I am wild about short stories. I know some people aren’t, but for me an excellent collection of short stories is like drinking whiskey neat on a cold night–pleasing to all the senses. To me, the most successful short stories are like the landscape of an anal retentive neighbor–shrubs are neatly pruned, flowers are planted in line with the pathway. You can’t overindulge in a short story; if you do, it becomes a sopping mess.
The short story, for whatever reason, also lends itself to strange, sometimes dark humor, and quirky, unconventional plots and characters and literary experimentation. Perhaps this is because maintaining a novel on such plots and characters would be like asking a reader to play board games for three days–a board game is a fine distraction for a few hours, but it’s not like these custom-made wooden jigsaw puzzles that can be any shape and number of pieces,* leading to days of delicious obsession.**
I admit I haven’t really thought about the short story form in YA literature–I suppose I always considered the short story to be a more “adult” genre, perhaps in particular as I consider the blurring of form between short story and prose poem. Though now that I put my mind to it, I suppose the Wayside School series are short stories, though they might be technically catalogued as chapter books, and there are other chapter books like that. Roald Dahl wrote short stories (though I don’t know if they’re considered children’s), as does David Levithan. There is, of course, J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which brings us to one of the earliest short story forms: the fairy/folk tale.
Adam Bagdasarian’s First French Kiss and Other Traumasis a collection of short stories exhibiting the warmth, humor, and unique narrative perspective that I like in “adult” short story collection. The collection follows one boy, Will, through his boyhood and adolescence. Will is bluster and bravado hiding sensitivity and confusion, oddly self-aware and yet completely out of touch. We experience Will’s defeats and small triumphs as a boy–the betrayals by an older brother, the awkward carelessness in breaking up with a girlfriend, the childhood luxury of believing one is destined for greatness, the fear and sadness of seeing the older brother going off to college, confronting the truth that change is uncontrollable, and loss is unforeseeable.
The collection achieves poignancy through its matter-of-fact, unassuming storytelling. Will takes himself very seriously, and you, as a reader, can’t help but to do it too. It’s a smart book that doesn’t underestimate its reader. Will reminds us how when we remember, we are reremembering–our memories, like ourselves, are fallible, and each time we look upon the past, it becomes something different. While Will is writing his past he is, in a way, writing his present as well. This is a very adult thing for me to say; perhaps Will would’ve been smart enough to think this at fourteen, but I am certain I was too concerned over how I could afford the knee-high Doc Martens I wanted at the mall. But I do believe that my fourteen-year-old self would’ve fallen a little in love with Will’s almost-impossible, over-analytical voice and his unintentional misadventures while just living a life. Here is Will explaining his “life and times” at age ten:
I am a decade old and cannot win a game of Monopoly to save my life…I have lots of baby fat, which my brother sometimes grabs. My mother assures me that sometime soon I will lose my baby fat and grow into my ears, which are large by most standards. My brother calls me Dumbo. I laugh because I have absolutely no vanity. As proof of this, I continue to have my hair cut at Dan’s Snip and Curl…Although gregarious and extroverted, I have a very definite private world. In this world I am a secret agent, a star athlete, a ladies’ man. I move like a cat and have catlike reflexes. However, after watching Damn Yankeeseight times in one week…I develop a crush on Gwen Verdon and begin to move less like a cat and more like a dancer.
How can you not love a boy like that? A boy who becomes an adult who writes his memoirs in his twenties and opens it with a letter to the reader explaining why, after being urged by his mother and brother to write a collection based on his childhood, instead:
I sat down and began writing a very serious and consequential novel about a bartender in the style of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce. The writing of this novel was such a trying and laborious process that I was convinced I was creating a masterpiece.
Will decides to write the collection because it was freeing, and easier, and enjoyable. I thank Bagdasarian for reminding me that some things in life are hard, yes, but not everything in life has to be, and life’s doleful moments are steps away from joyful ones.
Maureen Johnson is a prolific YA writer–she has written over a half-dozen YA books in the past five years. That, plus the fact that she has a pink website with the skyline of Manhattan as its background, pretty much makes me want to be her.
Maureen Johnson’s first book, The Key to the Golden Firebird, is an Overcomes Tragedy YA Book–the Golds sisters are three very different but fairly well-adjusted and happy girls until they come home one day and find an ambulance in front of their house. Their father, who named them after his favorite baseball players, had a heart attack and passed away. After this happens, each girl develops her own avoidance and coping mechanism, growing further apart from the others.
I have read one other of Johnson’s books, Devilish, which is much more in the chick-lit stream of YA (what I am calling “chickadee lit”–word, I’m coining it)–reading felt eating a double chocolate cupcake, an indulgence–but I remember being drawn in by the characters she created who seemed just real enough that I could find people I knew to match up with them, but just far-fetched enough that I didn’t have to.
Similarly in The Key to the Golden Firebird, Johnson’s strongest point is her girls. The story is mostly told from the point of view of May, the middle sister, the smart one who goes to a private school, the one who steps into a parental role after her father’s death. Unlike her two sisters who are so wholly consumed by their own coping mechanisms, May is so aware of her family falling apart that she is unable to see how she is avoiding her own grief. Brooks, the beautiful, popular older sister potentially sabotages her future by dropping off the softball team and taking up drinking. Palmer, the determined, younger sister who excels as a pitcher shrinks into herself, shutting off the world and filling it with white noise, usually from the television. May, who always identified as the responsible one is leaned on by her now double-shifting mother to cook, clean, and generally take care of her sisters.
May is a completely lovable character, and Johnson does a great job taking May’s everyday teenage worries, specifically the pressure of passing driver’s ed, and magnifying them to befit a high school student dealing with family tragedy–the pressure of passing driver’s ed so she can drive her younger sister to practice since her older sister has started drinking. While I do love the character of May, I found the most poignant moments to be when Johnson slips in the other two sister’s voices–when Palmer addresses feeling closed in and invisible; when the reader sees Brooks struggling to find a relationship to replace what she has lost. At times the brief shift of point of view seemed a bit sudden, but it was always welcome.
The story, of course, belongs to the Golds sisters, but it’s hard not to notice how sometimes parents become flattened in children’s books. That the father, who unfortunately is mostly a memory in the book, is mostly one-dimensional—cheerful, baseball-obsessed, a literally and figuratively large body—is understandable, but I felt the mother’s absence more acutely. Not that I expect a continual or more extensive mother-daughter(s) interaction throughout. I understand that the mother too has her own grief and reality to deal with. Now a single parent, she has to take on extra shifts at the hospital, which is why May is left in charge of domestic duties. But that the girls seem to leave (not even shut, because shut would be more active) their mother out so much in the first half makes the parts in the second half of the book where the mother does play more of a role a little harder to swallow.
The symbolism of driving (freedom begets responsibility) and the golden Firebird, which was May’s father’s car, runs throughout, as well as her father’s love of baseball, which is a legacy the Golds sisters will always have in their names (the girls are named after Willie Mays, Brooks Robinson, and Jim Palmer, for you baseball fans out there). Johnson explores the baseball and softball leitmotif well, with a particularly nice turn on how May feels about her relationship with her father. May’s full name is Mayzie, which she always felt was awkward, and she doesn’t have the same athletic talent as her sisters, which makes her feel even more estranged from her father. There’s a lovely scene at the highpoint of the novel involving an Orioles game and something that almost any baseball-loving kid, or American adult, wishes they could have done as a child–running across a major league ball field. And of course there is a love interest for May who is the perfect boy.
The book ends where it should—with all four Golds women together, physically, and spiritually, coming back to form a family again.
There was a panel on Asian-American poetry entitled Disrupting the Page: Hybridity and Asian American Poetics* which I felt drawn to probably because the blurb mentioned Teresa Hak Kyung Cha, because there was “Hybridity” in the title (titles matter, folks!), and because I have had such a hard time self-identifying as Asian American, and writing Asian American, and to have a panel that discusses Cha and have hybridity in the title is to implicitly, though more likely explicitly, discuss language-versus-identity, amongst other versuses. It was a tough decision, but I chose “Disrupting the Page” over an equally enticing “Multilingual Poetics” panel that was going on at the same time.
I won’t get into the specificities of the panel (that I might do on my blog–but I’m lazy, so who knows!), but I bring this conference up because I think it’s important to note and celebrate that it happened, and also because at some point in the panel discussion, this idea of generational Asian-American writing and expected Asian-American writing came up. One of the panelists mentioned that the “known” Asian-American writers, the ones that have made a small dent into our American literary knowledge and almost broken through our literary canon, are ones like Amy Tan** or Maxine Hong Kingston, the ones who build lives around the difference, using lyrical language, Eastern mythology and symbolism, calling to mind lotus flowers, calligraphy brush strokes, and silk robes. And interestingly, the ones that tend to focus on mother-daughter relations.
The exploration of the mother-daughter relationship is quite prevalent in popular Asian-American literature, and why is that? The truth is, the mother-daughter relationship is prevalent and essential in many literatures—Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing, the myth of Persephone and Demeter. What about the mother-daughter relationship calls out to us in Asian-American literature?
This post is supposed to be about Justina Chen-Headley’s Nothing but the Truth (and a few white lies),which I read well before attending the conference, but which, after picking it up again to write this post, I realize is about the mother-daughter relationship. I wanted to start with this book because I believe kids need children’s literature to provide a reflection of themselves. On a purely personal note, this book rings so true to me that I wish I had Asian-American young adult literature like this to read when I was trying to uncover my identity in middle school and high school. Chen-Headley does a lovely job in introducing Taiwanese-American specific experiences within the Asian-American experience, from bo-po-mo-fo***, Patty’s mom’s Potluck Club (hard not to think of Amy Tan, of course) to the question of a “white guy with an Asian Woman Fetish,” balancing the conflicts within Patty’s and the social expectations of Asian American—here is a snippet of conversation between Patty and her white best friend, Janie:
“Mama took me to see some crazy old lady last night to read fortunes.” Again, I brush off the niggling feeling I’m being disloyal to Mama. “She told my mom that I needed to drink this soup or something.”
“That is so Chinese,” says Janie, as if that’s a bad thing. As if I’m not so Chinese myself. I feel vaguely offended, but I’m more relieved that she sees me as unlike Mama that it washes away any irritation.
Nothing but the Truth (and a few white lies)**** is an identity novel–half-Asian and half-white Patty Ho is a hybrid; she feels caught between two set identities, and two sets of expectations. The novel follows Patty through her summer at a math camp in Stanford, and uses the assignment of a college personal essay, from which the title of the book is borrowed, as the thread throughout. She has the following: ultra-strict Taiwanese mom, a near-perfect Harvard-bound older brother, a missing-in-action white father. This, for an Asian-American teenager, is a lot of baggage. She is so lost among identities she doesn’t know what a Hapa is until her proud-to-be-Asian summer camp roommate, the aptly named Jasmine, calls her Hapa, a Hawaiian word now meaning half-white and half-Asian, but with more derogatory connotations in its origin.
Don’t be fooled by the fact that YA is written for teenagers, or the fact that more often than not YA books mention prom or some sort of school dance, death-by-fashion choice, and school hallways as a battlefield. It is difficult to write good YA–you have to fold in comedy, soul searching, and angst well enough to sell it to a bunch of disenchanted youths. You have to write compelling conversation that is believable but intelligent. You have to compete with John Hughes.
Identity novels are particularly difficult–authors must navigate stereotypes and alienating readers outside of the identity being explored. Making Patty a math whiz, for example, is working dangerously close to the Asian stereotype, but Chen-Headley combats this by having Patty be a reluctant math whiz, never willing to admit her math genius because she feels like she isn’t Asian enough to be a math whiz. Instead, like many YA heroines, she loves to write and play with the English language. Patty’s constant wordplay creates a striking and deliberate difference between Patty and her mother’s fluency and ability with the English language.
Throughout the book, Patty puns liberally and often cleverly. For me, it becomes overkill at times, but for the most part, puns like “sweet-and-sour dork” and “feeling like raw fish out of the water in this sushi restaurant” (both describing a character Patty calls Malibu Barbie) are doled judiciously and folded into the writing well. And though I’m not wild about the title, I can respect the nudge that the parenthetical gives (‘a few white lies’ … get it?). I also have to give a shout-out for how Chen-Headley uses mathlanguage throughout the novel; it compliments the language-heavy (in both words and emotions) wordplay.
I followed and felt Patty’s (and Chen-Headley’s) story like it was my own. For that, this book is a success. I would be interested in knowing how it plays out to someone who didn’t bo-po-mo-foher way through six years of Chinese school (uh, who are we kidding, I’m still doing that), but Chen-Headleyhas created enough three-dimensional, lovable characters that I believe anyone can read the book and find a piece of themselves in it. Perhaps the real truth is this: we are all working through labels–those we create for ourselves and those others create for us.
*The question of the hyphen! The panelists left the hyphen out of their panel title, so I have done the same, though you’ll notice that throughout the rest of the post, I leave it in. I tend to do so if it is used as an adjective, and I haven’t figured out my politics on the hyphen (identity politics v. grammatical anal retentive?). Question me about that later.
**P.S. This year is the 20th anniversary for the publication ofThe Joy Luck Club.
***I could spend another 10,000 words parsing this book, focusing on the way Chen-Headley uses language to differentiate the Taiwanese-American experience from the Chinese-American one, and nods towards the difficult Taiwan-China relationship. Mentioning bo-po-mo-fo is a particularly nice way of doing so–China has moved to the pinyin systemof learning literacy, whereas Taiwan still uses bo-po-mo-fo. Language as politics. That’s a dissertation right there.
****Here’s my snarky snarky snarky girl comment: for the love of god, please get a better cover designer for Chen-Headley! Her writing deserves so much better than this cover…
A few weeks ago, Reagan and I decided to check out Book Court located in Brooklyn Heights (the store was recently featured in the New York Times). While there she picked up the final book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympiansseries by Rick Riordan while handing over earlier books from her collection for me to read. After varying schedules since then, I’ve finally managed to pick up and read the remaining books and have been itching to share with you my thoughts.
I totally loved this book series. In net-speak I guess you could say I *Heart* the books. In fact, I’ve already recommended them to a young cousin who isn’t a big reader–perfect books for reading aloud with the family. The story moves quickly and the story is tight. Adults can appreciate the plays on words and pop-culture nods that are still accessible to young readers. There are no magic swords suddenly appearing out of the blue from a hat–if a magical item is used, the set-up happened chapters before. And Deus Ex Machina? Yea, they’re Greek Gods and are supposed to randomly pop-up.
Ultimately, what I loved about these book is how true they are to the ancient stories of Greek Heroes. Not from a theatrical standpoint of having a chorus and all. No, I mean the fact that heroes have weaknesses and do get help from others. Sure Percy gets advice and gifts to aid him on his quests, but so did Theseus and Perseus and Hercules. And the Gods interfered with the great heroes of the past; getting in the way, offering help, and offering “help.”* Drawing on that older tradition means that there are similarities to the Harry Potter series. On his blog, Riordan acknowledges and responds with a well thought out post to the criticism of the series; JK Rowling was doing nothing new–she too drew off older examples of hero tales. Similarity are inevitable in stories of this sort.
When I was younger I went through a phase where I was obsessed with Greek mythology. The interweaving of modernized Gods living in today’s world works well and reminded me of some of my favorite tales. Apparently, the books are inspiring a new generations of mythology enthusiasts looking for books featuring the tales of Jason and Zeus and Apollo. Riordan goes further into the tales as well, while most compilations of Greek Mythology feature a few exploits of the Gods and hero stories (Arachne and Athena, Echo and Narcissus, the Heroes), he reaches back to the often forgotten tales of creation and the wars with the Titans. One quibble is that there are some more Roman takes on a few of the characters featured, but he later redeems himself by correcting the often mistaken idea of Pandora’s box.
Oh, second quibble, heroes shouldn’t have supernatural abilities like the gods. More strength than other humans? Fine. Mommy goddess dipped you in the River Styx? Okay. Can control the weather? Eh, not so much. Not all the children of the gods have such ability, so I can forgive the three that do based on the consistency and defining link that all three share.
Looking up the books online, I discovered what many have already found out at the theaters; the series is being turned into movies. Again, there are similarities to Harry Potter, including director, but the trailer is an exciting teaser and seems to fit the story. There seems to be a slightly darker mood to the often humorous telling in the book, but the philosophical bent of the books and the events that happen make me feel this interpretation will work out well.
It seems odd that completely separate themes (chick-lit mystery and young adult) should both reference back to the same material of antiquity. Between Tasha Alexander’s Emily trying to preserve Grecian works of art and Percy understanding the old myths as part of his heritage, my interest in the old mythologies has rekindled. I plan on making a trip up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see their Greek Sculptures–a location that makes an appearance early on in the series.
*At one point a god offers a gift to a hero, after which the hero responds that it wasn’t a gift at all and rather a way for the god to claim credit for being helpful.
NOTE: Marcelo, before you go read these and complain about yet another kids’ fantasy book with a prophecy, IT’S GREEK MYTHOLOGY. Oracle of Delphi and all that–there had to be a prophocy. Riordan works some great magic on staying true to the obscure multi-meaning tradition. Read the series as a individual unit and not as a comparison to other books.
Yesterday I mentioned my cousin Dee and her love of the Twilight books. Dee takes after many of my family members in that she reads. All. The. Time.
She also texts a lot–but hey, she’s a teen.
There’s a sixteen-year age gap between the two of us and she’s a little older than our two male cousins. So at family gatherings, she’s taken to bringing about three books or so and holing up in a comfy chair to read for a portion of the time. Depending on the size of the book, she can often finish one or two in the few hours of the visit. Based on the speed of her reading, I sometimes think she’s reading a lot of teen junk that she’s much too smart for (i.e., the The Clique novels). But she enjoys the books and you can’t fault someone for liking to read. Some of the books she brings are so beat-up and damaged because she will read them over and over and to mark her spot another book will often be used as a bookmark.
Anyway, the other weekend we had a huge family reunion at her house to celebrate our Grandmother’s birthday. Since it was a surprise party, I went up early and managed to fit in a few minutes to take photos of her bookshelves. Her room has three shelves, the tallest has non-book related things on it, while the other two are jam packed.
I love these shelves because they are rather typically teenager in their stuffed disorder.
In larger views of the photos you can see duct-taped spines and curling covers. As you can see on the top shelf, she has a little bit of an organizational system and books in a series are kept together. The lower shelf seems to be a catch-all where books are just shoved into whatever space is available. She still has a few more years of high school to go, so I’m guessing that at some point, we’ll be able to get a photo of the currently empty third shelf which is sure to be packed soon enough.
Eventually you’ll be hearing from Dee directly. She’s agreed to guest-post from time to time about young adult books that adults tend to love. Like Twilight. She’ll give us that youthful insight into why people her age like certain books and what they think of books that we insist are important they read.
With the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in theaters, there’s finally a light at the end of the tunnel. Potter fans across the world, now unable to line up outside bookstores for the latest chapter, have taken to lining up at movie theaters in order to see how badly Hollywood has gutted the books to fit into a 2.5 hour run time. And soon they won’t even have that.
That’s not to say that I’m against people dressing up for premieres and expressing their fandom. I’ve been a devout Trekkie for decades, and when I was a swing dancer in LA, I’d always be wearing old vintage clothes. I’ve always appreciated the shared experience, the camaraderie, the anticipation of something new to love with my fellow fans. So before Potter fans around the world start sending me hate mail, let me be clear: this post is not about you.
This post is about how the Harry Potter books just aren’t that good. And while their massive popularity might have tons of positive effects (especially the way it’s engaged a whole generation of new readers to crack open some massive-ass books), there are also a few things I’m not too crazy about when it comes to Potter-mania.
It’s becoming a habit that I apologize for the backlog of belated reviews here. It’s a shame as I was backlogged when I read While In Darkness There Is Light and then ran off to do some hiking in Stowe, Vermont because I’ve been looking forward to writing this review.
Louella Bryant is better known to me as Ms. Bryant, and her husband as HR. In high school I took her creative writing and journalism classes (HR was the shop teacher; I spent a fair amount of time at an easel painting in the hallway by his classroom). Ms. Bryant later introduced me to the editor of the local paper where I soon became a sports writer. At the time she was writing young adult historical fiction although she never shared her work with the class. Sometime during my freshman year of college, I stopped by the school to have her sign a copy of The Black Bonnet, Which had finally come out. The book was a young-adult story of two girls journey through Burlington, Vermont on the underground railroad. Over the years I’ve checked around online from time to time to see if she’d written anything new and have purchased the books whenever I could.
While In Darkness There is Lightis her latest book and her first non-fiction. It took reading the synopsis a few times and mentioning the book to my parents before I realized that it is a story that heavily includes her husband HR – in the book he is known as Harry. The story is just fascinating. If you were paying attention during the 2004 Democratic Presidential campaigns, you might be aware that Howard Dean’s brother Charlie’s body was found in Asia Pacific after having been missing since 1974. During the campaign, Dean had flown over to Laos right before the suspected burial site was explored. HR had gone to school with the Dean brothers and this is the story of both HR and Charlie leaving their structured, privilaged society of New England to live on a commune in Australia shortly before Charlie decided to travel to lands torn apart by the Vietnam War.
Louella had amazing resources in writing her story such as HR’s journal and people who had lived on the commune sharing their experiences. The story sucked me in, possibly because I regularly dream of leaving everything behind and starting anew in order to discover who I really am. Only the end of the book is fabricated. Louella creates a vision that is difficult to connect with–the last chapter deals with what happened to Charlie after communication with him was lost and he was taken by the Pathet Lao. There is no way to truly know what happened, so she crafts a picture of what most likely happened and Charlie’s probable responses to what was happening to him based on the knowledge of those who knew him best.
I say that last bit of the book is difficult to connect with, not because of Louella’s writing, but because of the inability to fully grasp and understand the emotions and fear of being in such a situation. It’s probably best that I could not get my head further into such a horrifying experience.
Just before I went to pick up the book, I sent Louella a note thanking her. My high school years were a bit boring as I always knew Vermont was not the place I was meant to be. Her classes helped awaken a desire to write and I have done so in various forms since then. This book inspired me to get back on the horse for writing my novel and to finally start working on a piece of non-fiction that’s been flitting about my brain for a while. Her reply note is just as encouraging:
You were the most inspired writer in our creative writing class…I have no doubt that you’re going to shake up the literary world.
She’s currently teaching at low-residency program at Spaulding University, a class I am considering taking in the future, thanks of course to her note. I must admit, it’s taken me ten years to finally find a story that I want to write, and for her an incredible tale of “Idealism and Tragedy”* almost seemed to fall into her lap. Then I realized how many years it was waiting for her to find it–it waited until Dean decided to run for President and HR brought out an old red journal to share his part of the story.
What a busy whirl-wind weekend this was! Most of what I did all ties back into what I’ve been reading, so I’ll give you a little run-down and will go into a little more depth over the course of the week.
Coming up in a few weeks is the Coney Island Mermaid Parade. I marched for the first time last year with the Brooklyn Bombshells. My little seersucker sailor outfit was a hit with the MC and I decided to go all out this year with full on sparkle. Cindy took me out fabric shopping on Saturday and will be helping me to sew my creation together. Finally a chance to read the McCall’s Sewing Guide that’s been tucked away in a closet for a few years; of course, I am pretty sure there is no chapter on how to get your fins attached properly! I’ve also requested a biography on Hollywood’s own mermaid, Esther Williams, The Million Dollar Mermaid.
On my way home I managed to make it into the station just as the dreaded G Train pulled up to the platform. A rare occurrence indeed! Last time I attempted to make a trip up to Word Booksellers, I spent two hours combined riding and waiting for trains. More about Word in a minute.
Finally, yesterday I made it to a performance of the M. Stuart Dance Theater. I’ve known the company’s founder for a few years now and have been following the company’s growth. They are an amazing set of dancers and Mark’s mission for the company is to create stories out of movement–something he is very talented at.
Back to Word.
For the most part, my book shopping has been at the big warehouse store, Barnes & Noble. I don’t recall there being any indie booksellers in Burlington, VT back in the 1990s–at least none that I was aware of. Seeing as there was not much in the area to interest teenagers, my friends and I would often head over to B&N to camp out in the horoscope aisle with our Starbucks. While at college, there was one little bookseller and the shelves were filled mostly with religious propaganda (and Terry Pratchett!), so most of my shopping was done while visiting my family or in the campus bookshop. Once in Manhattan, I returned to B&N and the library, as both were a quick jaunt away from my apartment.
So, it was immensely refreshing to enter a bookstore where the atmosphere wasn’t about coffee, consumerism, Christianity, or team spirit. In fact, Word oozed modest intelligence. Thin shelves are arranged to let in the light, and the staff chats casually with customers telling them the good and bad of book recommendations and swapping thoughts. Stephanie* from Bookavore was behind the counter and remembered me by my many emails reserving books and then not making it in (see aforementioned G Train comment).
Word isn’t exactly convenient to my apartment, but I do plan on stopping by again, but not until I make a trip to Community Bookstore since they are a 15-minute walk ,which is much more preferable than that train trip. However, I like the sunny coziness of Word and the chatty bibliophile banter that goes on. Next time I’ll schedule in a little more lounge time to peruse the shelves and see what interesting recommendations can be found among the stacks.
* I was totally planning on introducing myself to Stephanie by saying, “Hi, I’m Stacked.” Because I think it’s rather funny. But my feet were in the first flip-flop wearing pain of the year and I forgot. Luckily when my name wasn’t in the system for having books on hold, she was all, “oh, you’re Stacked, right?” and had put the books aside for me separately. So, yea, still funny.
Marcelo is back with another list of five books, and it was a delight to read. Hope you all enjoy it as much as I did! .c
I was an avid reader as a kid. And as a daycare worker and camp counselor, I’ve seen firsthand how the right book at the right time can change a kid’s life. I’ve seen books transform teenagers overnight, turning them into passionate advocates and thinkers because a book moved them. When I first started reading Stacked, the first book that came to my mind that Christina had to read was such a book, Cory Doctorow’s awesome Little Brother. I could conceive of someone reading LB and deciding to become an info-activist or a hacker–a Big Life Decision spurred by a book they loved. Books like that are rare, and I thought in honor of Little BrotherI’d present five more books worth putting into a kid’s hands. These range from books for younger kids to books for teenagers, but they’re all wonderful and valuable.
Danny The Champion of the Worldby Roald Dahl – Most people who recommend Dahl recommend Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Matilda or one of my all-time favorites, The Witches. This book has flown under the radar for decades, probably because it’s the only children’s book Dahl wrote that doesn’t contain any magical elements. It’s a simple slice-of-life story about a boy and his father living in a caravan in the English countryside and the adventure they go through when the boy discovers his father’s deep dark secret.
What’s wonderful about this book is the attention to detail Dahl gives the community around the boy and his father, the autobiographical elements taken straight from his own childhood. Dahl clearly has a great deal of fondness for his characters and the story. Even though there’s nothing overtly magical or supernatural in the story, Dahl still fills it with the magic of everyday life. There’s a quiet stillness in it, an elegance that doesn’t really exist in Dahl’s other works for kids. It’s truly a gem and worth any kid’s valuable time.
A Wrinkle in Timeby Madeleine L’Engle – This is not an obscure book. It is beloved and appreciated by so many people. But I put it on this list because I remember so clearly how my 4th grade brain was completely stretched by this curious novel about hyperdimensional travel, and how even after having it explained to me over and over again, I couldn’t quite bend my mind around the concept of the Tesseract. The beauty of this book is that even if you never quite get there, you get somewhere.
At first you think it’s going to be a fun book about three bumbling witches and the adventures they take the kids on. But before you know it, the kids are thinking about hyperdimensional reality and flying across the universe to face off against an ominous evil. In a literary world filled with cheap surface-level fantasy franchises like Harry Potter, it’s nice to see a book that challenges and expands consciousness rather than cocooning it in an easily accessible world. Books like HP are safe. This one isn’t. In fact, it’s usually the first book a young reader ever encounters that truly tests them. And that test has so much value. I love seeing the look on a young reader’s face when they read this book, as their brains come to grips with what they’re being asked to understand. They’re never quite the same afterwards.
Frek and the Elixirby Rudy Rucker – Frek is a young boy on an Earth far removed from our own –a biotech company called NuBioCom has released a virus that prevents reproduction, so now only NuBioCom-approved genetically modified species roam the earth–generic dogs that are all the same, anyfruit trees and grobread plants that feed the world, even house-trees with wifi circuits genetically built into their walls. Life is pleasant and unremarkable, and every day looks and feels exactly like the last one. That all changes when a small alien appears in a cartoon Frek is watching, bearing a message from his long-lost father. Before he can even stop to rest, Frek is on the run from the authorities, taking flight in a miraculous spaceship powered by strange alien technology, and visiting planes of existence he never could have imagined.
This is a fun science fiction yarn that combines thrilling action and adventure with thought-provoking science. Kids will love the story of a young boy who may be Earth’s only hope to restore the genome, but they will also feel their minds bend over backwards to conceptualize dozens of typical wacky Ruckerisms, from a journey into the hyperspatial Planck brane to the natural habitat of an alien race that lives inside stars. They’ll also learn about concepts like biotech and monoculture and compare the world Frek lives in with the world we live in today–and it’s not that far off. This is the perfect book to give to the slightly nerdy science fiction fan who’s looking for something different but completely challenging. It would also make a great Pixar movie.
The Plain Janes/Janes in Loveby Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg – I’m not a comic book fan at all, but I love the line of short black and white graphic novels put out by a small division at DC Comics called Minx. Aimed at a teenage girl audience, the books are short, small, cheap, and most importantly, very smart. The Plain Janesis a great book to start checking out this line. Jane’s parents move her out of the big city to the suburbs after a minor terrorist attack freaks them out. In a new school with new questions about herself and her world, Jane finds a tribe of friends from all different corners and together they attempt to change their community through public “art attacks” in their tight-ass neighborhood. Labeled as terrorists and vandals, the Janes continue to strive to change the world by changing the community around them.
This book and its sequel, Janes in Love, are the perfect books to hand to a teenage girl who is still finding herself. They celebrate nonconformity and self-confidence and are empowering and sweet. The characters are well-developed and real, and the books don’t pander to what most publishers of books think the teenage girl crowd wants–stories of rich brats and designer jeans and who’s going out with whom. I wouldn’t be surprised if this book inspires some kid to go do the same thing in their town. The entire Minx line is filled with other great books that feature the same qualities, all drawn by different artists in different styles, featuring unique and quirky characters and plots. If you like these two books, you have a whole group of similar books to check out afterwards.
Cuntby Inga Muscio – Give this book to your free-thinking daughter during their senior year in high school. It’s a controversial feminist manifesto that challenges female readers to own their feminity and reclaim words like “cunt” for themselves. Muscio combines this call to arms with her own autobiographical journey of discovery, sharing extremely personal details about her own life (including a self-induced miscarriage). She also offers her readers alternative ways to own their femininity without having to depend on male-created institutions for their health.
This is the perfect book to give to the young woman in high school who’s looking for a way to empower herself and her gender. It will challenge sacred beliefs, reaffirm long-held truths, and ultimately introduce whomever you give it to to a whole new world of thinking. Most importantly, it’s the kind of book that creates women who aren’t afraid of being self-aware and articulate and beautiful in a way that they define and they own. In today’s high school space where teenage girls are hypersexualized, treated like marketing pawns, and expected to conform to a world that men have defined for them, this book breaks through all that to find and celebrate real women everywhere.
Utilizing Second Life, Ill Clan (a machinima animation studio) recently created a “trailer” for the pre-teen novel Cemetery Street by Brenda Seabrooke. With the popularity of YouTube and the video capabilities of Facebook, this seems like a fantastic new way to reach out to potential readers; it is more engaging than a banner ad and has the ability to be shared – and word of mouth goes a long way. A brief video is more able to capture the imagination of readers than a static image that does nothing to clue a potential read into the mood or writing style of an author.
As ”book trailers” develop and become more common (they’ve been around since about 2002), it will be interesting to watch how the medium grows and future trailers develop as more publishers take advantage to such an easy marketing tool. I really like the animation approach by using Ill Clan as the lack of human actors or physical locations still affords use of the imagination that comes with reading.
The book is targeted at younger readers (8-12) and after enjoying the The Twilight Series I’ve been meaning to check out some of the books out there for younger readers. Cemetery Street has a strong recommendation — Ill Clan points out on their blog and mentions in the trailer that the book is nominated for a 2009 Edgar Allen Poe Award.
Big thanks to my friend Rikomatic for point this out to me.
UPDATE 2/21/09: I’m trying to arrange a little informal interview with my friend Frank Dellario of Ill Clan to learn a little more about how they put the trailer together. Hopefully I’ll have a post for you soon.
Christina recently watched the first season of StarTrek: The Next Generation for the first time and reviewed episodes in conjunction with Wil Wheaton's book Memories of the Future
You can check out all the original posts and new reviews at the new AMNESIA OF THE FUTURE site.
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I am wild about short stories. I know some people aren’t, but for me an excellent collection of short stories is like drinking whiskey neat on a cold night–pleasing to all the senses. To me, the most successful short stories are like the landscape of an anal retentive neighbor–shrubs are neatly pruned, flowers are planted in line with the pathway. You can’t overindulge in a short story; if you do, it becomes a sopping mess.
Yesterday I mentioned my cousin Dee and her love of the 
Anyway, the other weekend we had a huge family reunion at her house to celebrate our Grandmother’s birthday. Since it was a surprise party, I went up early and managed to fit in a few minutes to take photos of her bookshelves. Her room has three shelves, the tallest has non-book related things on it, while the other two are jam packed. 
It’s becoming a habit that I apologize for the backlog of belated reviews here. It’s a shame as I was backlogged when I read 
Frek and the Elixir
Cunt
by Brenda Seabrooke. With the popularity of 
I’ve been meaning to check out some of the books out there for younger readers. 
