THE SHELF OF FAME

Look! Up there! On the tabs at top! A new addition to this blog. It's my YA SHELF OF FAME. I'll periodically add to this pantheon of greatness. Feel free to vainly argue with me about the merits of qualifiers and those left out on the cold tundra of my disdain. You don't need 300 wins or 500 homers to get in, you just need to touch me. No, not there. Not there either. Stop that. I MEANT IT FIGURATIVELY.

Author 715 good books without a ghostwriter and I'll think about it, big boy. 

ARTIFACT: School Is Hell

On occasion I find amusing writing- and reading-related samples from my students. This is from a class in which my student wouldn't participate in the writing activity, so I asked him to write instead about the trials and tribulations of school. Below is his hilarious response.

Extra credit for the fancy font. 

That was A Separate Peace, this is That Was Then, This Is Now

AUTHORS WITH THREE NAMES WRITING FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF TEENAGE BOYS, PART TWO

A Separate Peace 2: Life of the Street

PARALLELS

Just about everyone on the planet has read or heard of The Outsiders, the novel by wunderkind S.E. Hinton that became the standard for raw, roughneck YA literature. She so deftly captures life of the forgotten underclass that manifests in gang culture and rebellion against societal norms that when I first read the book, I thought that SE Hinton was some kind of reformed criminal. Imagine my surprise ("a teenage girl! I must write her a love letter") and depression ("a teenage girl! I'm a teenage boy and all I do is set things on fire. I'm a failure") when I found out that Hinton was a high school student at the time she wrote The Outsiders. It's my favorite mind-blower for the middle school boys who read this book for the first time with me.

Student: Hey, I just finished this book.

Me: What did you think?

Student: It was good. I identified with Pony Boy. I feel like him sometimes.

Me: Hey, that's great. I mean, sort of. We'll talk about that later with your probation officer. But did you know that S.E. Hinton is a girl? DID I JUST BLOW YOU MIND?!?!?!

Student: No. 

Me: Oh. 

That Was Then, This Is Now is the tangential followup to that well-known novel, and while it treads much the same ground of its predecessor (and features some characters from it), the more adult approach to That Was Then, regarding how relationships change over time and experience show that Hinton took a step forward as a write in the four years after her debut. I'm more inclined to compare this novel to A Separate Peace than I am to The Outsiders. Sounds unlikely, I know. Allow me to address your (fictional) italicized concerns.

But JB, there aren't any prep school Greasers in A Separate Peace!  

True. However, let's look beyond socioeconomic status and consider the parallels of the relationships between Gene/Finny and Bryon/Mark.

But JB, Gene becomes a psycho while Bryon becomes a good person. How do you explain that, smart guy?

No need for sarcastic name-calling. You're examining their differing behaviors, without accounting for the major shift in morality that takes place. It's the most common sight in a YA novel, or any novel for that matter: someone grows/changes and it affects their relationships. Gene and Bryon both begin to see their friendships fade, one via manufactured competition, the other via, I don't know, growing up. Gene shifts morally to a dark place, as Bryon emerges from ambiguity to a strong sense of right and wrong. What transpires after these transformations is extremely similar: Gene and Bryon irreparably do in their former friends. Finny dies from the sabotaged tree limb jump (this isn't a spoiler; you should have read this book by now) and after Bryon turns him in for dealing drugs, Mark descends into a hardened, eternal hatred for Bryon. Afterwards, Gene and Bryon are forever changed.

So, you're mistaking a convention of novel-writing for a striking similarity?
Not at all.

I don't believe you.
Yeah, well, I don't feel like arguing the matter anymore.

"I FEEL MIXED UP INSIDE"

Bryon says this about 68,000 times in this book, and I'm beginning to see the limitations of Hinton books. The characters stay in this constant flux, which is a realistic bent, but the insight isn't there. That's not necessarily the point of the Hinton books, and the focus on the anger and dissonance pays off. However, Hinton nearly beats this angle into oblivion, but does enough with the M&M B-story to keep it from monotony. And where does Bryon find relief? READING BOOKS. I'm shocked.

This book can serve a language arts teacher well, given Hinton's good work with foreshadowing, dialogue, and irony. 

The end of chapter 2 features fabulous foreshadowing. At that very moment every teacher should stop and ask their readers, "what do you think is going to happen?" and solicit predictions. Great stuff.

The irony of the last sentence of the novel: "I wish I was a kid again, when I had all the answers." Oh, man. Have students evaluate that statement in the context of Bryon's transformation and relate their own personal experiences in growing up. I've never offered this book to my classes, but I just may. Besides, we can then watch the movie: 

Any movie in which Emilio Estevez is ostracized & beaten senseless is good by me.

FINAL VERDICT

This book holds up on its own when compared to The Outsiders. Hinton is almost a required read for YA of all stripes, and that the book is regularly challenged in schools heightens its appeal. Make it so, number one.

BONUS!

Looks like more than a few dozen students were assigned to create a trailer for this book, and the results are on Youtube. Take a peek at a few of them and laugh your whatever off. 

NEXT TIME, I YELL ABOUT

Part three of my YA challenge. This one is set against the Vietnam War (again?!) and the entire town of Antler, Texas is thrown for a loop when the world's heaviest boy comes to town. Let's just say I'm setting a personal record for reading books with the word BEAVER in the title!

BORING STUFF

That was Then, This is Now

S.E. Hinton

1971 Viking/Penguin

Beaver Xing

Authors With Three Names: Part One

The sign of the beaver is a bear miming "Come at me, bro"

I read this book when I was, I don't know, nine years old, and I probably didn't pick up on the thematic nuances, because when you're nine, you think, "of course they're going to be friends! They're going to run around and set traps and shoot things with arrows! Holy crap, it's going to be fun! Indians are awesome!"

Now, I'm re-reading this book at, oh, let's say 29*, and it's so painfully obvious that when I was nine I was an idiot.

Not because nine-year-old JB (JB9) didn't grasp the culture gap and feelings of uselessness and isolation, nor the wonderful literal and metaphorical consequences of Matt desperately winging his rabbit at an oncoming bear**, nor the numerous inaccuracies in terminology, as pointed out in a snazzy foreword by Joseph Bruchac. JB9 didn't need to see these things. JB9's fatal mistake was to criticize the happy ending over dinner:

[Flashback to: 1990: A typical Midwestern kitchen in the summer, with fans blaring in all windows. JB9 sits at the table with with FATHER, MOTHER, and a humanoid identified by government scientists as his SISTER.  The table is set for dinner: plates, silverware, a giant salt shaker and nine pounds of butter. MOTHER scoops extra cauliflower on JB9's plate as a sadistic form of torture. FATHER cracks open a Milwaukee's Best. Years later, JB9 will be allowed to try one and puke his brains out. MOTHER leads the family in saying grace while SISTER kicks JB9 under the table.]

MOTHER: Tell me about the books you're reading.

SISTER: [unintelligible alien language spoken through mouthful of heavily-buttered bread]

FATHER nods, feigning interest.

MOTHER: And you, JB9? Here, have another beet.

JB9 [excited at the prospect of being allowed to speak]: I'm reading a great book about a kid who lives alone in the woods near some Indians. He's all by himself with no family and makes friends with an Indian boy who saved him from some bees! But I don't get why he misses his sister. [JB9 instinctively ducks as "SISTER" swings a savage arm at him] And the kid survives all by himself!

FATHER: What's your favorite part?

JB9: It's all really good. I wish I could be just like him! No family around, no cauliflower, and lots of bears!

MOTHER: That's it.

[JB spends the next five years in the basement]


*I will be 29 for the rest of my life. This was decided long ago by a haunted fortune-telling machine that infamously turned some kid into Tom Hanks. 

**It's the only part of the book I want to talk about, because it encapsulates everything about Matt's hapless situation, the European incursion into the Americas, and the beginning of Matt's transition from being afraid of nature to working within it to survive. Whoops, I just spoiled the book!

BUT I'M NOT A STRANDED 13 YEAR OLD BOY IN COLONIAL AMERICA. WHY SHOULD I CARE?

How the hell should I know. When I tried to set out on my own I was put under house arrest. 

I should (once again) note the tried-and-beaten-dead tactic of relating her story to a classic novel in order to get kids interested. In this book, it's Robinson Crusoe. Speare makes an admirable gesture in narrating the kid flipping through the boring parts to get to the action when Matt attempts to teach the Indian boy to read. I call it admirable because she essentially tells the young boys and girls who might be persuaded to read Crusoe that most of it is f@%#ing boring. And she's right! 

In recognizing Crusoe, she also turns the slave/master dynamic around in her own story, which is not lost on Matt. The themes of bridging cultural differences and equality make it worth the read. I suppose the "fat guys will enter your home, eat all your food, and steal your gun" theme has its own merit.

If your reader has whipped through Hatchet and its sequels, have them give this a try.  

NEXT TIME, I YELL ABOUT

Another three-named female author who initializes two of them. Thanks for making it easier to say your name, and making people think you might be a man! That trend is slowly giving way with the proliferation of social networking and direct author-reader interaction. Let's just say that was then...THIS IS NOW!

BORING STUFF

The Sign of the Beaver

Elizabeth George Speare

1983 Houghton Mifflin

2011 Sandpiper (Reissue)

Joke. Joke. Bit of story. Joke. Joke. Joke on bit of story. Joke. Sto-Joke.

Thanksgiving with my family is always a a diverse, terrifying affair. 

Since leaving the writing staff of The Simpsons, John Swartzwelder has spent the last decade writing nine short novels, eight of which center on the adventures of dimwit detective Frank Burly. In one of his latest books, Burly gets himself involved with boring-turned-mad scientists who conduct experiments based on what they see in old Hollywood movies. Burly bumbles his way through solving the case in standard Swarzweldian fashion, meaning it's packed with non sequitur and throwaway jokes that often reveal something ludicrous or break the fourth wall.

Like all of the Burly novels, it gets goofy. This isn't standard YA literature by any means, but students with broad pop culture knowledge will be able to recognize most of the material he uses for jokes in this one, and Swartzwelder's writing style has transferred well from television to prose, although I have been imagining scenes from this book in cartoon form, with lots of quick smash cuts and reveals when something sudden happens. Think of it as an episode of classic Simpsons, completely unfiltered for TV. Now you're getting it. Now give it back, it's mine.

What this book lacks in revelation/empowerment/strong emotional pull for YA readers, it makes up for it in complete insanity. I realize Swartzwelder isn't a YA author, nor does he write for a specific audience other than people who find humor in his demented cartoon universe. This is strictly for those with an advanced sense of comedy and crave something warped. This might serve as a stepping stone to thicker works of wackiness, such as those of Terry Pratchett.

READ THIS BOOK 

If you require absurd humor in your life, or know a YA reader who enjoys pop culture references and completely bizarre plots. So, you know, everyone. 

You may also read this book. Disclaimer: You probably will not get rich.

DON'T READ THIS BOOK 

If you want something serious, or need your literature to do more than give you some laughs. This reminds me of John Green's statement that he prefers to write about smart people, which might be a reaction to sitcom TV in which most characters are fairly dumb and the emotional currency rendered counterfeit. In the case of Swartzwelder, the characters are overly stupid, which does limit the depth of thought, but does open the opportunity for some incredible jokes. 

NEXT TIME, I YELL ABOUT

A book I read as a kid, and revisit 20+ years later to analyze how old that makes me. Let's just say this sign might stop traffic in the state of Oregon!

BORING STUFF

The Fifty Foot Detective

John Swartzwelder 

2011 Kennydale Books

The Fault In Our YA Star

I've read 3 of these 5 books, so I'm qualified to whine about them all.

LOOKING FOR PAPER TOWNS

Doesn't matter who the author is - read more than two of their books and you'll see their patterns. This is not a criticism, but an observation. Here are a few I've noticed:

TC Boyle: uses words nobody else knows. Probably owns a thesaurus the size of a bread truck.
John Grisham: Always with the lawyer crap.
Vonnegut: Can't help but insert himself, or elements from his own life, into his stories
Tolkien: Nothing like reading about singing dwarves
Stephen King: Lots of boring things happen, then something scary happens. Repeat.
Gertrude Stein: Completely insane.

I repeat: THIS IS NOT A BAD THING. These patterns reveal much of the author, and despite +John Green's attempt to dissuade us from divining anything about the author from the fiction they write as dismissing the merit of the novel itself* (spoiler alert: wrong!) we can learn much about him as a writer, when comparing The Fault In Our Stars to Looking For Alaska and Paper Towns.


*When Green asks his readers not to attempt to look for hidden meaning in the story, guess what? They're going to look for hidden meaning in the story. "I made it up" is not enough to convince anyone that he's inserting something about himself for us to find. And to say this diminishes the impact of the story itself, and that fiction doesn't matter if we look beyond the page to the author? I don't completely buy it. There is such a thing as compartmentalization, a capability most likely possessed and practiced by the "smart people" about whom Green prefers to write.

AN ABUNDANCE OF FAULT

I was going to scream and holler about how these books are all the same, but Green has already addressed this on one of his many web presences. So, we'll examine his own words on the matter.

The Fault in Our Stars is very different (it’s narrated by a girl; she is not in high school; her concerns are somewhat different from the concerns of my previous protagonists; etc.)

When quibbling differences in gender narration and school status (a 16-year old part time community college student as opposed to a high school student - big whoop) are what separate your books and make them very different (a word, by the way, that good writers know to avoid), you've got trouble. I accept the concerns argument, as the male narrators of the previous two novels tend to only suffer from debilitating social communication problems, rather than a terminal illness. This speaks to his larger point of exploring the Romantic Other, which is a fascinating concept, and what puts him on a shelf above most other YA authors:

 A lot of people read [Paper Towns] as a rewriting or a revision or a revisiting or whatever of Looking for Alaska, which is totally fine (books belong to their readers), but to me it is the complete OPPOSITE of LfA (one is about the legitimacy of Great Lost Love, and one is about the absolute ridiculousness and illegitimacy of Great Lost Love), or at least that’s what I intended.

No quarrel here. The thematic adjustment between the two is plain to see, and I think that Green puts another spin on Great Lost Love in Fault, which is to consider one's legacy after they've passed on, and what lies on the other side. Will the Great Lost Love be requited in the afterlife? Will it continue to live forever in the hearts of those still alive? By the way, Hazel's meditation on these sentiments that we seem to casually toss out when someone dies was fantastic. One of Green's strengths is deconstructing the everyday (or, as reviewers like to say, quotidian) phraseology of our culture and adding the right amount of cuss words to make us think, "yeah, screw that!"

That said, If you have to spell it out for your audience, maybe they're not that smart.

 (I also like smart people who do not find irony a convincing way to hide from intellectual engagement, which is the  A#1 reason I like writing about teenagers.)

Damn.

Katherines seems to me wholly different from my other books except in some uninteresting superficial ways (like, it also contains a road trip, and it also contains a romance and nerds, but those are boring and trivial similarities...

Whoa there, buddy. You just named boring and superficial differences between Fault and your other books to argue that they're very different, while pointing to trivial similarities as unjustifiable criticism.

In the end, Green knows the pratfalls of explaining his books - the relationship between author and reader is ever tenuous and subject to too much filling-in by the reader, whose individual interpretations will trump any point the writer tries to make. Such is the nature of perception. And, to an extent, personal relationships.

The reason most men are still boys.

THE STARS ALIGN

As for The Fault In Our Stars as a book on its own, I say this is Green's best. He's at his best when writing through the rawest of emotion that his characters must experience/suffer; it's lyrical without being schmaltzy and pedantic, tight, lucid, cogent, and other 25-cent words that would make Hazel Grace like me. 

This one took a while to get going, but the sustained intensity of the last half of the book cannot be denied. With Paper Towns, we're thrown right into Margo's magical night and disappearance (see, they're very different). Here, we have to slog through significant exposition before the story really kicks in - naught but a minor complaint about the pacing. 

The themes of this book: love the one you're with, leaving a legacy, what happens after we die, are all folded well into the narrative. The inclusion of a book-within-a-book device makes the metaphor more obvious; Hazel wants to know what happens to her favorite characters after a book ends. Yes, the afterlife of a fictional character. Do they find love, what happens, does anything happen? Just as we're unsure of anything after passing from this mortal coil, Hazel needs some kind of reassurance about these characters to whom she's married her own personal hopes. 

Selfishness plays a hefty role in this book. Each character deals with their own short-sighted wants, and they manifest in shouting matches, avoidance, and lots of crying, as most selfishness does. 

About Van Houten: Clean-cut author with massive internet presence writes about boozy a-hole recluse writer who refuses to read fan mail. Green must have had fun with this character. I'm digging for fact within fiction, which is a no-no, but I bet he had to make Van Houten an American so that the Dutch fellowshop he received would come through. Not to dismiss the power of storytelling, or anything. 

For all that's wonderful and moving about this book, he reduces his characters to near-stereotypes. Augustus plays video games and reads novels based on video games. Hazel watches America's Next Top Model and likes to be catty about it. Trivial, surface similarities, sure, but come on, branch out. I say this knowing that most readers enjoy the comfort of predictability, which is why there are so many book and movie series that recycle characters and plot lines and make millions of dollars. 

But here’s the thing: I am not the only writer. There are many, many writers creating a huge variety of stories—tens of thousands of novels will come out in 2012, for example—and it’s not really my responsibility to tell every possible story. I can only tell the truest versions of the stories I know, so that’s what I’m trying to do.

Amen, brother.

JOHN GREEN, JOHN GREEN

The John Green Book Checklist

1. Young protagonist with ample vocabulary - word placement screams thesaurus
2. Enigmatic love interest 
3. Statement about the attractive nature of curvy girls
4. Protagonist reads and continually refers to "classic" works of literature that no one reads anymore, but the characters create meaning from them to apply to their own experience
5. Death (or presumption of death) is the main catalyst for action
6. Jovial and loving parents who remain flat characters (exception: Fault explores the parental relationships more in-depth)
7. A character who goes by their full name
8. Protagonist thinks s/he is nothing special, but finds through his/her adventure to be capable of the extraordinary 

Follow these simple steps and you too can have a New York Times Bestseller! I think there's an element of teenage fantasy fulfillment in his writing, which is fine; that is where most, if not all, writing begins. However, he doesn't want me to talk about it, and if I do, a bunch of nerdfighters might beat me up with words, so I won't. Suffice to say: all three books satisfy, are uplifting in the face of losing someone forever, and Green acquits himself well as to character motivations in his own commentary, but I'll continue to divine fact from fiction just to get his goat. Because, you know, word of this will get to him. /Sarcasm.

NEXT TIME, I YELL ABOUT

Another John who has a formula and sticks to it. These probably aren't meant for young readers, but they're funny as hell and they read fast & easy. Let's just say what the cover of every one of his books says...BY THE WRITER OF 59 EPISODES OF THE SIMPSONS!

BORING STUFF

The Fault in Our Stars
John Green
2012 Dutton Juvenile

Donnie Dark Dude

 I HONESTLY THOUGHT THIS WAS GOING TO BE A STARGATE FAN FICTION

You might think that a book with a cover like this: 

would not inspire such a thought. Clearly, my line of reasoning is nonsense, but when the author so closely resembles the departed Don S. Davis, I get my hopes up. 

Don S Davis

Oscar Hijuelos, I am disappoint. 

So it wasn't to be. HOWEVER, I am bound by the code of this blog, which dropped off my radar for a couple of weeks thanks to the pesky intercession of EARNING A LIVING, to comment upon Dark Dude, the latest of my YA conquests.

SHOW DON'T TELL

For a book written in the first person, Hijuelos does lots of showing. For example, I didn't figure out that this book was set in the 1970s until after page 100. He showed me, but I wasn't looking. Shame on me. 

Rico, our hero, is a Cuban boy living in a rough Hispanic neighborhood in NYC, but there's one problem: he looks like a gringo. White skin, dirty blond hair. So right away, we're shown  that Rico doesn't fit in anywhere. Add fuel: he spent much of his childhood hospitalized and didn't grow up with a core group of friends. I feel I've been shown too much. Take it away, Rico, it's HIDEOUS.

So Rico takes us through his pasy, his family, his hobbies, his daily life, and it's no mystery why he hitchhikes to rural Wisconsin to find a friend who won the lottery and moved there to start a farm. Because the first thought in anyone's mind when they win $75,000 is, "I want to live where it smells like cow poop." 

Anyway, through hard work, socialization, lots of beer drinking, and saving a friend from drug addiction, Rico learns a lot about life, love, and fitting in. Good for him. Kid needed it.

OKAY, NOW STOP

Perhaps I'm growing jaded by YA, but the plot structure was just too rigidly predictable, as is much of the standard symbolism and the "wave a classic book into the story to get kids to read it" trend, of which John Green is the most notorious offender. This time, it's Huck Finn. Rico compares his own hitchhiking adventure with his junkie pal Jimmy to Huck and Jim's float down the Mississippi. Ugh, really. Jimmy and Jim. Write their names on an iron skillet and smash my face in with it, because I DIDN'T SEE THE PARALLELS. But wait, there's MORE. JIMMY is a SLAVE to DRUGS. It all makes sense now. Then, THEN! Rico develops the idea for a comic book about a guy who can change his skin tone to be Caucasian or Hispanic at will. While the symbolism is so laughably overt, it does demonstrate the depths of Rico's loneliness and feelings as an outsider.

So, not a read to avoid, but it is long. I will soon read We Were Here, which is of a similar bent, and I'll probably be better prepared to discuss identity among Latino boys in the United States. 

 NEXT TIME, I YELL ABOUT

The works of John Green. I'm struggling with my own assessment of his writing. He's worshiped as the voice of the 21st Century YA but there's something askew, and I just can't find it. Let's just say I might find fault...IN OUR STARS!

BORING STUFF

Dark Dude

Oscar Hijuelos

2009 Atheneum