It seriously has taken me weeks to wade through the explosion of responses. The YA community circled wagons and wrote a lot of inspiring posts about how some teens need dark books (see #YAsaves on Twitter); YA needs to come in a variety of flavors just like adult books do; there’s a difference between censorship by institutional gatekeepers and guidance by parents. I don’t disagree with any of that, and I’m not going to get into it much because everybody has already said it at least as well as I could. Similarly, the internet has pretty well covered the point that Gurdon’s examples are cherry-picked and ignore how we’ve been having this conversation for more than 30 years.

There are a few things going on here that I do want to address. First, teen readers come from vastly different backgrounds — from homes where at 12 they have already experienced violence and drug use and sex, and from homes where those things are distant fiction. And all those kids want different sorts of things out of their reading material. Liz of A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy expresses this mix well:

What this article ignores is the questions of why people read what they do — one of the areas I find fascinating just because, and also because it helps with readers advisory. Some kids in terrible circumstances read about kids in terrible circumstances and find comfort and hope, even in the bleakest book; others live it, so don’t want to read it. Some read for windows; some, for mirrors. Some kids in crappy circumstances want to read about kids who have it worse off, so they can think, “at least my life isn’t bad as so and sos.” Some teens love literary books; some teens get so much literature during the school year that recreational reading is all about the popcorn. Each reader’s “popcorn” is different; for some it’s vampires and horror, for others it’s books that make them cry, like books about suicide, for others its books that talk frankly about what is whispered around school, like self-mutilation.

And for others, of course, it’s totally fluffy romances or brand porn like The Clique series. So the “YA saves” refrain makes an important point, but it’s limiting. Roger Sutton calls shenanigans on it as the dominant message in this conversation: sure, maybe Go Ask Alice convinced some girls in the ’70s and ’80s not to become drug addicts or helped them understand the addicts in their lives, but mostly it probably titillated a lot of middle-class girls with nice lives who wanted a thrill. When I was a kid I read a ton of Lurlene McDaniel precisely because I didn’t know anyone who’d died tragically young of leukemia: it was a safely lurid emotional release. And that’s fine. Books can be wonderful therapy, but how boring a world would it be if the only times we read books were when we needed to heal from something? Expecting all YA books — even all dark, violent, sad YA books — to be read as therapy is just as limiting as expecting all YA books to present some other “positive message.”

Another issue here is the range of what’s considered “YA.” Kids need their parents to know what they’re reading and to discuss it; teens much less so — and it’s the borderline of young adolescence, when parents still need to guide but kids no longer make it easy, that’s scariest for parents. If I were the parent of one of my 7th graders who’s reading Hunger Games, I’d absolutely want to read it myself and discuss it with her. As the parent of an 11th grader that would feel much less crucial. (As their librarian, I discuss it with both age groups, and far more 7th graders than 11th graders put it down or don’t pick it up in the first place because it creeps them out. Kids are pretty good at monitoring their own reading material.)

And on that note, I very much wish I could have found more teen responses in the vast sea of librarian, teacher, bookseller, reviewer, and author blog posts. Emma of Booking Through 365 wrote an excellent one; if you’ve found (or written) more, please let me know. However involved in the lives of teen readers we are, we are still adults, and our days as 14-year-olds reading Flowers in the Attic are increasingly distant. The open platform of the internet should give us access to the opinions of current teenagers so we aren’t just talking to each other.

Ultimately, Mary Elizabeth Williams in Salon wrote perhaps my favorite response, a fairly balanced (the insult in the following quote notwithstanding) consideration in which she makes the lovely point that, “One of the terrific side effects of an obviously click-baiting piece of editorial twaddle like Gurdon’s is that it reminds people how many fellow passionate readers there are in the world.” People wouldn’t have gotten so upset about this column all over the internet if they didn’t love books. And I hope that’s something we can all agree is a good thing.

I’d very much like to hear what my fellow “YA community” members think about this, but I’m even more curious to hear the thoughts of those of you who aren’t steeped in the YA world every day.

Al Capone, my favorite of the two, takes place on Alcatraz in 1935, when guards’ families lived on the island. (I have a bit of a prison thing — any closed society, really — so I was all over this premise. Also my students have been recommending the book to me for years.) Moose has just moved to the island with his father, mother, and sister Natalie. Natalie has an undiagnosed mental disability (she would probably be diagnosed with fairly low-functioning autism today). Their mother, obsessed with curing her, has sent her to every quack she could find. Now they’ve moved to San Francisco so Natalie can attend a school for special-needs kids.

But she doesn’t get in. So Moose’s mother insists that Moose come straight home from school every day on the ferry and take Natalie around the island with him and the handful of other island kids. Moose is initially grumpy about Natalie cramping his style, but the extra interaction does turn out to help both Natalie and Moose.

I made that description mostly about Natalie, but there’s a lot more going on for Moose: the Warden’s daughter Piper, who’s way too much trouble to be as cute as she is. His new friends at school and their regular baseball games. His relationships with his parents. All are handled with humor and sensitivity, and despite the historical setting the whole thing feels like it could have happened yesterday. This is a book that happens to have an autistic character, not an Austism Problem Novel.

Anything But Typical, on the other hand, is definitely a one-trick pony. Jason, the narrator, is far higher functioning than Natalie — he is “mainstreamed” in school, though he finds a lot of challenges there now that he’s denied his one-on-one assistant. His favorite thing in the world is Storyboard, the forum to which he posts his short stories. He strikes up a correspondence with PhoenixBird, which turns into an online friendship. When Jason’s parents surprise him with a trip to a Storyboard convention, he’s terrified of meeting PhoenixBird — will she still be his friend or even his girlfriend, or will she ditch him once she sees how “weird” he is?

It’s not much of a spoiler to say that she reacts with some distance when they meet — the book would be wildly unrealistic if she didn’t. Jason’s life is pretty tough in some ways. He doesn’t understand what people expect of him or how to give it, but he wants to please them; he wants the kind of relationships “neurotypicals” have. The “uplifting” ending has him proud of his unusual mind, but one definitely gets the sense that he’s going to go through that cycle (as we all do, I guess) many times before adulthood.

This is a solid story that provides a good perspective on autism from the inside (with the caveat, of course, that autism varies widely, so no one should take this as The Way the Autistic Mind Works). My favorite part was reading the descriptions of Jason’s inventive stories, somewhere between magical realism and fable. But overall, it didn’t particularly grab me — there just wasn’t enough depth. (On the other hand, gorgeous cover!)

Al Capone also reviewed by: Of Cabbages and Kings, Searching for a Good Read, and Fyrefly’s Book Blog

Anything But also reviewed by: Auntie Sarah, Abby (the) Librarian, and Ms. Yingling

Alex Sanchez is one of the go-to authors for gay YA, and I’d never read anything by him. This book is fairly workmanlike, but it gave me the warm fuzzies. It’s told in alternating points of view, Xio’s and Frederick’s. I loved that Xio is Mexican (along with everyone Frederick hangs out with in his new California town) and Frederick is Wisconsin white, and you get to see the ways their lives are culturally different, but it’s never a Big Deal. The parents are three-dimensional. There’s a gay kid who gets picked on, so Frederick knows what’s in store if he comes out, and the book doesn’t try to pretend that Frederick will somehow escape that treatment — some kids (and adults) will be jerks, but both Frederick and Iggy still have friends.

This is as much about Xio figuring out who she is — her absent father, her newly-dating mother, her friends, all her dramatic 13-year-old emotions — as it is about Frederick, so I think even kids (like a lot of my girls) who are a little embarrassed about reading A Gay Book will find a lot to enjoy here.

Here’s a column by Sanchez about writing controversial books for teens.

Ingrid and her sprawling extended family get together for every possible occasion, where no matter how old she and her teenage cousins get, they are always stuck at the kid table. Hanging out with each other beats discussing mortgages with their parents, but what will it take for the family to see them as adults?

For a book that’s largely people psychoanalyzing each other and themselves, it was surprisingly engaging — I kept wanting to find odd moments in the day when I could read more. It deals with some Serious Issues (anorexia, alcoholism, coming out), but most of the book is taken up with Ingrid (and to a lesser extent, the cousins we see through her rather distant, calculating gaze) figuring out who she is and what she wants out of life. (…Man, could I sound any vaguer? This is a really hard book to summarize.)

It is very funny, in a dark way, but most of the humor is built up over time as you get to know the characters — my favorite kind of humor, but hard to quote. I think this bit gives you a sense of Ingrid, though:

I looked [the valet] up and down, smiling as if I liked what I saw, even though I saw nothing beyond a nice-enough-looking guy somewhere around my age.
“I’ll be here all night,” he told me.
“You’re a comedian?”
“What?”
“Never mind,” I said. “You shouldn’t be alone on a holiday. Later I’ll bring you out some breasts and legs.”
I’m not sure that one connected either.

And immediately below that is this paragraph, which is pretty representative of the kind of insightful philosophizing Ingrid/Seigel do a lot of:

Whenever there was a holiday involving the preparation of food, all the women crowded in the kitchen, even the ones who had no clue how to warm Pop-Tarts, which made me feel a little crazy. It was like we were participating in a tradition that had never come from us — I mean both the girls and the guys — and it had robbed us of making new ones that had something to do with who we really were.

Sometimes the characters’ behavior is cringeworthily over-the-top. But that flamboyance is a nice counterpoint to Ingrid’s pragmatism, which I quite admired. I liked spending time with a YA female lead who is emphatically not a romantic. I missed her when I closed the book and want to know what she does next with her life, and I can’t think of higher praise for a character.

This is definitely a book for older YAs, trending towards adult. (Of recent books, it reminded me most of Peter Cameron’s Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, though I was never annoyed by Ingrid the way I was by James.) There is sex (or the discussion thereof, anyway), and drinking, but mostly I think it would just bore younger teens who aren’t interested in questions of morality and identity. Adult Themes in the least euphemistic sense.

Full disclosure: the author is a friend of a friend, with whom I went to college. Which makes me doubly pleased to be able to say how much I enjoyed it! It also means I got a peek at a preliminary cover which was deeply wrong for the book, and I’m glad that Melissa Walker of Readergirlz has the whole cover story so you can see it, too.

Also reviewed by: the excellently named Mean Old Library Teacher and The Literary Lollipop.

Fortunately, the book doesn’t stop there. Skyla and her creepy boyfriend want Naomi to come live with them, for reasons that may have to do with baby-sitting the boyfriend’s daughter and may have to do with child-support welfare checks. They don’t want Owen, because he has a physical disability which Skyla finds embarrassing. Gram is legitimately terrified that Skyla is going to get custody of Naomi, so what does she do?

She freakin’ picks up the trailer, hitches it to the truck that belongs to Fabiola and her husband Bernardo, and all six of them take off for Mexico in the middle of the night to try to find the children’s Mexican father. Obviously. And that’s when the story really gets going. Ryan’s descriptions of southern Mexico are gorgeous, and she follows my #1 rule of writing realism for children: Pick a Quirk, Any Quirk.

Without the soap carving, Naomi’s story would just be yet another children’s novel about overcoming an alcoholic, absent parent. Her art lends the story specificity. It turns out that Naomi comes from a long line of carvers who compete every year in a Oaxacan festival called Noche de Rabanos (Night of the Radishes). Of course this is where she ultimately finds her father, and herself.

I normally find problem novels eye-roll-inducing, but I loved this one thanks to carving, Mexico, and radishes. (Check out some pictures of carved radishes. They’re stunning!)

Also reviewed at: Inkweaver Review, A Fondness for Reading, and Books and Other Thoughts.

I realized that I’m unfamiliar with the work of a number of people speaking at the conference — mostly because they write for younger kids or children’s poetry or something else outside of my wheelhouse — so I’m going to try to rectify that.

Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key is the first in a series about Joey, a fourth grader trying to get his ADHD* under control. I’ll be the first to admit that out of the world of problems that my students have, ADHD is not one I get. At a fundamental level, my reaction tends to be, “Oh, just chill out already!” In the same way, some of my colleagues don’t get why my favorite nerdy quiet kids can’t have a non-awkward conversation with their classmates. Teachers are people too, and we gravitate towards different types of kids.

But we still have to teach all of them fairly. And like the best fiction, Joey Pigza put me in Joey’s (tied-together, tossed down the hall, spinning in circles) shoes and helped me get for the first time what it’s like to be the kind of kid who can’t sit still. It was written to be entertaining and maybe comforting for kids, but it ended up being bibliotherapy for this teacher, too.

* Presumably, though the diagnosis is never named.

Also reviewed at: MentalHelp.net, Blogcritics, and HomeschoolBuzz.com

Parrotfish opens in the middle of Angela’s transition to Grady: he’s already decided he’s done with being a girl, he’s shared his new name with his family, he’s bought some boy’s clothes, and he’s about to tell his teachers about the pronoun switch.

Of course this doesn’t go smoothly. His mom and sister are wigged out, the principal and several teachers are predictably rigid, his best friend can’t deal with the fact that being friends with the school freak makes her a freak, too.

But what’s cool about this book is how many things do go smoothly. His gym teacher’s reaction is a weary, “Don’t tell me. Good Lord, you’re transgendered, aren’t you?” at which point she gives him her office to change in and goes to bat for him in her gruff way with the rest of the school. He segues into a new group of friends with minimal fuss, including a beautiful girl who might actually like him back. And his dad just says, “Nice name,” and goes back to treating him the same way he always has. There’s no illusion that this is an easy process, but Grady has enough love and support in his life to stay believably strong.

Some characterizations are shallow (Grady’s mom and siblings, the popular girls), but they’re balanced by more entertaining characters (his new friend Sebastian, his Christmas-decoration-obsessed dad), and Grady’s own funny, engaging voice. That’s right, this is a funny book: Grady can be bitter and cynical, but he never wallows. (And nothing’s hilarious like a house all dressed up for Christmas with Victorian picture windows and moth-eaten bears.)

Eventually there will be enough books on this subject that I’ll be able to judge them on their own merits without comparing them to “that one other book about the transgendered kid.” In the meantime, I’ll say that this isn’t a 5-star novel, but it does rise above the generic problem-novel status of Luna. It’s a very good book on the subject of transgendered teens, and that is a thing we need more of.

Also reviewed at: Emily Reads, Bookslut, and A Chair, a Fireplace, & a Tea Cozy.

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The only people in Samara’s life are her neglectful mother, her mother’s abusive live-in boyfriend, and her favorite chimpanzee at the zoo… until elderly Mr. Brook subs for her regular English teacher and changes her life with some poetry.

Sound like a cliche? Well, it… pretty much is. The book is only 173 small-format pages, and that is apparently not enough space to make the characters more than two-dimensional stamps of Neglectful Parent, Depressed Teenager, and Inspiring Teacher. Large chunks of time are skipped over, Samara’s internal monologue is truncated… we never get to know any of the characters enough to mourn or cheer for them. Life is in no way fine by the end of the book (though Samara has found some two-dimensional Quirky Friends), but fortunately I didn’t care enough about Samara to be depressed about it.

Skip this one and go read Whittenberg’s first novel, Sweet Thang, instead. Sweet Thang is everything Life Is Fine isn’t: believable, funny, emotional, engaging, touching. Half my middle schoolers have read it by now, and I bet the rest will by the end of the year. (It’s also short, and therefore a good choice for the “OMG I have to do a book report for Friday!” crowd.) I love it lots, and I have faith in Whittenberg as a writer; everybody stumbles once or twice.