot understand that her son does not know how very much she loves the boy. This book is worth reading for these brilliant flashes of ordinary life, and particularly worth reading if you enjoy short stories, or like to read the stark, bare, haunting prose that I usually associate with authors like Wallace Stegner.

The Big Field by Mike Lupica

I'm not a fan of Lupica - he's pretty much a loud mouth ESPN sports writer - a breed I tend to dislike - and I thought Heat was middling OK - but not great. But 2 fourth grade boys I know loved that book - I mean REALLY loved it. One of them is a baseball nut and a reader and the other just a reader. So I gave Lupica's newest book a ride, and I have to and hate to admit it, but I really liked it. I liked the pacing, the backstory, the characters, the setup - even if it is a typical kids' sports book that features an unnaturally gifted athlete in a championship series in which every game comes down to do or die. "Hutch" Hutchinson is a natural shortstop, a 14 year old boy who lives in a lousy neighborhood in Palm Beach County, Florida. He is the son of a Puerto Rican mom and a dad who once made it all the way to AAA baseball, but washed out. Now Hutch's dad works as a caddy and a limo driver. Hutch has always wished his dad would share baseball with him, but his dad never does. To make matters worse, Hutch has been moved to 2nd base because a young phenom (D-Will) has joined the team, and that boy has SKILLS - even if he doesn't seem to care about the team or the game - only where they can take him. The action moves along in this book, it all pulls together in the end, and Hutch finds out that his dad really does care. It all ties up neatly in a perfectly predictable way - but it is mighty satisfying and interesting along the way. I'd give this to any boy reader from about 5th grade up to 8th, and especially to your baseball or sports fan.

http://www.amazon.com/Big-Field-Mike-Lupica/dp/0399246258/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207082107&sr=1-1



http://www.amazon.com/Big-Field-Mike-Lupica/dp/0399246258

Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale

Shannon Hale has not been one of my favorite children's writers. A perennial on the two star and best of lists, her works have typically left me cold, and the arrival of a new book often makes me groan about having to read another Shannon Hale book. Well, this book finally made me understand what the reviewers see in her. Book of a Thousand Days is a fast moving tale of two young women walled up in a tower. Basing her book on a Grimm Fairy Tale called "Maid Maleen," Hale takes the basic structure of the story and transfers it to a quasi-Mongolian setting. The story follows a serving maid named Dashti, who finds herself walled into a tower with her mistress, who has angered her father by refusing to marry the man he has selected for her. The two are to be walled in for seven years. Gradually, the food goes from plentiful to scarce, rats begin to eat the stores, and Dashti impersonates her mistress while speaking to the lad to whom the lady had promised herself. Eventually, the guards stop bringing food, and the girls are alone. Dashti finally breaks out to find that the country has been laid waste, and no one remains. The two young women wander to the land of the lady's betrothed and end up as kitchen maids in the palace. What happens after this strains credulity for an adult, but I think 5th-8th grade girls who like princess or fairy tales will find the tale both engrossing and satisfying. Note that the younger level I recommend this to would have to be strong, motivated readers - the book is not slim.

Click here to read the original Grimm tale online:

http://www.4literature.net/Jacob_and_Wilhelm_Grimm/Maid_Maleen/

Here's a link to Hale's website including info about the book.

http://www.squeetus.com/stage/books_b1000.html