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Why Friendship Books Are Essential: Guest Post by Stacey Lee

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Today’s guest post comes from debut YA author Stacey Lee. She’s talking about the importance of friendship books and why girls need these stories, be they about girl-to-girl friendships or not.

Stacey Lee is a fourth generation Chinese-American whose people came to California during the heydays of the cowboys.  She believes she still has a bit of cowboy dust in her soul.  A native of southern California, she graduated from UCLA then got her law degree at UC Davis King Hall.  After practicing law in the Silicon Valley for several years, she finally took up the pen because she wanted the perks of being able to nap during the day, and it was easier than moving to Spain.  She plays classical piano, wrangles children, and writes YA fiction.

UNDER A PAINTED SKY is her debut book.  

Tastes change.  At two years old, my daughter couldn’t get enough of Everyone Poops, but by age three, she had discarded that one for The Holes In Your Nose.  After sticking her fingers up her nose got old, she moved to If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (which might explain her insatiable need for cookies), and so on and so forth.  

Somewhere along the way, she’s become a tween, and now she can’t get enough of friendship stories.  But even as she evolves into wanting the more ‘lovey dovey’ books, I hope the friendship story is one she will never outgrow.  

So why are friendship books so important?

First, let’s look at why friendships are so important.  Studies show that the strongest predictor of having a fulfilling life is to build healthy relationships with others, especially for women.  One landmark study showed that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause them to befriend other women.  Up until then, it was thought that stress provoked a fight or flight response, but that was due to the test subjects historically consisting of men.  This ‘befriending’ response buffers stress for women in a way that doesn’t occur in men.  Another study found that the more friends women have, the less likely they are to develop physical impairments as they age.  Friendships are as essential to women as a good diet and exercise. 

1. Friendship stories encourage us to seek out good friendships.

Books that show healthy friendships encourage us to foster these relationships in our lives.  How many of us wanted an amazing spider for a best friend after reading Charlotte’s Web?  Someone who would save our hides from becoming bacon when the world turned against us?  E.B. White created such relatable emotions in her two unlikely characters of Wilbur the pig and Charlotte the spider, it’s not surprising this book is the best selling paperback of all time.  The ending still chokes me up.  

Another classic series, the Betsy-Tacy-Tib books by Maud Hart Lovelace, centers around three best friends who are constantly getting into trouble for things like throwing mud at each other, and cutting off each other’s hair.  When I read them, I longed for a friend I could throw mud at.  (Instead, I had sisters, who were almost as fun.)  To this day, I still seek out the kind of people I can be silly with, because of those girls.

2.  Friendship stories help us to be good friends.

My daughter loves the Gallagher Girl series by Ally Carter, about an elite spy school for teen girls.  When I asked her what she likes most about the books, it wasn’t the gadgets or the girls’ crazy adventures.  Instead, she loves how the girls rely on each other in tough situations, whatever that involves – boys, parents, ancient international terrorist organizations.  I felt a moment of pride when she told me, “When I read (these books), they help me be a good friend.” 

Returning to Charlotte’s Web, while I wanted a spider for a best friend, more often I imagined that I could be that selfless spider someday.  Books help us imagine ourselves at our best, and if we can imagine it, we can achieve it.

3.  Books that show unhealthy friendship help us understand others and ourselves.

Alexis Bass’ brilliant novel Love and Other Theories is about a group of girl ‘players’ who follow certain rules to avoid heartbreak.  These girls are cruel and catty, and the indignation expressed by Goodreads reviews is a testament to how well the author captured these characters.  But the book shows us how easy it is to get caught up in toxic relationships, and the harm that can result.  It encourages us to emerge from such relationships, stronger and wiser, and may even help us understand these flawed characters in a redemptive way.

In one of my favorite books, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Junior’s best friend Rowdy rejects him when Junior switches to an all-white school.  But even while Rowdy is beating up on Junior, Alexie somehow makes us care about both of them, showing us the power of best friends to hurt and to heal.

4.  Books about friendship give us hope.

One of my favorite adult friendship titles is Waiting to Exhale, by Terry McMillan, about the lives of African American women living in Arizona.  Each have their own stories –a woman tries to find Mr. Right, a divorcée rebuilds her life, a mother deals with an empty nest, and a serial dater questions whether she needs a man.  What carries these women through their own personal heartbreaks is their friendship with one another.

In writing my debut, UNDER A PAINTED SKY, I wanted to show how essential friendship is to our survival.  Samantha, a Chinese violinist, and Annamae, a runaway slave make a perilous escape out of Missouri in 1849.  Each has separate missions that will require them to eventually split up, but their unlikely friendship might be the only thing that can save them. 

Friendship books assure us that in the midst of life’s worst struggles, as long as we have friends, we can prevail.  As the famous Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist Bill Watterson put it, “Things are never quite as scary as when you have a best friend.”  I couldn’t agree more.

Friendship books in YA I recommend:


The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie

Love and Other Theories, Alexis Bass

Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

The Orphan Queen, Jodi Meadows

When Reason Breaks, Cindy Rodriguez

We All Looked Up, Tommy Wallach

I Am the Messenger, Markus Zusak

Friendship books in my TBR pile:


Tiny Pretty Things, Sona Charaipotra & Dhonielle Clayton

Mexican White Boy, Matt De La Peña

Becoming Jinn, Lori Goldstein

The Distance Between Lost and Found, Kathryn Holmes

Lucy the Giant, Sherri L. Smith
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Under a Painted Sky is available now. 
You can find more about Stacey in these places: 

www.staceyhlee.com
@staceyleeauthor [Twitter]
https://www.facebook.com/staceylee.author
https://www.pinterest.com/staceyleeauthor/
https://www.tumblr.com/blog/staceyleeauthor

Strong Heroines: Guest Post by Mary E. Pearson

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Today’s guest post comes to us from one of the very first YA authors I read as an adult and one that Kimberly admires: Mary E. Pearson. She’s talking about strong heroines, particularly in science fiction and fantasy. 

Mary E. Pearson is the  author of The Kiss of Deception and many other award-winning books for young adults. You can learn more about Mary and her books here.










March is National Women’s History Month and this year’s theme is about weaving women’s stories into the “essential fabric of our nation’s history.” There are so many strong, amazing women who helped build this country and often they’ve been left out of the historical record.

  

The National History Women’s Project aims to correct that and says, “Accounts of the lives of individual women are critically important because they reveal exceptionally strong role models who share a more expansive vision of what a woman can do. The stories of women’s lives, and the choices they made, encourage girls and young women to think larger and bolder, and give boys and men a fuller understanding of the female experience.”

I think this applies to fiction too. I love reading about strong women. Why shouldn’t I? They are a part of our lives. They are everywhere. Our mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, and colleagues. They inspire us, hold us up, and help to move us forward in our own dreams. They help us to see all that we are and all that we can be, in spite of our flaws, our weaknesses, and fears. The stories of strong women, both in history and in fiction, need to be heard! And heard by both our daughters and our sons.

I’ve had some incredible strong women role models, one of whom was my grandmother. She didn’t take crap from anyone. Maybe it stemmed from an oppressive childhood. She grew up in in a small town in Arkansas, and though she fell in love with one boy, her father forced her to marry another—a man actually—much older than she was. He was “wealthy.” He owned the only car in town which was a big deal back then—at least to her father.  It was a loveless marriage and two children later she walked out, defying both her father and her husband. Being a single mother during the Depression wasn’t easy, but somehow she kept her children fed, including the “love child” that came along later. Yes, scandalous for her time, but she made no apologies. She moved forward.

That’s what I’ve seen with the strong women in my life. They may get knocked down; they might make mistakes along the way, but that doesn’t stop them. They move forward drawing on their own unique strengths and the ones they’ve gained on their journey—and there are so many ways to be strong. One way of course, is through plain physical power.  I know a lot of women with incredible physical endurance—and ones who can pack a wallop! But there are many shades of strength, including bravery, compassion, intelligence, perseverance, vision, curiosity, cleverness, ambition, resolve, and so many more.  

I love seeing the whole spectrum in so many amazing heroines. In celebration of Women’s History Month, I’d like to share a few of my favorites from recent reads:

Sybella


Oh Sybella, how I ached for you.  From the time she was introduced in the first book of the series, I was pricked with curiosity about the depth of her story.  When at last it unfolded in Dark Triumph, I was undone. Yes, it is a fantasy novel, but Sybella’s story cut me to the quick with its gritty realism. Sybella somehow finds the strength to reach deep and overcome a lifetime of betrayals. She broke my heart and then pieced it back together again with hope. I loved all the female protagonists in the His Fair Assassin series by Robin LaFevers, but Sybella’s strength melted into my core.

Charley


Charley is fun. She is clever. She is strong.  She’s the kind of girl you want for a best friend—whether you’re a guy or a girl. She is resourceful, and has a sense of humor even as she is desperately trying to survive after being thrown into the most dire of circumstances on an island—without food, water, or clothes. Yes, she is naked, which she notes with all the shock and horror that my own seventeen year-old self would have had. Charley, the main protagonist in Lynne Matson’s debut, NIL, has stuck with me and still makes me smile when I think of her. She is a survivor.

Cress


Humorous like Charley, Cress is a different kind of survivor. She’s on an island of another sort, a prisoner in a satellite high above the earth. Locked away from almost all human contact, Cress uses her imagination to survive. She is a dreamer and envisions a different life from the one she has had. Yes, Cress is flawed and naïve—what else could you expect from someone who has had to endure a life of isolation—but she is also skilled at things like hacking computer systems and when she realizes how she has been used, she puts those skills to good use. In her naivety Cress is so different from the other heroines in Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles, but that is what captured my heart too. Her world has only been seen through the lens of a netscreen and from that she pieces together some semblance of a life—until she has the opportunity to grab for another.

Celaena


She’s a bad ass. There is no other way to say it. Dangerous and driven, violence is all Celaena has ever known. She was raised to be an assassin—and she’s damn good at it. But besides setting her adversaries on edge with her knife skills, she can do it with her humor too. That’s my kind of girl. She lets no strength go unmined. My grandmother would love her. So do I. I’ve only read the first book in The Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas, but I can’t wait to see what mayhem Celaena stirs in the rest.

For the sake of space, I’ll have to use shorthand here, but more strong heroines I loved were Kestrel from The Winner’s Curse (clever and calculating!), Wilhelmina from The Orphan Queen (courageous and determined!), Rosie from The Vault of Dreamers (curious, creative, and brave!) and . . . okay, there are a lot of great heroines out there.

Even though all the stories I’ve mentioned are fantasy, I think the fantasy elements help illuminate the very real strengths in all of us. All these incredible heroines had tough choices to make, just as we all do every day, and they meet the challenges of their fate and circumstances through trial and error, calculations and intelligence, missteps and perseverance, vision and triumph—and plenty of badassery. Sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

The NWHP says, “There is a real power in hearing women’s stories” and I couldn’t agree more. The female voice, experience, and perspective is unique, and reading about it enriches all of our lives, girls and women, boys and men alike.
There! Go link arms with one of these women and let them take you on a powerful journey.

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Kiss of Deception is available now. The sequel, The Heart of Betrayal, will be available July 7. 

Appropriate Literature: Guest Post by Elana K. Arnold

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Today’s “About the Girls” guest post is from author Elana K. Arnold. She’s here to talk about the idea of “appropriate literature” and how that applies to girls, girls reading, and feminism. 

Elana K. Arnold has a master’s degree in Creative Writing from UC Davis. She writes books for and about young people and lives in Huntington Beach, California with her family and more than a few pets. Visit Elana at www.elanakarnold.com.
















A few days ago, I got an email. This is what it said:

“My 13 year old daughter is interested in reading your books. I research novels before she reads them to ensure they are age appropriate. Can you please provide me with information regarding the sexual content, profanity, and violence so I can make an informed decision.”

The subject of the email was: Concerned Mother.

I’m not proud to admit that my first reaction was a twist in my stomach, a lurching sensation. Was I attempting to lead her daughter astray, were my books nothing more than thinly disguised smut, or pulp?

And I wasn’t sure how to respond. Yes, my books have sexual content. They have profanity. There is violence. But my books—like all books—are more than a checklist, a set of tally marks (Kisses? 6. Punches thrown? 4.) 

Then I began thinking about myself at thirteen, about what was appropriate for me in that year, and those that followed.

When I was thirteen, I read whatever I wanted. No one was watching. Largely I found books in my grandmother’s home library. I roamed the shelves and chose based on titles, covers, thickness of the spines. I read All You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex (But were afraid to ask). I read The Stranger. I read Gone with the Wind. And I read at home too, of course, and in school—Anne of Green Gables and Bridge to Terabithia and Forever.

Those early teen years were steeped in sex, even though I wasn’t sexually active. In junior high school, there were these boys who loved to snap the girls’ bras at recess. I didn’t wear a bra, though I wished desperately for the need to. I was sickened by the thought that one of the boys might discover my secret shame, reach for my bra strap and find nothing there.

So one day I stole my sister’s bra and wore it to school. All morning I was aware of the itch of it, its foreign presence. I hunched over my work, straining my shirt across my back so the straps would show through.

At recess, I wandered dangerously near the group of boys, heart thumping, hoping, terrified. Joe Harrison did chase me—I ran and yelped until he caught me by the arm, found the strap, snapped it.

And then his words—“What are you wearing a bra for? You don’t have any tits.”

The next year, there was a boy—older, 15—who didn’t seem to care whether or not I needed a bra. We kissed at a Halloween party, just days after my thirteenth birthday. I was Scarlett O’Hara. He was a 1950’s bad boy, cigarettes rolled into the sleeve of his white T-shirt. He was someone else’s boyfriend.

The next day at school, a well-meaning girl whispered to me, just as class was about to start, “If you’re going to let him bang you, make him finger bang you first. That way, it won’t hurt as much.”

Later that year, before I transferred schools when my family moved away, my English teacher told me I was talented, and that he would miss me. Then he kissed me on the mouth.

The next year, a high school freshman, I was enrolled in Algebra I, and I didn’t think I was very good at it. Truthfully, I didn’t pay much attention to whatever the math teacher/football coach was saying up there, preferring to scribble in my notebook or gaze into half-distance, bringing my eyes into and out of focus.

On the last day of class, the teacher called me up to his desk. “You should fail this class,” he told me. “You went into the final with a D, and you got less than half of the questions right.”

I had never failed a class. I was terrified.

“But,” he went on, smiling, “I’m gonna give you a C-, because I like the way you look in that pink leather miniskirt.”

At fifteen, a sophomore, I took Spanish. I raised my hand to ask a question, and the teacher—who liked the students to call him Señor Pistola—knelt by my desk as I spoke. When I finished, instead of answering me he said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t hear a word. I was lost in your beautiful eyes.”

I wasn’t having sex. I had only kissed one boy. But still, I was brewing in it—sex, its implications, my role as an object of male desire, my conflicting feelings of fear and excitement. 

Recently, I taught an upper division English class at the University of California, Davis. The course topic was Adolescent Literature. Several of my book selections upset the students, who argued vehemently that the books were inappropriate for teens because of their subject matter—explicit sexual activity, sexual violence, and incest. The Hunger Games was on my reading list, too, a book in which the violent deaths of children—one only twelve years old—are graphically depicted. No one questioned whether that book was appropriate. Of course, none of the characters have sex. Not even under the promise of imminent death do any of the featured characters decide to do anything more than kiss, and even the kissing scenes end before they get too intense.

So I think about the mother who wrote me that email, asking me, Are your books appropriate for my daughter? I think about the girl I was at thirteen, and the girls I knew. The girl who told me about finger banging. The other girls my English teacher may have kissed. The girls who had grown used to boys groping their backs, feeling for a bra strap, snapping it. 

I think, What is appropriate? I want to tell that mother that she can pre-read and write to authors and try her best to ensure that everything her daughter reads is “appropriate.” But when I was thirteen, and fourteen and fifteen, stealing my sister’s bra and puzzling over the kiss of the boy at the party, the kiss of my teacher in an empty classroom, what was happening to me and around me and inside of me probably wouldn’t have passed that mother’s “appropriate” test. Still, it all happened. To a good girl with a mother who thought her daughter was protected. Safe. 

And it was the books that I stumbled upon—all on my own, “inappropriate” books like Lolita and All You Ever Wanted to Know about Sex—these were the books that gave me words for my emotions and my fears. 

Maybe the books I write are appropriate. Maybe they are not. But I think it should be up to the daughters to make that decision, not the mothers. Censorship—even on a familial level—only closes doors. We may want to guard our daughters’ innocence, we may fear that giving them access to books that depict sexuality in raw and honest ways will encourage them to promiscuity, or will put ideas in their heads.

I don’t think our daughters need guardians of innocence. I think what they need is power. 

Let your daughter read my books, Concerned Mother. Read them with her. Have a conversation. Tell her your stories. Let her see your secrets, and your shames. Arm your daughter with information and experience. 

Give her power. 






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Infandous is available now. 

About The Girls: Year Two

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Tomorrow kicks off our second annual “About the Girls” series here at STACKED. It’s nearly two weeks of guest posts about girls, girl reading, and feminism in honor of Women’s History Month. We dedicate so much time to boys and their reading and interests but spend hardly a fraction of the same time considering the question “what about the girls?” That’s what this series hopes to address. If you missed last year’s series, spend some time with it.

I didn’t prompt my guests with anything. I left it open to them to decide what it was they wanted to talk about when it came to girls, girls reading, and feminism in YA. Each guest came up with something entirely unique and yet, the entire series builds upon itself. There is a lot to think about and discuss with each of these posts, which range from discussing the role of abortion within and outside of YA fiction to girls who kick serious ass in science fiction. As with last year’s series, I hope readers walk away with a lot to think about when it comes to teen girls, their reading habits, and their interests, and I hope that every reader walks away with at least one new book added to their reading lists. I spent a long time making decisions on who to invite to this series, as I wanted a wide variety of voices, experiences, and backgrounds at the table.

Because I envision this series as a conversation, I open up the floor to readers and other bloggers to feel free to write “about the girls” in some capacity before March ends. Those who do and would like their work shared, feel free to pass along links to me. I would be thrilled to round them up into another post for STACKED readers to check out. You can talk about favorite female characters, favorite female authors, or about anything girls or girls reading related. The only “goal” is that it be an answer to that question, “what about the girls?” It’s my hope to post a few times outside the guest posts with pieces of interest or connection to this series as well.

We’ve seen a lot of discussion about sexism and about girls and feminism in the last few months on social media. But rather than dive into specifics, I wanted to instead highlight what I think is an important and worthwhile campaign happening on April 14: #ToTheGirls. The campaign, run by YA author Courtney Summers, is about telling girls how important they are and why they matter. All it asks is on that date, you share something to the girls and tell them why they matter, why their voices are important, and that they’re loved. It’s easy, simple, free, and it can make a tremendous impact on girls who hear that message. All of the details are here. If you’re on social media, I encourage you to take part.

Read these posts. Think about them. Talk about them. Share them. Get ready to get invested in girls, girls reading, and their complex, challenging, and rich lives.

“For the Girls” in Dedication

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I don’t pay a lot of attention to dedications in books. Most of the time, those are personal to the author, naming people in their lives who are important to them — family members, friends, someone who helped them significantly while writing the book. I find acknowledgement pages far more interesting to read.

But that’s changed a little as I’ve noticed a small trend in YA dedications. It’s a trend I love, and it’s one that I hope I keep stumbling upon. These are dedications to girls. Not just one girl, but to girls more broadly, offering them a piece of advice, a word of kindness, or a piece of hope. A lot of these dedications make perfect sense in context with the book too. If the book’s about strong girls or about a girl who learns what it means to be a girl, that sort of dedication feels like a sweet message from the author to the reader holding the book. 

Here’s a round-up of recent dedications I’ve seen “for the girls.” This is incomplete, as it’s something that I’ve only just started to notice. If you can think of others, let me know in the comments so I can track down those books and include a shot of the dedication. I’d love to have enough to do another big round-up of them, and I know they’re out there. 

I’m including a description of the book and, for some, the publication date, since these aren’t all released yet. Descriptions are from WorldCat.

Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

Fifteen-year-old Tiger Lily receives special protections from the spiritual forces of Neverland, but then she meets her tribe’s most dangerous enemy–Peter Pan–and falls in love with him.

Gabi, A Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero
Sixteen-year-old Gabi Hernandez chronicles her senior year in high school as she copes with her friend Cindy’s pregnancy, friend Sebastian’s coming out, her father’s meth habit, her own cravings for food and cute boys, and especially, the poetry that helps forge her identity.
Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future by A. S. King
As her high school graduation draws near, Glory O’Brien begins having powerful and terrifying visions of the future as she struggles with her long-buried grief over her mother’s suicide.

The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma (March 24, 2015)
Orianna and Violet are ballet dancers and best friends, but when the ballerinas who have been harassing Violet are murdered, Orianna is accused of the crime and sent to a juvenile detention center where she meets Amber and they experience supernatural events linking the girls together.

The Devil You Know by Trish Doller (June 2, 2015)
Exhausted and rebellious after three years of working for her father and mothering her brother, eighteen-year-old Arcadia “Cadie” Wells joins two cousins who are camping their way through Florida, soon learning that one is a murderer.