Free Books! and not just any book either

Laurie Halse Anderson’s breakout book, SPEAK, has a new 10th anniversary edition coming out, and Lenore (from Presenting Lenore) and Steph (from ReviewerX) have been doing an awesome series of posts in its honor. And now they are giving away 20 free copies!

Here’s what I wrote about SPEAK (spoiler alert!!!):

As boys get older, they usually stop reading about girls. For progressive parents hoping to raise thoughtful boys, I recommend Speak. The narrator is a severely depressed high school senior. As the story goes on, chronicling the small absurdities of high school along the way, we piece together that the cause is a date rape that occurred several months prior. In an interview with author Laurie Halse Anderson included in the book’s “platinum edition,” she says that she has heard from dozens of young men who liked the book but were surprised that someone would have such a strong reaction to a rape. It’s a good reminder that in the absence of stronger social movements affecting what people grow up knowing, literature can play a role in telling stories that need to be heard.

Seriously, if you haven’t read this book, you totally should. And if you have, Lenore and Steph’s posts have been a great celebration of it (they do a very good job of articulating the things I liked about it so much); you can find their whole series at the link above.

Friday Why: Why is a book in which heartbroken parents think their child is lost forever a good book for young kids?

I know I read William Steig’s SYLVESTER AND THE MAGIC PEBBLE as a kid, more than once or twice or Iwouldn’t remember it, and I must have liked it or my mom wouldn’t have picked it out as a present for my little cousin. But re-reading it recently (before it got mailed off to aforementioned little cousin), I felt such distress and empathy for the parents, who for a whole year believe something horrible must have happened to their child because he went missing and couldn’t be found, that I couldn’t really enjoy it at all. I mean seriously, how awful for those poor parents. Yes, in the end, there’s a happy reunion, but still, a whole year.

It occurs to me, though, that perhaps as a child my empathy didn’t naturally focus on the parents (although there are quite a few pages devoted to them and their sorrow), but rather on Sylvester, the child, whose plight of being stuck in the form of a rock is also quite miserable. The Sylvester story line somehow seems less inappropriate to me, more in keeping with common fairy tale themes (hero/heroine stuck in unhappy situation with no apparent way out, in the end finds way out or is rescued). This of course raises the question: when I begin identifying more with the parents in a story than with the kid? How did that happen? What is this creeping, insipent adultness that keeps happening to me???

John Green can get you a date

You guys, I’m sorry for what a John Green fest my posts have been lately (well, I’m sorry for those of you who don’t know or care about John Green) (and it’s about to get worse, let me tell you, and if you do happen to like John Green, that means come back next week), but after all my ruminating on John Green and boys, and my quoting John Green on how YouTube is his outreach to boys, and so forth, check out this video, which

1) is awesome

2) includes his admitting that 3/4 of his YouTube-watching audience is women. The mystery of whether boys read Green continues. Why am I so fixated on this? I don’t know.

Wedensday Words: Dear Elizabeth,

“And, today, you don’t have to be tidy or neat.
If you wish, you may eat with both hands and both feet.
So get in there and much. Have a big munch-er-oo!
Today is your birthday! Today you are you!“

– Dr. Seuss, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

Why I Love It: The Mysterious Benedict Society

I was wandering around the kids’ section at Barnes and Noble Sunday and my eye fell upon THE MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY by Trenton Lee Stewart. I thought “good title” (well, isn’t it?), picked it up, read a chapter, bought it, started reading on the subway coming home later, looked up when I was about two-thirds of the way through and saw that it was 11:30 *, gave up any hope of getting to bed at a reasonable hour, and finished around 1am. My point here is, this is a really great book, one which I read cover-to-cover in one evening and did not put down despite being very much a sleep-loving person. Its not a new release, and it was a NYT bestseller (or so the cover informs me), so I’m sure there were lots of reviews when it came out and everyone read it already, but in case anyone else totally missed the boat like me…

I don’t often have a natural inclination to describe books by comparing them to other books, but THE MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY is like THE VIEW FROM SATURDAY meets 1984, with THE GOLDEN COMPASS’ sense of adventure. The basic concept is 4 children, all exceptionally intelligent and resourceful and each, of course, with their own special strength ** such that together they make the perfect team, go through a series of tests to be chosen for a secret mission to save the world. The characters are excellent – a mix of not quite 100% realistic quirks and genius with extremely realistic and cohesive personalities that you love so much you just decide to believe in them as characters. I particularly appreciated that one of the female characters is the adventuresome, resourceful, physically athletic one (she carries a bucket full of Useful Things), and that this is treated quite naturally by all the other characters. The approach to gender carries through to secondary characters as well – the enemies are remarkably non-gendered while still feeling like real people.

The central mystery is fairly obvious, but their task is less to figure out the mystery than, as I said, to figure out how to save the world. I worried that after the early go-through-the-test, introduce-the-characters part, the humor would fade, but it doesn’t – it stays pretty consistent, as does the just plain good writing (its the combination of the genius kids theme and the writing style that made me think so strongly of E.L. Konigsburg).

Anyway, a quite excellent book, which I highly recommend. I myself I am going to go pick up the sequel tomorrow. (Although I have to say I’m a little afraid two of the characters will develop a romantic relationship in the sequel, which was realistically and refreshingly absent from the first book. I’m a big fan of deep platonic friendships between girls and boys, or men and women for that matter, that just stay platonic.)

* In between I got off the subway and walked home. Its a great book, but not great enough to wind up in Coney Island without realizing it.

** Incredible knowledge of facts and figures/photographic memory; solving puzzles; resourcefulness and athleticism; and, my personal favorite, extreme stubborness and contrariness.

Great Debates: Twilight (what else?)

A debate via links:

• Bitch Magazine describes TWILIGHT as inaugurating a new genre: “abstinence porn.” (Courtesy of the Dairi Burger.)
• The Atlantic Monthly writes a fabulous article, highly complimentary to TWILIGHT, on what it’s like to be a teenage girl and why our novels meant so much to us. (Courtesy of one of my professors; I suppose there’s, improbably, an upside to allowing your love of teenage romance novels to become so widely known.)

obMSCL*: Extra credit to the second article, because it ends with an anecdote that is ripped from the single most iconic scene of MY SO-CALLED LIFE, except that it’s reporting the author’s actual experience.

* obMSCL = Obligatory MY SO-CALLED LIFE reference. The label comes from a listserv I’ve long been a member of (like, over a dozen years now), which started as a MSCL fan list and gradually morphed into random discussions of a group of friends. Who would occasionally still feel the need to talk about the show. I’ve transported it into other contexts, because, really, when is a MSCL reference not obligatory?

Book vs. Book: Battle of the kids battling racist humiliation and not quite winning

Inaugurating our latest regular series: BOOK vs. BOOK. It’s a death match between somehow-related examples of young people’s fiction… because Lord knows, no one would ever read more than one book.

The books: Sherman Alexie, THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN; Mildred D. Taylor, ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY

SPOILER ALERTS for some key scenes in both books.

These are not books, at first glance, that one might think to compare. And yet if you happen to read them side-by-side (as I did a year and a half ago, when doing the research for this article), the similarities are surprising.

ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY is a classic, published in 1976 and winning the following year’s Newbery, set amid a Black community in Great Depression Mississippi. Nine-year-old Cassie’s family struggles to keep their land — their only hope of being able to determine their own future against every twist of unjust fate.

THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN, on the other hand, is a contemporary novel, told in text and comics, about the repercussions of Junior (a.k.a. Arnold Spirit Jr.)’s decision to leave his crappy school on “the rez” in favor of the well-funded white school nearby.

The similarities:

Both books open on the first day of school, with our respective protagonists’ excitement turning to disillusionment and anger when they realize, via the pathetic state of their textbooks, just how little their education is actually valued by anyone with any power. Both Cassie and Junior rebel by rejecting their books, and in neither case does it go exactly as planned.

We get the picture: the world is stacked against them, but these kids are fighters. But they may pay a price for that that they can’t quite imagine — yet.

More strikingly, these books also share some fundamental similarities in the scene I found most powerful in each. With a lot of buildup so we understand just what is being risked with this choice, Taylor and Alexie have their protagonists each choose to stand up to more powerful white kids, whose outward friendliness is heavily spiked with racism and condescension.

And then Taylor and Alexie give us the same painful twist: after all that courage in standing up for their own dignity and self-respect, Cassie and Junior are met with bafflement. It’s not that the white kids are angry; it’s not that they fight back and punish our heroes; rather, they just don’t get it at all. Junior and Cassie’s defiant stands deflate into irrelevance in the face of their would-be antagonists’ genuine inability to understand why they are so angry.

Both scenes are so well done, it’s hurting me just writing about it. I think these books’d be worth reading for this alone, but as it happens, they’ve each got a lot more to offer.

The comparison:

THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY has an irreverence I love, with hilarious observations and exactly the kind of obsession with, and half-angst-half-pride about, masturbation that we expect from a teenage boy.

I like that Alexie doesn’t shy away from showing the really destructive elements of reservation culture — its alcoholism; crushing and unromanticized poverty; a misplaced toughness borne of oppression and the absence of any imaginable future — without ever disrespecting his characters and their humanity. Also, as I recently mentioned, I was quite struck by some small references to how homophobia distorts Junior’s friendship with his also-straight best friend. There’s a lot here that moved me, and made me think.

Unfortunately, there’s a point in the book, about two-thirds of the way through, when I started to find it really tough going. Alexie kind of piles on the tragedy, with (I said SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!) the deaths of two emotionally central characters in a row. The book is described as “semi-autobiographical,” and I suspect that this is one of those autobiographical parts, because it’s the kind of thing that actually happens in life but doesn’t really work in fiction.

Which, actually, is interesting; I’ve long remembered a Joss Whedon interview where he described his philosophy of writing as “put the characters in the worst situation you can imagine, and then make it worse.” Which I think is just brilliant (and exactly why BUFFY’s season two plot arc is so phenomenal, but I’ll save those discussions), so here you would think Alexie is just following that advice and I would love it, but I don’t.

This suggests to me that the real plotting secret is something more specific, like maybe that the escalation of badness has to be of a qualitatively different kind; at a certain point, DIARY begins to feel, unfortunately, like an undifferentiated mass of depression. And this might also be personal taste, because I’ve found some other books with really depressed narrators, like Laurie Halse Anderson’s also-wonderful TWISTED, to be hard to wade through as well.

But anyway, that’s my one caveat about Alexie’s really amazing book, his first for young adults, and I truly hope not his last.

ROLL OF THUNDER, meanwhile, manages something I’ve seen in only the best political books (Katherine Paterson’s LYDDIE is one of the few I’d put up on this same pedestal): a real exploration, in plausible and human terms, of the tradeoffs involved in some strategy for facing oppression — with absolutely no abstraction, just the logical development of choices made by characters I care about.

What Taylor does (and maybe this is closer to what Whedon meant?) is put her characters in what seem like truly impossible circumstances, and then really examine the consequences of their reactions. She does this, somehow, without descending into either nihilism or easy answers.

How this plays out is that everyone in and around Cassie Logan’s family has their own plan, more or less explicitly, for trying to make it; it goes the worst for the one who goes the farthest to ingratiate himself to the white power structure, but no one gets by without scars. The Logan family, and especially Cassie, have to learn to make compromises they hate in order to survive. But they also have to learn that sometimes you have to stand up for yourself, your dignity, your family and your life, or none of that was worth protecting.

It’s the way Taylor believably navigates that particular set of contradictions that makes the book incredible; I can’t think of any other that really manages this as well.

Advantage: THUNDER. But since it actually is possible to read more than one book, do yourself a favor and read them both, and savor it. In fact, I may just read them again.

Friday “Why?”: Why is John Green obsessed with boys who are obsessed with girls, and why I am obsessed with knowing if boys like his books too?

Today’s Friday “Why?” was originally going to be, Who puts a big picture of a girl’s face on the cover of their book that seems like it’s directed toward teenage boys?

But then Anita Miller gave me the opportunity to ask John Green this myself over at her blog. Thanks, Anita!

The exchange:

Q: Did you or your publisher worry that by having two of your three book covers feature girls you would be limiting your audience to female readers?

A: Yeah, I think we both worried about it. But with “Paper Towns,” it’s very hard to look back and feel anything but total elation, because the book has done so much better than anyone expected, and I think the cover designs helped. There will be a different, more gender-neutral cover for the paperback, and I think we may move toward repackaging “Katherines” as well in a more post-gender way. The problem, to be frank, is that publishers believe (and to an extent their evidence is unassailable) that 16-year-old guys do not purchase books. Now, I’m all for marketing to guys and convincing them that books make a better investment than (say) video games. I believe that all of us who love books and work with teenagers need to be out making that case every way we can. But I don’t really buy the argument that the only reason guys don’t buy books is because book covers don’t do a good job of appealing to them. So I think we have to take a broad focus in our outreach to male readers (which is a big part of the reason why so much of my creative work is made for youtube).

So, answers to my question above:
1. John Green does, that’s who.
2. Who says these books are directed toward teenage boys anyway?

On the latter, I see the point — even as I was writing the question I thought, I bet it’s all girls and women reading John Green’s books — it’s just that they still seem like such boys’ books to me. Part of this is the kind of alpha nerdiness that I’ve spent my life being angry is considered a male trait; but part of it, like I wrote about in my AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES review, is that he seems to really get male friendships. And I can totally see why reading about that appeals to females, because it does to me, but if teenage boys don’t also enjoy it, then that’s kind of sad, isn’t it?

I actually think the point about YouTube outreach is really fascinating. And, in fact, it’s how John Green got his start. * His own quirky, nerdy personality is what really comes across in his writing. The thing I always feel reading his books is that — while they don’t always fully work for me — I think he has an immensely enthusiastic fan base because he is speaking to an audience and a set of experiences that are not necessarily otherwise well represented in teen fiction. And they seem to me very gendered male experiences, but now that I’m thinking it through, I wonder if it’s actually girls to whom having those experiences represented in fiction actually appeals most strongly.

But yeah, so my new question: Why are all John Green books about a boy who’s obsessed with a girl (and discovers himself through the process), and is he going to keep that up?

* Tragically, I have not yet been able to watch this, because something is wrong with the my crappy computer-You Tube interaction. When I say this is tragic, it’s because I love YouTube more than anything else in the world after butter and my best friends.

Nostalgic affection or genuine book ardor?: The Dollhouse Murders

Betty Ren Wright’s THE DOLLHOUSE MURDERS is one of those books that I always assumed was never particularly famous, but that somehow got into my main shelf rotation and was read by me many times as a child.

That assumption has been called into question, though, since I randomly threw in a small reference to it in my first blog post and somehow it became one of our main sources of search engine traffic.

It seems people are searching for things like “the dollhouse murders summary chapter 12,” and I’m like, “…Really? 1) Are they assigning this in schools now? Why? (No offense to the book; like I said, I’m a fan. But really: why?) 2) You need a summary of one chapter of a book whose chapters are maybe six pages long?”*

But anyway. As with many books, I can’t sort out whether I love this book on its own merits, or merely because I did read it again and again and again in my youth.

As the blogger from whom I stole the image of my original ’80s cover notes, the resolution to the book’s central mystery is really anti-climactic and a bit lame. I also thought that it too neatly wrapped up one character’s personality flaws in a neat little deterministic package, like her whole life can now all be understood as a reaction to this one event a quarter century ago.

On the other hand, that same character’s flaws are one of the things I appreciated about the book, rereading it as an adult. The character is our protagonist Amy’s beloved Aunt Clare. She’s prickly and can be almost a bit mean, but you also see her real strengths and kindness. It’s relatively rare to have that nuanced a portrait of an adult even in a young adult novel, much more so in (publishing jargon alert!) a “middle-grade” book like this one.

The most interesting aspect of the book, for me, is Amy’s relationship with her retarded sister Louann.

Even this newer cover somehow still screams '80s

This relationship is extremely well portrayed. Amy is frustrated by Louann, resentful of her, embarrassed by her… and will also rise to her defense against anyone outside the family, judging them by their acceptance of her. Isn’t that how most of us feel about our own families?

I particularly like that Wright shows us Louann’s needs for autonomy in spite of the disability that will inherently limit that freedom. I have developmentally disabled people in my extended family, and this very much rings true to my experiences.

It also raises my biggest question about the book. The conflict in this subplot is primarily with Amy and Louann’s mom, who needs to learn, despite her instincts, to let Louann go. Internally to the book I feel like this works.

...Whereas this new cover is totally creepy

But when I reread it within the last couple years, it was after having done a lot of reading about the long history of mother-blaming in this arena. Like, the prevailing “scientific” theory of autism, well into the 1960s until parents of autistic kids began successfully challenging it, was the “refrigerator mother” theory — the specter of mothers who were so cold and unloving that they made their kids autistic.

Wright’s book is totally on another plane from that, but somehow, after all the refrigerator mother reading, a book where the disabled child is being held back by her mother made me uncomfortable. I’m wondering if maybe the conventions of drama require a certain kind of conflict and resolution that, in books about developmental disability, actually do involve taking some sides on parents’ roles.

I haven’t read Ann M. Martin’s INSIDE OUT (a book I deeply respect) since I was very small, but there too, part of the development of the story is that the family has to learn to handle James’s autism. And, you know, I’m not very up on my autism research these days, but in a context where Jenny McCarthy is getting a $1 million advance for a book full of bullshit “remedies” and sadly false hope for desperate parents, I feel like you have to be careful with the stories about autistic kids improving because their parents figured out what to do. Can you write those stories without taking sides on controversies much larger than the individual characters you’re creating? Can you do it without implicitly blaming the parents who aren’t doing whatever your characters need to learn to do, when that learning is the emotional engine of your book?

So what do you guys think? This is (yet! another!) case of me overthinking things, isn’t it?

* Other troubling search term: “vampire academy theme.” …Seriously?

Wednesday Words: Variety is the spice of life

“So he laid out a nice simple picnic lunch. There was nothing but pie. But there were all nine kinds of pie that Harold liked best.”

– Crockett Johnson, HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON