A Book Review Starring "Double Exposure" by Bridget Birdsall

The short version:
Alyx was born interex. After a traumatic bullying event in her native Walnut Grove, California prompts she and her mother to relocate to her mother's hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin Alyx aksi makes the decision that she identifies as a girl despite her parents' decision to raise her as a boy and allowing her to choose later. Knowing she can't undergo surgery that would allow her to fully identify as a girl for two years, Alyx changes her last name at her new school and is off to a new start despite feelings of PTSD from the bullying. When she joins the basketball team jealousy from a teammate threatens to unravel all that she's started to build.

The long version:
The book had its strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths: the essential plotting of the story was well-constructed, the technical writing was efficient and descriptive and resulted in an easy to read story that moved quickly and kept the reader involved. The plot points became fraught with tension with the implication that at many points in the story her history would be revealed. The PTSD from the bullying event was effectively woven through the story which served to additionally heighten the tension.

Alyx's family's response from her grandfather, uncle and mother, to her change in gender identity was heartfelt and believable and complex and the majority of the secondary characters were refreshing in their humanity.

Weaknesses: I couldn't help getting tripped up in Alyx's character development. Here was a character who had lived her first fifteen years as a boy, however uncomfortably, yet her transition to living as a girl was in some ways surprisingly easy. There was no implication she'd been preparing for it in any way during childhood. She could identify other girls' cup sizes in the locker room, she had no issues with adapting to make-up and dressing as a girl (despite some small insecurities if she's passing), she adapted to social situations with relative (not total) ease. There was a complexity to the minutia of her transition that was somewhat glossed over or went unaddressed, in my opinion.

For all the nicely realized secondary characters, Alyx's nemesis is a bit too evil (and thus one dimensional) for my liking, especially within the context of so many other secondary characters who were not. It seemed like an easy device to make Pepper evil with a stunted character arc and a dissatisfying resolution in the end. Trying not to reveal too much, the later plot points that threaten Alyx's future seemed more nuanced (with again sympathetic, humane secondary characters) than Pepper.

I also wished the author didn't feel it necessary to throw in details that were more interesting to her but seemed incongruous and distracting to the plot. Trying to throw in facts about Wisconsin Governor Walker breaking up unions or Alyx repeating factual information about intersex teens she learned from her doctor, for example, not essential in my opinion.

With the lack of young adult fiction featuring intersex characters (though it's nice to see the numbers growing), this was the first I read thus far that provided an engaging story and characters. The basketball subplot and sports detail (which I think can be hard to write and incorporate into narrative) was evenly woven into Alyx's story in a balanced way that was both easy to read and didn't create two disparate plots.

In the end, an enjoyable and engaging read that broaches a tough subject matter with ease and sensitivity.

A Book Review Starring "I Was Here" by Gayle Forman

The short version:
When Cody's estranged best friend kills herself, Cody agrees to collect her things from college and comes to discover her best friend in ways she wasn't aware through her roommates, her computer and the life she'd created for herself.

The long version:
Engrossing from the start. Cody, as conceived by Forman, is a complex main character for young adult (in my opinion) in that she's not likeable or relatable from the start. And it doesn't help that the start is a dark place in which Cody is embodying a range of complex and unpleasant emotions in response to her friend's suicide. Resentment, detachment, confusion, these are the qualities that Cody first expresses when we meet her as she's processing her emotions.

One of Forman's strengths is her ability to write involving, subtle, relatively complex two-person drama in which the relationship is messy, filled with competing interests and emotions and the characters and their journeys are very human and, I'll say it again, messy. It's what I loved best about her two books "Just One Day" and "Just One Year", both of which I thought represented a leap in maturity and growth from her big (now) blockbuster "If I Stay" and follow-up "Where I Went".

You may not love Cody from the start, but you understand and identify with her as the book progresses, your heart aches for her as she processes not only her friend's reality but her own reality too. And in her male counterpart Ben McCallister, you get an equally complicated character who isn't all he appears to be and is refreshing when he's not the YA-Fantasy-Boyfriend material that I find in a fair amount of young adult fiction.

The book also continues a great trend in young adult literature focusing on 18+ characters and the post-high school experience. For years I've been excited to see the evolution of "Young Adult Literature" expand to include not only an audience that's over eighteen but characters and stories about those post-high school years told in thoughtful, contemplative ways that serve as that gray area between traditional YA and Adult Literature where books are getting longer and incorporating more complexity and/or mature themes.

That segment of literature that focuses on the 18-22 year old experience has been automatically shelved in Adult Fiction until recently. When we have started to see books with 18-25 year old protagonists appear on Young Adult shelves, many of those that have made an appearance are perceived or labeled as "New Adult", which in my mind are more romance-laden melodramas that may or may not contain more explicit sexual content. "New Adult" is tricky, not universally accepted genre in my opinion, and certainly not a division found on our library shelves. In my mind, "New Adult" is a genre and not an audience classification the way we segment our audiences between Children-Young Adult-Adult.

In seeing the audience for Young Adult expand beyond the long-assumed 12-18 year old audience, it seems natural that the content of YA has now begun to fill that gap with stories that both redefine Young Adult Literature and tell those stories in fresh, new ways. I Was Here is the epitome of that transformation within YA and I devoured it.

A Book Review Starring "Game" by Walter Dean Myers

The short version:
New York City senior Drew is looking forward to the second half of basketball season. He's the starting guard at James Baldwin Academy and is hoping a winning season will translate into an athletic scholarship. But he'll have to adapt to the unexpected when a white transfer student gets a starting position and he's forced to consider his coach's team ethic even when he'd rather shoot and play individual ball.

The long version:
My first Walter Dean Myers book!

And what a great first book to start with. As you read his slim book (218 pages) you feel you're in trusted hands. He writes with a confidence and ease that masks the work he put into it.

Drew is an engaging main character you want to follow from the start. He's smart, interesting and well-liked, yet young and still has things to learn, especially when it comes to playing team basketball and adapting to other personalities. His first-person narration is very entertaining and a clear testament to the writer as Myers infuses his narrative with the vernacular of an African-American teen that's accessible and flows well throughout and at the same time is insightful within the mindset of a teen character.

There's a lot of basketball narration to the story. I always find description of sports events hard, even if you're familiar with the sport. Myers has lengthly narrations of multiple games, he not only creates narratives that are visual and fast paced like a game, but does so from Drew's point of view with a street and basketball slang mixed in that comes across seamlessly and makes for an easy read.

I couldn't help reflecting on Myer's New York Times editorial from last summer in which he reflected upon his own childhood growing up without books that were written about and for kids like him. You can't help but feel as if he wrote this book for his younger self, and all the younger selves of him out there today. "Game" was written in 2008 and there's some references to the internet or cell phones that put it in a present day historical context, but Myers also manages to give a nice sense of timelessness to it so you can see the book aging well for kids ten years down the line.

Regarding the size and page length. Myers manages to do a lot in 218 pages. It's a compact book, both in page number and size (maybe it's 8x6 inches, eyeballing it alone) and I think it makes for an inviting book, particularly when it comes to boys who aren't of the million-page-fantasy-tome reading variety. And I think there's something to be said for a book that doesn't physically intimidate a reluctant or occasional reader.

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.

Younger Adult Reader of the Day: Stephen Colbert

Alright, Younger Adult reader of the day some day last June.

Were we not all collectively cheering (not at the same time at 11:45pm on a weeknight, thanks to our DVR culture that allows us to collectively do things independently on our own time) when John Green rocked The Colbert Report on Monday, June 23rd.

And did we not all fall in love with Stephen Colbert for the millionth time when he said:

"As far as I can tell a young adult novel is a regular novel that people actually read."

Spoken like a true father of teenaged children.

Source: http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-a-young-adult-novel-is-a-regular-novel-that-people-actually-read-20140624-story.html

Younger Adult Reader of the Day: movie producer Nina Jacobson

From the November 16th New York Times Magazine:

Nina Jacobson, prolific movie producer of "The Hunger Games" trilogy among others. When asked if she had:

"any feelings about whether adults should be so into reading Y.A. novels?"

She answered:

"To me, a great story well told is a great story well told, and just because the protagonist is a young adult doesn’t mean that story has less merit or worth than if the protagonist is a full-grown adult."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/nina-jacobson-isnt-afraid-to-fight-hollywoods-old-guard.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3As%2C%7B%222%22%3A%22RI%3A13%22%7D&_r=0

The Redefintion of Young Adult

The Young Adult Library Services Association is the division of the American Library Association which focuses on

 "library services for teens, aged 12-18."

But is "Young Adult' the equivalent of "teen"?  Is the definition of a Young Adult someone only between the ages of 12 and 18?

The advent of Young Adult literature in its current form is still so relatively young, maybe twenty years since publishing divisions first started creating divisions for those readers between children and adults and libraries have created departments that seek to serve those readers. In its infancy Young Adult literature and its audience was defined narrowly as for teenagers.

I happen to think the time has come to revisit the initial definition of "Young Adult" and here are a few reasons why:

• As the genre has expanded and diversified, the audience has expanded and diversified. Those who are responsible for the majority of purchases of Young Adult literature for their own reading consumption (as opposed to gift giving) are over the age of 18.
• As the genre has diversified, so too have the characters portrayed in them. More characters in Young Adult literature are in their post-collegiate years, ages 18-20. It's become so diverse that an entirely new subgenre of literature has sprung up in recent years: "New Adult" defined as more risqué novels marketed to women in their early twenties, among others. Much of these "New Adult" titles are cataloged as Young Adult novels in libraries.
• The genre has gone on to produce not only rich novels, but cinematic novels. Movies based on young adult novels are not only being produced in greater numbers, but are being marketed to and attended by a more general audience that includes adults as much as if not more so than teenagers.

I propose a new, broader term to describe the audience between Children and Adult. And all I had to do was come up with a suffix:

 

Younger Adult

My definition of Younger Adult includes pre-teens and teenagers but expands to include later teens ages 18-19 and the audience and readers in their twenties: 18-30 years old.