Over at Book Riot this week…
I’ve gotten a lot better at giving up on books that just aren’t working for me, but occasionally I persevere, pushing through to the end. In the case of these two titles, I recognized that the writing was technically good and the plots were interesting to me on paper (pun intended), but I just never got sucked in the way I normally do with a great book.
The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Vol. 1: At the Edge of Empire by Daniel Kraus
This is a book in search of the right reader. It’s about seventeen year old Zebulon, and it begins with his life in the latter part of the 19th century. Raised in privilege, he rails against his absent father and his coddling mother who wants nothing for his life that he himself wants. He runs away and becomes…a gangster, in a bit of a roundabout way. It starts small, with petty theft and impersonation of members of the Black Hand, but then grows much larger, until he’s committing regular acts of violence for a living. This way of life gets him killed. Only he doesn’t die, not quite. He continues to exist, in a sort of zombie-like way, but without the need to eat brains. He doesn’t need to eat anything, actually. Or drink. Or breathe. He can’t have sex, either, which is a bit of a downer. And he can’t heal, allowing Kraus to imbue the story with a bit of a horror touch. But he continues to exist.
This makes him a curiosity, and it brings him to the attention of all sorts of unsavory people. He becomes part of a freak show, participates in experiments with a mad doctor, fights in World War I, spends time as a bootlegger, and on. He himself is an unsavory character, which makes him interesting; it’s not yet clear whether his story arc will be redemptive, but I don’t think it needs to be. Kraus gives Zebulon a distinctive voice and a vibrant personality, and his adventures should have been more interesting to me than they were. Instead, I grew tired of the episodic nature of the novel. It’s a catalog of Zebulon’s life, and that life is certainly a unique one, but I prefer my stories to go places, and to get there a little more quickly. This is a book for patient readers who like the weird and have contemplated what it would be like to live for a hundred years and never grow old.
These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly
It’s possible that Jennifer Donnelly’s books just aren’t for me. I read A Northern Light, her book that garnered a Printz Honor, and was underwhelmed, contrary to the opinion of pretty much everyone else. But she writes historical fiction about girls trying live independent lives in times when it was much more difficult, and that’s always been one of my genre kryptonites. Jo Montfort is from a wealthy family and anticipates that she’ll soon be engaged to a young man from another wealthy family, a friend whom she actually does like – but doesn’t love. What she really wants, much more than getting married, is to be a journalist like Nellie Bly. When her father dies, supposedly in an accident, her life is thrown upside down. She soon discovers that it wasn’t an accident at all – he was murdered. She teams up with another journalist, Eddie, and the two grow closer as they unravel what really happened.
My main issue with this book was its length. Some books deserve to be 500 pages, but I don’t feel like this one warranted it. There was a lot of repetition as Jo fretted over the danger of what she was doing, over her new feelings for Eddie, over her desire to be a journalist versus her family’s pressure to make a good marriage, over the thought that her father could have been betrayed by someone close to her. These are all valid things to fret about, but so much time is spent on it that it slows the pace of the novel. It felt tedious instead of exciting. Additionally, I knew who the culprit was pretty soon in the novel, but it’s likely teen readers who have less experience with historical mysteries won’t. This is another novel for patient readers (perhaps I’m less patient than most?) who would love getting sucked into 19th century New York. It’s got a little bit of everything for them: murder, mystery, romance, friendship, and lots of period detail.
In a tight group of librarian/blogger colleagues I keep, a really interesting comment popped up that I can’t stop thinking about. The librarian had been informed that during a presentation she would be giving, it was requested she include “clean reads,” since the community the person asking served was quite conservative and even kissing in a YA would cause a problem.
One look at the top 10 most challenged books in any given year will show an interesting trend: books tend to be challenged for something relating to sexuality. Sure, religion is another big reason but take a look at the reasons behind the top ten for children/YAs (list via the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom):
1) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
Reasons: anti-family, cultural insensitivity, drugs/alcohol/smoking, gambling, offensive language, sex education, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group, violence. Additional reasons: “depictions of bullying”
2) Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi
Reasons: gambling, offensive language, political viewpoint. Additional reasons: “politically, racially, and socially offensive,” “graphic depictions”
3) And Tango Makes Three, Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
Reasons: Anti-family, homosexuality, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group. Additional reasons: “promotes the homosexual agenda”
4) The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
Reasons: Sexually explicit, unsuited for age group. Additional reasons: “contains controversial issues”
5) It’s Perfectly Normal, by Robie Harris
Reasons: Nudity, sex education, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group. Additional reasons: “alleges it child pornography”
6) Saga, by Brian Vaughan and Fiona Staples
Reasons: Anti-Family, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.
7) The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
Reasons: Offensive language, unsuited to age group, violence
8) The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: drugs/alcohol/smoking, homosexuality, offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group. Additional reasons: “date rape and masturbation”
9) A Stolen Life, Jaycee Dugard
Reasons: drugs/alcohol/smoking, offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group
10) Drama, by Raina Telgemeier
Reasons: sexually explicit
Emphasis marked above are mine, and they’re worth looking at. Of the ten books here, 12 of the reasons for a book to be challenged involve something relating to sex or sexuality and only 2 are related to violence. There are, of course, citations for offensive language, for drug/alcohol use, and religious offense, as well as the ever-present and completely vague “unsuited for age group,” but stop a second and look at the numbers again.
Twelve times books were cited as being too sexually-forward and only two times were the same books cited as being too violent. I didn’t include the “depictions of bullying” under violence, since that is a vague and undefined explanation.
I’m a big believer in letting teenagers read what they want to when they’re ready to. I’m also a firm believer that honesty, especially as it’s related to depictions of sexuality as it fits into a story, is important; if a scene shouldn’t be “fade to black,” then it shouldn’t be. Teens who are not ready for that will either put the book down or skim passages where they’re made to feel uncomfortable.
The reverse, of course, is important, too: there should be books that don’t feature sexuality — even in the light sense of hugs or touching or kissing — since many teens don’t want that in their books, and there are ways to tell stories where these are not important or vital to a character or his/her journey.
In every library I worked, I made sure to keep lists of books that were for readers who didn’t want something explicit or even something that could potentially “make them blush.” I’m against the phrase “clean reads,” since it suggests that books featuring kisses or touching or sex of any sort — discussions of a character’s sexual identity included — and I found the idea of “Green Light Reads” to be a fair compromise for describing these books. But the longer I think about the terminology, the more I wonder the implications of whatever language we use. “Clean reads” and “books that doesn’t make you blush” convey that the books don’t have sexual under or over tones to them. But those same phrases and descriptions make no mention of violence.
Violence isn’t uncommon in YA, especially after the spate of dystopian novels in the past few years, but it’s something that is, at least in my own reading experience, far less common to see in YA. It’s hard to think that’s because violence is less often a component of adolescence. Except, we live in a world where this is the reality:
This shooting in #Glendale is the 7th school shooting of 2016 and the 167th school shooting since 1/1/2013. https://t.co/pVhaMCiECK
— Everytown (@Everytown) February 12, 2016
It’s hard to wrestle with the divergence in what it is that makes teen sexuality so challenging to think about and yet, we hardly blink at the idea of violence. We need books that “don’t make us blush,” yet we don’t put out the same type of rallying cry nor do we have the same sort of patronizing language used against books which are violent.
I do not believe books encourage teenagers to act in any way, but rather, I believe they’re safe spaces in which teens can grapple with big ideas and topics that they may not find elsewhere. But, it’s hard not to look at the way we label books, at the way we challenge topics, and wonder what it says about us as a bigger, broader culture and what implications those things have on the way our world continues to operate.
Why aren’t we more concerned about violence than we are sex?
I’m not sure I have any answers here, nor do I think I have anything powerful or moving to say. Rather, this is something I continue grappling with, especially when it comes to thinking about how we talk about books, how we share books, and how we can ensure teenagers have access to and permission to books meant to give them a place to learn, to grow, to think, and to change.
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After I scheduled this post, an article popped up worth including here: in Virginia, they’re considering the option of allowing parents to block their child’s reading of anything sexual in the classroom.
But we do not see the same being begged for in terms of violence.
What is it that makes us so afraid of sex?
Because here’s the thing: I’d rather a teenager enjoy their body for what it was made to do in safe, healthy ways if they like far more than I’d like a teen to take away that same physical opportunity from anyone else with man-made weapons.
Over on Book Riot this week…
The nominees for the 2015 Nebula Awards were announced this past weekend, and I’m always excited to see which books were chosen to be honored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). This is an award given to writers by their peers, since members of SFWA (who can vote for the awards) must be paid writers. They have a YA category, named in honor of Andre Norton. This year, I’ve read a few of the books, in part thanks to Cybils, and have heard of most of them. Here are the nominees:
Seriously Wicked by Tina Connolly
I’ve heard of this one, but not read it. It’s a contemporary fantasy about a girl whose adoptive mother is a witch – a “seriously wicked” one. The synopsis on Goodreads makes it out to be fun and funny, which is nice in a genre that is often dark and depressing.
Court of Fives by Kate Elliott
Elliott, a mainstay in adult fantasy, turns her skills to YA in this book, which I have read and enjoyed a great deal. It’s set in a pseudo-Roman fantasy world where the main character, Jessamy, has been practicing to run “the fives,” an athletic competition that brings honor to the winner – usually. Jessamy shouldn’t be running it, though, because her unique social and political position – she’s the daughter of a noble man and a woman from a race considered “lesser,” – would actually bring shame to her father. She has three sisters and this is very much a story about family; a large portion of the plot involves Jessamy needing to rescue her sisters and mother from a truly horrible fate. The story is a take on Little Women, at least in the sisters’ names, and it’s fun picking out some of the parallels between the personalities of the March sisters and the ones here. I was impressed by the world-building, which seemed realistic and vibrant, in part thanks to the way Elliott portrays the two races/ethnicities and the way Jessamy is caught between them.
Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge
This is another I’ve heard of but haven’t read. From the Goodreads synopsis, it sounds like it would be a good pick for horror fans. Hardinge’s novels are usually critically well-received.
Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace
The only reason I had heard of this book was because of the Cybils (it was a nominee this past year in YA SFF). It’s from a small press, Big Mouth House an imprint of Small Beer Press, and has a rather unfortunate cover. It’s about a ghost hunter named Wasp, and it’s variously described as odd, strange, unexpected, beautiful, and weird by its reviewers.
Zeroboxer by Fonda Lee
Another Cybils nominee, this one has been on my to-read list since it was published last April. It centers around a sport called zeroboxing, which is basically regular boxing, but weightless – as in, boxing in zero gravity. The concept is cool and the story widens to involve intergalactic derring-do, which I always enjoy.
Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older
This one made our Cybils shortlist, and it certainly deserves its place on the Andre Norton nominee list as well. Read more of my thoughts on it here.
Bone Gap by Laura Ruby
I’m not surprised at all this made the list, considering it also won the Printz and was a finalist for the National Book Award. I didn’t love it, but I certainly see why so many people do.
Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
How have I not read this yet? I don’t know. It’s the only graphic novel to make the list this year and I really, really just need to read it already.
Updraft by Fran Wilde
This might be the most interesting pick for me, and I hadn’t even heard of it until it was announced as a nominee. It’s also a nominee for the Nebula for Best Novel (for adults), and it’s published by Tor, not its teen imprint. I suspect it has strong crossover appeal, though, since many of the Goodreads reviewers have it shelved on a YA shelf. If it were a Cybil nominee in YA SFF, it would have been rejected, but the SFWA’s rules are more flexible.
Which books have you read? Are you surprised by any of the picks?