“Strong female character” is one of those shorthand memes that has leached into the cultural groundwater and spawned all kinds of cinematic clichés: alpha professionals whose laserlike focus on career advancement has turned them into grim, celibate automatons; robotic, lone-wolf, ascetic action heroines whose monomaniacal devotion to their crime-fighting makes them lean and cranky and very impatient; murderous 20-something comic-book salesgirls who dream of one day sidekicking for a superhero; avenging brides; poker-faced assassins; and gloomy ninjas with commitment issues.

Or the YA versions, typically found in fantasy or historical fiction: the girl who dresses up as a boy to fight or do some other “male” activity; the girl who hates the feminine tasks assigned her and runs off to do boy stuff instead; the girl who saves the world with her ass-kicking skills.

Chocano acknowledges that the original goal of “strong female characters” was “strong” as in “interesting or complex or well written,” and that is certainly the goal of these YA characters as well. Too often, though, the thing that makes them interesting or complex is the fact that they don’t want to do what their society expects of them as women. They buck their culture’s expectations while fitting neatly into the reader’s. What girl would want to be stuck with no options but cooking and sewing and getting married? By modern standards, a girl who submits to those restrictions couldn’t possibly be strong.

But that ends up implying that cooking and sewing and raising a family can’t be strong things to do — or more to the point, that they can’t be strong things to want, since to be strong a YA character must go after what she wants. (Though that’s a pretty American attitude — it could also be strong to submit to what one doesn’t want for the good of the many. But that’s a discussion for another time.) I would love to see more YA historical fiction and fantasy with more strong (as in complex, interesting, and possessed of inner strength) female characters who aren’t strong (as in wielding a sword).

Arianna of Wandering Librarians writes more about that inner strength idea.

Anyway, I want to call your attention to their Great Graphic Novels for Girls website. It’s clearly organized and full of awesome recommendations, should you happen to be a girl or know girls or just want to read some outstanding graphic novels.

When the king comes for a surprise visit to Evie’s tiny village, she gets the chance of a lifetime: to go to university in the capitol, where she can study to become a healer like her parents were. Her grandfather is devastated to lose her, but he lets her go… provided she is accompanied for protection (ahem) by handsome Aidan, the boy next door. They travel by coach, under strict instructions from Grandfather never to go by sea — but when their coach is attacked by a highwayman and the driver killed, they have no choice but to book passage on a ship. And that’s when Evie’s adventures really begin…

Like the author’s last book, The Amaranth Enchantment, this is full of twists, but it holds together much better. It ain’t deep, but it’s loads of fun. Definitely recommended for your “Yes, I’ve read The Goose Girl… yeah, and the other Bayern books… Ms. Parenthetical, I’ve read everything Shannon Hale’s ever written, what else you got?” kids.

Also reviewed by: The Book Scout

Evolution was a Newbery Honor book this year, and it sure does have “Newbery” all over it, with the cute 19th-century pinafore and the spunky-yet-wholesome heroine who loves science and her granddaddy. All of which is to say, I adored it. It might seem too “good for you” for some kids, though.

It’s episodic and slice-of-life, without much in the way of overarching plot. Calpurnia is yet another “tomboy” who bravely strives to shrug off the limitations her society places on women. If actual history had had as many of these girls as YA fiction does, we would have won the vote a hell of a lot sooner. (Can we get a novel about a 19th-century girl who loves needlework and looks forward to marrying a boy from a good family? Didn’t those girls have interesting lives sometimes, too? Especially since, quite frankly, most of my students are more likely to be the modern equivalent of this girl than of Calpurnia or Caddie Woodlawn.)

I loved her relationship with Granddaddy. I loved that he wasn’t secretly a sweet doting grandfather just waiting to emerge; he was in fact as hopelessly absorbed with his own interests as he looked, but Callie fit right into that single-mindedness. (The scenes in which he forgets that she’s a kid and wants to share a celebratory shot of liquor with her? Priceless.)

And I loved the promise of a new millennium — kids might be frustrated by the lack of resolution to Callie’s problems (I sure would have been), but I know what happens after that snowy Jan. 1, 1900. The telephones and automobiles that are so novel in Callie’s town take over the world. The 19th Amendment passes in Callie’s 32nd year. More and more women go to university, become scientists. I like to think Calpurnia V. Tate is one of them.

Also reviewed at: A Fuse #8 Production and onehandclapping.

Finnikin escapes and spends his adolescence traveling with his mentor, doing what they can to alleviate the suffering of the scattered Lumateran refugee camps and find their people a new home. As the book opens, he has been called to a distant monastery to take on a new traveling companion: Evanjalin, a traumatized Lumateran refugee who claims to have seen their kingdom’s lost heir in her prophetic dreams.

I love me some complicated stories (5th season of Lost, what now?), but this is a bit “kitchen sink.” There are too many Important Messages, too many characters with Painful Pasts, and too many Big Reveals. The stuff about the two goddesses and their religious conflict, in particular, seemed tacked-on.

I also have no problem with violence or sex or challenging subjects in YA lit, per se. That sort of book is not for everyone, which is why it’s part of my job to be familiar with what might be difficult about the books in my collection, but they can be powerful for a lot of kids. That said, I do have a problem with gratuity. If it isn’t key to the story or the characters, gloss on over that sex scene or graphic torture. I’m no prude, but despite the themes of growing up and finding oneself, I’d be hard-pressed not to put this in the adult section.

All that aside, I think I would have been more into this when I was younger. I was going to be a martyr to activism; the strong woman tying herself to trees, no doubt about the rightness of her cause. I admired no end characters in books who walk miles with no shoes and torn and bloody feet, as Evanjalin does, sheltered by their single-minded purpose.

Turns out I have no single-minded purpose. Turns out I prefer nesting in a safe city with my friends around me and working at a job that is meaningful but not overly exhausting (er, usually). No one’s going to write any epic biographies about me, and I am a-ok with that. Now that I’m an adult, Evanjalin and Finnikin’s single-mindedness just seems naive. I recognize that they are refugees, that their lives are challenged in ways that mine never has been and hopefully never will be. But I still found it hard to connect with them. I want a spin-off about Lady Abian and her household full of displaced villagers, keeping her community alive with low-key good humor (and randomly having really loud sex with her husband, because for some reason Marchetta felt the need to share these moments with us). She’s much more my speed.

But this seems to be in the Megan Whalen Turner category of “stuff I should love, that everyone else loved, but I couldn’t get into.” So your mileage may definitely vary.

Also reviewed by: Skerricks, Library Lounge Lizard, and Persnickety Snark.

In the end, I had two favorite things about this book, and neither were the story. The first is the epigraph: “Unicorns are in the world again.” — Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn. Knowing that this book is about brutal, dangerous unicorns turns that hopeful line that I know so well into a threat. It’s quite effectively chilling.

The second was how it deals with sex. Unicorns are drawn to virgins, so the “Slayers” have to be abstinent. But what does that mean for modern girls? How creepy is it for the “Watcher” (a young, inexperienced guy himself) to be in charge of safeguarding their virginity?

I am, however, so over “I’m just an ordinary girl with a Great Destiny, but all I want is to live a normal life!” stories. I’m sure Buffy didn’t do it first (though I’m actually having trouble thinking of predecessors), but it did it best. Until you have something new to say on the subject, find a different trope, please.

I also hate aggressively ordinary protagonists. “I like boys and my friends and hot celebrities, and I think my parents are kind of dumb!” It’s blank-slate Bella syndrome, but it’s been around a hell of a lot longer than Twilight; I think every character in 80s realistic fiction was like this. I hate aggressively ordinary people; why would I want to read about them? Astrid grows out of most of this by the end of the book, but she’d annoyed me so much at the beginning that it was tough for her to win me over.

And finally, the conspiracies and grand plotting seemed sloppy. It felt like a first novel, although it wasn’t. In summary: fun book, but didn’t live up to its clever premise.

Also reviewed at: Strange Horizons, Teen Book Review (yikes, the ARC had an atrocious cover!), and Jen Robinson’s Book Page.

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Basically, Prentisstown is a human settlement on an alien planet. There was a war with the natives, who were wiped out — but not before they released some nasty biological warfare in the form of Noise. Noise killed all the women in Prentisstown and left the men able to hear each others’ thoughts, all the time, whether they want to or not. (Noise also makes animals talk, so if talking dogs are your thing, well, here you go. Just remember that this came out before Up whenever Manchee barks, “Squirrel!”)

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…

“Everything he thought he knew was a lie” books are some of my favorites. I love tragic misunderstandings and deep secrets that slowly unfold. Books that take place on other planets are ideal for this (think Speaker for the Dead and The Sparrow), and I realized it had been way too long since any of my SF had been other-world rather than Earth’s-future.

Knife is an outstanding book. I gobbled it up in two days and will be reading the sequel as soon as I can get my grubby paws on it. My only gripes (because criticisms are more interesting to write about than kvells):

• It’s actually too fast-paced. Riding a roller-coaster for two days straight started to make me sick, rather than exhilarated.
• I figured out the secrets long before the book laid them out. Which was doubly annoying because the characters figured them out long before the book saw fit to share with the rest of the class. Ness seemed to think he needed to hold on to them for the bang-up conclusion, but there was enough interesting stuff going on that it would have been fine if he’d paid them out earlier, after he’d given enough clues that they were pretty obvious anyway. For a book that’s about what an overabundance of information does to people, Ness’s characters are infuriatingly stingy with theirs.

  SPOILER

• I’ve never bought into the “Come to the Dark Side, Luke” school of boss battles. It strikes me as an artificial valorizing of innocence. Not that I know what I’m talking about — I’ve never killed anyone — but it seems to me that a nuanced, mature person ought to be able to make a moral distinction between Being a Killer and killing that one evil dude who has been chasing you without mercy for the whole damn book. (Sure, Todd’s thirteen, but the whole book is about his journey to manhood, so I think he counts as “mature” by the end.)

  I get that in this case, it was more not wanting to give in to Prentisstown’s crazy worldview than real belief that Todd would be a horrible person if he killed Aaron. I felt much better about it all after Viola killed him herself. But there was far too much discussion of Todd’s Boy Who Wouldn’t Kill purity for my taste — like, when did he become Harry Potter? Why is he special? You know I hate destiny books anyway, and here the destiny felt tacked-on. He’s a more interesting character if he’s just a victim of circumstance.

  Also reviewed at: Allow me to introduce you to Asking the Wrong Question, my new favorite blog about smart stories (books and TV). Her posts are long — really, really long — but worth it.

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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.

Catching Fire – SPOILERS for Hunger Games, of course (and you don’t want to be spoiled)

Why do they go back to the Games? At first I thought it was a lame choice — this is what the readers want, so back we go. The same reason you can’t have Harry without Hogwarts.

But I think it sets up a necessary parallel. In the 74th Games, each contestant is out for him or herself, and just trying to get home — until Katniss and Peeta subvert that by becoming the first pair of victors. In the 75th Games, the contestants from a number of Districts work together, and people from the Capitol are helping as part of the underground resistance. The Games are a microcosm of what’s going on in Panem at large. The Games are what the book is about, so that’s how we have to see the change in the world, and the beginning of the rebellion that presumably we’ll follow in book 3.

I love, by the way, seeing a rebellion built over such a period of time in YA SF. Usually these rebellions feel wrapped up too quickly — ta da, the world is changed, thanks to some scrappy kids with good luck! Now I want to re-read the Uglies series, which I remember as having a similar slow progress of the rebellion, with a similar broad-scale feel implying heroes we don’t know in cities we never see.

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The plot is complicated — there’s a deaf kid, a theater production, a wacky road trip to New York (does it count as a road trip if it’s on a train?), a baseball memorial at Manzanar — but it basically boils down to a coming-of-age love story. These are a dime a dozen on the YA shelves; it’s the details that make a book stand out (or not). Fortunately there’s nothing generic about My Most Excellent Year. (Did you notice the bit about the baseball memorial?)

My only gripe is that the year — and I say this as a person who loves happy endings — is too excellent. Need tickets to the Red Sox? Good thing you have a bodyguard who knows a guy! The kid you’ve adopted is obsessed with Mary Poppins? Well, of course Julie Andrews is going to decide he’s the cutest thing ever and be his best friend! If you establish a pattern where everything works out for the best every time, the stakes never get high enough to worry about the characters. By the end I was rolling my eyes at each plot twist.

Despite this, I found it warm and fuzzy and entertaining, though I didn’t adore it the way a lot of people seem to.

(Side note: What’s with all the framing devices in YA? Is it really necessary to use the Autobiography Assignment trope? Can’t you just tell a story? I know I’m being too harsh here, but it’s starting to remind me of my students whenever they’re asked to give a speech: “So, I stayed up last night worrying about what I was going to say in this speech. First, I looked up ‘speech’ in the dictionary…”)

Also reviewed at: Valentina’s Room, Kidliterate, and Book Crossing.

On one level, this is a rocking adventure, complete with shark attacks, cannibals, and a duel. On another level, it’s a gorgeously philosophical exploration of religion, science, and colonialism:

“Hah, you fall silent,” said the priest. “You are a good child, the women say, and you do good things, but the difference between the trousermen and the Raiders is that sooner or later the cannibals go away!”
“That’s a terrible thing to say!” said Daphne hotly. “We don’t eat people!”
“There are different ways to eat people, girl, and you are clever, oh yes, clever enough to know it. And sometimes the people don’t realize it’s happened until they hear the belch!”

It has some touches of Pratchett’s trademark nonsense, just enough to keep things light, but this is not a silly book. It is a brilliant book that I’m going to be thinking about for awhile, and you should all go read it so you can think about it with me.

It doesn’t hurt that it speaks to one of my literary kinks. You know I have a thing about fantasies in which people defy their destinies, and this is the ultimate anti-destiny book. Mau’s entire character arc has to do with discovering who he is when he can’t be what the culture of his people expected. He left his boy’s soul behind, but he never had the ceremony to give him a man’s soul. So who is he? His people’s gods and revered Grandfathers are always speaking in his head, ordering him to recreate the Nation as it was. Much of the book is about Mau learning to ignore those voices and think for himself, while still appreciating the value of ritual and tradition.

Read-alikes: Honestly, this reminds me of nothing so much as The Princess Bride. The His Dark Materials trilogy and Kenneth Oppel’s Airborne have a similar feel as well (self-reliant girls bucking society’s expectations; a magical touch of new science), and of course you can’t beat Bloody Jack for 18th century high seas adventure.

Also reviewed at: the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Teen Reads.

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