Further proof that M.T. Anderson is awesome

Someone wants to ban his book, Feed. And not because it challenges the media-frenzied, social networking, consumerist robots that we will all turn into one day (or that we have already turned into), or because of its overt environmental message, but because, “‘Page 239 had a lot of F words [and] had a lot of B words.’”

Now that’s some high-level critical thinking.

I’ve been meaning to write about M.T. Anderson for a while now, because his level of writing is so incredible, and because he is able to write two award-winning books from the perspective of a slave in the Revolutionary War and then—seamlessly—switch to a futuristic world where we live in plastic bubbles and purchase things through microchips embedded in brains. (The OMG I love M.T. Anderson so much post is still coming, don’t worry.) But when I saw this article yesterday, I just couldn’t help myself.

I understand that this is just two people making an insignificant stand, and let’s give full credit to the teacher, superintendent, and school board for not doing a damn thing about this complaint. But this brings up a problem that I have with American culture in general, and that is the complete overreaction to profanity in every artistic setting. We bleep out words on TV, we give R ratings to movies that use the f-word more than ONE TIME. (From mpaa.org: “A motion picture’s single use of one of the harsher sexually-derived words, though only as an expletive, initially requires at least a PG-13 rating. More than one such expletive requires an R rating, as must even one of those words used in a sexual context.” What?)

What happens as a result of this is that young people are discouraged from reading or watching high-quality art because of a few words. And, spoiler alert to all you over-protective parents: Your kids have not only heard those words, but they use them. Just like everyone else.

What’s even more ridiculous about this complaint is that I would make the argument that Anderson’s use of profanity in Feed is actually used to highlight the lack of self-awareness and critical analysis in the characters’ lives. The way the characters speak is indicative of their lack of responsibility and ability to make independent decisions, which, obviously, is a bad thing.

We shouldn’t tell kids that they can’t read a book because the f-word is in it, we should let kids discuss why they thought the author chose to use the f-word and what it says about the characters and their relationships with their friends, parents, and authority figures. Because that critical analysis is what will help young people make good decisions later in life, like talking to their own children intelligently about a book that uses profanity instead of turning to page 239 and throwing it down in disgust. 

What do you think about expletives in YA? When are they appropriate, and when are they not? 

New Releases Tuesday!

I think this blog is going to be hazardous to my bank account. Here are a few books that come out today that I will most likely find myself buying sometime in the near future.

The Story of Us, by Deb Caletti

Simon Pulse

Aside from the title instantly bringing to mind that terrible Bruce Willis/Michelle Pfieffer movie (just realizing that they probably didn't worry about this because the target audience is too young to remember that movie and oh my god I'm old) this is the book that I'm most excited about this week. 

Cricket's mother is (finally, after three tries) getting married to someone Cricket adores, but his children--Cricket's future step-sisters--don't feel the same happiness towards the union. Throw in some teenage lust, a Grandpa "revealing a secret" (what?), and an ex-wife crashing the wedding, and we've got ourselves a party. 

You can purchase the book and read some serious reviews (like, from PW and stuff) here.

Thumped, by Megan McCafferty

Balzer + Bray

The power and fragility of reproduction is a theme that I gravitate to (thanks mostly to The Handmaid's Tale), but Thumped (a sequel to the earlier Bumped) seems to take this idea and turn it on its head. In McCafferty's futuristic world, getting "bumped" (that means pregnant. Get it?) brings status and accolades, and can only happen to teen girls. Twins Harmony and Melody (ugh, those names) are separated at birth, living separate lives, and set to give birth--on a very public stage, it would appear--to two sets of twins on the same day. 

The story sounds intriguing, but I'm also getting a bit of a creepy 16 and Pregnant fangirl vibe from it, and the cutesy names for everything might be a bit much for me. I'd also have to read the first book, which sounds much less enticing. I'm not really selling this one, am I? (But Holy Cover Design, Batman! This book is gorgeous.) 

Buy it from your friendly independent internet bookstore here!

It's Our Prom (So Deal With It), by Julia Anne Peters

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

This is one of those YA books that has little chance of gaining an adult audience, but I think it sounds pretty fun. There will most likely be wacky hijinks, teen angst, and some references to teen fashion that are hilariously misguided (as they always are). But I know Julie Anne Peters is funny, and the idea of telling the story from two different perspectives is a tried and true tactic in the YA world. I'll give this one a shot.

Pick it up here!

As always, check out YAlit.com  for more recommendations, and don't forget that Insurgent comes out next Tuesday! Work and sleep will most likely elude me that day. 

Re-reading: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

I might be cheating on this one because I’m not exactly "rediscovering" this book. I’ve read it, oh, hundreds of times over the years—I used to flip to the scene where they dig for coins in the fountain and read from there if I couldn’t fall asleep—and it is my go-to answer for the “what’s your favorite book” question.

If you aren’t familiar with the story, it’s about a 12-year-old girl, Claudia, who runs away with her little brother Jamie. But she doesn’t like doing things halfway and she really likes learning (I wonder why I identify with this book?) so she plans everything out in minute detail, and chooses to run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Claudia and Jamie join up with school tours to learn everything they can about the museum; they try to solve the mystery of a possibly-carved-by-Michelangelo sculpture; they make a budget and go to automats. Basically, they are awesome in a way that I want to be awesome, and I fundamentally don’t understand how anyone can dislike this book.

The first time I visited the Met, I dragged my companion to the furniture room to see if there was a canopied bed like the one Claudia and Jamie slept in. We stumbled on a dark mahogany bed with intricate carvings, and it was all I could do to keep from crawling in. (He hadn’t read the book and didn’t get why I was so excited.) And I think that’s what I love about books so much—how they can change the way you perceive everything. To anyone else, that was just a pretty bed, but for me it was the musty-smelling retreat that Claudia wanted to be so much more comfortable than it actually was.

There’s something to be said for a book that follows you throughout your life, and I haven’t had anything that comes close to this one. Everything about it—the story, the characters, the voice—is just so perfect to me. One thing that has changed, though, is that I now live in New York, and every time I walk down Fifth Avenue, I think of Claudia, carrying a violin case packed with clothes and thinking about how to be important. Which is, I think, what we’re all doing here (minus the violin case, maybe).

Grade I would have given this book as a kid: Macaroni and Cheese

Re-reading grade: Macaroni and Cheese with Bacon

Status: I love this book, but now I'm hungry

New Releases Tuesday!

If you're a book nerd like me, Tuesday means Yay New Books! Every week I'll highlight a few of the new YA titles you might want to check out and links to buy the books. I'll do my best to have a good representation of genres and publishers to keep it fair. Let me know if there's anything you'd like to see here!

The Last Echo (Body Finder series #3) by Kimberly Derting
HarperCollins

I'm much more drawn to dystopia than the supernatural, but if you're into ghost whispering and the like, this series might be for you. The third book comes out today, and the reviews from the first two books look pretty good. I might have to give this one a chance. If you've started on this series, let me know what you think!

You can buy the book from B&N here, or from Powell's here.

172 Hours on the Moon by Johan Harstad, translated by Tara Chace
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

It isn't every day you see a YA book in translation, so I think this one might be worth a second look. A sci-fi and horror mash-up, Publisher's Weekly has this to say about it: "Creepy and bleak, Harstad’s story is both psychologically and atmospherically disturbing." Sign me up.

Buy it from B&N or from Powell's!

The Springsweet by Saundra Mitchell
Harcourt Children's Books

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we find a "Paranormal historical romance" (according to Kirkus) about a 17-year-old water-finder trying to get over the loss of her fiancee. The cover copy might not do it justice, as the reviews seem to be pretty favorable. A companion to The Vespertine, this might be just what I need to come back after the bleakness of 172 Hours on the Moon.

B&N / Powell's

If nothing here strikes your fancy, you should visit yalit.com, a great resource for new and recent YA book releases. In two weeks, Insurgent, the second book in the Divergent trilogy comes out. I'm obsessed, so I'll go ahead and put a preemptive pre-order link right here. Can't wait!

What are you reading this week? Any recommendations for me?

Re-reading: The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

I’ve heard many friends talk about the books that define them—books that, for some reason, stuck with us more than most. For me, many of these books come from my youth, and in this recurring feature, I want to go back and read these books from an adult perspective, and assess how my attitudes toward the books have changed. In the best scenarios, I’ll discover more to love about the books than I remembered; in the worst, I’ll find that some books I hold so dear and loved so much maybe aren't that good after all. (I really hope that doesn’t happen too often.) Let me know if you have any suggestions for books to re-read!

I was walking up Broadway on an unseasonably warm Saturday in March, trying to delay the end of my lunch hour by perusing the used book tables on the sidewalk. (Sidenote: The existence of these tables is, and will remain, my absolute favorite thing about Manhattan.) After two tables and no luck, I started to head back to work, almost altogether skipping the last table. But something stopped me in my tracks. It was a cover—well, half of a cover, actually—with a young girl in a poufy blue dress with some seriously 80’s-influenced bangs. It was Charlotte Doyle: sailor, childhood hero, and ultimate bad ass.

I bought the book for $4, and didn’t even try to haggle.

I can’t be sure, but I think this book made me a feminist. Or a tomboy. Or, most likely, a feminist tomboy. It is action-packed, with sailing, betrayal, murder, and a clearly psychotic captain, all rolled into 226 pages. As a kid I loved the adventure, but the book is much more than that. It teaches young women to speak their minds and stand up for themselves, it portrays a strong, intelligent female character who throws away the frivolity of her upper class society life for something that makes her feel important, and it has a dash of racial issues to boot.

And then there is this passage. Before rereading, I remembered almost nothing about this book except for this one image of Charlotte, climbing rigging on a ship during a storm:

Though I was in fact climbing into the air, I felt as though I were swimming against a rising river tide. But more than rain or waves it was the screaming wind that tore at me. I could hardly make out where I was going. To make matters worse my wet and heavy hair, like a horse’s tail, kept whipping across my face. I might have been blindfolded. 

Desperate, I wrapped my legs and one arm about the ropes. With my one free arm I pulled my hair around, grasped it with the hand entwined in the ropes, and pulled it taut. I took the knife and hacked. With a shake of my head my thirteen year’s growth of hair fell away.

I still remember how I felt reading that--almost feeling the knife catching on tough strands of hair, and the lightness of it when it falls. I wanted to do something, anything, that would feel like that. I wanted to wrap my toes around wet rope and slice through sails. I wanted to travel. Really, I wanted to be Charlotte.

Seriously, is there a female character badder ass than this? (No, really, tell me. I want to read about her.)

Grade I would have given this book as a kid: A-

Re-reading grade: A+

Status: My childhood dreams remain in tact. 

The Case for YA

 

Roughly half of the books that I read are categorized as Young Adult, and I am most decidedly not a Young Adult. To some, this means I’m reading books that are meant for kids, which is fine. Kids are more fun anyway. But this categorization means that many adults—especially those in the literary community—automatically discount the importance of these books. They don’t carry the literary heft that something like a Jonathan Safran Foer novel does, but the distinctions between “literature” and “YA” are often arbitrary. (I would, in fact, argue that Everything is Illuminated could be marketed as YA as easily as The Book Thief was, but then we wouldn’t have created a literary darling in Foer.)

All this is to say that I’m not asking you to put down your A.S. Byatt, but I’m asking that you look past the marketing and the categorizing—and the fact that you’ll have to go into the section of the store with the tiny stools and the stain-resistant puzzle carpet—and give YA a chance. And if you are, in fact, a Young Adult: Congratulations! You were born at the right time, and you’ve got some pretty kick-ass books being written for you right now.

So here is a list of reasons why YA is awesome. You, like me, can pull from this list whenever someone wrinkles their nose and says, “I mean, I read The Hunger Games, but I’m not, like, a YA person, you know?”

Why YA is awesome:

1)    Teenagers are some of the most complex characters that can be written, and YA gives the author the freedom to put them in ridiculous situations, like throwing them in a ring where they have to kill each other, or sending them to an old guy that passes along the memories of an entire people. They are resilient yet ever evolving, which is more than you can say for most adult characters.

2)    Reading should be fun, yes? For the most part, I simply want to enjoy what I am reading. YA is fun. Spending 5 minutes on one page trying to decipher what the hell the author is trying to say: not fun. Also, I have a degree in English and an MA in Publishing. If I have to get out a dictionary more than once a page, you are trying. too. hard. Don't get me wrong, I love learning, I just think there is a fine line between challenging and overtly difficult.

3)    Here is a short list of things that have gotten a little boring coming from an adult perspective: cheating, divorce, guilt from cheating, guilt from divorce, estrangement, alcoholism, drug use, loss. I get it; we’re all guilty, we’re all sad, we’re all Dealing With It. Now go rebel against your fascist government that pumps plague into slums and we’ll talk.

4)    YA is one of the only publishing markets that is growing—exploding, in fact. If your livelihood depends on people buying books, you should probably get behind this.

5)    Avi.

6)    The Hunger Games.

7)    Pretty much every dystopian trilogy ever.

8)    Did I say Avi yet?

9)    E.L. Konigsburg.

10)  Harry effing Potter, y’all.

And that’s just the short list.

From here on out, I hope this blog gives you a thousand more reasons to love/discover/discuss YA, whether you are solidly in the adult category, or you are actually young enough to be the true target audience. 

Please feel free to send me any book recommendations or any ideas you’d like to see discussed here. Let’s do this!