> I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Freaks and Geeks. It is not a book, but it’s a smart, nuanced television show that, I think, ‘reads” as a literary text. This show ran for one year (’99-00) on NBC and is now a cult classic and critical favorite; in regards to bullying, its strength lies in connecting greater socioeconomic forces to the lives of bullies and their targets. (Note: I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention Glee. And Mean Girls. And Everybody Loves Chris. And 30 Rock’s “Reunion” episode.)
"The Harry Potter series: Nobody would ever merely describe this series as “books about bullying,” but bullying relationships of every kind are woven throughout all seven texts. Hogwarts is cluttered with a wide variety of power dynamics—between older students and younger, between professors, between professors and students—the list goes on. Older readers will appreciate how J.K. Rowling deftly re-casts her aggressors into targets, then into bystanders, and back again, and vice versa."
— Top 10 Books (and Media) About Bullying | The ExpandED Exchange
Alvin Schwartz’s collection of haunting tales Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is an important gateway drug into the world of the supernatural. And as terrifying as the stories about brides locked forever in an attic trunk truly are, it’s the artwork by Stephen Gammell that kept you up at night.
Are you shitting me? It’s the wicked illustrations that got my 10yr old apathetic ass into reading more books; WTH people?!
Recent outrage in the tumblrverse!
The silly begins!
Favorite quotes of the night:
“Even just the word ‘looseleaf’ is kind of sexy” - Daniel Handler on note-passing
“Because I think young women are powerful, inherently.” - Daniel Handler on his motivation for writing Why We Broke Up and for writing from the perspective of a teenage girl.
"Welcome to the Queer Hip-Hop Revolution, young-adult-style. Transgressive Y.A. novels are all the rage—all the cool kids are reading them. Thus, continuing my desperate, life-long mission to sit at the popular table, I am too. Being a huge supporter of grrrl rockers, I fell hard for Laura Goode’s Sister Mischief (Candlewick Press), which centers on a swaggering, all-chick teen hip-hop group from the mean streets of, um, a wealthy, super-Christian suburb of Minneapolis. You can’t help but cheer as Goode’s crew—starring Esme, a Jewish lesbian songwriter who goes by “M.C. Ferocious”; D.J. SheStorm, a badass breeder; and M.C. Rohini, a hot desi chick and Ferocious’s love interest—take over a pep rally, read Diane di Prima, and throw down rhymes."
— Just My Type: The Best Books of 2011 You Haven’t Read | Elissa Schappell | Vanity Fair
So this was from Jan 10 of last year. Anyone have guesses for what will win this year?
By the way, the above-mentioned book sounds marvelous -
“A young adult novel about a transgender girl—told from the perspective of the straight boy who falls for her—“Almost Perfect” is exceptional. The writing is sensitive, haunting and revelatory,” said Stonewall Children’s and Young Adult Award committee chair Lisa Johnston.
- I definitely want to read it!
It’s the Huffington Post, buuut it’s still a solid meditation on how time, age, memory, and expectation can affect the experience of re-reading the book.
Interesting - at the end of the blog, he encourages others to share their experiences in re-reading old favorites… and it looks like he’s responded to pretty much everyone’s comments!
Links straight through to slide #2: The Moon Over High Street, by Natalie Babbitt (author of Tuck Everlasting). Release date March 1. Get pumped.
Our novel, Stranger, has five viewpoint characters; one, Yuki Nakamura, is gay and has a boyfriend. Yuki’s romance, like the heterosexual ones in the novel, involves nothing more explicit than kissing.
An agent from a major agency, one which represents a bestselling YA novel in the same genre as ours, called us.
The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation.
Rachel replied, “Making a gay character straight is a line in the sand which I will not cross. That is a moral issue. I work with teenagers, and some of them are gay. They never get to read fantasy novels where people like them are the heroes, and that’s not right.”
The agent suggested that perhaps, if the book was very popular and sequels were demanded, Yuki could be revealed to be gay in later books, when readers were already invested in the series.
We knew this was a pie-in-the-sky offer—who knew if there would even be sequels?—and didn’t solve the moral issue. When you refuse to allow major characters in YA novels to be gay, you are telling gay teenagers that they are so utterly horrible that people like them can’t even be allowed to exist in fiction.
LGBTQ teenagers already get told this. They are four times more likely than straight teenagers to attempt suicide. We’re not saying that the absence of LGBTQ teens in YA sf and fantasy novels is the reason for that. But it’s part of the overall social prejudice that does cause that killing despair.
We wrote this novel so that the teenagers we know—some of whom are gay, and many of whom are not white—would be able, for once, to read a fun post-apocalyptic adventure in which they are the heroes. And we were told that such a thing could not be allowed.
This is SO troubling! Props to the authors for speaking out about this since I can’t imagine this is the first time something like this has happened.
Description
In this subject, students investigate the development of literature for children from the traditional literatures of myth and legend, folk and fairy tales, through early publishing, to the emergence of genres of adventure, fantasy and realism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
"As a secondary English teacher for 42 years, this was yet another affirmation that Alexie’s book was affecting the lives of students, even those not in my classes. Few books have elicited this kind of response from students. Comments from readers ranged from, “This is the first book I’ve ever read,” to, “I’ve been there Mr. D, honest. It’s my life story."
— Classroom best place for controversial novel - Opinions | Tri-City Herald : Mid-Columbia news
"The rise of screen-based media has not melted children’s brains, despite ardent warnings otherwise: “It does not appear that time spent using screen media (TV, video games and computers) displaces time spent with print media,” the report stated. Teens are not only reading more books, they’re involved in communities of like-minded book lovers. The Story Siren, a young adult online book review authored by an Indiana graduate student gets 3,500-4,000 unique page views a day."
— McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: The State of Publishing: Young People Are Reading More Than You.
Roundup! Yee-haw. (#1)
- Gay YA: GLBT characters & pairings in YA Fiction - “The Ultimate Gay Reading List”
- “Children’s Books by and about People of Color Published in the United States”
(Statistics Gathered by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison) - The Atlantic’s YA Fiction Series.
- New website: Diversity in YA Fiction (includes Blog, Reading Challenge, Tour).
