Younger Adults Flexed Their Reading And Buying Muscles in 2014

According to Jonathon Sturgeon, Literary Editor of Flavorwire, who points out in his December 16th article that the dramatic rise in ebook sales of Young Adult fiction titles can be linked to the increase in readership of 18+ readers of Young Adult literature.

Yet another piece of evidence to add to the case for redefining "Young Adult" to include the amorphous 18-30 year old readers.

Please, Dear Authors

Dear Young Adult Authors,

I can imagine writing your first young adult novel is a bit like getting the keys to a feisty little Mazda Miata. You're having fun, you're fingers are moving speedy quick trying to keep up with your head, you get the occasional writer's high after a good spin at the keyboard.

And that's all great. But, please, use the keyboard wisely. Just because you have the power to rev up your little Miata of a keyboard doesn't mean you should always exercise that power.

I'm talking specifically about exercising your power to italicize.

I know it's there. Command or Apple and "I" is all it takes. Why would they put it there if they didn't want you to use it, right? It's not against the law after all.

The thing is, when you italicize a word or phrase repeatedly you're telling me how to read your story. It's as if you don't trust me to read your story or to get where you're going with it. So you're prodding me to read your story, your words, in such a way that I'll hopefully replicate how those words expressed themselves in your head when you typed them long ago.

Here's the paradox. You don't get to earn my trust. It's me, the reader, who's learning to trust you with every page I read. When you put headlights on words to get me to read them the way you want me to you're telling me not to trust you. That you maybe don't believe in the merit of the words you've strung together strongly enough to allow them to stand on their own printed legs.

Please, if you must, use italics at your own discretion. They are a tool, not to communicate how you want me to read your story but of the storytelling itself. When I see two, three, four or more words italicized on a page, repeatedly, that's not the storytelling talking. It's the storyteller talking.

You don't get to hold my hand while I read your story. You gave it away and they took it our of your hands a long time ago. And I congratulate you for all your hard work and success you've achieved between your Mazda Miata keyboard all the way to me at my kitchen table.

But you don't get to tell me how to read your book.

Cordially,
H

A Book Review Starring "Lies We Tell Ourselves" by Robin Talley

The short version:
Set in 1959 Virginia, Jefferson High School is starting their school year in January after the state government's failed efforts to stop integration. African-American Sarah and her sister Ruth, recently transplanted from Chicago because their parents want to be part of the movement for equal access to education, enter the halls to jeers and shoving, sneers and wads of paper. On the other side is Linda, born and raised in Davisburg and the daughter of a Southern conservative newspaper publisher, Linda only knows segregation and sticks to it. But when she and Sarah are thrown together as part of a French class project, she begins to not only question her views but also who she thought she was when both girls are unable to deny their attraction to the other.

Over the course of the school year, Sarah and Linda will learn about the hard repercussions of integration but also about discovering who you are even when who you are isn't what you thought was right or easy.

The long version:
What a strong debut.

Talley has managed to write historical fiction that feels real and rooted in fact without sounding didactic or dry. She's also woven in a lesbian subplot that feels genuine given the time period.

She's written two authentic main characters who both engage you and make you want to root for them, Linda in spite of her inherent bigotry. At the same time, it would have been nice if Sarah had a flaw or two, something to give her more humanity. She's a lovely character, strong and smart and yet conflicted about her sexual identity, but she's very all-good in a way that I think main characters written by first time writers sometimes are. In that sense I thought it was much easier to give Linda humanity because she's a bigot who's only just started to question how she sees the world.

Talley also created a somewhat vast cast of secondary characters but still manages to give them their own voices and personalities and maintain their consistency.

The plot takes place over the course of the abbreviated school year, it's well paced with constant and mounting tension. She doesn't shy away from the violence or consistent verbal abuse and taunting that likely happened to kids put in the position of integrating schools.

Diversity On the Shelf 2015 Challenge

What should arrive this morning via my library system's inter-library grey envelope but the May, 2014 Diversity Issue of School Library Journal (only a little late, but I'll take it, as we do have a large library system after all). It just so happens that this past week I'd been revisiting Walter Dean Myer's New York Times editorial from this past summer entitled "Where Are the People of Color in Children's Books?"  in which he reflects upon the lack of novels with African-American characters he read growing up and his concern that the landscape hadn't changed all that drastically since his childhood.

At the same time I'd been thinking, in hindsight and perhaps with a hint of smug, that I'VE read a fair number of young adult novels featuring diverse main characters this year and loved them. But when I went back through my Goodreads list of books I'd read I was unpleasantly surprised to come up with this anemic number: 8.

8 out of 102 books I read this year. Eeek.

(Can I count the two I only coincidentally happen to be in the middle of right now which both happen to feature African-American main characters? I must admit I picked them up before coming upon my anemic little number.)

So I was pleasantly surprised to come upon the world of book challenges thanks to an article from SLJ's Diversity Issue. I'm not speaking of zealots burning Catcher In The Rye but rather pages online where you can sign up for challenges to read a certain type or quantity of books. I'm a librarian, I had no idea.

Hence I'm hitching my ride to the Diversity On the Shelf 2015 Challenge in an effort to feed my anemic 2014 number.

Beginning January 1st I'm shooting for the 3rd Shelf of the challenge: 13-18 books featuring diverse main characters.

As I read mostly young adult novels, some of the titles I look forward to reading in 2015 can be found on my beautiful, vacant-but-soon-to-be-filled Diversity on the Shelf 2015 Goodreads bookshelf.

Happy New Year (of Reading)!

A Book Review Starring "Sammy & Juliana in Hollywood" by Benjamin Alire Saenz

The short version:
Sammy Santos lives in the poor Mexican neighborhood of Hollywood in Las Cruces, New Mexico circa late 1960s. Here he tells the story of his friends, his family, his community in a coming of age story about a boy who learns about loss and hypocrisy much too soon.

The long version:
This book was a gift in the way some reads are. Knowing that if you'd read it earlier in life, you probably wouldn't have felt that same way.

I already knew Saenz had a gift for writing engrossing Young Adult after reading Dante and Aristotle Discover the Secrets of the Universe. This book was written seven years prior and has more of the feel of fictional autobiography, or rather fiction steeped in personal experience. Even though I know that's entirely presumptuous, or sounds as if I'm not giving the author credit for having an imagination.

But I think the opposite is actually true. His sense of place and people and time is so keen and evocative, you can't but help but think it's coming from real experience.

Sammy reads very much like stream of consciousness, with internal repetition and him talking to himself. Which gives the narrative a sense of both immediacy and intimacy. Your heart aches for him throughout the book. It aches for him, it aches for his friends and family and Mrs. Apodaca, the crusty, opinionated neighbor.

It's also a beautiful window to a working class Las Cruces circa 1968, where the battle for civil rights and the war in Vietnam and the Summer of Love are all distilled through this small corner of the county as seen through the eyes of a smart, sensitive, heartbroken Mexican-American kid.

Good stuff.

A Book Review Starring "Perfectly Good White Boy" by Carrie Mesrobian

The short version:
Following a summer of getting laid and then left by Hallie, Sean spends his senior year rudderless. Despite his newfound friendship with co-worker Neecie and the return of drop-out Hallie it's not until he secretly decides to join the Marines that he finds the direction that will get him out of small town Minnesota.

The long version:
Mesrobian's strength is that she writes really good young adult novels with main characters who are male, she's clearly interested in exploring the lives of boys in their late teens. She's really good at it, judging by her two novels. She's good at finding and maintaining a male voice that's credible and doesn't devolve into teen-boy-fantasy as so many YA novels written by women do. More than writing credible male characters, you really get the sense she enjoys exploring how boys of that age are.

This is a fine character piece, Sean is endearing and entertaining, and his unique and complex friendship with Neecie over the course of the book is what was most interesting. But there isn't a lot of plot to drive the story along. It's very character focused, whether it's Sean and his relationship with his brother, mother or absent, recovering alcoholic father. Sean and his relationship with his friend Eddie. Sean and Hallie. Sean and Neecie. Which may be why I found it so hard to push through, despite it being under 300 pages. The book was a lot like it's main character, a little rudderless, wanting for a bit more wind to propel it.

Which didn't prevent it from being a perfectly good read.

A Book Review Starring "Destroy All Cars" by Blake Nelson

The short version:
James Hoff, a Portland (OR) high school junior, uses diary entries mixed with English Composition essays to expound upon why cars are bad for the earth, but his writing also reveals the contemplations of a boy beginning to question his place in the world.

The long version:
I should start by saying I love Nelson's writing. His acerbic wit. His keen sense of observation and ability to articulate it in an entertaining fashion. His affable male protagonists. His ability to write high school and its inhabitants in ways that are revealing and empathetic and entertaining. He's become one of my go-to authors for when I fear I might be approaching a reading rut that needs avoiding.

This is my fourth Nelson book and it was the least satisfying. Perhaps it was because James spends so much of the book railing against so many things and people, which I'll be the first to admit is a common adolescent trait, especially at the dawn of those teenage years when one first comes into their own self-awareness and/or insecurities in comparison to others. But reading consistent railing got a little old.

The story lacked focus. I found myself thinking "I know what the plot is supposed to be I think" or "there it is in the title." And I knew I was supposed to draw a parallel or connection between James' grappling with his understanding of a larger world or planet (though it was less grappling and more consistent railing) with the things that are going on in his suburban teen existence. Only I couldn't seem to do that. I suppose they shared a common sense of futility, knowing cars are destroying the planet and being a teen who's not cool or awesome or totally together who still has to manage to get through high school.

Not only did it lack focus, but it didn't seem to have a thoroughly advancing plot either. I know it's Nelson's story and not what I wish his story were, but I would have appreciated it more had James come to some conclusions about his relationships with Sadie and his Dad. Some personal revelations at the conclusion of the story (on a small and believable level as opposed to capital R revelations) would have made all the railing more palatable.

Nelson's a great writer. I love him. It's his writing that made me continue with the book even though I didn't love it.

A Book Review Starring "Alex As Well" by Alyssa Brugman

(this is a review of an Advanced  Reader Copy)

The short version:
Australian teen Alex Stringfellow harbors a big secret, she feels she's a girl, not the boy she was raised to be. After being bullied at her old school she takes it upon herself to enroll in a new school as a girl where she makes friends and finally feels like the person she was meant to be (despite her parents resistance). Needing a birth certificate that identifies her as a girl in order to complete enrollment she employs a lawyer (solicitor, if you will) to help her get a new one, despite the repercussions involved in trying to explain who she is to her parents.

The long version:
So much of the plot felt flimsy, underdeveloped.

Like a kid being able to just switch schools and enroll herself (maybe they do it differently in Australia). Or the subplot involving Alex's crush on one girl, but treating a girl who likes her in a brazen yet aloof fashion (for someone who's struggling with their identity AND their sexuality to be so easily brazen was pretty unbelievable). The mother was a one-dimensional narcissistic tyrant, which she's entitled to be (it's not my book after all), but after so many interactions, her breakdowns became repetitive and boring to read. Though I did enjoy how the author told her point of view via postings to a motherhood website, and then delivered a bevy of responses in the comments section from other moms (some responses good, others bias and odd, as would be on a comments section). Both parents were so thoroughly in denial, which is quite realistic and possible but still made them pretty uninteresting and repetitive (how many times will they tell Alex it's all her fault? Multiple throughout the book, but without any progression of the plot or real character development from Alex, all the scenes wind up being variations on the same one). My sense was these weren't character decisions but rather a matter of underdeveloped secondary characters and plot.

There were quite a few subplots that felt the same way, never felt thought through and didn't really amount to anything: the modeling thing, the parent's deception, the girl who develops a crush on Alex, the girl Alex develops a crush on, Alex's father figure relationship with the solicitor, Alex's grappling with both her intersex physical identity as well as her sexual orientation at the same time (which was also the most poorly handled, as there's so much that I would imagine could be mined from being intersex, raised as a boy, identifying as a girl AND discovering she's a lesbian. It was as if having all these subplots allowed the author not to have to focus on writing a more fleshed out plot and main character, these subplots would just come and go to fill in the predetermined spaces as needed.

I don't think there's been a young adult novel to tackle a teen who is intersex and that's commendable. And I appreciated that, given the gravity of the subject matter, the author eschewed the explicit or graphic and wrote a story that could easily be given to a middle reader or early high school reader.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that it's their story, not the story I wish it would be.

I just wished this story was better written so that I bought it.

A Visit to Cinco Puntos Press

Things I knew before visiting Cinco Puntos Press:


1. They published Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood by Benjamin Alire Saenz (which in fact does not take place in my own Hollywood)

2. They were located in El Paso, Texas (i.e. not in New York, the supposed heart of the publishing industry)

3. My friend Anne Giangiulio designed some of their book covers and would often post/talk about them

Things I knew after visiting Cinco Puntos Press:

1. The act of loving, nurturing and publishing books can be found outside New York City. 

Tucked away in western Texas in an unassuming yet special building in downtown El Paso, Texas is Cinco Puntos Press. A small, independent publishing house started by husband and wife team Bobby and Lee Byrd in 1985.

2. "Publishing is very creative work. Like writing, it's a marvelous act of self-discovery" 

Publisher Lee Byrd (on left)

     - Lee Byrd, publisher and author.

From the moment you walk in to their storefront office, the creative element of publishing is evident. The posters on the walls aren't necessarily current or framed to promote but are put up and stay up because they want to be surrounded by work they are proud of and love, both current works as well as art and posters that may be unrelated to a new title. Talking with Lee you feel her passion for discovering and nurturing talent and stories, forging editorial relationships with authors based on their individual and specific needs. Talking to Lee about books is like having a conversation you know could continue all day and wander into all sorts of interesting and surprising places.

3. The diversity thing can be the best afterthought to discovering well-written books

So their imprint is in Spanish (for "five points" not that I learned what those five points are). And you look around the room and see a healthy dose of Mexican American, African American and Latin American author names on the tables. But after talking with Lee and reading two of their Young Adult titles, you get the sense that the primary goal is finding the good stuff and the fact that their titles happen to tell stories of diverse (i.e. not white, because isn't that what we really mean when we say "diverse"?) people is a happy consequence of that.

4. Independent publishers are finding a niche not in art books but in Young Adult novels!

Graphic Designer Anne Giangiulio at the first display table 

How often do you see an independent publisher that specializes in Young Adult novels? Candlewick I suppose, but they are a powerhouse today, they feel too big to call independent even though they are. It made me smile to walk into  a publishing house where the first display table was of Young Adult titles. 

THE FIRST DISPLAY TABLE! 

The covers were all fascinating (even the ones that weren't designed by one of my best friends) and original. They take stylistic chances with artists as opposed to many marketing departments that design book covers. I might not have loved them all, but I really appreciated the attention to detail and narrative all the book covers shared. It made me rethink how I view book covers overall.

Thank you Lee Byrd and Anne Giangiulio for inviting me into your world at Cinco Puntos Press.