Book-It 'o11! Book #55
The Fifty Books Challenge, year three! (Years one and two, just in case you're curious.) This was a library request.
Title: Americus by MK Reed and Jonathan Hill
Details: Copyright 2011, First Second Books
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "Life in the small town of Americus isn't easy for a bookworm like Neil Barton. It only gets harder when his best friend is sent to military school, forcing Neil to face his freshman year of high school alone. And to make matters worse, local activists are trying to get the town library to ban his favorite series: The Adventures of Apathea Ravenchilde.
For the first time in his life, Neil is going to have to stand up and take action. And it just might be the best thing to ever happen to him."
Why I Wanted to Read It: In my fevered search for more graphic novels from my local library, this was another stumble-upon.
How I Liked It: I'm not the target audience of this book. This book is for (presumably) preteens or even teens. BUT, some of the best books have been intended for children (or preteens) and worked wonderfully for adults as well.
This book, maybe not. Some of the themes will no doubt inspire pangs of nostalgia (the Satanic Panic of the '80s, for example, as well as the Goth paranoia post-Columbine) and the timeless "constant outsider" is so universal an experience that it's a requirement from a "coming of age" story.
But the political climate for the book has its roots most firmly in the present. "Apathea Ravenchilde" is a dead-ringer for Harry Potter (with a bit of Lord of the Rings thrown in) with the "boon-to-childhood-literary-enthusiasm" and accusations that it promotes (W)itchcraft. The fever of the accusation of liberal bias runs far more rampant now than it did in the '80s, and while the idea of actually picketing and the signs carried by the fundies more recalls the bad old days rather than Tea Party nation, the feel is undeniably modern.
Context aside, the story itself is cartoony in a way that really can only appeal to kids generally experiencing their first brushes with censorship and moral posturing. The characters stay cartoony in style and substance (the wild-eyed, frothing "Christians" who spew ignorance and hypocrisy, the head crazy with a splitting-apart family full of secrets, the overworked, exhausted, prying mother, the absentee father, the "outsider" girl that the main character takes a fancy towards, lockstep neo-con teachers, the frustrated, miserable youth itching to leave the confines of the small town, vapid gossipy backstabbing bitches of teenage girls, homophobic hairy bro-bullies) and the only one who experiences any real growth is practically required by law to do so by the nature of the story. Poor young protagonist Neil stumbles through his awkward life clinging to his favorite fantasy books at every turn whether it's the awkward horror of a school dance (where even his best friend, who we later find out is gay, dances with a girl) to the tedium of drives with his mother, and getting the crap beat out of him by bullies for doing so. By the end of the book, our protagonist, buoyed by speaking out against censorship (and intolerance), and with some punk rock instilled in him by a hip boyfriend of his cousin he encounters at a family barbeque (on a run to the store to escape the endless stream of stereotypical female chatter, said hip male discovers that Neil doesn't "really listen to music" and takes it upon himself to burn the kid a bunch of CDs and even gives him an old CD player since all he's got is the one "my mom has in her alarm clock."), and the pluck he still derives from the book series itself, which inspires him to reach out to the "quirky" girl in his high school.
The style of art itself is cartoony even in the brush strokes of the Apathea Ravenchilde segments (which are a slightly different, more realistic style interestingly interspersed with the regular). Such a style would no doubt be popular with children (and help nudge the reading along since "It looks like a comic book!").
The book serves as a decent primer for kids unfamiliar with censorship and fundie brainwashing (including Jack Chickesque tracts: the head crazy's miserable young son boredly fiddles with one titled The Devil's Girlfriend,featuring what looks like a young pencil-moustached Franchot Tone with horns in his BVDs with his arm slung around a woman adorned ala the Wicked Witch of the West sans make-up) and will hopefully steer them in the right direction.
Notable: I was curious to see if we would actually make an appearance given the numerous inroads Pagans have made in recent years. While the head-crazy mother uses the word "Pagan" (when defending her actions to the main character's mother, she bemoans the idea of her daughter growing up to be a Pagan or a feminist but from her other rantings, she makes it clear she equates all bad things with atheism and communism, so she could be referring to Paganism erroneously as atheism rather than as the umbrella term for Witchcraft), it's another character whose quick with the W-word.
In an exchange with the exhausted head librarian of the fundie-targeted public library (also primary ally of the main character, after his best friend), a frenzied fundie mother while demanding such immorality as the Apathea Ravenchilde series be removed from the shelves, aggressively inquires if the librarian has accepted Jesus Christ as her personal savior.
The librarian angrily dismisses the question as "totally irrelevant" before going on.
"The books meet the library guidelines for young adults and given that witchcraft is fantasy--"
Before being interrupted by the wild-eyed fundie, and here we find the word.
"Have you not heard of these "'Wiccans'? Witches are real and trying to pervert the mind of children! Don't you understand?"
As Neil is entering, he overhears the librarian's response.
"But the magic in the book is made up. Wiccans, as I understand, don't actually have special powers."
This, as to be expected, is met with the mother charging out firing "I wouldn't expect a heathen to understand!"
This exchange is also useful in that our existence, now fairly undeniable, is used as a cudgel for fundies somehow believing that it cements their theories ("Witches do ___, and Witches are real!").
Title: Americus by MK Reed and Jonathan Hill
Details: Copyright 2011, First Second Books
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "Life in the small town of Americus isn't easy for a bookworm like Neil Barton. It only gets harder when his best friend is sent to military school, forcing Neil to face his freshman year of high school alone. And to make matters worse, local activists are trying to get the town library to ban his favorite series: The Adventures of Apathea Ravenchilde.
For the first time in his life, Neil is going to have to stand up and take action. And it just might be the best thing to ever happen to him."
Why I Wanted to Read It: In my fevered search for more graphic novels from my local library, this was another stumble-upon.
How I Liked It: I'm not the target audience of this book. This book is for (presumably) preteens or even teens. BUT, some of the best books have been intended for children (or preteens) and worked wonderfully for adults as well.
This book, maybe not. Some of the themes will no doubt inspire pangs of nostalgia (the Satanic Panic of the '80s, for example, as well as the Goth paranoia post-Columbine) and the timeless "constant outsider" is so universal an experience that it's a requirement from a "coming of age" story.
But the political climate for the book has its roots most firmly in the present. "Apathea Ravenchilde" is a dead-ringer for Harry Potter (with a bit of Lord of the Rings thrown in) with the "boon-to-childhood-literary-enthusiasm" and accusations that it promotes (W)itchcraft. The fever of the accusation of liberal bias runs far more rampant now than it did in the '80s, and while the idea of actually picketing and the signs carried by the fundies more recalls the bad old days rather than Tea Party nation, the feel is undeniably modern.
Context aside, the story itself is cartoony in a way that really can only appeal to kids generally experiencing their first brushes with censorship and moral posturing. The characters stay cartoony in style and substance (the wild-eyed, frothing "Christians" who spew ignorance and hypocrisy, the head crazy with a splitting-apart family full of secrets, the overworked, exhausted, prying mother, the absentee father, the "outsider" girl that the main character takes a fancy towards, lockstep neo-con teachers, the frustrated, miserable youth itching to leave the confines of the small town, vapid gossipy backstabbing bitches of teenage girls, homophobic hairy bro-bullies) and the only one who experiences any real growth is practically required by law to do so by the nature of the story. Poor young protagonist Neil stumbles through his awkward life clinging to his favorite fantasy books at every turn whether it's the awkward horror of a school dance (where even his best friend, who we later find out is gay, dances with a girl) to the tedium of drives with his mother, and getting the crap beat out of him by bullies for doing so. By the end of the book, our protagonist, buoyed by speaking out against censorship (and intolerance), and with some punk rock instilled in him by a hip boyfriend of his cousin he encounters at a family barbeque (on a run to the store to escape the endless stream of stereotypical female chatter, said hip male discovers that Neil doesn't "really listen to music" and takes it upon himself to burn the kid a bunch of CDs and even gives him an old CD player since all he's got is the one "my mom has in her alarm clock."), and the pluck he still derives from the book series itself, which inspires him to reach out to the "quirky" girl in his high school.
The style of art itself is cartoony even in the brush strokes of the Apathea Ravenchilde segments (which are a slightly different, more realistic style interestingly interspersed with the regular). Such a style would no doubt be popular with children (and help nudge the reading along since "It looks like a comic book!").
The book serves as a decent primer for kids unfamiliar with censorship and fundie brainwashing (including Jack Chickesque tracts: the head crazy's miserable young son boredly fiddles with one titled The Devil's Girlfriend,featuring what looks like a young pencil-moustached Franchot Tone with horns in his BVDs with his arm slung around a woman adorned ala the Wicked Witch of the West sans make-up) and will hopefully steer them in the right direction.
Notable: I was curious to see if we would actually make an appearance given the numerous inroads Pagans have made in recent years. While the head-crazy mother uses the word "Pagan" (when defending her actions to the main character's mother, she bemoans the idea of her daughter growing up to be a Pagan or a feminist but from her other rantings, she makes it clear she equates all bad things with atheism and communism, so she could be referring to Paganism erroneously as atheism rather than as the umbrella term for Witchcraft), it's another character whose quick with the W-word.
In an exchange with the exhausted head librarian of the fundie-targeted public library (also primary ally of the main character, after his best friend), a frenzied fundie mother while demanding such immorality as the Apathea Ravenchilde series be removed from the shelves, aggressively inquires if the librarian has accepted Jesus Christ as her personal savior.
The librarian angrily dismisses the question as "totally irrelevant" before going on.
"The books meet the library guidelines for young adults and given that witchcraft is fantasy--"
Before being interrupted by the wild-eyed fundie, and here we find the word.
"Have you not heard of these "'Wiccans'? Witches are real and trying to pervert the mind of children! Don't you understand?"
As Neil is entering, he overhears the librarian's response.
"But the magic in the book is made up. Wiccans, as I understand, don't actually have special powers."
This, as to be expected, is met with the mother charging out firing "I wouldn't expect a heathen to understand!"
This exchange is also useful in that our existence, now fairly undeniable, is used as a cudgel for fundies somehow believing that it cements their theories ("Witches do ___, and Witches are real!").