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So You Want to Read YA?: Guest Post from Zoe Luderitz (School & Library Marketing, Social Media at Little, Brown)

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Let’s switch around who we have sharing their picks this week. Let’s talk to someone who is in the business of getting YA books into the hands of those who work with teens. We’ve got the manager of school and library marketing, as well as social media, from Little, Brown, Zoe Luderitz. 


Zoe Luderitz is the Manager, School & Library Marketing and Social Media at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. She also has her MLIS from San Jose State University. She did not want to give us a head shot, so imagine her smile right about here.

Thinking about how I would introduce YA to non-YA readers was more of a challenge for me than I thought it would be! I’ve always been such a fan of teen books. When I was a teenager I was into alternative lit. I loved Francesca Lia Block and read all of her Weetzie Bat books. The worlds she created of real teen lives mixed up with unexpected circumstances always appealed to me. My friends and I would draw stars and faeries on our notebooks. I would have died if Holly Black was around when I was in high school! I absolutely would have loved the Tithe series.

But YA was still so new when I was a teenager. There was not the variety that there is today. It was just becoming a “thing” when I started High School. I completely remember my freshman year when Speak was making the rounds. Then my senior year when the new The Perks of Being a Wallflower came out it was the first time I had heard about a fiction book for teens specifically. 
Though I was interested in children’s lit when I started my marketing internship at Candlewick Press in college I came away with a real love for YA. I read Feed by M.T. anderson and The Earth, My Butt and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler. I realized the depth and breadth of new YA. 
When I started working at The Horn Book I became fascinated by the conversation around YA literature. The topics ranged from more traditional realistic fiction to fantasy to paranormal romance. I started the year that Twilight came out. But it was also the year that The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian was published. One of my very favorite books of all time. I still remember sitting on the couch in The Horn Book offices opening it up not knowing the awesomeness that was in store. When I got my job at Little, Brown working on that book had me starstruck. 
I love that some of my favorite books of all time are written for teenagers! Sweethearts by Sara Zarr, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock that’s coming out this summer from Matthew Quick.  And I promise I’m not just naming Little, Brown titles! Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron, The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han, Going Bovine by Libba Bray. The list could go on and on.
YA is such a welcoming place. You can read realistic fiction like This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen AND graphic novels like American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. Science Fiction like Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi AND novels in verse like This is What I Did by Ann Dee Ellis. The characters and emotional experiences are some of the best out there and if you haven’t yet, you should definitely join the club. 

Links of Note: June 22, 2013

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This display for YA road trip books is so awesome. Go read Molly Wetta’s post about putting it together in her teen department and be inspired to do something similar with your own space. 

This might be one of my favorite collections of interesting links in a long time. It’s shorter than usual, but there is a lot to take in, so let’s go for it. And if there’s something I’ve missed in the last couple of weeks, let me know in the comments.

  • Kicking off next month is this awesome project by Kody Keplinger and Corrine Duyvis called Disability in YA. I will be watching this like crazy because I am eager to see what they’re talking about when it comes to disabilities and representation in YA lit. Such an important and under discussed topic. I think this will be a mega resource for anyone who works with teens. 
  • Someone asked me a few months ago if there was a “So you want to read middle grade?” series that was similar to the “So you want to read YA?” series we run here. Enter Sarah at Green Bean Teen Queen, who is kicking off a middle grade series for those who want to start reading more of it. 
  • Here’s an ambitious project that I have been waiting for: Recaptains. Remember when you read book one in a series a long time ago and forgot what happened at the end but you still want to read book two? Here’s where they spoil the books for you so you can carry on with the series and not need to reread the book. 
  • Why not make card catalog art? One Greenfield, Massachusetts librarian did just that. 
  • June is pride month, and even though we haven’t done anything here, I’ve collected a couple of really worthwhile reads on the topic. First, Anna has a great post over at gay ya about getting queer YA out there (including how to be a good reader AND how to be a  great librarian who knows where to find and how to promote these books) and Rebecca has a guest post over at Housequeer about queer YA fiction and MORE queer YA fiction.
  • Linda over at NPR’s Monkey See wrote a really interesting and sad post about how there are no films out there right now which feature women. I have to say more broadly, there’s been nothing of interest to me at the theater in months. I’m picky with movie watching, but there’s usually at least something which I want to see. But this year? I’ve seen nothing and have put nothing on my must-see list. 
I had a post over at Book Riot this week you can check out, too — 15 awesome young adult book cover inspired manicures. Do you have any idea how fun it is to spend hours looking at images of people’s incredible nail art? Meanwhile, I try to paint my nails one color and it is a disaster. 

When We Talk About “Girl Problems”

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My problems might be superficial on a global scale, but they’re real to me. 
— Wanderlove by Kirsten Hubbard
One of my favorite quotes in YA fiction is the one above. It’s one I’ve thought long and hard about, and part of the reason is that it captures one of the reasons I love realistic YA fiction so much. On the global scale, problems about boyfriends or about parents or even about the “tougher” stuff — drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, self-harm, and so forth — are fairly superficial. Few of the stories presented in realistic YA make a huge impact globally. They’re in the here and now, but that doesn’t at all discredit their importance and immediacy to the characters who are telling the story.

Amanda Nelson wrote a really great post over at Book Riot recently about her conflicted feelings for Elizabeth Gilbert (most well-known for her Eat, Pray, Love) that struck a chord with some of what I’ve been thinking about lately in regards to YA fiction and more specifically, the problems that girls encounter in YA fiction. It’s a short post, but the heart of it for me was this:

I have CONFLICTED FEELINGS about Elizabeth Gilbert. I read Eat, Pray, Love, and while I thought her actual putting-words-in-sentences-in-nice-and-interesting-ways WRITING was really good, the subject matter was so annoying that I ended up turning my nose up at the book. A wealthy American white lady complaining about…what, exactly? The spirituality-lite? Leaving her husband because she doesn’t want to be married, then spending the rest of the book talking about men? Ergh.
Except I could deal with it, apparently, because I didn’t fling the book away in disgust or even irritation. I finished it, thought about it, talked about it with other readers. Realized that judging the seriousness of someone else’s problems and the sincerity of their spiritual expression was probably a personality flaw of mine. Changed a little–all because of a book I kinda sorta didn’t even like.

What the wealthy white American lady complains about is the heart of the book and the heart of the criticism people have for this particular book. Gilbert’s memoir is about how she was working through the spiritual and personal aspects of a changing relationship that had, at one time, meant a lot to her but now had left her feeling something different. Amanda nails her own biases here in a way that many readers don’t or don’t think about when they approach a book like Gilbert’s — she judged the seriousness of the problems in the book, rather than reading and considering the book on its own merits.

This is where I see a huge link to what many readers do when it comes to YA fiction, particularly realistic fiction about teen girls. Their problems become disposable, collapsable, and easily judged by the reader. Their problems aren’t considered as global or with any heft. They’re seen as silly and it’s almost an insult to even be compared to a teen girl. Because whatever they’re feeling or experiencing isn’t legitimate or worthy of consideration or attention.
This video is a shining example of what I’m getting at. The standout moment for me is what she has to say here:

People don’t wanna be compared to the teenage girl; the teenage girl is hated, teenage girls hate themselves. If you listen to a certain kind of music, or if you express your emotions in a certain kind of way, if you self harm, you write diaries, all those kind of activities are sort of laughed at and ridiculed because they’re associated with being a teenage girl. Even just things like being cripplingly self conscious or overly concerned with our appearance, that’s considered like a teenage girl thing and therefore its ridiculous, it’s stupid, it’s not relevant or legitimate, and you know, what we needed at that age was legitimisation and respect and support but all we got was dismissal and “oh you’re such a teenage girl.

This is precisely what we do when we’re reading about teenage girls as much as when we’re actually interacting with teenage girls. We call their problems — the real, honest, painful, tough things they’re experiencing — “typical girl problems.”

What does that even mean? What’s a typical girl problem? What’s a typical girl? What’s a typical problem? What puts the line between a “typical girl problem” and a book that’s published featuring a male main character going through “typical boy problems?” What’s a “typical boy problem?” And why is it that “typical boy problems” are considered Literary as opposed to throw away, fluff, or otherwise light reading that “just some book about typical girl problems” can be?

I’m not sure I have answers to any of these questions. And I know for a fact that I’ve used lines like “typical girl problems” in my own reviews to describe what’s going on in a character’s life. But the longer I think about it and consider it, the less that line makes sense and the more it sort of frustrates me as someone who not only loves books about “typical girl problems,” but as someone who loves working with teen girls. I think about this in light of what it might mean to be an unlikable/complicated female protagonist in YA and what it means when a girl learns about her own ability to make choices for enjoying her body and sexuality.

Are we scared that by legitimizing the issues girls face that they might learn to like themselves or that they might find themselves valuable and worthwhile despite not having global problems to work through? 

Rather than offer up answers — I can’t — I thought instead it’d be worth looking through some of the common criticisms leveled at books featuring female main characters and why those perceptions are problematic. As Hubbard notes in that quote from Wanderlove — a book about a girl who needs to travel in order to sort out what’s going on in her own personal life and her own relationships — while the problems may be trivial, they’re very real to the character experiencing them. That doesn’t make them less challenging or less important. 

In many ways, it’s that very thing which keeps girls coming back to YA. They’re seeing themselves in the fiction and they’re empathizing and relating to the problems in these stories. These are their stories and their challenges, and for once, they’re finding a place in the world that not only understands them, but accepts them and loves them through it. 

These books remind teen girls they are perfectly capable, lovable, and valuable as they are right now.  

Keep Calm, Keep Silent 

There are so many books about teen girls and silence. About what happens when something terrible happens to a girl and she isn’t invited to speak up about it or when she tries to, she’s brushed off as being just some girl who doesn’t really know what’s going on.

I’ve been thinking about this since I finished Julie Berry’s All the Truth That’s In Me (September). There’s nothing spoiler in saying the book is about what happens when a girl comes back from being kidnapped. She’s lived in a cult/Puritanical-like world, and that world values a girl’s virginity above all else. When the nameless main character is kidnapped but returns home from where she was taken two years later with her tongue removed — a literal statement — no one wants to listen to her. When she wants to go back to school to be educated, she’s met with sexual advances on the part of her teacher. 
The assumption is that when she was kidnapped, she was made unpure. And as an unpure woman, she had no value to society anymore. She’s not entitled to an education. No one wants to hear her speak up and no one will help her meet her own desire to do so. 
Even though the book is set in a historical time frame, what made it standout was that it was so much a reflection of our own world as it is right now. We silence teen girls and belittle whatever their experiences and opinions and insights might be about what’s going on around us. The main character in this book had the answer to a major crime in town, but no one wanted to listen to her. No one wanted to find out why her tongue was cut out because by virtue of her being a teen girl, the town had already metaphorically removed her ability to speak. 

The girl knew what was going on. And part of her motivation for coming back home was to help people understand what happened to her friend. To make sense of a senseless crime. But no one would listen to her. It wasn’t simply that she had no tongue, making her voice impaired — remember, she wanted to go back to school to learn how to communicate — it’s that no one valued her voice enough to want to help her get to that point. Part of it was her perceived impurity, but a bigger part of it was that she was a teen girl. 

Silence has played a role in the lives of girls in YA for a long time. That was the whole premise behind Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak. It played a huge role in Colleen Clayton’s novel about sexual assault, What Happens Next. It certainly played a role in Courtney Summers’s Cracked Up to Be. In all four of these cases in particular, that silence revolved around sexual assault or sexual impurity or at least perceived sexual assault or impurity on some level. 

Which is interesting because for whatever reason, sexual assault and rape and the notion of sexual purity are “girl problems.” 

It’s interesting too, how many parents in these stories don’t exist. Whether that’s by design — they aren’t there — or by perception. Whatever the case is, the truth of it is the adults in so many of these stories aren’t there. 

Girl voices aren’t valued. Girl voices are written off as unimportant, and even when it’s clear there is a girl in trouble — a girl who maybe even knows the key to something bigger — she’s seen as a devalued member of her world. She’s troubled and has problems and needs help but no one actually reaches out to her and sees her through it. Or worse, they do but they’re doing so not because they care about her, but rather, because she’s causing a scene or a fuss and needs to be silenced again. 

In many ways, it’s because of the culture of being undervalued, for being seen as not having something worth sharing, that these girls internalize. They don’t choose silence. It’s not a choice at all. 

The Love Triangle


I’m not the biggest fan of love triangles in YA fiction, but they serve a purpose and do reach a number of readers. But responses to love triangles in YA are fascinating and I think speak to what I’m working at here, too. 

Love triangles are about not just the romance — though that plays a valid and important part. They’re about choice. They’re about making choices among people who a girl wants to get to know better and they’re about making choices regarding time and energy. They’re about following one’s heart and one’s mind in pursuing relationships. 

Responses to love triangles? They’re lame or overdone or tired or stupid plot devices. They’re boring because who cares about romance? 

The girl in the story cares about the romance or else she wouldn’t be struggling with which boy or girl she wants to pursue. Just as fairly, the girls and boys reading the story care about the romance. They relate, even if it’s in their own personal fantasies, of having to make a choice between two people who want to be involved with them. 

Do you see that?

A love triangle is, in many ways, where the girl at the center of the story is able to not only make a choice, but she’s making a choice among two pursuers who are interested in HER. Who want to get to know HER. Who care about who SHE is as she is. 

These sorts of responses don’t get leveled at books where there a male at the center of the story, though, quite in the way they are when it is a girl choosing between two romantic partners. Andrew Smith’s Winger features Ryan Dean West, who has a choice between two girls. But the responses to his pursuits aren’t met with nearly the same vitriol a novel which features similar set ups but with a girl choosing between two boys (and here is my bias, since I haven’t read enough YA where a girl is choosing a non-heterosexual partner). It’s not that Ryan Dean is seen as a hot shot who can get all of the ladies — he’s not! — but rather, his pursuit of romance and physical intimacy and enjoyment isn’t met with the cries of boredom or triteness or the phrase “who cares about the romance?” And while the girls in his book get to make a choice too, about whether or not he’s the guy for them, because the book’s in his voice and through his perspective, we don’t get to know what it is that’s driving them or why it matters to them. 

Boys in YA novels are allowed more choice when it comes to pursuing romance. And in many ways, there’s a special novelty granted to stories where the boy pursues romance in the way that when a girl at the center of a YA novel pursues it, she’s judged for doing so and in many ways, the strength and value of her character are determined based on this decision. 

Dismissing the love triangle trope in YA and complaining about how it’s lame and boring undercuts the value of choice, of independence, of romance, of making tough decisions about relationships to pursue and relationships to drop that teen girls do experience. Though the girls in the real world don’t always have two boys seeking their love, they do deal with tough choices similar to these choices. They have to make choices between activities to engage in. Between friendships to hold onto and those to break. Between making choices about the futures that send them down one road or another. The love triangle in YA is both the literal choice among two romantic paths and the metaphorical choice. That sometimes you simply have to make tough decisions between two appealing but different things.

Further reading on the love triangle and why it is valuable can be found on Angie’s blog in relation to Katniss in The Hunger Games titles “Why Team Peeta is a Feminist Statement” and on S. E. Sinkhorn’s post “Love Triangles: Why? – A List.”  

The Every Girl


There was a really interesting comment last year over at the Someday My Printz Will Come blog about the Sarah Dessen formula. And it’s a comment that’s appeared in more than one review of a Dessen book. While I definitely agree there is something formulaic in Dessen’s writing — all of her stories feature an average girl dealing with challenges of balancing family, self, romance, and friendship — the writing is always top notch. But more importantly . . . 


All of her stories feature an average girl dealing with the challenges of balancing family, self, romance, and friendship. 

The Dessen girl is the every girl. She is, if you will, often much like Elizabeth Gilbert. She is worried about her own life and the tough things she’s going through at the time. Yes, this often revolves around a boy. Sometimes it revolves around a good friend. Sometimes it revolves around a family that’s not necessarily 100% whole and intact. 

The Moon and More debuted at #3 on the New York Times best sellers list. Dessen isn’t a stranger to this list, and her books are among the first associated with realistic fiction. She’s been around for a long time, and her books are always highly anticipated when they come out every couple of years. Readers love Dessen because they know what to expect of her stories: a girl working through her life’s challenges, with the hope and promise of a satisfying, honest, and real ending. There’s also hope for a little romance and an adventure or two — however small — along the way.

Dessen writes books that readers relate to because they’re their stories. And in many ways, Dessen’s books are criticized for that very thing: for being formulaic and for being predictable. But the truth is, that’s the bulk of a teen girl’s life — it’s formulaic and predictable. That is not a slight on teen girls but rather, a window into the truth of what their every day experiences are. They find themselves drawn to stories like Dessen’s or Susane Colasanti’s or Deb Caletti’s or Jessi Kirby’s or other similar writers because they understand these girls because they are these girls. 
They’re finding authors who completely understand them, but more than that, who want to tell their stories. These authors respect and cherish teen girls and do so by illuminating their worlds in ways that readers (and I don’t leave out boys here!) completely understand because they are living these stories every single day. Contemporary YA authors do this in their work, but there’s something even more intimate and personal about the authors who are so focused on these stories about girls working through their every day challenges. 
The characters in these books? They’re living the problems their readers are. And these books respect that. These are not grand, end-of-the-world problems. They’re real world problems. Today’s teen girls are told over and over their problems don’t matter. They’re trivial. They’re not global.  
But these same teens are buying these books and caring about these stories because they’re finding here that their problems DO matter somewhere.

What’s Scary For Teen Girls To Know?


In 2006, John Green’s Looking for Alaska won the Printz Award. It’s a book which features an oral sex scene. The book is considered literary despite that.

I talked at length about female sexuality in YA already and the positive, empowering portrayals of it in recent titles. But in many ways, I think that when we think about positive female sexuality in YA, it’s not given the same sort of merit or time or praise. Much of it has to do with the greater book, of course, which leads back to the idea that stories about girls, with girls at the center, aren’t received with the same seriousness and merit as literary as those with boys at the center. Yes, Looking for Alaska was primarily about Alaska. But it was about Alaska through the eyes of Miles. 

Coming back to this particular topic in YA is important because I spent a long time reading and considering the comments about my own post over at Dear Author. I wonder if it’s true that a sex scene as mild and implied — not explicit but implied — as the one noted in Doller’s book really and truly wouldn’t fly in some of the public and school libraries as suggested. 
Do these libraries not have Looking for Alaska on shelf? 

I think we come back to the same thing — when a girl is at the helm, the perceptions of what a book is or isn’t about comes through. A girl exploring and being positive about her sexuality is considered too much for some libraries, but a book about a boy doing the same thing is par for the course. It’s, in fact, literary, where the book about the girl is considered more disposable. And sure, there are books where girls who are sexually active or experience positive sexuality which merit the label literary. But I think there is a much quicker knee-jerk reaction to what a book is or is not when it is a girl having these experiences. When it’s a boy, it’s just a boy being a boy.

Are girls’ stories frivolous? Are they worth less than a story about a boy?
Is it scary to think about a girl who is in control of her life, her story, or her experiences, physically, mentally, and emotionally? Why do we bristle at a girl experiences? Why do we devalue it? Why is there a belief that sexual moments in YA books that are through a female main character are there as means of titillation? 
Of course, we know that Green’s book has been challenged. But I think there’s a difference between a book being challenged because it’s made it to the shelves and a book that never gets a chance because it’s not seen as worth the expense. 

So . . . what?


I don’t have any answers, but I have a lot more questions. 

We see girl problems in stories, and we call them out as much.

We dismiss girls’ feelings and experiences as “typical girl problems” and I think we often do it in a way that makes these palatable. But they’re palatable not to girls through this sort of language, but instead, they’re dismissed as a means of making the story palatable to boys. 

Think about the books — realistic, in particular — featuring amazing male lead characters. Whether the book is written by a male or female, those boys are noted for having memorable and strong voices, often because they are boys. This is something someone pointed out to me in my own reviews and discussion of memorable voice. I’ve fallen into calling a voice memorable on the basis that the voice is a male’s. Even when I am conscious of my own thoughts on characters, on gender, and on avoiding conflating either or both of them, I find myself coding them together. This isn’t something I tend to do when talking about a girl main character’s voice.

Is it because I, too, have silenced her voice in my own reading?

Or is it because I’m trying to making statement about the palatability and the importance of problems in these stories, even though it’s far from intention on my part to do so? 

Many times I think we go much easier on our male main characters than our female ones. We don’t have an easily-created “unlikable male characters” book list. We forgive tragic back story much easier (note that male characters don’t often have a back story where they were a victim of rape, sexual assault, or sexual abuse — big, heavy, hard-to-take female back stories that are so often dismissed as “tragic” or “easy” or “lazy” back story). I’ve found myself thinking a lot lately about those books about boy main characters — those I’ve loved, especially — and wonder what the reactions would be toward the behaviors and stories would be if it were instead a female main character. Would they be memorable? Or would they be disposable? Or would they face harder challenges? Or would it be easier? 

There is a lot here, and there is a lot more I can’t say because I don’t have the words to sort through my thoughts on this topic. But I keep going back to the Hubbard quote, and I keep coming back to what Nelson notes in her post about Elizabeth Gilbert. 

Despite many of the books being about “girl problems,” there’s no such thing as “girl problems.” These are people problems. And if we keep devaluing people problems by calling them “girl problems” or “typical girl problems,” we inherently devalue the girl. We keep her silenced. We keep her from making choices and pursuing her destiny on her own terms. We make her an every girl. And we keep her scared that she’s always going to be just a teenage girl.

September Girls by Bennett Madison

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Sometimes when there is a book that everyone is talking about negatively — and giving good reasons why they’re responding negatively to it — I find myself wanting to do nothing more than actually read that book for myself. Even if it’s not something I’d normally read.

Enter September Girls by Bennett Madison.

Sam, his brother Jeff, and their father are spending the summer away from their home in the Northeast and at the Outer Banks in North Carolina. It’s been a rough year for the family. Sam’s mom recently decided to abandon them in order to find herself in Woman Land. According to Sam, she’d gotten some ideas from Facebook and Farmville and something called the SCUM Manifesto and needed to get away for a while. Sam’s dad is kind of there and not there at the same time. Part of it is the fact he’s just been abandoned by his long-time wife with two boys, of course. Part of why he wants to get away is to give him bonding time with his kids and to give Sam specifically the opportunity to have that one last summer of freedom. And Jeff, who is the older brother, is bent on making sure Sam has the kind of summer he will never forget. The Outer Banks is filled with amazing, gorgeous, luscious, and available girls. Jeff sees this as Sam’s opportunity to lose his virginity and do so without the messy strings that can happen with relationships.

Plus, that’s Jeff’s plan anyway.

The girls in this summer place are indeed magical. They all look similar to one another, and they’re all gorgeous. Everywhere Sam goes, there’s another beautiful lady, and everywhere he goes, he’s approached by these beautiful ladies. They’re practically throwing themselves at him. But Sam’s not drawn to them for their looks. In fact, he pushes himself not to be drawn to them at all, until he meets Dee Dee. Dee Dee is rough. She’s not pleasant. She talks in one hand about how well she knows the Bible and professes this knowledge through sharing with Sam the names of all of the “hos” in it. He can’t stop caring about her though, even when other girls are clamoring for a slice of his attention.

But what is it about these girls? Why are they so attracted to Sam? Why are they so attractive? And how come they never leave this place?

That’s where this story goes from what many have called a misogynistic tale to one that’s actually quite brilliant. Because these aren’t average girls. These are sirens, and it’s their duty to throw themselves at virgin males in hopes of being released from the spell that forces them to live and dwell and vie for attention in this place. Interspersed within Sam’s story are the songs of the sirens — there’s a little back story into why it is they’re stuck here, into who created them, into their legends. There’s nothing particularly answered about their origin, but that’s sort of the point. They don’t know. All they know are the stories they hear about how they can break free. They call themselves sisters, as well as the Girls. The belief is that it’s through sex with a male virgin, and that’s why so many want Sam. They know.

When Dee Dee suggests that Sam help her Sister break free, telling him it is okay to lose his virginity to another girl in the event it might set her free from the place that is killing her, Sam considers it. But he doesn’t do it. He wrestles with this in part because he wants to help Dee Dee’s sister since Dee Dee wants that, but he wrestles with it, too, since it’s not who he is at his core.

September Girls is about a boy becoming a man.

It is about breaking through this pressures thrust upon teen boys to “become a man.”

It is about learning where your values lie and what your own judgments are in seeing other people and in helping them.

Sam is dealt incredibly mixed messages about women. He’s seen his mother struggle with what it means to be a wife and a mother and feel like her place in the world is something greater than either of those. He’s told by his dad he needs to have a fun summer, and he’s told by his brother that he needs to get laid this summer in order to prove his manhood. Plus, the ladies here are easy. And available. And good looking. And isn’t that all that matters? Dee Dee, too, feeds Sam messages about women and their roles because of what she is and what it is she believes she herself is tied to. She’s a siren. She’s beautiful and ephemeral and she doesn’t get to have the experiences that other women do — not those in magazine advertisements or on television (the Girls choose their names based on what they experience when in the world believing that Commercial Feminized Things are of value) — nor those which the women in the Bible have — that’s why she sees them all as “hos.” Sam’s best friend at home feeds him messages too, as his summer is also about conquest. It’s about reminding Sam that his duty as a man is to become a Man by collecting sexual experiences under his belt and doing so without over thinking it. When Dee Dee tells Sam she should sleep with her sister in order to set her free, that’s the moment Sam realizes his well of feelings for Dee Dee. For their emotional relationship.

And it’s in that moment when he himself is set free.

It’s when he becomes a man.

There’s also a really nice tie in about mirrors and reflections that knot together the real-world elements of Sam’s narrative with those siren songs and legends. Freedom is in facing yourself as you are when you see it and not worrying about the things cast upon you as your destiny.

Madison writes a pretty powerful novel here, and he does so in a way that’s quite jarring. Sam’s not your most likable character, and much of his time is kind of . . . boring. He tells us how much TV he watches. How many walks on the beach he takes. He’s downright crass and his brother is ten times worse. There is no doubt that the language used in this book is hard to read and process and that the messages about women and what their role is in the world is hard to digest. But that is the entire point. This is a book about Sam cutting through those horrible messages society feeds people and figuring out what it is that matters to him. Because the messages that are offensive aren’t just geared toward females. They’re offensive toward men, too. To “be a man,” Sam’s told it’s his duty to sleep with a woman. That even if things look like they’re permanent, women will just leave men if they’re not proving their worth enough (see Sam’s mom).

The mirror is held up to the readers in this book to examine themselves in light of these precise messages, too.

These characters are flawed and those flaws are in your face. And isn’t it telling that readers see those flaws in others and sometimes misses them in themselves?

September Girls definitely has guy appeal, and it’s for those readers who like magical realism and fairy tale. I saw it pitched as a mermaid tale for boys, and that’s a pretty good assessment. There’s definitely female appeal here, too. But while I think what Madison says in this book is really smart and savvy and does precisely the opposite of what many readers are claiming it does (this book spins misogyny on its head by using those messages to make the point), this book wasn’t as satisfying as I hoped. I found it boring at times. The writing is simply okay, and I thought that Sam’s cataloging of his days — while effective to the message — was uninteresting. It felt like this could have used a little more time to become stronger and more compelling, and it’s not necessarily a book I will eagerly pass off to readers. It’s not that it’s bad. It’s just that it’s a bit flat and has a narrow readership who will put in the time and energy to come out with the big take aways. I think some of that is evidenced in reviews around the web — and that’s not a slight on any reader taking the story as they need to, but instead, I think, a sign that the book didn’t necessarily achieve all it set out to through the writing.

“Summer” here is symbolic of adolescence. It’s that time between being fresh and in bloom in spring and finding a comfortable, settled pattern that comes with fall. It’s about exploration and excitement. It’s about testing the waters. About pushing yourself and your boundaries. And I think Madison gives that to Sam with a nice dose of reality coming through the messages about what it means to be a person. Not just a man. Not just a woman. But a person who wants to establish meaningful relationships.

Review copy received from Lenore. September Girls is available now. 

Where you can see me at ALA in Chicago

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Are you going to ALA next week? I’ll be there, and I’d love to see you.

I’m presenting twice this year:

All About ARCs: The Ins and Outs of Requesting, Using, and Abusing Advanced Readers Copies (ARCs)


Saturday, June 28 @ 10:30 – 11:30 a.m., McCormick Place Room S103d


Presenters: Liz Burns, Kristi Chadwick, and myself, with Jen Childs and Victoria Stapleton


This presentation is a straight result of everything relating to ARCGate last summer. You’ll get a chance to hear about the results of the survey we took about ARCs and their use from librarians, teachers, bloggers, and others (we had nearly 500 responses), and you’ll hear straight from two publishing representatives who will talk about why and how they make the choices they do about ARC distribution.

Unfortunately, due to a committee obligation, I won’t be able to linger after the presentation to answer questions or talk further. But I will be happy to field questions or thoughts either on the blog (there will be a post with accompanying information) or in person later.

New Adult Fiction: What is it and is it really happening?


Monday, July 1 @ 9:15 – 10, McCormick Place Room S102D


Presenters: Sophie Brookover, Liz Burns, and myself


Ready to hear about “New Adult” fiction? This is a conversation starter that will be more about talking about the idea of “NA” fiction than it will be trying to define something. That’s the point of a conversation starter. That said, those who come will walk away with ideas about this category of books, what’s being published as “NA” right now, what we consider to be “NA” titles already available, and why serving readers who want these stories is important. When we put together our notes for this presentation, there were charts made. It should be lively.

I’m extremely excited about both of these presentations. It’s not just that they’ve been topics of interest for a while now. But there’s something special about presenting at a convention center that you went to many times as a child — I grew up near Chicago, and I went to a few trade shows at McCormick as a kid. To be able to present there now? It’s really neat.

If you’re around on Friday night at ALA, I highly encourage you to come to the official meetup that is sponsored by STACKED, YA Highway, and the Chicago Kid Lit Drink Night folks. It’s free and casual, but it is 21 and over since it’s at a bar. I should be there for much of the event, though I may duck out early since I have another thing that night, too. But if you see me, introduce yourself!

The rest of my ALA plans involve a lot of committee time, among other obligations. I have a little more flexibility to check out exhibits at this ALA, compared to at Midwinter.