Banned Books Week 2015

Happy Banned Books Week 2015 everyone! This week in September is set aside by the American Library Association and partners, including independent bookstores. Its purpose is to bring attention to the fact that there are STILL books (and other media) in this country, at this moment, that are banned. Most are for political or religious reasons, like To Kill a Mockingbird and Harry Potter (TKaM supposedly presents offensive racial issues and HP endorses witchcraft. No, I'm not making this up. These are real reasons why these books have been banned in certain United States communities.). Check out your local libraries, independent bookstores, literary foundations and community groups to find out about Banned Books Week events in your area!

Book Review: "Newt's Emerald" by Garth Nix

With the recent resurgence of Regency romances in YA literature, I've had to be admittedly picky about what I choose to read. Despite their cleverness, intellect and witty repartee, I've never felt particularly drawn to that genre. When you combine it with alternate history, a little bit of magic, mistaken identity and general hilarity though, my interest is definitely piqued. That interest and a history of predominately favorable experiences with his writing led me to pick up "Newt's Emerald," the beginning of a new series by Garth Nix.

Lady Truthful's birthright isn't just her father's extensive property; it's also the great emerald once worn by her dead mother, which is rumored to hold great magical potential. When that emerald is stolen from under her nose, Lady Truthful decides to follow it despite her male relatives' insistence that she stay at home while they undergo various attempts to either regain it or find her a new one. Traveling to London, she finds an unlikely ally in her great aunt and discovers a whole world of subterfuge, magic and conspiracy that draws her in as she searches for her family's emerald.

In order to pursue her line of questioning unmolested, Truthful is forced to take on the persona of a distant relative, a French gentleman bound for the clergy. It is this double life, and the multiple, interwoven cases of mistaken identity that ensue, that make this book such a hilarious, endearing read. As Truthful struggles with both the mystery of her emerald's disappearance and her task of maintaining two distinct identities, her emotions and state of mind are the things that begin to suffer even as she gets closer to the one who may have stolen her emerald. The climax is exciting, imaginative, and endearing all at once and I can't wait for the next installment of this series!

Nix has taken the Napoleonic period and added a thrilling twist of magic to it along with a hefty dash of "The Importance of Being Earnest." It's Regency romance that doesn't take itself too seriously, but recalls the funny little (and not-so-little) foibles in which we all find ourselves embroiled in the pursuit of love, romantic or familial. This is a truly delightful read suitable for a broad range of ages and all genders, especially if you like historical fantasy along the lines of the Temeraire series. "Newt's Emerald" will be released October 13th and can be pre-ordered right now at your favorite local, independent bookstore.

Is This Book Okay For My Kid?

Even for someone who works in the book industry, it's impossible to stay up-to-date on every new book that comes out. This is a particular concern with children's and young adult literature, since many parents are concerned with whether a given book will be appropriate, subject-wise as well as regarding reading level, for their children. Common Sense Media has a great resource that you can find here that lists books that have been estimated to be suitable for each age group. Additionally book reviews, star ratings and parental commentary are all featured in an easily readable format that will let you either browse for something a young person might like, or look up a particular book in which they've shown interest. Take a look and get some new ideas for a great read or three as the summer winds down!

The College FYE Reading Assignment

In a lot of colleges and universities across the country, part of the Freshman Year Experience is reading a single book, distributed to all incoming Freshmen across campus, regardless of discipline. This book is discussed in different classes over the first quarter especially, examining it from multiple perspectives in an exercise designed to not only give students some sense of unity and commonality, having all read this as an introduction to college life, but to connect classes to one another and introduce students to the kind of analysis and exploration that will be their future in academia.

Communities also often get involved in campus-wide reads, and author visits are not uncommon as part of the large discussion. Books from Science to novels are selected, often by individual schools, to be featured as student reading. NPR has put together a sample list of some of what is being featured for these kinds of programs. You can check it out here.

Book Review: "Warm Bodies" by Isaac Marion

I normally detest zombie books.

Yeah, part of it is that they're scary and often gory as well. But more than that, I'm just not particularly interested in this brand of the undead. In most of these stories, zombies appear in either a global apocalypse or a small-town nightmare, wander around and moan, eat a few brains, and then are either repelled by a small, desperate group of survivors or triumph, and wander the undead earth forevermore, longing for more brains.

I picked up "Warm Bodies" by Isaac Marion because a coworker said it was her favorite book. She described to me the humor, the insight, the sentiment behind it and then actually let me borrow her loaner copy. Yup, she has a loner copy. That's how much she likes this book. So I read it. And I'll admit, I was skeptical at the beginning. I'd heard about the movie version of this, and had it branded as a sort of zombie "Twilight," teen romance meets necrophilia. While this novel hasn't made me want to go out and play HvZ, it took me by surprise and has challenged some of the assumptions I made about the zombie concept in general.

First of all, this book is hilarious. It's written from the perspective of R, a zombie. When you fall victim to the plague, which everyone does unless someone is good enough to destroy their brain on death, you forget everything. Your name, your memories, even how to read. R begins the story by describing how deeply unsatisfying his (un)existence as a zombie is, wandering around the airport that is the hub of zombie activity in the area. When they get hungry, they go into the city in hunting parties to find and devour human refugees from the huge, reinforced stadium that has become humanity's last bastion of the living. R is profoundly unimpressed with his own existence. He's not content to just moan and shamble any more. So he tries getting married, but even that is a hollow mockery of the meaning he's really looking for.

Then he meets Julie. Or rather, he eats Perry. When he consumes the brain of Julie's boyfriend on an ill-fated (for the humans) salvage trip, R falls completely in love with Julie. The problem? He doesn't know quite what that means or feels like any more. So he kidnaps her, disguises her as a zombie and keeps her with him at the airport for a while. During that time they get to know one another a little bit better, and R finds that parts of Perry's personality are integrating themselves into him. The resulting story is one of the struggle against hopelessness, towards acceptance and the desire to make the world a better place for everyone. It's also a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, which made for some interesting "aha!" moments.

While the story was entertaining, it wasn't particularly inspired. The hypothesized source of the zombie plague, discussed by Julie toward the end of the book, is pretty trite. But it fits in well with the rest of the book. Similarly, the apparent solution and cure for the plague is equally unimaginative and too sappy for me. What actually made this book a great read was R and his introspection. He's honest and matter-of-fact about his own presence and its influence on others, as well as his perceptions of the lackluster (un)life he's (un)living. He discusses the sick parodies of life that take place around him, including zombie sex, which he compares with slapping two dead chickens together. R's connection to Julie both confuses and galvanizes him, leading him to grasp toward more and reject the notion that he will spend eternity as just another one of the shambling masses.

One of my favorite aspects of R was the fact that he challenged the binary concept of life and death. He's (un)dead, but still retains enough of himself to question the point of his semi-existence and wonder after more meaning. Perry, on the other hand, was still physically alive but had lost the will to live or the ability to keep hoping for salvation, for humanity's victory. They make an interesting pair, and Julie's hopefulness is a beacon for R's returning humanity as well as a wake-up call to Perry about what he gave up.

Read this novel if, like me, you're a zombie skeptic. It's got humor, insight, and refreshingly real characters who will make you consider what humanity means, what we need and where we're going. It's been around for a while, so odds are good that you can find a copy of "Warm Bodies" today at your favorite local, independent bookstore.

Rankings of Classic YA Female Protagonists

This list of 20 classic female YA protagonists claims to have them "ranked." We're not told by what criteria, but by reading through the list one can infer that the ranking is based on, in the colloquial, "badassery." Independence, intelligence, capacity for taking action on one's own intellectually and creatively seem to be the common factors in the high-ranking protagonists, along with a certain sense of quirkiness unique to their specific books.

I'm not sure if it's fair to rank these protagonists and the books to which they belong as "better" or "worse" than one another. After all, while they're all considered "classic" they come from a wide variety of time periods where different standards were the social norm. I'm not saying that in 1913 (when "Pollyanna" was first published) every girl should have wanted to be like her; rather, it's what people expected to see in YA novels "for girls." Once 1979 rolled around it was more acceptable to present young women as they really are: awkward, out of sorts, dissatisfied, creative, brilliant, and fantastic.

So perhaps instead of being a ranked list, this collection of protagonists should be considered a scale of the traditional representation of female domesticity, or a representation of blandest to quirkiest. One might even base some sort of measure of likeability on how closely the protagonists on the list conform to our modern ideal of what being a young woman should be all about. However you choose to view it, enjoy this collection of 20 very different female protagonists from classic YA literature.

Book Review: "Made You Up" by Francesca Zappia

Speculative Fiction is all about the question "What if?" It's about taking things that are unreal in our world and putting them somewhere that they can exist, with the words on the page or screen as the portal between worlds. Sometimes, the unreality of a situation lies not in the setting or the mythical creatures, advanced technology and magic, but rather in the perspective of the characters themselves. We call these characters "unreliable narrators" because what they tell us cannot be trusted as true. However, in many cases it's this unreliability that makes their stories so compelling and beautiful.

That's definitely the case in "Made You Up," a young adult novel by Francesca Zappia. Main character Alex is starting her senior  year in high school. Years ago she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and she's learned tips and tricks in addition to taking her medication that help her to differentiate between hallucinations and reality, like consulting a Magic 8 Ball at work, perimeter checks whenever she enters a room, and taking photos with her digital camera. If the questionable images are still there later when she looks at them, then they were real. She'll be attending a new high school, after a psychotic break and some unfortunate graffiti necessitated her leaving her old school. Alex is doing much better now though. She has a job as a waitress, she's applying to colleges, nobody at East Shoal High School knows her secret, and she even has a friend named Tucker. If she can just make it through this year, she'll be out. She'll be okay.

As part of her community service for her graffiti incident, Alex is placed in a student club that does volunteer prep work for East Shoal's athletic events. In charge of that club is Miles, a social outcast and possible evil genius who reminds Alex uncannily of her first hallucination when she was very young. Tucker warns her to stay away from Miles, but eventually their quirks bring them together. Between her sometimes overprotective mother, her younger sister Charlie, her coping mechanisms and the friendships she starts to develop, Alex thinks the year is going okay. But one night on the way home from a party she has a break in front of Miles. Her secret revealed, she's forced to depend on him more than she'd like to make sure her new school doesn't turn on her the way her old one did. In addition, one of the school's queen bees gets involved in the club and there's something strange going on with the principal and the school's athletic score board. Just when things should be getting better, with a "normal" life and "normal" high school issues, Alex starts to fall apart. She's used to being "crazy"; it's the normalcy that might make her unravel.

Zappia put together a really, truly wonderful novel about someone whose brain just doesn't work the same way as everyone else's, and how rewarding and difficult it can be to finally see some of their world meshing. But she also shows how difficult and frustrating it can be when a person has to ignore what their senses are telling them exists, like a phoenix that lives in your neighborhood or a boy who reminds you of your first hallucination. Alex's character is especially beautiful because it's the little everyday things that make her question her own sanity. She knows she has to be aware of her triggers and her surroundings, knows that some of what she sees isn't real and knows to take care of herself to avoid the same sort of incident that took place at her old school. But as the author points out (brilliantly, I might add) it's not always as easy as knowing that there isn't really a python hanging out of the school ceiling.

This book is the perfect blend of self-discovery and acceptance, young romance, mystery and tough stuff. It starts out as a journey of self-acceptance for Alex and morphs into a budding romance mixed with trying to figure out what's going on with a cheerleader queen and the creepy school principal, and what they have to do with Miles and the athletic club. The two main parts of the story morphed so wonderfully into one another though that it didn't feel like separate issues. Alex isn't the only one learning how she interacts best with the world around her; Miles and Tucker are evolving with her, as is her relationship with her family members. And the evolution doesn't follow a rote script; characters react to events as they unfold, leaves in a stream, instead of being the ones dictating what "should" happen next in the story.

I wasn't entirely satisfied with the end of the book. While I thought Alex made the right choice for her, it wasn't clear that she was the one in charge of what happened next in her life. And the confrontation with the principal seemed a little too black-versus-white, good-versus-evil for a book that did such a great job of blurring the lines between perception and reality. It made me feel like there are "good" kinds of mental illness and "bad" kinds, where in my experience with them there are really just different ways that they manifest. Some coping mechanisms and treatments are obviously much healthier than others, but nothing has inherent value; it's all about how a given person's brain works or doesn't in different situations.

Despite what I thought were shortcomings at the story's end, I enjoyed this book from start to finish. It's written with incredible voice and sensitivity, and what turns out to be real or imaginary in Alex's world isn't what you thought it would be. That's what makes this truly a realistic representation of what things are like for Alex and people like her who deal with different kinds of mental illness that impact their perception of reality. This is one of my favorite YA books to come out this year, and if you're looking for a spellbinding writing style with a main character who will really get under your skin and into your heart, pick up this book. It's witty, it's clever, it's funny, endearing, heartbreaking and encouraging by turns. In other words, it's the complete package and better yet it's available now at your favorite local, independent bookstore.