Update on Festival of Books HW:
Author's Note: I started writing this post on Friday but wasn't able to post it until today owing to internet issues as well as actually being at the festival and then being exhausted from the festival.
****
Books read this week:
ttyl (young adult) by Lauren Myracle
Chloe Doe (young adult) by Suzanne Phillips
Burn (young adult) by Suzanne Phillips
boy proof (young adult) by Cecil Castellucci
Zibby Payne and the Trio Trouble (middle grades) by Alison Bell
Audrey, Wait! (young adult) by Robin Benway
Books left to go (hopefully before the appropriate panels this weekend):
Millicent Min, Girl Genius (middle grades) by Lisa Yee
Atherton: The House of Power (middle grades) by Patrick Carman
The Higher Power of Lucky (middle grades) by Susan Patron
Wild Roses (young adult) by Deb Caletti
Ignatius MacFarland: Frequenaut (middle grades) by Paul Feig
Prom (young adult) by Laurie Halse Anderson
Zibby Payne & the Party Problem (middle grades) by Alison Bell
At about noon today, after I had finished the Zibby Payne book, I was feeling exceptionally depressed about how much it sucks to be a teen. My on views on the quality of the current crop of young adult and tween fiction books wasn't much better. Which also meant that I was not nearly as excited about tFoB as I was month ago.
Luckily, Robin Benway swooped in to save the day:
"So do I kill myself now, or do I wait and do it on front of Evan so he feels really, really really bad?"
"You are not going to kill yourself. Remember in health class, when they talked about how adolescents drink to mask pain? That's what you are going to do."
Bwah!
To be fair, Chloe Doe was superb, and I'd recommend ttyl as well.
Chloe Doe did a really good job (as far as I can tell) of exploring the how and why of girls who get mixed up in prostitution, the ways in which well-meaning but over-moralizing and condescending adults fail to help, and how compassion and respect are more important to such girls' chances of survival than judgements are. One thing I'm torn about is the author's use of Spanish in the story. As someone who grew up in SoCal, playing soccer and eating tacos as often as we ate hamburgers, I always like it when Spanish is tossed into English conversations for much the same reason I like all the other times characters in books act like me. It's an easy thing to do condescendingly though, because a lot of the hispanic culture that I and my whitebread peers grew up was very much appropriated rather than respected. In the book, Chloe uses Spanish as a way of escaping from her past and into a new culture. Since she's also escaping from her home and into a life of prostitution at the same time, it tends to give the overall impression that the hispanic neighborhoods and communities are full of drug dealers and whores, which is not so good.
ttyl was a light read that still managed to touch on some heavy subject matter. It did a good job of walking that fine line of not being preachy while also trying to nudge girls in a healthier direction than most media does. The format was interesting and worked well for the story, although it seemed a bit weird to be reading im messages on printed pages instead of on the computer. :)
Boy Proof was a bit annoying though; if one is going to write a story about having realistic romantic expectations and opening oneself up to love, it helps if one doesn't make the main characters so damn perfect. Technically, Egg is far from perfect, it's just that she doesn't seem to grow so much as learn to be less real and more like how the author wants her to be. Max, however is annoyingly, absurdly perfect - and always right. I kept wanting Egg to ditch him in order to spend more time with Rue.
Plus, after reading that and Zibby Payne I wanted nothing more than to write a story for tween and/or teen girls in which the "Queen Bee" - and all her normative femininity - are vindicated. Like Zibby Payne and boy proof Egg, I was also one of those girls who couldn't understand why everyone else spent so much time doing their make-up (and I still hate the fact that normative femininity is so normative). Both books were so over the top in trashing "the pretty girls," though, that they managed to make me feel sorry for the Queen Bee and hate the protagonists despite the fact that I'm fairly certain the opposite was the authors' goal.
Also, Alison Bell needs to go listen to some elementary school kids actually talk. I get that kids in books aren't going to sound like real kids, but there's adjusting how they talk to make the story readable and interesting...and then there's making 6th graders sound (and think!) like miniature (and judgmental!) adults. Anyway, that's what Zibby and her friends sounded like to me.
(I'm still reserving judgment on Burn. I think it tackled a subject matter that doesn't get enough attention, but it doesn't feel as well-paced or ring as true as Chloe Doe did. However, since it's about boys, I'd also like to get a few guys' opinions on that before I make up my mind.)
****
For the record, managed to I finish Millicent Min Friday night, got started on the first few chapters of Wild Roses Saturday morning and that was it. I ended up inhaling devouring Wintergirls Saturday night instead of any of the books by authors that I would be seeing on Sunday because the discussion about Wintergirls that morning got me all impatient to read it.
****
Books read this week:
ttyl (young adult) by Lauren Myracle
Chloe Doe (young adult) by Suzanne Phillips
Burn (young adult) by Suzanne Phillips
boy proof (young adult) by Cecil Castellucci
Zibby Payne and the Trio Trouble (middle grades) by Alison Bell
Audrey, Wait! (young adult) by Robin Benway
Books left to go (hopefully before the appropriate panels this weekend):
Millicent Min, Girl Genius (middle grades) by Lisa Yee
Atherton: The House of Power (middle grades) by Patrick Carman
The Higher Power of Lucky (middle grades) by Susan Patron
Wild Roses (young adult) by Deb Caletti
Ignatius MacFarland: Frequenaut (middle grades) by Paul Feig
Prom (young adult) by Laurie Halse Anderson
Zibby Payne & the Party Problem (middle grades) by Alison Bell
At about noon today, after I had finished the Zibby Payne book, I was feeling exceptionally depressed about how much it sucks to be a teen. My on views on the quality of the current crop of young adult and tween fiction books wasn't much better. Which also meant that I was not nearly as excited about tFoB as I was month ago.
Luckily, Robin Benway swooped in to save the day:
"So do I kill myself now, or do I wait and do it on front of Evan so he feels really, really really bad?"
"You are not going to kill yourself. Remember in health class, when they talked about how adolescents drink to mask pain? That's what you are going to do."
Bwah!
To be fair, Chloe Doe was superb, and I'd recommend ttyl as well.
Chloe Doe did a really good job (as far as I can tell) of exploring the how and why of girls who get mixed up in prostitution, the ways in which well-meaning but over-moralizing and condescending adults fail to help, and how compassion and respect are more important to such girls' chances of survival than judgements are. One thing I'm torn about is the author's use of Spanish in the story. As someone who grew up in SoCal, playing soccer and eating tacos as often as we ate hamburgers, I always like it when Spanish is tossed into English conversations for much the same reason I like all the other times characters in books act like me. It's an easy thing to do condescendingly though, because a lot of the hispanic culture that I and my whitebread peers grew up was very much appropriated rather than respected. In the book, Chloe uses Spanish as a way of escaping from her past and into a new culture. Since she's also escaping from her home and into a life of prostitution at the same time, it tends to give the overall impression that the hispanic neighborhoods and communities are full of drug dealers and whores, which is not so good.
ttyl was a light read that still managed to touch on some heavy subject matter. It did a good job of walking that fine line of not being preachy while also trying to nudge girls in a healthier direction than most media does. The format was interesting and worked well for the story, although it seemed a bit weird to be reading im messages on printed pages instead of on the computer. :)
Boy Proof was a bit annoying though; if one is going to write a story about having realistic romantic expectations and opening oneself up to love, it helps if one doesn't make the main characters so damn perfect. Technically, Egg is far from perfect, it's just that she doesn't seem to grow so much as learn to be less real and more like how the author wants her to be. Max, however is annoyingly, absurdly perfect - and always right. I kept wanting Egg to ditch him in order to spend more time with Rue.
Plus, after reading that and Zibby Payne I wanted nothing more than to write a story for tween and/or teen girls in which the "Queen Bee" - and all her normative femininity - are vindicated. Like Zibby Payne and boy proof Egg, I was also one of those girls who couldn't understand why everyone else spent so much time doing their make-up (and I still hate the fact that normative femininity is so normative). Both books were so over the top in trashing "the pretty girls," though, that they managed to make me feel sorry for the Queen Bee and hate the protagonists despite the fact that I'm fairly certain the opposite was the authors' goal.
Also, Alison Bell needs to go listen to some elementary school kids actually talk. I get that kids in books aren't going to sound like real kids, but there's adjusting how they talk to make the story readable and interesting...and then there's making 6th graders sound (and think!) like miniature (and judgmental!) adults. Anyway, that's what Zibby and her friends sounded like to me.
(I'm still reserving judgment on Burn. I think it tackled a subject matter that doesn't get enough attention, but it doesn't feel as well-paced or ring as true as Chloe Doe did. However, since it's about boys, I'd also like to get a few guys' opinions on that before I make up my mind.)
****
For the record, managed to I finish Millicent Min Friday night, got started on the first few chapters of Wild Roses Saturday morning and that was it. I ended up inhaling devouring Wintergirls Saturday night instead of any of the books by authors that I would be seeing on Sunday because the discussion about Wintergirls that morning got me all impatient to read it.