A little post about dystopia and YA fiction.

Sorry folks: no deep, meaningful stuff from me tonight.  I read Susan Beth Pfeffer's The Dead and the Gone recently.  At first it was really creepy, then it got kind of boring, then it ended and I was disappointed.  I am not a fan.

What creeped me out was that in my experience, dystopian literature takes place in some far-off future where something catastrophic happened or the current political/technological climate came into being a long time ago.  The Dead and the Gone seems to be set today, and the novel starts on the day that the world-changing catastrophe happens.  For this reason I found the first few chapters pretty hard (emotionally) to get through, especially after the recent events in Japan.

So, the first few chapters were very effective, but I got pretty bored after that.

I also read Laura Miller's article "Fresh Hell"* and liked what she had to say, especially about dystopian fiction mirroring the young adult's high school experience.

*Miller, Laura. 2010. Fresh Hell: What’s Behind the Boom in Dystopian Fiction for Young Readers?” The New Yorker June 14.

I don't like Twilight.

This is the story of when I read Twilight.

My roommate loves Twilight.  Like, a read all the books multiple times, counts down the days to the movies, and lines up at midnight kind of love.  I was a Twilight skeptic.  I had heard bad things about the books and was sick of hearing about the movies all over my (admittedly beloved) celebrity gossip websites.   But, last summer, I had some downtime between school ending and jobs starting, was rolling around my London house looking for stuff to do, and my Twilight-loving roommate convinced me to read the first book.

So I did.

I hated it.

OK, OK, "hate" may be a strong word.  I strongly disliked the writing and really disliked a lot of the main characters.  But I understood the appeal. I was interested in the story and kept reading because I wanted to find out what happened next.  Compelled to find out what happened when the book ended, I read the second book, New Moon.

I hated it even more.

Not only was the writing bad, there was no story and the characters were even less likable.  I still get the appeal.  Spending two books with the same characters could leave a different sort of person needing/wanting to know what happens to them.  A different sort of person may enjoy reading 200+ pages about a girl who likes a guy but doesn't know where he is so she wonders where he is and kind of starts liking some other guy, but OH NO she doesn't know where the first guy is and she really likes him but she's starting to like this other guy, and he's really nice and all, but what about that first guy....

Aaaanyway, I watched the movie and, needless to say, didn't like it either.  Something about the way it was filmed (cinematography?) was ridiculous, but I did like seeing how the characters and story were represented.

So I think it's pretty clear that I don't like Twilight as a piece of literature/film.  But I do like that lots of tweens/teens like it.  It's getting "reluctant" readers to read and  encourages them to read similar books outside the series, which may lead them to an even broader range of literature.  The media tie-in makes the books accessible to an even wider audience.  I'm reading through the Margaret Mackey chapter and hope to have some more intelligent things to say soon....

Getting the Laughs: Absolutely Positively Not by David LaRochelle

I thought Absolutely Positively Not was a great book.  It was really funny without downplaying the seriousness of the main character's situation (coming out while attending high school in a small town).    It approached the topic effectively and managed to avoid predictability and cheesiness (cough - Judy Blume).  The humour made what could be an uncomfortable or embarrassing topic approachable and readable.  I thought the protagonist was realistic and charming. It's a fun read with an important message. 

Response to "Gossiping Girls, Insider Boys, A-List Achievement: Examining and Exposing Young Adult Novels Consumed by Conspicuous Consumption" by Wendy Glenn

Glenn, Wendy. 2008. “Gossiping Girls, Insider Boys, A-List Achievement: Examining and Exposing Young Adult Novels Consumed by Conspicuous Consumption.” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 52(1): 34-42. 

I liked Wendy Glenn’s take on the sort of novels that idealize glamorous, luxurious lifestyles of rich New York teens: that they can be useful tools in teaching literary criticism and critical thinking.  However, I don’t think there’s much librarians can do about it.  If these items were included in book clubs we could of course bring up the subjects discussed in this article.  But when a teen comes to the circulation desk with a Gossip Girl book, I think it would be a bit out of place for the librarian to say “Now, while you read this, think about whether or not you identify with the characters and what point of view the author is bringing to this kind of world.”  Of course these items have to be in a library’s collection, and reading this article has only made me feel even more uneasy about how teens may react to these materials.  

Digital Booktalk for The Virgin Suicides

Woohoo! Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pV6XdcdbNM

Special thanks to the lovely and talented David Sylvester and Sarah Soles. 

Getting the Girl: A Guide to Private Investigation, Surveillance, and Cookery

I just read Getting the Girl by Susan Juby and really enjoyed it.  I thought Juby captured the feeling of high school cliques and the pressures of being a teen girl quite effectively.  Showing the high school "girl world" (I had to draw some comparisons to Mean Girls as I read) through the eyes of a grade nine boy was a different approach and worked really well.

That being said, I was not looking forward to reading this book.  I'll admit I went to Chapters and bought the cheapest book they had from this week's list, and the other books available (Zusack's I am the Messenger and Vizzinni's Be More Chill) looked so much cooler and edgier.  The cover of this edition of Getting the Girl is pretty awful.  The photograph made me imagine something really cheesy.  The subtitle of the book gives a hint of its cleverness and humour, but given in the context of the cover I was expecting a bad Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging knock-off.  We've talked about book covers in class, and this example really drove the point home.  Had I wanted a cheesy romance, I would have been difficult.  If I was looking for a witty mystery novel, I never would have picked up this book.  What were these publishers thinking???


Seriously?