Left Me Wanting More

When I was a teenager, I enjoyed reading these enormous historical novels that covered several generations in the same family, sometimes spread over a century or more. So I was attracted to The Snows by Sharelle Byars Moranville because it's about four generations of the same family. It begins during the Depression and ends in 2006.

Each of the four members of the Snow family are caught during a pivotal moment when they are sixteen. These moments are pivotal to them, personally, but definitely relate very strongly to the period in which they live, too.

I had a bizarre experience reading this book. At first, I got kind of excited because I thought I was really going to like it. Each Snow speaks in the first person, though, and I found that disappointing because I felt they sounded a bit too much alike. Then I became intrigued again. Each character's section seems a little weak at first. The author is trying to cover a lot of ground in not much space, so there's a bit too much telling for my taste. However, each section also has a strength. Jim's depressing road trip...Cathy's stay at a place I won't describe so as not to give anything away...Jill's experience with campus activism... Those settings really draw a reader in.

These days I often read books that are far longer than they need to be with lots of drawn out scenes and repetitive information. The Snows is just the opposite. I wanted to know so much more about these people. Though we do get to know some of the young characters in the earlier sections as adults in later sections, I still wanted to know much more about them. I wanted to know more about many of the secondary characters, too, especially many of the women. I felt a little feminist history-thing going on here, which I liked. Was Jill's mother depressed because of the lack of opportunities for her in the 50s and 60s? And what was with Jim's mother who read to the point of neglecting her family? (Who hasn't done that?) Both these women ended up with a female descendant who was a highly successful professional woman.

Hey, and what was with Jim? He grew up with what looked like a mildly depressed, but functioning, father and then went out and married a depressed, and barely functioning, woman.

Of course, it may be that I wanted to know about adult characters and expanding on them would have meant that this wouldn't be a YA book. Still, I think Byars Moranville should treat The Snows as some kind of arty, literary exercise and rewrite this book, expanding on everyone, showing us everything about everybody. What would her storyline be? Well, something relating to the evolution of the Snow women and their connection to their individual time periods would be nice. And she should also give us more of the brother, father, and grandfather who wanted to take care of them all.

So What Was The Problem?

Can you believe Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer has been out less than a week, and I've already finished reading it? Big book, too.

Okay, so I rushed to read this book because of talk about disappointed fans. I checked out some of the 1,800+ customer reviews at Amazon this afternoon and stopped by a Twilight Moms forum. While there certainly are plenty of unhappy readers, there are plenty of happy ones, too. Plus, some of the negative responses at Amazon seem to come from readers who weren't hardcore fans to begin with.

I think one thing to keep in mind with the Twilight series is that it's what might be called a paranormal romance with a big, big emphasis on romance. Laura Miller in Salon said the Twilight books are "romance novels, and despite their gothic trappings represent a resurrection of the most old-fashioned incarnation of the genre." Many of the negative comments I've seen about Breaking Dawn object to its ending. (I'm trying not to give anything away.) Two other recent series, Harry Potter and The Underland Chronicles, ended with bloodbaths. The Twilight Saga ended differently because it is a romance. I think some readers may have been confused by the vampires and werewolves.

Some readers also objected because they felt that some characters, in particular Bella, behaved out of character in Breaking Dawn. I think Bella remained Bella pretty much right to the end of the book. She is a female who is defined totally by her relationships to others. She has no real "self." When she appears to behave differently in Breaking Dawn, she does so because of her relationship to someone else. For instance, she appears to grow a backbone in this last book, both literally and figuratively. But when she does so, it's because of her relationships with two other characters. She becomes powerful, even, but only because of her love for others. And in the final sentences of the book, the power she's developed she gives away as an act of love.

Love--romantic, familial, maternal, and even sexual--is treated pretty much as a cult here. Some readers objected to a character who had never shown any interest in children suddenly being willing to die for one. But that makes sense if you're into the cult of maternal love. I found an extended section regarding a pregnancy and childbirth sadistic, and it appears that a number of other readers were turned off by its "ick" factor. But, again, when you're talking the cult of maternal love, a woman becomes noble through such suffering. Is this a storyline that's going to be compelling to YA readers, though? I wonder if the whole maternal love thing is an adult interest, not YA.

In fact, The Twilight Saga may have moved out of YA in this final book, which could explain the response from some of its readers. Bella and Edward are no longer in high school. They're dealing with grown-up, family problems, not teen problems. When young readers were reading about people they could relate to in the earlier books, they were willing to ignore the way so many characters roll their eyes, chuckle, and snore, the improbabilities regarding plot, and the scenes that went on way too long. But Bella becomes matronly in Breaking Dawn, and Edward seems as if he ought to be out playing golf.

These characters may have outgrown their readers.

You Know, Except For Having Murdered Someone, He Was A Marvelous Guy

Gail Giles is a member of one of my listservs, and I've been interested in reading her work for some time. And now I have.

Kip McFarland was nine years old when he set a nine-year-old boy on fire and killed him. After years in an institution, he and his father start out on a new life, in a new state, with new names. Right Behind You is the story of what it's like for him to carry that kind of past around with him. It's highly suspenseful but not in the sense that readers will be waiting to see if Kip kills again. Rather, they'll wonder what he's going to do to himself.

I think Giles was better on Kip's dark and miserable side then she was on the lighter portion of his life when he's fitting into high school post-murder and post-institution. I felt that portion of the book seemed a little rushed. Or maybe I just like dark and miserable more than I like happy high school. But, all in all, I'd say Right Behind You could be described as both thought provoking and a bit of a thrill ride. A very good combination.

Take a look at Giles' other titles and covers. Do I see some kind of pattern here? Perhaps thought provoking and thrill ride is her thing.

Gail Gauthier Is...The Dissenter

Doesn't that sound like the title of a television show? The Dissenter? Yeah, folks, once again I find myself all alone in my response to a beloved book.

I've seen a few write-ups describing The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie as being based on his life. His bio at his website definitely sounds similar to early events in the book. He most definitely has a compelling, fascinating, and original personal story, growing up on a reservation and making the decision as a teenager to move to a school in a neighboring town. As an adolescent he struggled between two cultures. All great, all interesting.

However, it seemed to me that as a piece of fiction, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian was...choppy. A lot of events are touched upon but not exactly woven into a story. There's a great deal of tell in this book. For instance, three very interesting characters die in the course of the story. However, we see so little of the characters that their deaths don't have the power they could have had if we'd known them better. We know that Arnold, the main character, is torn up about the deaths because he tells us so. But most of what I know is from what he's told me. I never saw a lot in real scenes.


The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian was last year's big YA book. What I find so fascinating about that situation is that Alexie published another book last year with a teenage main character, a wonderful, unique, magical book called Flight.
Flight, however, was published as an adult book. What's going on here?

I think Part-time Indian could be described as a formulaic YA book. It uses a first-person outsider narrator who comments on life. While I found the voice flat so that a lot of the jokes didn't work for me, others may have found it to be the edgy, hip voice that, again, has become part of the YA formula. As I mentioned before, you have characters dying, which is adored in YA. Part-time Indian could be described as a problem book, for those folks who still like those. (Arnold truly does have problems, what with alcoholic parents and feeling that he's being rejected by his tribe for wanting to leave the reservation.) It has an uplifting ending.

Flight, has a magical realism element as the young main character, who appears to die at the opening of the book, experiences shifts into other bodies. We're not talking another realistic teen school experience here, though the story is uplifting. I definitely didn't feel I was reading formula YA when I was reading it. I thought I was reading something young people would love, if they could just find it, but I wasn't reading another run-of-the-mill YA story.

I'm Y.A., and I'm O.K. discusses some of the thinking behind publishers' decisions regarding classifying books as YA or adult fiction. I'm guessing that someone decided that Alexie shouldn't bring out two YA books in the same year. I can understand that. But I also feel...saddened...that the book that followed the recognizable YA format that everyone understands and feels comfortable with was wildly embraced, while the book that was just plain wonderful couldn't even be considered for bigtime YA lovin' because it wasn't published as YA.

Once Again, What Is YA Lit?

Evidently Margo Rabb's NYTimes essay I'm Y.A., and I'm O.K has received responses regarding what an author Margo interviewed describes as "condescension towards Y.A. writing in the literary world." Personally, I'm far more interested in what Margo says about the confusion in the publishing world about what is YA and what is adult literature. She quotes Michael Cart as saying, "The line between Y.A. and adult has become almost transparent...These days, what makes a book Y.A. is not so much what makes it as who makes it — and the ‘who’ is the marketing department." Peter Cameron told her "The line [between YA and adult fiction] has completely blurred."

The publishing world may be confused about just what Y.A. is, but people in the children's literature field have given the matter some thought and tried to pin it down. Patty Campbell wrote on the subject in The Horn Book back in 2003 and again in 2004.

Personally, I think some kind of definition ought to be agreed upon or YA could just disappear altogether, absorbed into adult fiction. While I'm sure there are many who would believe that to be a very good thing, I'm not one of them. Yes, every fifteen year old will one day be fifty. But while she's fifteen, she should be able to read about others like herself, just as her elders do.

Did They Come To A Decision?

The Publishers Weekly article “Think Future” Panel Debates What Makes a YA a YA has been getting some attention at listservs and elsewhere. My own first (bitchy) thought when I began reading it was, Sherman Alexie has written one YA book and that qualifies him to sit on a panel discussing YA?

My second thought as I moved toward the end of the article was that he had some interesting things to say. I was particularly taken with what he said about being "reservationized."

"An audience member, agent Rosemary Stimola, observed that a key issue in the debate is, Are these books for young people or are they books about young people? Alexie addressed her question, commenting, “If the former, a more conservative point of view comes in. If they are about young people, it’s more about respecting and not protecting. As an Indian I’m used to being what I call ‘reservationized.’ There can be a sense of the category, instead of elevating us, doing the reverse.”"

I think the analogy he was making was that YA books end up being placed in their little category or "reservation" by the nonYA (meaning adult) gatekeepers who control what is published, reviewed, purchased and on and on as I am always droning on about here. And then the YA books become about what those nonYA gatekeepers think they should be because it was the nonYA gatekeepers who created the category or reservation.

The same could be said of all children's books.

The Stages Of Life, Thematically

Over the years I've heard from people who made it clear that they defined Young Adult fiction as books that didn't include much sex or so-called mature subject matter. I heard of one writer whose publisher was going to market his genre book as a crossover to YA because it was "clean." These folks were living in a dreamworld, of course. In addition, they didn't know what YA was because they didn't understand that it's supposed to be about something, about something different from books that are for other readers.

I frequently find myself explaining that theme is important in YA, since theme, essentially, is what a book is about. A really good YA book includes classic YA themes, such as separating oneself from family, seeking a path in life. Usually the people I'm talking to don't read much YA, so they have no idea what I'm talking about. In fact, I know some of my family members think I'm making this stuff up as I go along.

Oddly enough, I'm clearest on my thinking about YA themes when I'm reading a M(iddle) A(ge) book, as I am right now. MA books deal with disappointment. They deal with coming to terms with what your life has been. That's a very strong contrast to YA books that deal with what your life is going to be.

Books directed to various stages of life address themes important to those stages.

Childhood: After having been the center of the universe in order to survive (cry-get fed, cry-get changed, cry-get attention),I find out that this behavior is no longer going to work for me. How will I get along with others at school, day care, Scouts, the world? How much am I willing to conform in order to get along with others?

Young Adult: Separation. How am I like/different from my family/peer group? What will I do with my life? What will become of me?

Twenty/Thirty Somethings: Life sucks. Shouldn't someone have told me? Now what?

Middle Age: Assessment. How have I spent my life? Did I do good? Is this what I wanted? Is it too late for me?

Older Age: I'm too old to give a damn. My last shot at happiness and fulfillment.

YA fiction isn't the only kind of literature that addresses concerns/themes of a specific age group. Every age has its themes. It's much easier to understand what YA literature is when you understand it in relation to these other types of literature.

A Balance Of Power

In an article in the most recent issue of The Horn Book, Roger Sutton makes a reference to "...some of today's voice-trumps-all YA novelists..." Oh, so true, so true. Some of today's YA novelists do rely very heavily on voice, and those voices often sound very much the same. How often have you seen a blurb on a YA book about "A unique new voice in YA!" only to find you're reading about another Holden Caulfield clone or a Georgia Nicholson wannabe?

D.J. Schwenk's voice in Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock is self-deprecating and wry. What's more, it is also the voice of a farmer from the midwest. This is not another member of a teen bitch posse or an outsider girl who is fighting that teen bitch posse. No, D.J. is busy morning and night working in the barn to keep the family farm going while her father recovers from an injury. It's hard to see how she could be further out of the school social loop as most of us know it from teen books and movies.

The book has more than a voice. It has a strong setting in the Schwenk's midwestern farm. It has powerful characters in D.J., her silent brother, her hostile yet strangely endearing father, and her mother, a farm wife with a professional job outside the home. Even Brian, who starts out as a stereotypical ugly jock, is turned around and becomes something else here. This tale of a girl who isn't worried about a date for the prom but about whether or not she is mindlessly doing just what she's supposed to do also has a strong plot. D.J. wants to strike out, and this is the story of how she does it.

Dairy Queen is a very balanced book.

It also has a romantic element. Brian, the aforementioned ugly jock, is a great looking quarterback from a rival school. Oh, he has super grades and comes from a solidly middle class family with no cows, too. There's no doubt this boy's going to college. In the traditional high school universe he is definitely superior in every way to poor D.J., who has had only one date in her life, has had to quit the basketball team, and has recently failed English. But that's the traditional high school universe. As D.J. says, the Scwenks aren't very bright and aren't much on looks, but they definitely can work. In her farm universe, which Brian is forced to enter, she knows how to get things done. She is the power figure.

In addition to being hard workers, the Schwenks know football. Brian is sent to D.J. by his football coach for training. Some readers might find that just slightly contrived, but, hey, if you're reading a book that is only slightly contrived it's your lucky day. At any rate, D.J. has trained with her older brothers, both high school football stars attending college on football scholarships. She has knowledge Brian needs. She can hold her own with him in training.

All the good looks and money and smarts that he has are balanced by her knowledge, skill, and strength. Their romance is one of equals. Their power is balanced.

The romance doesn't take over the story, either. I couldn't help but notice the contrast.

Kind Of Beige

I was a fan of Cecil Castellucci's first book Boy Proof, even though I found it a bit predictable. I wasn't as fond of one of her 2007 books (she has two this year), Beige, even though I respect what I think Castellucci was trying to do with it.

Beige is a strangely formulaic book with a lesson to teach us readers. The main character, Katy, is your traditional late twentieth century child of divorce who is forced to move in for a while with her noncustodial parent whom she barely knows. She is distraught and determined to get out of there as soon as she can. We've seen this before.

What makes this scenario strangely formulaic is that Katy is quite a straight, even bland "beige" girl who has been uprooted and deposited with her punk rocker dad. Dad is a member of a cult band that never quite made it to the big time but is about to try to make a comeback. He's also a recovering drug addict. Katy, who is nicknamed Beige by the far more colorful Lake, the daughter of one of her dad's bandmates, doesn't get rock music. But over the course of the book she comes to appreciate it, which is the classic way of teaching a reader to appreciate something, too.

What I think Castellucci was trying to do here was write a book about an edgy, out-there scene from the point of view of the least colorful, run-of-the-mill person in it. I like that. I love the average guy. I just had the feeling that Castellucci knew all her other, more exotic characters better. Dad (known as the Rat because of his last name), his mature retro girlfriend, the passionate Lake, and the over eager skateboarder Garth all fired up the page whenever they appeared. These are the characters who would appear as outsiders in many YA novels. It is interesting that in their world, the average girl is the outsider.

But she was just so...beige.

No More OCD Jokes

In a cover note Crissa-Jean Chappell included with an arc of her first book, Total Constant Order, she said, "I was unhappy with the way that OCD is portrayed in television and movies, as if it were the punch line to a joke." If her goal was to get readers to take the condition seriously, she was successful as far as this one is concerned.

What Chappell does with her main character, Fin, is get us away from the externals of OCD, the uncontrolled repetitive behaviors we think we're familiar with if we watch Monk, and take us into an anxious mind that needs those behaviors. Fin is into numbers, by which I don't mean she's good at math but that she needs to count, and she thinks of numbers during anxious moments, of which she has many. The counting remains in her head, but she has a variety of other small behaviors she can't control. She's aware that something is wrong, though she doesn't have a name for it.

Her mother wants her to see a therapist, which is interesting given the shape her mother is in. Therapy gives Fin a diagnosis, but it turns out that just taking a pill won't make things right for her.

Some readers may think of Total Constant Order as a problem book. I don't mind a problem book if it deals with one specific problem in a well-developed, coherent way. I think Total Constant Order does that. For a while I wondered if Chappell was piling the problems on a bit because Fin has recently moved so she's a new girl at school and her parents have recently separated and her father is dating and she has a lot of conflict with her mother. Wasn't OCD enough? Why not stick to that? But Fin has always had OCD tendencies. It's the extra anxiety from all these events coming all together that have intensified her symptoms and made her life miserable. What's more, you have to wonder how much the OCD in Fin's family had to do with creating some of these problems in the first place. We're talking a bit of a loop here.

I know many college-aged and slightly older young men and women. Among them are a surprising number of people suffering from depression or anxiety. OCD is only one kind of anxiety disorder, of course, but, nonetheless, Total Constant Order may reflect a reality for this generation. If so, Chappell has an interesting take on how the depressed and anxious may learn to cope. It begins with acceptance of your own difference.

Total Constant Order will be published in October by Harper Teen.

By the way, Fin moves to Miami from Vermont and comments on the good radio stations back in Burlington. That is so true.

Teen Book Lists

The ALA and YALSA have announced nominations for the 2007 Teens' Top Ten list. Teenagers can vote for their favorites during Teen Read Week, which will be October 14 through 20 this year.

Among the nominees are Tony Abbott's Firegirl and Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life As We Knew It. Also, Stephenie Meyer's New Moon, the sequel to...Twilight!

YALSA also has the nominations up for the Best Books for Young Adults for 2008. Included on this list are Sherman Alexie's Flight, which I was just carrying on about a couple of days ago. I was also very happy to see The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar on the list. Good Fairies isn't YAish the way Flight is. But it's definitely a book older teens and the college crowd can enjoy. It's also a book that appears to have been around for a while with a new edition released in 2006. It's great to see it getting some attention.

So Why Isn't This YA?

Sherman Alexie has a YA book coming out in September that is being chatted up in some circles. That's all I know on that subject.

However, Alexie's book Flight came out in April, and I do know that it's just wonderful. And it seems darn close to YA to me.

At the beginning of the story, Flight's fifteen-year-old main character is angst-ridden for very good reasons. He falls in with bad company and ends up dead. Then he starts traveling through time, always (well, with one exception) ending up in some confrontation between Native Americans and whites. Sometimes he's in the body of a white character, sometimes he's in the body of a Native American. (Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, uses the term Indian in the book and at his website.) In almost every case, someone is trying to force him to commit a violent act.

The book involves a young character who is definitely in search of self. It also takes acne seriously, which we tend to think of as the curse of the adolescent. Don't laugh. The book doesn't make light of it.

Why wasn't this published as YA? Because Alexie was publishing another YA book this year?

Sometimes I'm embarrassed by my need for novelty. I like YA, but sometimes you do see a lot of similar material published in that genre. For instance, you get your boarding school with a dead character books. You get your Holden Caulfield books. You get your girls with posse books. You get your books in the form of diaries.

While I was reading Flight, I was so excited because, at least as far as I was concerned, this was new ground.

Here's the positive aspect of publishing Flight for adults. Maybe that way it has the potential to become a cross-over book like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.

But Do We Need Another Boarding School Novel?

Today Salon carries a review of The Headmaster Ritual by Taylor Antrim. Since I'm still waiting to recover after having read Looking for Alaska, I won't be rushing out to hunt for Ritual.

Speaking of Looking for Alaska, check out this review I just stumbled upon at Bookslut from back in 2005. It begins with "John Green’s debut novel Looking for Alaska has been labeled as “young adult” fiction. This is surprising because the book is so very engaging, mature, and complex."

Yikes! Does that sound to anyone else as if the reviewer is saying that YA isn't "engaging, mature, and complex?"

It ends with "Green handles the slippery subject matter with grace and humor and this book transcends its genre of young adult fiction to be a fine book that anyone will enjoy."

Ouch.

Another Excellent Question

YA Authors Cafe has another Open Discussion going. This one is on Who is reading Young Adult books?

As I may have mentioned here before, when I first started publishing in the mid-nineties, I was told by someone at my publishing house that teenagers didn't read YA. I don't think anyone would say that now. I'm wondering, myself, if a lot of adults are reading it. Certainly within the on-line kidlit community many adults are reading it.

And if adults are reading it, will adult views and interests, adult sensibilities, we might say, start to invade the genre (or classification or whatever it is)?

You might also like to check out Jonathan Hunt's article Redefining the Young Adult Novel in the most recent issue of The Horn Book. In it he discusses crossover novels, "those books that appeal to both teenagers and adults, which could have been published for either market."