Parenthetical

There’s this Versatile Blogger award meme going around, and my Nerds Heart YA partner Allegra of My Library Card Wore Out gave one of hers to me. Thanks, Allegra! Normally I am not a meme person, but this seems like fun — it’s never a bad idea to take the opportunity to promote worthwhile reading material.

I’m not sure how seriously to take the “versatile” part of the name. I think I’ll interpret it as “I am versatile because I care about things other than YA lit,” so I’ll choose to give my awards to a few bloggers I read regularly who post (at least sometimes) outside of children’s lit. Most of them are my friends in real life, but they are also excellent writers (and pretty low-traffic, which I appreciate).

• No Seriously, What About Teh Menz? — Men’s issues written about in a way that fascinates this feminist, rather than pissing her off.
• Pith — My friend Jesse takes beautiful pictures and thinks about the internet and life and the intersection of the two, and has been posting all of that online even longer than I have. (Which is almost 13 years, not that I’m counting.)
• The CSA Files — I get some of my best recipe ideas from my friend Lexi’s blog.
• There’s a Botticelli Angel Inside, Snapping Beans — In addition to being smart about children’s lit, my friend Rebecca is also smart on the internet about queer theory, fat politics, and other interesting things.

Feel no obligation, but if any of you want to pass this award along, please do!

Growing up, my brother and I were both obsessed with Chris Van Allsburg. The Mysteries of Harris Burdick was a favorite, as it is for so many kids beloved of their imaginations. A collection of magical images dropped off at a publisher by the mysterious Harris Burdick (so the legend goes), each with only a title and caption. The stories would come later, Burdick promised, but he never returned.

Twenty-five (or so) years later, the top authors in the business tell those stories in The Chronicles of Harris Burdick. A week ago I attended a Harvard Bookstore event at the Brattle Theater: Chris Van Allsburg himself, Lois Lowry (one of the contributors, and a local gal), the book’s editor, and moderator/Horn Book editor/professional curmudgeon Roger Sutton.

It was delightful. Some tidbits:

They stuck to the mythology admirably the whole night. “When Harris Burdick dropped off the pictures” this and “Lemony Snicket claims that Burdick sent these stories to the authors in secret” that. Never a snicker or wink from Van Allsburg.

Hollywood’s original Jumanji sequel idea? Jumanji in the White House. “The President discovers the Jumanji game while visiting in France.” Van Allsburg had to come up with a better idea fast to prevent this travesty from seeing the light of film. Hence, Zathura — a game comes to life in space. (Which, while undoubtedly a better idea, may or may not have been a better film. I didn’t see it.)

To avoid fights, the editor called each author in order to pick a picture. She “got very few nos” from the authors she called. (Which is pretty impressive, since we’re talking about a list that includes Stephen King, Sherman Alexie, Jules Feiffer, Lois Lowry, and on and on.) But some folks were stuck with only a couple of pictures to choose from. When asked who had no choice at the end, the editor said, “That would be you, Chris.” (The least-loved picture? “Oscar and Alphonse,” the caterpillars who spell goodbye in the girl’s hand. It was never my favorite, either. I would have picked “The Third Floor Bedroom.” “It all began when someone left the window open…”)

The most interesting question was the one no one in my world can shut up about these days: what will become of us (writers, publishers, librarians, readers) in this digital age?

Roger: “This seems a very print-dependent book.” (Not sure I agree with that, actually, though in its print form it is quite beautiful — the formatting is pretty straightforward, and I think the images would look fine on an iPad.)

CVA: For text, he said he’s fine with digital, especially for large, heavy books. “But the book as an artistic object can’t exist” digitally, because the publisher’s choices about size, paper, and font are all made by the device manufacturer. As an illustrator, for instance, he can’t think about large double-page spreads for a book that will be published digitally. LL agreed.

Roger: “The activity is reading the iPad, not reading the book.” (I think that’s a good way of putting it. The iPad does so many other things that it’s tempting to take a break between chapters… or paragraphs… to check email or whatever.) He and LL both said they don’t go back to books that don’t grab them right away, because there are so many other things sitting on their Kindles to be read. It, like so much digital information consumption, promotes flitting about rather than focus.

CVA: Reading on glowing screens is not relaxing, biologically; it doesn’t work for bedtime reading, especially with children. (And this is one of the reasons I got a Kindle rather than a color device. Though I still read on paper, mostly.)

I’ve only read the first story so far (Tabitha King’s, which was fine, if not stunning). I’ll post a full review when I’ve finished it. So much of the magic lay in imagining the story lurking behind the image and words that I wonder whether reading these stories will ruin it a bit. Sure, they’re just one author’s imagination (unless you believe Lemony Snicket, of course), and mine is just as valid… but it’s hard not to see these as the “official” versions. (Besides, it’s not like I ever had a firm vision of what happened in any story; each one felt more like a dream I couldn’t quite hold on to.) Anyway, I look forward to diving in!

(If you have no idea what my title is referencing, it’s this. You’re welcome.)

You might have noticed that I haven’t been around much lately. (Or maybe you haven’t noticed. That is also okay.) There are two reasons:

1. In less than a month now, I am taking this test: Middle School Humanities MTEL. If I pass it, I will be well on my way to becoming a certified teacher of middle school English and social studies in the state of MA. This may or may not be a thing I ever want to do, but a girl likes to have options.

I have many many feelings about this test. Mostly I’m really cranky about it. I’m also semi-panicked about my ability to re-learn all of human history in a month, plus British and American literature. Without, you know, any sample tests so I have any idea whether I’m learning the right things. (Panic, panic.)

The upshot is that I haven’t read anything fun in a month and don’t foresee doing so until Thanksgiving. I could review history textbooks, or I could… never mind.

2. Remember how I posted that question about whether you use RSS readers? And you were all about the RSS? Well, too bad for us. In case you haven’t heard, Google is relegating Reader to even further third-class status, removing all the social features my friends and I rely on, and folding them into Google+, which doesn’t do the same things at all. (I can go into greater detail about this if you care.)

Basically, though, when I haven’t been reading history textbooks, I’ve been attending this sort of multi-week wake with my friends on Reader. I spend very little time on Facebook and almost none on Google+, which I didn’t like even before this announcement (good lord the whitespace! the scrolling!), so Google Reader is 95% of my online social life. My Reader Party has much to mourn.

Hopefully I’ll be back in the blogging swing after Thanksgiving. Until then, read some fiction for me; I miss it.

“I can never decide which book I want, and I hate buying a book and then realizing halfway through that I hate it. I can’t just return it and I’ve wasted money. I wish there were a way I could just borrow a book instead.”

You can borrow books and return them if you would just GO THE FUCK TO THE LIBRARY.

This website is pretty entertaining. I don’t feel like commenting on it seriously, because just about everything that makes me laugh right now is rooted in something that pisses me off. It’s that kind of month.

At least I finally feel like a bunch of people are sharing my anger and doing something with it.

Thanks to our ever-beloved local independent bookstore Wellesley Books, we hosted Laini Taylor last week on her book tour. (Laini, you will remember, is the author of Daughter of Smoke and Bone, about which I kvelled with an uncharacteristic lack of criticism in June.)

She signed books (and, patiently, bookmarks), chatted to a group of 30 high schoolers during lunch, and gave a more formal presentation to a similar-sized group of middle schoolers. She talked about her writing process and about the travel that inspired Daughter. Both groups were totally engaged and had no shortage of questions. (Here’s two of my middle schoolers on her blog.)

(I’m sure she didn’t intend her hair to be a marketing tool, but boy, my students couldn’t get enough of the hair comments and questions! I think having that to talk about helped them warm up to her. Plus, between that and protagonist Karou’s blue hair, my event publicity design has never been easier.)

At one point, while talking about the challenges of editing, she said, “Just because it’s hard for you doesn’t mean you aren’t meant to do it.” That really stuck with me — she didn’t say it as a Lesson (which probably made it all the more effective), but if there’s one thing I want my girls to get out of middle school, that’s probably it.

She, her Little, Brown entourage, and Wellesley Books were super friendly, flexible, and delightful to hang out with. Thank you again, Laini, Ames, Faye, and Allison!

(That’s me up there in the picture, regretting that this was the first time I’d thought to ask for a dorky author pic for my blog. Better late than never!)

I’m so honored/excited/bouncing up and down to be on the Cybils for my 4th year. Like last year, I’m on the YA Fantasy & Science Fiction 2nd round. Congrats to my fellow SFF round 2s:

Anne Levy
Cybils

Aurora Celeste
YASFF Blog

Kimberly Francisco
STACKED

Julie Jurgens
Hi Miss Julie

Can’t wait to argue about some books with you this January!

Everyone else: nominations open at midnight tonight. Here are the eligibility rules. Go nominate!

Six intersecting stories, from a mid-19th century ship in the South Pacific to a post-WWI European castle to 1970s California to modern-day England to future Korea to even-further-future Hawaii. The characters are all connected mysteriously… or maybe not so much. The stories interrupt each other along the way to the future, and then pick back up where they left of as they unfold back out to 1849.

This is one of the 3 or 4 books I read a year that aren’t remotely YA. It’s dark, complex, and thought-provoking, although it has way too much rape and abuse and torment for me to really say I “enjoyed” it.

But mostly, I’m just confused. I love non-linear storytelling and unreliable narrators, but I do like things to come together in the end. This was not at all clear, and I think set up a few paradoxes to block my attempts at clarity. I know a number of you have read it, so:

SPOILERS (Help me figure this out!)
[Read more →]

If you could make all the students in grades 8-12 (plus faculty) at an all-girls prep school read one book, what would it be?

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!

Briony Larkin is a witch. Her stepmother told her so before she died, a death for which Briony feels responsible. Briony’s youthful temper and magic also caused her twin sister Rose to be developmentally disabled. Briony avoids the swamp and the Old Ones that call to her, sullenly cares for Rose, and hides from the world. Until Eldric, an energetic university dropout with a gift for making everyone around him feel at ease, comes to stay at the Larkin home. As Briony starts to see herself through his eyes, she wonders how a witch like her could have a normal-girl life.

This is a Jellicoe Road. That’s become my shorthand for a wonderful but difficult book that I want to put down early, but stick with because a reader I trust assures me, “Stick with it; it all comes together in the end.” And so I pass this on to you: You will probably be confused. If you, like me, have limited patience for protagonists whose defining characteristic is emo self-loathing, Briony will start off annoying the crap out of you. You will be suspicious of everyone, and not sure if there’s a single character worth hanging your hat on.

That’s just what they want you to think. Stick with it; it all comes together in the end.

I hesitate to say much else, because the pleasure of this book is so much in the unfolding of secrets. The setting is a small town in Victorian England that is just getting a train station, but has an earlier-century habit of hanging witches; the descriptions are appropriately creepy and claustrophobic. This is dark stuff, on occasion, but with trademark YA uplift at the end. Briony’s language is repetitive and quirky in a way that is trying to be poetic, and will feel that way to many readers, but often the poetry felt too “high school lit mag” to me:

We were to have new clothes.

We were to have new clothes because I tried to bargain with the Boggy Mun and he outwitted me. I should feel guilty, but I don’t. Father shouldn’t feel guilty, but he does. We were to have new clothes because I made Rose sick.

This, to me, is Hell.

On and on ring the lunatic bells.

And the love story? It feels mature (such a relief). It’s not good enough to have a relationship that’s fun for awhile; oh no, in so much YA these days, he needs to be your One True Soulmate Schmoopypants, and I don’t buy it. Most of us are far too un-formed in high school to luck into our dream partner. This is one of the rare young literary relationships that I believe might actually work out.

(This is a conversation for another post, but it occurs to me that a lot of YA romances these days follow the conventions of adult romance, in that the couple needs to get married — or at least imply that they will. Paranormals, of course, often take that to the next level — they’ll get married for all eternity. Why is this? Teen romances used to have their own standards, in which a fun, healthy relationship was plenty — why isn’t that good enough anymore? Or am I wrong? While I read a lot of books with love stories (I read YA at a girls’ school library, after all), I admittedly don’t read a lot of romances. (Ever wonder why this blog is called Parenthetical? Uh-huh.))

Read-alikes: Graceling! In the way it drops you in the middle of the action, in the maturity of the love story, plus in one other way I won’t get into. It also plays with the self-hating unreliable narrator in similar ways to A Long Long Sleep.

Cover: It sucks. I hate to be that blunt, but it is exactly wrong in every way for this book. If the cover makes you go, “Ew, historical paranormal romance; over it,” you will probably like the book because it is in many ways the exact opposite of that.

Also reviewed by: Things Mean A Lot (who has some smart things to say about how this book handles gender), The Book Smugglers, The Spectacle, and Wandering Librarians.

The audiobook giveaway ended yesterday. And the winners are…

Grace S wins Dreamland.
Susan wins All These Things I’ve Done.

Congratulations, and thanks for entering, everyone!