Rules:

Last year we read Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which I think was about as well-received as can be expected for something everyone had to read. This year we want something that won’t feel like a re-tread of that style and those themes.

I spent some time Googling all-school read programs, and it doesn’t seem terribly common after middle school. I was surprised at how few lists and suggestions were already out there. Let’s start a resource the whole internet can use!

Christy Lusiak, counselor and Lecturer in English and Women & Gender Studies, spoke about “triggering,” which might be of interest to those of you who had such a good discussion about it back on my original post. She defined a trigger as something that “retraumatizes a victim of abuse, or any traumatic event.” I like her use of the word “retraumatize” — as distinct from ordinary kinds of being upset.

Christy also noted that the flip side of triggers is that a different victim of the same sort of trauma might read the same book and find comfort in it. One of the many reasons why content warnings would have been a better idea than removing the books entirely.

Panelist Amy Pattee, my Children’s Lit prof from library school, and moderator Kelly Hager, interim Chair of Women’s and Gender Studies (both super-smart women for whom I have endless respect) discussed the more theoretical aspects of creating a list of books “for the feminist reader.” What does that mean anyway? Are readers feminist just because they’re female, or because they’re actively working for women’s equality, or because they’re girls who the writers of the Bitch list hope will do so eventually, or what?

And what is a book meant to do for such a reader? The word “empower” shows up predictably on this list and others like it, but empower whom to do what? As Amy asked, is it only feminist to read books with “kick-ass teens,” or can you still be a feminist reader reading Sweet Valley High? Does being a “feminist reader” mean something about how you critically interact with texts, all texts? (In other words, are you a feminist who is reading, or are you reading in a feminist manner?)

And who cares anyway? What’s the point of lists? It’s easy to sniff at the authoritarianism of list-making in this era of crowd-sourcing, but a list from people or an organization with authority in the field has value, I think. There are simply too many books in the world (movies, albums, restaurants…); sometimes we want to enjoy serendipity, but sometimes we rely on those with experience to narrow our choices down. One problem — the biggest one, I’d say — with the Bitch list is that it wasn’t clear who wrote it or what their criteria were. But with those specified (“we are the editors of a feminist magazine, compiling a list of stories that we hope will inspire teenage girls to be thoughtful about their role in the world as women,” to toss out my hasty, poorly-written attempt), and with some annotations on the books themselves, Bitch could have created something really valuable.

As usual, I parked my obnoxious little self in the front row and talked too much. Sorry, Kelly (and everyone else). I made too much of a concern that many of the books aren’t “YA.” To be clearer about my issue with this: yes, there isn’t a clear definition for what YA means, but it seems to me that a list that includes both Harriet the Spy and Hunger Games without being clear why, and puts both under the banner “YA,” hasn’t thought things through. There’s overlap, yes, but these are not books for the same readers at the same point in their lives.

Simmons took a survey and ended up with its own list, which has exactly the same problems as the Bitch list: it isn’t clear who wrote it and the criteria and goals aren’t clear. A crowd-sourced list from the general Simmons community asked to choose their “favorite” feminist YA books from the Bitch list garnered a fairly predictable top 10 of mostly classics we adults would have loved as kids (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, A Wrinkle in Time, Island of the Blue Dolphins) and a few modern classics widely read by adults (Hunger Games, Speak, Golden Compass). Books like The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and Climbing the Stairs, which might have something even more compelling to say to the modern feminist girl, were overlooked, probably because they were unfamiliar to most of the voters from outside the YA lit field. There’s an interesting list of write-in votes (from Little Women to the Abhorsen trilogy), but it’s just as unmediated as the rest.

Simmons College, a reputable women’s college with an outstanding library school and Children’s Literature department, is in a position at least as good as Bitch Magazine’s to create a meaningful list of “books for the feminist reader.” I would really, really love for that to happen. And in the meantime, the discussion was utterly fascinating and an hour wasn’t nearly enough. Thanks, Kelly, Amy, and Christy, for making it happen!

The middle school section at the beginning is the part you helped with. (And those yellow highlighted books, by the way? Are links to YouTube videos of booktalks by my colleagues and me. I can’t bear to watch mine, but feel free to mock my ridiculous facial expressions and hair-fiddling.)

Thanks to all of your for your fantastic suggestions! Special props to those of you who suggested:

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Susan Cooper
Lloyd Alexander
Watership Down
Island on Bird Street (replacing one of the seven — yes, really — Holocaust books on last year’s list)
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (which I’d never heard of and totally want to read now!)
Of Nightingales That Weep
Hatchet

…all of which I included. Many of your suggestions were already on the list, and some were (sorry) too old or too young. But I loved hearing what all of you read in middle school, and your ideas definitely helped round out my list!

For the grown-up who wants something packaged as Actual Literature:

• Marcelo in the Real World, Francisco X. Stork — Marcelo relates to people as though he has Asperger’s (the book eschews an easy label) and has spent his whole life in a special school. For his last summer in high school, his dad sets Marcelo up with a job in the “real world”: the mailroom in his dad’s law firm. The real world turns out to be full of grey areas, moral complications, and a lot more growing up than Marcelo or his dad had counted on.
• Nation, Terry Pratchett — Mau’s island village is wrecked by a tsunami; he is the only survivor. Daphne’s ship runs aground on Mau’s island during the same storm; she, too, is alone. As survivors start to stream in from nearby islands, the two become leaders, adults, and entirely different from who their societies intended them to be.

For your favorite bad-ass girl (or boy):

• Graceling, Kristin Cashore — Katsa is Graced with superhuman fighting abilities, which her uncle the king forces her to use for his petty vengeance. Under his nose, though, she starts a Council of Robin Hoods bent on protecting the common people tormented by the whims of the kings. In the process of doing the Council’s work, she meets a prince who shares her Grace and uncovers the horrible secret behind a distant king’s rule. This book has it all: violence, romance, adventure, perfectly plotted mysteries… ok, I sound like the grandpa in A Princess Bride, but trust me, you’ll love it.
• Rapunzel’s Revenge, Shannon Hale, Dean Hale, & Nathan Hale — This graphic novel sets Rapunzel in the Wild West, with a greedy mine-owning wicked witch, an endearing outlaw sidekick named Jack (of Beanstalk fame), and a Rapunzel who climbs down her own damn hair.

For absolutely everyone 9-14 (and plenty who are older):

• A Crooked Kind of Perfect, Linda Urban — Zoe dreams of being a piano prodigy, of playing classical music at Carnegie Hall in a long, elegant dress. But her agoraphobic dad has trouble saying no to salesmen, so instead of a piano, what she gets is a Perfectone organ and a chance to compete at the Perfectone Perform-A-Rama. This book will make you laugh, cry, and gain a new appreciation for Neil Diamond’s “Forever in Blue Jeans.”
• When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead — Miranda walks home with her best friend every day, helps her mom study for her $20,000 Pyramid debut, and reads A Wrinkle in Time over and over again. But suddenly her life is full of odd characters: the crazy man under the mailbox on her street, and the kid who punches her best friend for no reason. And then she starts getting the notes… This is the sort of book you’ll need to read again the minute you finish it, just for the pleasure of seeing how all the pieces fit into place.
• The True Meaning of Smekday, Adam Rex — When the Boov invade, they herd everyone in America to Florida. How much space do all these humans need, anyway? Tip and her cat road-trip south, joined by an outlaw Boov named JLo… until even scarier aliens show up and they have to save the world. It sounds silly, and it is, but it’s also secretly brilliant. Not to be missed.

For thinkers who aren’t afraid of adventure, and adventurers who aren’t afraid of thinking:

• The Knife of Never Letting Go & The Ask and the Answer, Patrick Ness — Prentisstown is a human settlement on an alien planet. In a war with the natives, everyone was infected with the Noise. Noise killed all the women in Prentisstown and left the men able to hear each others’ thoughts, whether they want to or not. Todd is the last boy in Prentisstown, about to become a man when he turns thirteen in a month. But shit is going ill, and even though he doesn’t understand any of it, he and his dog need to run, now, into the rest of New World beyond the swamp. He’d always been taught there was nothing beyond Prentisstown, but it turns out that a lot of what he thought he knew is a lie… You won’t be able to put it down, or even take a breath, until it’s over.
• Hunger Games & Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins — In a post-apocalyptic U.S., now called Panem, the merciless Capitol rules the twelve Districts. The Capitol gets all the good food, all the advanced technology, all the comforts; all most District people get is work and hunger. To remind the Districts who’s in charge, every year the Capitol forces each District to choose at random a boy and a girl as tributes. The twenty-four lucky kids are contestants in the Hunger Games: a fight to the death, broadcast throughout Panem as the ultimate reality show entertainment. Deeply disturbing, but worth it.

For anyone at all (seriously):

• The Arrival, Shaun Tan — The story of a man who escapes his threatened home to start a new life on foreign shores, leaving his wife and daughter behind until he has enough money to send for them, is told wordlessly in rich sepia-toned pencil drawings. It’s the most beautiful book ever, and works on appropriate levels for all ages.

Let me know if any of these suggestions work out for you and yours!

Comment here

Except books, of course! The new year is traditionally a time for “best-of” lists, and this blog is no exception. These 5 books have the whole package: believable, endearing characters; stories that keep me turning pages; humor that doesn’t work too hard; real moments of gut-wrenching emotional intensity; sheer can’t-put-it-down-ness. They have solid literary chops and are worth a look even for those of you who think you don’t read YA.

My 5 favorite YA novels I read this year are:

Graceling, by the lovely and talented Kristin Cashore
As Katsa, a young woman Graced with fighting ability, and her new friend Po unravel a mysterious kidnapping, it leads them to the dark secret behind a distant king’s rule. If you love fantasy, adventure, romance (…do I sound like the grandpa in Princess Bride yet?), and especially if you are one of those who shows up at my house and says, “Sam! Feed me good YA!” (you know who you are)… well, consider yourself fed.

An Abundance of Katherines, by John Green
After being dumped by his 19th girlfriend named Katherine, a former child prodigy and his slacker best friend take a road trip in search of adventure, romance, and themselves. Whether you think you like YA or not, read some John Green this year. You can thank me later.

Double Helix, by Nancy Werlin
Eli discovers that his new boss, a famous geneticist, has a mysterious past which is somehow entangled with Eli’s own. Creepy science mystery, with bonus points for familiar Cambridge settings!

The Off-Season, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
DJ Schwenk, the only female football player in Wisconsin, has her life complicated further by a boy, an injury, her family farm’s financial troubles, and a terrible accident (among other things). DJ is one of my favorite characters in YA lit. This is a sequel; read Dairy Queen first. (Ooh, apparently the third DJ book is coming out next fall! Also, Murdock’s sister is Elizabeth Gilbert, of Eat Pray Love fame. Who knew?)

Kiki Strike: The Empress’s Tomb, by Kirsten Miller (annoying sound/Flash animation alert!)
The further adventures of Kiki Strike, “butt-kicking girl superspy,” and her band of “delinquent Girl Scouts” as they solve another mystery in the tunnels under New York. This is younger and therefore a tougher sell for adults who don’t already love YA, but if you read a lot of Nancy Drew or Trixie Belden as a kid — or if there’s a badass 10-14-year old girl in your life who needs a present — give Kiki and her Irregulars a whirl.

(I didn’t include any of the Cybils nominees in this list — not because there weren’t a few that would have been in the running, but because they’ve already been whittled down to top-5 lists of their own.)

Thanks for the title, Brian!

Comment here

I also can’t wait to read the Fantasy & Science Fiction, YA, and Middle Grade lists — and then start foisting them on my students!

I’m proud to say that I read 42 out of the 49 nominees to the Graphic Novel panel — whew! (A few more reviews are in the pipeline, in case you were worried. I know you were.) All in all, it was a great experience, and I can’t wait for next year. Props to Betsy, Gina, Paula, Liz, and Snow — thanks for everything, y’all!

Comment here

I’m a member of the Graphic Novel Panel! Squee! Could not be more excited, seriously.

And now y’all need to go nominate graphic novels, especially, so that I have good stuff to read.

Comments

In every fantasy novel that we could think of in which characters have sex and don’t get KID (as my boyfriend so charmingly puts it), they either a) ignore birth control entirely, or b) have some herb or spell that magically eliminates pregnancy as a possibility. 100% effective, easily obtained, no side effects. Wouldn’t we all love to have birth control like that?

As a plot device, it’s invaluable: you can be responsible by bringing up the issue of pregnancy, and then sweep it off the table easily, leaving the characters to grapple with the more emotionally interesting reasons to have sex or not. But I would love to see a fantasy novel deal with the modern (and age-old) fact that sex isn’t just an emotional risk, it’s also a physical risk.

(The only counter-example I can think of is Pamela Dean’s Tam-Lin. I read it a decade ago and don’t remember the details, but as I recall, Janet’s magical birth control fails (does Thomas make it fail on purpose? I forget). In the end, though, she’s happy about the pregnancy, despite being in college. Correct me if I’m wrong here, people who are more into this book than I am.)

Most fantasy (and historical) novels, of course, eventually get around this by having the heroine decide that she wants kids after all. She meets the right man and decides to slow down from her adventuring days. Alanna does it, Sabriel does it, Catherine-called-Birdy does it. In Sean Stewart’s Nobody’s Son, Gail’s decision to have a child is the happy ending on the very last page (and in that world, there is no magical birth control, so Gail has been denying poor Mark not just sons, but booty). These are all totally reasonable decisions for the characters to make. Often the woman is heir to something and has little choice, so you’re just glad she’s found a way to be happy with her destiny. As a woman who doesn’t want kids and (at almost-30) has yet to change her mind, though, I’m invested in seeing more characters choose to remain childless. Even if that does limit the possibility for multi-generational sequels.

So I read four YA novels written around the turn of the 21st century, set in post-apocalyptic-ville (or immediately-pre-apocalyptic-ville):

The Secret Under My Skin, Janet McNaughton: Former street kid Blay, now a ward of the totalitarian state, is chosen to help Marrella prepare for her investiture as a bio-indicator. Bio-indicators used to be ritual sacrifices to keep the planet’s toxins at bay; now they’re part of an underground movement to bring science and democracy back to Canada. Blay comes to live with the scientist and resistance leader who are training Marrella, and discovers truths about her own past and future.

Apocalypse how? Here we get two apocalypses* for the price of one: the gradual environmental destruction I was hoping to find in one of these books, which happened well before the characters’ lifetimes, plus a more recent “technocaust” (the mass murder of scientists, who are blamed for the environmental disaster). A neo-Dark Ages, scientists-as-shamans, complex political machinations, brave revolutionaries, “love makes a family,” three-dimensional adults… way to push all my post-apocalyptic buttons, Janet! And it’s very well-written, to boot. I heart this book!

Star Split, Kathryn Lasky: Lasky doesn’t mess around — this novel is set all the way in 3038, when everyone is cured of genetic diseases in utero, and the educated elite are given an extra chromosome to which they can attach extra abilities and talents. The entire culture is focused on genetic manipulation, and the highest crime is unauthorized “umbellation” (cloning).

Apocalypse how? Well, that’s not so clear. This was my least favorite of the bunch, because (among other things) it’s terribly scattered. Of course heroine Darci finds out that her parents cloned her, using added DNA from the less-genetically-manipulated underclass Originals. Turns out her parents are part of a resistance movement, which is resisting the permanent change of the human race into…something else, we’re told. It’s never made clear what that means, or why we don’t want that to happen, or what the larger context is. It only matters that Darci and her clone find that their futures are (gasp!) not predetermined, because they Have Souls and that means God Loves Them.

Songs of Power, Hilari Bell: Imina, the great-granddaughter of an Inuit shaman, wants to be a shaman herself, but she’s stuck in an undersea habitat with her scientist parents and a bunch of other scientists who totally don’t get her belief in magic. But when mysterious Magic-Makers mess with their habitat, only Imina can figure out what’s going on.

Apocalypse how? The reason the habitat (and many others like it) exists is that a revolutionary group (with Commie-esque slogans, but no clear agenda) semi-accidentally released a genetic virus that will render the nutrients in all terrestrial plants unavailable to humans within a few years. Humanity will need to feed itself from the sea for a few decades until the virus runs its course, so the habitat is studying ways to increase plankton growth and thereby increase the populations of fish we eat. Aside from the gaping scientific holes in this scheme, it struck me as a lot of contortions just to get to “we can’t feed ourselves the usual way anymore.” Bell forced man-made instantaneous apocalypse to do the duty of longer-term environmental apocalypse.

(Oh, and this one’s for you, Miriam: the Magic-Makers, with whom only Imina can communicate? They turn out to be the noble Whales, defending their noble way of life from human encroachment. Is that better than dolphins, at least? Maybe?)

Among the Hidden, Margaret Peterson Haddix: This one’s similar to Star Split in that it’s about a controversial birth policy: after a national famine, followed by a military coup, families are only allowed two children. Luke is a third, born to a mother with more sentiment than sense: “You just happened, [and] I wouldn’t even let your dad talk about… getting rid of you.” So he’s stuck in his attic bedroom, with no hope for a real life ever — thanks, Mom! Until one day he sees another third child out the window, and gets caught up in her revolutionary schemes.

Apocalypse how? Until Luke meets Jen halfway through the book, we know virtually nothing about the politics of this world — Luke’s parents are uneducated subsistence farmers, but Jen’s are high-ranking government officials who allow her internet access. Jen’s view of the world is skewed too, though, so we never get a very clear picture of what, exactly, happened to cause the famine, or what the situation is now. Thumbs up to the atmospheric ambiguity, thumbs down to the confusion.

So for those keeping score at home, we have one genetic apocalypse, two famine apocalypses (one man-made and one probably not), and one environmental apocalypse with an added touch of genocide. (And one Sam, grateful that most of the books weren’t so complex or deep, because otherwise she’d be extremely freaked out.) I suppose it’s easier to set up a high-stakes challenge for the characters if you set the apocalypse right now or right before they were born, rather than building over decades/centuries.

And hey, if you need an insta-pocalypse, and nuclear war is so 1975, you could always have asteroids slam into the moon and knock it off course! I haven’t read Susan Beth Pfeffer’s Life As We Knew It, but…um…that’s not likely to happen, is it?

*”Now I find myself needing to know the plural of ‘apocalypse’.” – Riley, Buffy

1. Witch of Blackbird Pond, by Elizabeth George Speare — When you think “romance,” you probably don’t think “Puritan New England.” But Blackbird Pond was the first love story that I was ever swept away by. Brave girl, cocky boy, detailed descriptions of pretty dresses, triple wedding at the end: what’s not to love?

2. Boy Meets Boy, by David Levithan — Paul’s budding romance with the new boy in school is all snuggled up in a gay (in both senses of the world) suburban utopia, in which quarterback Darlene is the homecoming (drag) queen, and everyone gets to love whoever they want. It’s like a love letter to the future.

3. An Abundance of Katherines, by John Green — I just reviewed this, but as I said, it’s my new favorite book, so clearly it goes on the list.

4. Born Confused, by Tanuja Desai Hidier — Dimple swears up and down that she wants nothing to do with the nice Indian boys her parents pick out — until they introduce her to Karsh, and her white best friend Gwyn falls for him. This has more actual pain than the previous three (and more moments in which you want to smack the characters upside their well-coiffed heads), but that makes the happy ending all the sweeter.

5. Weetzie Bat, by Francesca Lia Block — My (otherwise awesome) YA lit professor in grad school enjoyed mocking the hippie-dippy ending of Weetzie Bat, but reading it always makes me feel like hugging everyone (because I, like Weetzie, am a giant hippie): “…[L]ove and disease are both like electricity, Weetzie thought. They are always there — you can’t see or smell or hear, touch, or taste them, but you know they are there like a current in the air. We can choose, Weetzie thought, we can choose to plug into the love current instead. And she looked around the table at [her family] — all of them lit up and golden like a wreath of lights. I don’t know about happily ever after…but I know about happily, Weetzie Bat thought.”

Plug into the love current today, y’all.

Question: What are your favorite happy-ending love stories?