Weetzie Bat

I really enjoyed reading Weetzie Bat.  It was like reading a stylized cartoon.  More thoughts later.

(This image is kind of like the sort of thing I imagine as I read Weetzie Bat)

Review 1: Fishtailing by Wendy Phillips

Fishtailing

Wendy Phillips

Regina, Saskatchewan: Coteau Books, 2010.

196 pp., pbk., $14.95.

ISBN 978-1-55050-411-8.

Grades 10 and up / Ages 14 and up.

Review by Sheela Sur.

****/4

excerpt:

Tricia

When the police come

they say

The neighbours made

a noise complaint.

When Kyle staggers

bleeding

down the stairs

they say

Let’s go, kid.

We’re bathed in

flashing blue silence

at the doorway

and I realise

the music has stopped.

Wendy Phillips’s Fishtailing tells the haunting story of four Canadian high school students during the fall and winter of their senior year.  Through a series of short free verse poems told from the perspectives of each character, we learn about their lives and how their fates become intertwined.  We meet Natalie, the manipulative new girl at school with a troubled past and a destructive plan for her new classmates; Tricia, the product of a mixed-race marriage struggling to form an identity and fit in; Kyle, whose new-found love of music causes tension between him and his mechanic father; and Miguel, a recent immigrant who fled a war-torn country with few surviving family members hiding a dangerous secret.

     By peppering the narrative with commentary from the high school’s English teacher and counsellor, Wendy Phillips creates a rich, authentic, and believable world that draws the reader in.  The breathless pace of the narrative excels the reader to the book’s climax: a party at Natalie’s house that ends in tragedy.

     Fishtailing is a very quick read and thus may appeal to reluctant readers.  However, its free verse prose style may not be enjoyed by everyone. The content is quite mature and may not be appropriate for younger readers (includes scenes of child pornography and rape, suicide, and cutting).

     This is Wendy Phillips’s first book.  It was awarded the 2010 Governor General’s Literary Award for Children’s Literature (English text).

Highly recommended.

Sex in YA Lit Part 2

As promised, here are my thoughts on Forever... by Judy Blume.

As soon as Michael and Katherine first said "Forever..." I knew they'd break up.  I have to say I'm happy that Katherine was the one that broke it off.  Michael was a creep and a jerk for the entire book (I would have gotten out of there at the first mention of Ralph) and I'm glad that Blume had the girl be the stronger character and be a solid role model for the teen girls this book is aimed at.

At first, I was a bit miffed by how short the story was and how bluntly the relationship ended.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that that's what highschool relationships are like.  I remember imagining marrying my first highschool boyfriend.... We broke up 7 months later.

That said, I wasn't a huge fan of the book.  It may have been realistic, but I found it boring (perhaps it was too true to life?).  The Erica/Artie subplot was MUCH more interesting and I liked their characters a lot more.  I'd have much rather read a book about them.  

Sex in YA Lit Part 1

I read 101 Ways to Dance by Kathy Stinson on Saturday morning (I couldn't sleep and read the whole thing sometime between midnight and 5:30 a.m.) and just finished Forever.  I'll write a bit about 101 Ways first and gather my thoughts on Forever for Part 2.

I was expecting the book to be a cheesy romance with a sex scene or two thrown in for good measure, but was pleasantly surprised.  I actually really liked it!  The different ways Stinson finds to approach the subject of teen relationships and sex were so clever, creative, and well done.  I never felt like she was trying to be cool or force the reader to believe that this was a teenager's perspective, and she made me think about situations that I'm sure happen in real life that I had never thought about before. I think this book would be great to encounter as a teen reader.

I laughed, I cried, I cringed, and I enjoyed every minute while reading 101 Ways to Dance.

Reactions to Rutherford

OK, so I'm in a pretty bad mood tonight and don't feel much like writing, so bare with me.  Initial reaction to the Rutherford article on marketing youth fiction online: How many typos can you get away with in a peer review journal?  Second: I used to live on Rutherford Street.  Third: It seems fairly obvious to me that to market something to teens you should get hooked up on Facebook, make a slick website, and sensationalize to the point of celebrity everything you possibly can. 


The only interesting thing in this article was when Rutherford talks about popular fiction being sold in places other than book stores.  I had never thought about why romance books were sold in drug stores until I read that "the point of sale for the mass–market romance was not just bookshops but wherever women bought daily commodities." This reminded me of the Scholastic book orders you'd get at school: Scholastic was selling its mass-market children's books where children went every day.  And now, publishers sell/market their popular teen fiction where teenagers go every day: the Internet.