two hundred public words 8/30
I am not a very critical person -- except politically, and even politically, I tend not to come off as a judgmental or orthodox zealot. So all of these ramblings about young adult fiction authors have been positive, ravingly so. I thought for a change of pace, I'd highlight some authors I either outright dislike, or am pretty ambivalent about.
First the cheapshot: Stephenie Meyer. I am not even sure I am spelling her name right. I know, however, that I am not alone in loathing her writing. I can find it interesting as a publishing phenomenon -- I think I even noted that when she was first hitting the big time, largely because she was featured in every magazine I laid eyes on, including something really weird like the "CostCo" advertising rag.
That entry, more than two years ago, talks about Mormon authoresses I have read... I haven't read any authors, since I've avoided Orson Scott Card like the veritable plague. And it talks about the Meyer phenomenon. At that point, I was seeing virtually every girl and several boys in the seventh grade read those books. Even very smart girls who resisted the tide eventually caved and read all four of the books. I read them myself, so I could feel qualified to talk about it with the kids. But then I found I couldn't bear to. They're so dreadful. I mean, J. K. Rowling is no Classic Author... but at least her gender politics aren't more harmful than the status quo, basically. Where Meyer is hideous, in her Mormon heavy panting celibacy and her Mormon birther-ness and her Mormon subservient girliness. Ugh.
I haven't been able to bring myself to watch the films.
Other YAF authors I don't much like, despite their popularity:
Ann M. Martin -- she is a factory churning out series books -- first and foremost The Babysitters' Club. I don't even know if that series still has some ghost writers penning new entries... She also had a spin off I somewhat liked, though it was largely set among richie rich LA kids, with a sprinkling of -- maybe one -- character who wasn't rich. That was California Diaries, the conceit of which is obvious in the title: these purported to be diaries, about two or three each, from five characters who were supposed to keep a journal each year in high school. One of the characters was a sort of graduate of the Babysitters' Club series... Dawn, I think. The characters (let's see if I remember them all) were Dawn, Sunny, Amalia, someone, and Ducky. Who was the fourth girl? Hmmm. Maggie, I think. Yes, the anorexic one. Dawn has a mother dying of cancer (or Sunny does... one of them does). Maggie is the daughter of an absent, neglectful, alcoholic producer, and is anorexic. Amalia is a plucky Latina girl. Sunny... don't remember her deal. Ducky is the sole boy, and he doesn't QUITE come out, which is the failure of the series. In every single book, you think he might, and he doesn't... quite. Maddening! I wish I had all of these. I bought them as they were coming out in the early 2000s, for my classroom library at Lowell. They were kind of read to pieces, which is always both sad and also gratifying.
Anyway, I'm ambivalent about Ann Martin. What makes me dislike her is the factory aspect. What makes me like her is that she CAN and sometimes does do better, and she's workmanlike, and she was smart enough to recognize how cool Paula Danziger was (herself a practitioner of the factory line assemblage of books, but also the author of hella cool books like The Cat Ate my Gymsuit.) Martin reminds me a bit of Francine Pascal, who wrote reams of crap, but also a couple of gems like Hangin' Out with Cici, one of the better time travel/previous generations of your own family novels.
And more than ambivalent, I absolutely do not like Ann Rinaldi, who is one of the most prolific of historical YAF authors. But she's... so dull! So didactic! She doesn't invent characters and choose a time period so much as choose a specific historical event and fictionalize some history around it. I really don't like her. I suppose it's probably one of those cases where it's mostly dog-in-the-manger, because I feel like I could (and should) do it better.
First the cheapshot: Stephenie Meyer. I am not even sure I am spelling her name right. I know, however, that I am not alone in loathing her writing. I can find it interesting as a publishing phenomenon -- I think I even noted that when she was first hitting the big time, largely because she was featured in every magazine I laid eyes on, including something really weird like the "CostCo" advertising rag.
That entry, more than two years ago, talks about Mormon authoresses I have read... I haven't read any authors, since I've avoided Orson Scott Card like the veritable plague. And it talks about the Meyer phenomenon. At that point, I was seeing virtually every girl and several boys in the seventh grade read those books. Even very smart girls who resisted the tide eventually caved and read all four of the books. I read them myself, so I could feel qualified to talk about it with the kids. But then I found I couldn't bear to. They're so dreadful. I mean, J. K. Rowling is no Classic Author... but at least her gender politics aren't more harmful than the status quo, basically. Where Meyer is hideous, in her Mormon heavy panting celibacy and her Mormon birther-ness and her Mormon subservient girliness. Ugh.
I haven't been able to bring myself to watch the films.
Other YAF authors I don't much like, despite their popularity:
Ann M. Martin -- she is a factory churning out series books -- first and foremost The Babysitters' Club. I don't even know if that series still has some ghost writers penning new entries... She also had a spin off I somewhat liked, though it was largely set among richie rich LA kids, with a sprinkling of -- maybe one -- character who wasn't rich. That was California Diaries, the conceit of which is obvious in the title: these purported to be diaries, about two or three each, from five characters who were supposed to keep a journal each year in high school. One of the characters was a sort of graduate of the Babysitters' Club series... Dawn, I think. The characters (let's see if I remember them all) were Dawn, Sunny, Amalia, someone, and Ducky. Who was the fourth girl? Hmmm. Maggie, I think. Yes, the anorexic one. Dawn has a mother dying of cancer (or Sunny does... one of them does). Maggie is the daughter of an absent, neglectful, alcoholic producer, and is anorexic. Amalia is a plucky Latina girl. Sunny... don't remember her deal. Ducky is the sole boy, and he doesn't QUITE come out, which is the failure of the series. In every single book, you think he might, and he doesn't... quite. Maddening! I wish I had all of these. I bought them as they were coming out in the early 2000s, for my classroom library at Lowell. They were kind of read to pieces, which is always both sad and also gratifying.
Anyway, I'm ambivalent about Ann Martin. What makes me dislike her is the factory aspect. What makes me like her is that she CAN and sometimes does do better, and she's workmanlike, and she was smart enough to recognize how cool Paula Danziger was (herself a practitioner of the factory line assemblage of books, but also the author of hella cool books like The Cat Ate my Gymsuit.) Martin reminds me a bit of Francine Pascal, who wrote reams of crap, but also a couple of gems like Hangin' Out with Cici, one of the better time travel/previous generations of your own family novels.
And more than ambivalent, I absolutely do not like Ann Rinaldi, who is one of the most prolific of historical YAF authors. But she's... so dull! So didactic! She doesn't invent characters and choose a time period so much as choose a specific historical event and fictionalize some history around it. I really don't like her. I suppose it's probably one of those cases where it's mostly dog-in-the-manger, because I feel like I could (and should) do it better.