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One last piece of dystopiana: Research Reveals That Apocalyptic Stories Changed Dramatically 20 Years Ago.

Chanda Phelan wrote this article based on her thesis, for which she looked at a ton of apocalyptic literature from 1826 to 2007 and charted the nature of the apocalypse. Click the image at the top of the article for a full-size version of her amazing chart.

See the spike in natural apocalypses right around the publication of Silent Spring (1962)! Note all the divine apocalypses when the first Left Behind book came out (1996)! I’m dying to get a look at her raw data, but just the graph is fun enough.

(All this discussion of doom books has inspired me to re-read some gems from my YA post-apocalyptic bookshelf. Old-skool apocalypse theme month coming in April!)

Ah, vampires. Sexy, powerful, immortal vampires. What if you achieved immortality at your dorkiest? Would you be stuck an awkward high school boy forever?

While we’re asking questions, what if you were sick to death of vampires, but the author of The True Meaning of Smekday, one of the most brilliant pieces of children’s fiction in recent years, wrote a vampire novel? You’d read it. And the bar would be set way too high, and you’d be disappointed.

Adam Rex is a funny guy, no doubt. He captures the sweaty awkwardness of the high school male perfectly, and if I taught at a school with boys in it, I would buy this right away and make them all read it. (As it is, there are a few too many boner jokes for my clientele.)

It did not, however, transcend my expectations for “high school boy vampire.” There are touches of metaphoric theme: “vampirism = unhealthy relationship” and “immortality is static; growing up means changing.” There are intriguing ideas: one character posits that what it means to be a vampire shifts based on societal expectations; another character has “the google,” a mental illness that comes of too much self-referential internet use. None of these are explored nearly enough; the story is a mishmash of dropped threads that aren’t integral to the conclusion.

Oh, and can we talk about the title? The fact that Doug is fat really has nothing to do with anything. The point is that he’s dorky and unpopular; the title uses “fat” as lazy and offensive shorthand for that. The first chapter is called “My Dork Embrace,” which is the cleverest thing in the whole book and would have made an excellent title.

Obvious read-alikes: The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl has the same sort of dorky anti-hero; the graphic novel Life Sucks has a virtually identical premise.

Thanks again to the fabulous Laura at HarperCollins for sending me a copy! Coming to a library or independent bookstore near you in July.

Also reviewed by: Steve Is Not an Octopus and… pretty much nobody else. Whee, I’m ahead of the curve!

Post-apocalyptic and/or dystopian fiction! It’s: a) pretty much all I read as an adolescent, b) what made the hippie I am today, c) ridiculously popular all of a sudden in YA lit, or d) all of the above?

D, obviously. The YA lit world is exploding with talk of dystopias. This article from Publishers Weekly gives a good overview of what’s coming out, and theorizes about its current popularity:

“In the late ’80s, the government was seemingly more in control of terrorist things, and the financial system seemed more in control,” says Regina Griffin, executive editor at Egmont USA…. “People didn’t feel that same sense of perpetual unease that is invading books now.” In other words, the time is ripe. “The dystopic novel reflects the current mood of the new generation of young people who see that their future isn’t as rosy,” says child psychiatrist Elizabeth Berger, author of Raising Kids with Character.

As someone who read boatloads of these books in the late ’80s, I don’t know that I agree with this. I remember my 3-2-1 Contacts being full of acid rain and pollution, and anyone who grew up in a liberal household like mine was unsettled by the “traditional values” of the Reagan/H.W. Bush era. Maybe the government was “more in control of terrorist things,” but that just means that didn’t happen to be our Number One Fear at the time. Or maybe I was just a downer kid.

Diana Peterfreund, author of Rampant, tries to untangle “post-apocalyptic” from “dystopian.” (This is slightly easier than defining “fantasy” vs. “science fiction,” but only slightly.) It’s getting more common to lump the terms together, but Diana seems to prefer thinking of a dystopia as “a utopia gone horribly wrong” or “aiming for utopia and missing.”

I’m inclined to agree. Dystopias often follow apocalypses (cue Buffy line about “the plural of apocalypse”), but the beauty of the English language is specificity. We have two words for a reason. Uglies and The Ask and the Answer are both post-apoc and dystopian, The Forest of Hands and Teeth is just plain post-apoc, and Little Brother is just plain dystopian (assuming you would argue, considering the book takes place years later on the other side of the country, that Sept. 11th was not an apocalypse).

As Diana says, “Like a scientist, the author of a dystopian work of fiction creates a set of very particular conditions within which he runs his human experiment.” I love this; that’s exactly what appeals to me about dystopias. Whereas while post-apocalyptics can be this specific, they often boil down to the same themes, with the restrictive governments and/or warlord anarchy.

It does make me wish that we had a word that would lump the two sub-genres together, though, since as Diana points out, they appeal to the same readers. I usually say “speculative fiction,” but that’s not specific enough. Thoughts, clever readers?

Finally, Presenting Lenore is wrapping up Dystopian February, with a world of reviews and author interviews! Here’s one with Patrick Ness, of my beloved Knife of Never Letting Go.

1. No Brownies at Bake Sales, but Doritos May Be O.K. raised my blood pressure way more than a whole plate of brownies (mmm… brownies):

Nine months after effectively banning most fund-raising food sales in city schools, a city panel will vote Wednesday on an amended regulation that will allow student groups to sell items like Pop-Tarts and Doritos during the school day, but not brownies, zucchini bread or anything else homemade.

Ostensibly this is about “health”: they have a whole list of proposed regulations about percentage of calories from fat and allowable ingredients. It could also be about allergies. (My theory, based on the sort of things I’ve heard people say at my school, is that it’s at least partly about sanitation: who knows what could be going on at those other parents’ houses? At least if it’s pre-packaged I know it’s safe!)

Shall we count the things that piss me off here? “Childhood obesity” is a bogus bogeyman. Let’s teach our kids to make healthy choices about their diets rather than micromanaging everything. A list of ingredients and a portion size doesn’t make something healthy — in fact, I would argue that, whatever the fat content, brownies made from scratch are healthier than Pop-Tarts because they’re made out of actual food ingredients pronounceable by human beings. Baking together at home is an educational family bonding activity; stopping by Costco is not so much. And for crying out loud, can schools stop [insert gross metaphor here that I won't use because this is a family site] huge corporations already?

That’s five things, and I didn’t even include my made-up sanitation theory!

2. From Wired: How to Raise Racist Kids.

Step One: Don’t talk about race. Don’t point out skin color. Be “color blind.”

Step Two: Actually, that’s it. There is no Step Two.

Or at least, so says the authors of a recent book researching how kids think about race.

3. And back to food… The Anti-Fridge

While the wall-mounted “anti-fridges” are pretty cool, I’m not sure they’re so practical for large quantities. My current eating lifestyle involves very little refrigeration in production or transportation, but lots in my home. Turns out you have to chill a lot of produce if you a) live in New England, b) don’t buy produce except from the farmer’s market, and c) want to eat something other than root veggies all winter. But it does concern me to be so dependent on refrigeration… clearly I’ve found my next Crazy Hippie Food Project!

The best thing about this link, though, is that it introduced me to You Are What You Eat by Mark Menjivar, “a series of portraits made by examining the interiors of refrigerators in homes across the United States.” It’s not quite as amazing as Material World: A Global Family Portrait, but darn close.

(Thanks for the links, Martini-Corona!)

This is the next book by the author of Marcelo in the Real World. I wanted to adore this as much as I adored Marcelo, but it didn’t quite come together for me.

Pancho is a troubled young man with one goal: to avenge the mysterious death of his sister. She was his legal guardian, so after her death, he’s taken to St. Anthony’s, a home for boys. His summer job at St. Tony’s? Taking care of D.J., another boy his age who’s dying of cancer. Before D.J. dies, he’s working to complete his masterpiece, the Death Warrior Manifesto — and Pancho is suddenly key to his plan.

A lot of this is pretty standard Dying Kid Yoda stuff. D.J. spends a lot of time, especially in the first half of the book, sounding holy; I wanted him to sound more like a kid. Assuming you’ve read a book before, you know from the beginning that hanging out with D.J. will “save” Pancho from his anger — though I did believe Pancho’s journey, and it was nice that the emotional saving went both ways by the end.

I found the dialogue forced at times, and the first half of the book dragged. When they get to Albuquerque things picked up, but if I hadn’t had the “Marcelo was so awesome” motivation, it would have already lost me by then.

It’s entirely possible that this is just me, though. My guess is that this will appeal to the kids who love Chris Crutcher (though maybe slightly older versions of those kids, since this is a slower book).

Coming to a bookstore near you in March 2010. I picked up my copy at ALA.

Also reviewed by: Menasha Public Library and MissAttitude of Reading in Color

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Here’s a chance for you, my friends and readers, to tell my kids what to read: what book do you remember most fondly from your 6th-8th grade years? Get your suggestion to me by Thursday night and I’ll probably put it on my school’s middle school summer reading list! (I still want to hear your thoughts if it’s later than Thursday — there’s always next year!)

I’m updating the list, and it really needs a facelift. In particular, I want some older books — I’m pretty on top of what’s new, but I forget about the classics. Bonus points if it’s not fantasy or science fiction, because I’m a bit overloaded in those categories. (Shocker.)

If you’re in the MG/YA lit world and you have a favorite recent (paperback) suggestion, I’d love to hear that, too. Especially if it’s historical fiction, realistic girl fiction, and/or involves characters of color.

(These aren’t required books, in case you’re wondering — you don’t have that much power. Each kid has to choose a couple from the list. I try to shake it up a little every year, so the options don’t get stale. They should have some literary merit, but we’re looking more for enticing than Great Works of Literature.)

Thanks for doing my job for me!

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Now that the Cybils winners are all official ‘n stuff, I can review the finalists from the Middle Grade Fantasy & Science Fiction category. Here they are, in one speedy blowout:

The Prince of Fenway Park, Julianna Baggott

Check this premise, people: the famous Curse on the Red Sox is a real curse, brought on by an angry faerie. Not only does it prevent the Sox from winning the Series, it also traps an odd assortment of Cursed Creatures in tunnels under Fenway Park. Oscar’s deadbeat dad turns out to be one of them, and only Oscar can break the Curse and free his father and the rest of his family.

It’s one of the most original fantasy premises I’ve ever heard, and as a Bostonian I’m contractually obligated to love it at least a little. I wanted to love it a lot — and there were things I did love about it, besides the Boston stuff.

Oscar is mixed-race, white and African-American, and adopted by white parents (ok, one turns out to be half-fae, but it’s not like that’s a box you can check on the census). There aren’t enough books like that to start with, and the way this one uses the fantasy journey to help Oscar find where he belongs is kind of beautiful. The Curse ends up being in part about how shamefully the Sox treated black ballplayers, and the parallels between Oscar and Jackie Robinson were neat. I loved that the Sox weren’t the unmitigated Good Guys — they were a deeply flawed “hero” who had to grow up in order to be worthy of having the Curse broken. It made baseball be about something deeper.

Lots of kids will love this book (though I can’t tell how many will be neither Bostonians nor baseball fans). But I was disappointed in the magic: it’s too easy, too contrived.

The Farwalker’s Quest, Jodi Sensel

In this vaguely post-apocalyptic future, almost no one ever leaves their village, and little old knowledge remains. Thirteen-year-olds Ariel and Zeke are about to choose their vocations, when they find a mysterious message dart in a tree that sends them on a long journey and changes their futures forever.

This is an old-school fantasy adventure that manages not to be (too) derivative, the above summary notwithstanding. If you like the title, you’ll like the book — it’s pretty much as advertised. I couldn’t put it down.

Slight spoiler
I have to tell you, though, that I got a little obsessed with the relationship between Ariel and her protector, Scarl — and I wasn’t alone. A bunch of us judges got vibes. The book claims that they develop a father-daughter relationship, but I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to decide how old Ariel would have to be before their 16-year age gap was no longer icky. I mean, I had a crush on Scarl, so I totally saw where Ariel was coming from. He’s all moody and tortured! (It was very Fire and Hemlock, for the three of you who get that reference.)

11 Birthdays, Wendy Mass

This is Groundhog’s Day for kids — and I love me some Groundhog’s Day, so I found it charming. If you’re looking for a slightly quirky read for nice girls who can’t get enough books about friendship and Learning About Themselves — the girls who loved Savvy — this is a solid choice. But as a potential award winner, I didn’t think it sang.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Grace Lin

If you need a gift book for an elementary school girl, this is a lovely choice. It’s the children’s novel equivalent of a period piece: the set designer and costumer will win Oscars, and it’s easy to ignore the rest.

Fortunately, in this case the rest is also lovely. Lin’s writing is simple in a way that evokes mythology, but it’s meatier than Odd and the Frost Giants. The stories all weave together in a very particular way: I was reminded of Bridge of Birds, which makes me wonder if this brand of story interconnection is a feature of Chinese mythology. (Anyone know?)

I would have been totally bored by it as a kid — there’s not enough excitement, and it would have felt like something adults thought was Good for Me. But I hope not all kids are as narrow-minded as I was, because it really is an excellent book.

Odd and the Frost Giants, Neil Gaiman

This is an invented myth about a boy who tricks the frost giant who’s taken over Asgard, thereby saving his people from endless winter — it’s Neil Gaiman, doing what he does with the reinvented mythology and whatnot. It’s cute, but slight.

The Serial Garden, Joan Aiken

This is a posthumously collected book of Aiken’s short stories about the Armitage family, to whom something magical happens almost — but not every — Monday. They’re delightful, and so adorably British they created an insatiable desire for tea and crumpets… but they’re all kind of the same. Once you’ve got the hang of the amusingly blase way the Armitages react to a unicorn in their backyard or a witch teaching the neighborhood school, you could pretty much write the rest of the stories yourself.

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Snowfall in America brings with it, inevitably, a blizzard of “jokes” about the alleged absurdity of global warming. All of these jokes have two things in common: 1) they mention Al Gore, and 2) they’re not actually funny.

So begins the ever-brilliant Slacktivist’s recent post about the emphasis on blame in the climate change debate: if climate change isn’t “anthropogenic,” then “La la la it’s not our fault and that means…” what? We don’t have to do anything about it?

Slacktivist (who, it should be noted, is a politically liberal evangelical Christian journalist) claims that people make that argument to clean their souls. If we didn’t cause it, then we can still go to environmentalist heaven. I found this perspective fascinating:

This kind of accidentally disastrous consequences arising from well-intentioned actions is particularly confusing for the many Americans, including most evangelical Christians, who have a primarily visceral sense of morality, where what matters is what’s “in your heart.” Good-hearted decisions to do what you think is best for your family — a nice suburban home, cars chosen for their tank-like safety, etc. — can’t conceivably, from this perspective, produce anything but good results. The absence of deliberate malice constitutes innocence.

The whole post is a clearer statement than I’ve been able to formulate yet of something I’ve been saying for years: over the course of my lifetime, the American conversation about climate change jumped from “Global warming what now?” to a mix of “It’s happening but it’s too late” and “Maybe it’s happening, but we didn’t start it, so it’s not our responsibility.” The whole country’s standing around with our fingers on our noses, basically: “Not it!”

Slacktivist uses a quote from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel to draw a key distinction: “Few are guilty; all are responsible.”

[W]hat matters isn’t that we get everyone, or anyone, to accept guilt. What matters is getting everyone to accept responsibility.

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Following up on last week’s post about books in libraries… the NYTimes Room for Debate blog posted some of the comments from students. Most didn’t say much new, but here are a couple of thoughts I liked:

One signed just “a thought”:

Also, books (or any other printed material) cannot be changed by any means without completely destroying them, while e-books can be corrupted anytime … like the time Amazon pulled books from the Kindle, or have we forgotten that already?

It’s so important to remember how malleable and insecure digital information is. Particularly when the information the library “owns” is hosted elsewhere (as with a database), the company can raise prices or discontinue access or shut down entirely — it’s not at all the same as owning the material outright. This isn’t a reason not to use electronic sources, of course, but it has to be a factor in the decision.

From “Jessica, Student,” on what students need:

Excellent physical books to get stuck into and electronic access that makes both broad and precise research feasible.

I couldn’t agree more.

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For the last month I’ve been reading middle grade fantasy & science fiction and discussing it with my fellow panelists, but I couldn’t blog about any of it. Now the winners are official! Yay!

Our Middle Grade F & SF winner is a sequel, Dreamdark: Silksinger by Laini Taylor. I don’t really do fairies (even if you spell it “faeries”), but even I loved this. It’s a satisfying adventure that’s well worth a look. You don’t have to start with the first one, but why wouldn’t you want to?

Here are all the winners. If you’re a teacher or librarian or bookseller, talk these up — and talk up the award while you’re at it! We focus on “kid appeal” and literary quality, which is a different set of criteria than many awards. I think we fill a valuable niche and I’d love for the award to get more recognition!

Thanks to my co-panelists: I couldn’t believe how smooth and easy this process was (not to mention fun)! I’d discuss books with y’all any day.

(Finally, extra-special congratulations to my dear Kristin, who won the YA Fantasy & Science Fiction category for Fire! Woot!)

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