Justine Larbalestier, author of, among other books, Liar, (an interesting read about which I'll likely post sometime in the future), has started a discussion on her blog about the common argument that anything that gets teens reading is good for their minds.
The discussion largely revolves around the most popular teen series of the moment, Twilight. I have read all four books and have mixed feelings on them--there are so, so many problematic themes going on there it makes my head spin, including the rarely discussed racism, yet I got totally sucked (ha!) in, in the manner of impressionable young women everywhere, much to my embarrassment. But after reading it, I talked about it. Actually, I talk about it a lot, which anyone who's ever mentioned Twilight in my presence will already know. And, yeah, I discuss it as an older person with an English degree, someone who has become used to deconstructing and analyzing books. But do people really think teenagers are reading these books blindly? You don't become obsessed with something to the degree that these Twilight fans are obsessed without thinking about it. A lot. These girls (and boys, but mostly girls, I'm guessing) might be dazzled by the sparkly vampire, but that doesn't make them stupid, and it doesn't give adults (or anyone) the right to tell them what is "good" for them and what isn't.
How you read is important. But reading things that you might later deem as "bad" (see my previously mentioned Sweet Valley High obsession) isn't the end of the world, and it might actually, one day, help you to further develop your reading tastes.
Certain people will always critique your taste in books, whether you love Meyer or Proust. Believe me, I have seen some skeptical looks when I reveal how much I love young adult fiction; I've done a fair share of judging people's tastes myself. But I don't let people deter me from reading what I want to read, and I hope I haven't deterred anyone from reading what they love. If you, as an adult, wouldn't appreciate someone saying that it's okay that you read "trash" because "at least you're reading something," you poor, unfortunate, barely literate soul, then why is it okay to say this to teenagers?
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Interlude: Paper Towns by John Green
I first discovered John Green a few years ago when someone somewhere linked to his brother Hank's video/song about Harry Potter. This led me to the Brotherhood 2.0 project, an amazing YouTube experiment. The Green brothers decided that for one year they would outlaw text messaging and e-mail, communicating through video instead. In addition to being hilarious and bringing me hours of nerdy amusement (if you clicked on that link you know it's a nerd-licious time over there), this project introduced me to John Green the Fabulous YA Author.
Since then, I've read three of his novels: Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines and Paper Towns. All have similar themes ("coming-of-age adventures" doesn't do the books justice at all, but it's all I seem to have right now), but Paper Towns is definitely my favourite. To give you a quick synopsis, here is a quick synopsis from the back cover copy:
Who is the real Margo? Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life--dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge--he follows. After their all-nighter ends, and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues--and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew....
(Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group.)
Sounds good, n'est pas? There are a few things I really love about this book. First of all, reading a realist YA novel in the midst of a market enthralled with vampires (sorry! [I'm not sorry. I love puns.]) and werewolves, et cetera, is extremely refreshing. Although I love paranormal books, in the midst of all these biting and clawing metaphors for the human condition it can be easy to forget how refreshing and moving well-written realism can be. A protagonist doesn't have to be threatened by monsters for me to care about him/her. This book reminded me of that.
One of the main themes of Paper Towns is the way we tend to idealize those we love. Quentin has been obsessed (not in a stalkery way) with Margo for years, and because they are not particularly close as teenagers, his knowledge of her is based on a combination of observation and speculation that is particularly heavy on the speculation. We have all done this at some point(s) in our lives, likely when we were in high school, as Quentin is, but also likely not limited to that time. According to Quentin, Margo is a perfect girl. She is absent for most of the book, essentially existing only through what Quentin thinks about her and the assumptions he makes about her. Absolutely my favourite part of the book is towards the end, when Quentin meets Margo again and she completely debunks all of his theories about her, asserting her status as an individual existing outside of Quentin's perceptions of her. It is impossible for anyone to live up to Q's idea of Margo Roth Spiegelman, and by calling him out, Margo shows Quentin, and us, that a real person, flaws and all, is always better than an imaginary ideal.
I could go on, especially about Green's portrayal of suburbia, but instead you should read the book yourself. If you need further convincing, check out the Brotherhood 2.0 project (start at the beginning or check out the most popular), the vlogbrothers YouTube channel, or John Green's website.
P.S. I didn't mention that all the YouTube action above led to an incredible fanbase calling themselves nerdfighters. They follow John and Hank on twitter, YouTube and the general internet and, as far as I can tell, are amazing. It's a great example of author publicity, but more importantly, a great example of people being awesome and creating communities full of other awesome people.
That's all for now! Read some books!
Since then, I've read three of his novels: Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines and Paper Towns. All have similar themes ("coming-of-age adventures" doesn't do the books justice at all, but it's all I seem to have right now), but Paper Towns is definitely my favourite. To give you a quick synopsis, here is a quick synopsis from the back cover copy:
Who is the real Margo? Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life--dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge--he follows. After their all-nighter ends, and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues--and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew....
(Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group.)
Sounds good, n'est pas? There are a few things I really love about this book. First of all, reading a realist YA novel in the midst of a market enthralled with vampires (sorry! [I'm not sorry. I love puns.]) and werewolves, et cetera, is extremely refreshing. Although I love paranormal books, in the midst of all these biting and clawing metaphors for the human condition it can be easy to forget how refreshing and moving well-written realism can be. A protagonist doesn't have to be threatened by monsters for me to care about him/her. This book reminded me of that.
One of the main themes of Paper Towns is the way we tend to idealize those we love. Quentin has been obsessed (not in a stalkery way) with Margo for years, and because they are not particularly close as teenagers, his knowledge of her is based on a combination of observation and speculation that is particularly heavy on the speculation. We have all done this at some point(s) in our lives, likely when we were in high school, as Quentin is, but also likely not limited to that time. According to Quentin, Margo is a perfect girl. She is absent for most of the book, essentially existing only through what Quentin thinks about her and the assumptions he makes about her. Absolutely my favourite part of the book is towards the end, when Quentin meets Margo again and she completely debunks all of his theories about her, asserting her status as an individual existing outside of Quentin's perceptions of her. It is impossible for anyone to live up to Q's idea of Margo Roth Spiegelman, and by calling him out, Margo shows Quentin, and us, that a real person, flaws and all, is always better than an imaginary ideal.
I could go on, especially about Green's portrayal of suburbia, but instead you should read the book yourself. If you need further convincing, check out the Brotherhood 2.0 project (start at the beginning or check out the most popular), the vlogbrothers YouTube channel, or John Green's website.
P.S. I didn't mention that all the YouTube action above led to an incredible fanbase calling themselves nerdfighters. They follow John and Hank on twitter, YouTube and the general internet and, as far as I can tell, are amazing. It's a great example of author publicity, but more importantly, a great example of people being awesome and creating communities full of other awesome people.
That's all for now! Read some books!
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Sweet Valley High quiz
Though I haven't gotten around to a Sweet Valley High book yet, fret not. I love them. I only scored 7/11 on this quiz, though, bringing shame to my ancestors. Or something.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory pre-read
My memories of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are connected very specifically to one person from my childhood: my fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Potter.
I was in Mr. Potter's first class at our school. I remember the gossip about him the summer before fifth grade: none of us had had a male teacher before, and we were all nervous and excited to hear that the new guy used to play football for the Edmonton Oilers. I am from a small town. This was big news. Visions of a huge, scary guy loomed over us all summer. I remember especially that the boys were very excited, speculating that the new teacher would just want to talk football all day, and that we girls were worried that the new teacher would be scary. Gender stereotypes were clearly alive and well.
Mr. Potter turned out to be one of the best teachers I've ever had. He did a lot of great things with our class, and was particularly good at seeing what other teachers, who had known us all for years, had gotten used to and therefore overlooked. For me specifically this included singling me out to model school clothing (something usually reserved for the more popular kids) and nicknaming me Trillium, after the modeling agency, an action that caused me endless embarrassment but in the end was pretty good for my self-esteem. But the most remarkable thing he did that year was read to us from Roald Dahl books.
Every afternoon, about half an hour before the day ended, Mr. Potter would take out a book and read. And when I say read, I mean read. He is probably to this day one of the best readers I have ever heard. He had different voices for every character, and an enthusiasm that drew in even the most anti-book kids in the class. He moved across the room while reading, and most importantly, he didn't hold back. When Matilda's father yelled at her and called her stupid, Mr. Potter yelled louder than I think anyone had dared to yell within the walls of an elementary school before, to the point where once my mother, who volunteered in the school library, ran halfway down the hallway terrified that he had snapped and was shouting at the top of his lungs to some poor student.
Other teachers had read to us, of course, but by the time we got to grade five that had mostly tapered off, probably because of the belief that once kids learn to read on their own there is no longer a need for others to read to them. We were reluctant at first, thinking it was babyish to be read to. But I remember missing it once I got to grade six.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory should be an interesting read because, although I feel I have a good recollection of the plotline, this is almost entirely because I've seen the movie version many times. Dahl's prose style and sense of humour are legendary, and I am really excited to reacquaint myself with this book.
This is going to be fun. See you soon!
P.S. Speaking of reading aloud, here is one of my favourite videos on the subject. Enjoy!
I was in Mr. Potter's first class at our school. I remember the gossip about him the summer before fifth grade: none of us had had a male teacher before, and we were all nervous and excited to hear that the new guy used to play football for the Edmonton Oilers. I am from a small town. This was big news. Visions of a huge, scary guy loomed over us all summer. I remember especially that the boys were very excited, speculating that the new teacher would just want to talk football all day, and that we girls were worried that the new teacher would be scary. Gender stereotypes were clearly alive and well.
Mr. Potter turned out to be one of the best teachers I've ever had. He did a lot of great things with our class, and was particularly good at seeing what other teachers, who had known us all for years, had gotten used to and therefore overlooked. For me specifically this included singling me out to model school clothing (something usually reserved for the more popular kids) and nicknaming me Trillium, after the modeling agency, an action that caused me endless embarrassment but in the end was pretty good for my self-esteem. But the most remarkable thing he did that year was read to us from Roald Dahl books.
Every afternoon, about half an hour before the day ended, Mr. Potter would take out a book and read. And when I say read, I mean read. He is probably to this day one of the best readers I have ever heard. He had different voices for every character, and an enthusiasm that drew in even the most anti-book kids in the class. He moved across the room while reading, and most importantly, he didn't hold back. When Matilda's father yelled at her and called her stupid, Mr. Potter yelled louder than I think anyone had dared to yell within the walls of an elementary school before, to the point where once my mother, who volunteered in the school library, ran halfway down the hallway terrified that he had snapped and was shouting at the top of his lungs to some poor student.
Other teachers had read to us, of course, but by the time we got to grade five that had mostly tapered off, probably because of the belief that once kids learn to read on their own there is no longer a need for others to read to them. We were reluctant at first, thinking it was babyish to be read to. But I remember missing it once I got to grade six.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory should be an interesting read because, although I feel I have a good recollection of the plotline, this is almost entirely because I've seen the movie version many times. Dahl's prose style and sense of humour are legendary, and I am really excited to reacquaint myself with this book.
This is going to be fun. See you soon!
P.S. Speaking of reading aloud, here is one of my favourite videos on the subject. Enjoy!
Sunday, February 28, 2010
This has nothing to do with literature
Young adult or otherwise. What it does have to do with is enjoying life.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Why I Quit Halfway Through the Very First Book OR Black Beauty, the Post-read
You guys. This was not supposed to happen. My vision for this blog, it was grand. I was going to read beloved classics from my childhood (and some trash; come on, I wasn’t a perfect child), fall in love with them all over again for much more mature, grandiose reasons than the first time, and generally impress everyone with my skills of being awesome.
I didn’t think I wouldn’t like the book. Yes, the entire point is to show how the way I read books has changed, but I hadn’t counted on my reading tastes to have changed.
In retrospect, this was probably stupid. Of course they’ve changed. It would be a bit sad if they hadn’t. And while I found Black Beauty interesting as a concept, and while I certainly enjoyed learning a little more about its history and origins (which I will expand on in a minute), halfway through the book I just couldn’t go on. It doesn’t have the sense of urgency to me as an adult that it did when I was a child. But after a month or so of not knowing what to do about this, and therefore accidentally abandoning this blog (sorry!), a friend helped me to realize that not liking a book would still make for a pretty good blog post. So here I am.
I can’t remember if I knew this when I first read it, but Black Beauty was originally written as an animal-rights tome of sorts. It was first published in 1877 in England, when horses were widely and harshly used. Anna Sewell wrote Black Beauty in order to raise awareness about the cruel methods used to break horses, as well as the completely unnecessary and brutal techniques used to make horses walk and appear fashionable.
Because of this, the book has a somewhat unusual narrative structure, in which the protagonist (Beauty, a horse) goes from colthood (is there a proper term for the childhood of a horse? Probably, but colthood will have to do) to old-horse-hood (see previous parenthetical query), experiencing a wide spectrum of treatment as he goes.
The decision to have a horse narrate is certainly effective, and likely the reason I found the book so emotionally draining as a child. It’s unusual, and it evokes compassion and provokes new considerations. I had likely never thought too much about what animals were thinking (aside from a nagging feeling that maybe my cat was really a person just like in Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which was terrifying, by the way), and I had certainly never been exposed to animal cruelty before. Beauty rarely experiences true cruelty in this book: most of his suffering is a result of ignorance on the part of his owners rather than a true desire to harm. But ignorance is presented, rightly, as a poor excuse for mistreating an animal.
One thing I did notice on this re-read that I probably didn’t realize the first time around was the Uncle Tom-ness of Beauty. Aside: I feel I am about to go to literary hell for comparing Black Beauty to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but bear with me, because there are real similarities. One of the most frustrating things about both characters is their submissiveness, their unwillingness to stand up for themselves despite constantly talking about how they are being mistreated. This is a byproduct of the time in which both books were written: the authors were attempting to reach audiences reluctant to change their privileged ways of life, and in order to have an effect on people they needed to make their characters as sympathetic as possible. To a modern reader this can be incredibly stifling, as it is difficult to understand why Tom placidly accepts beatings or why Beauty doesn’t just kick someone in the face already. But I can see that it was necessary. When I first read it, this technique totally worked on me. I felt terrible. Why wouldn’t someone help this poor, defenceless horse? But now that I have more reading experience and have read a few other books that use this technique, it is easy to both see through it and to see the ingenenuity involved. It’s not an accident that Beauty doesn’t lash out at his abusers, and it was extremely clever of Sewell to restrain him like that.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)