The Top Five YA Novels of All Time

by Juliet Bond

Recently, NPR asked its audience to weigh in on the top Young Adult novels of all time.  The final list of 100 books can be found here and a critique of the list can be found on the fabulous Forever YA blog.  Pinning down my own favorites took only seconds.  Aside from The Hunger Games, which contains the most kick-butt teen heroine in the history of bad-asses (sorry, Buffy), I love Jennifer Donnelly’s Mattie Gokey.   Her book, A Northern Light has a more gentle, humorous heroine but she's no less brave.  The book also has a gripping plot (about a real life murder mystery) and a fantastic dash of historical fiction.  I don't know how she did this, but Jennifer Donnelly wrote a beautiful, perfect book.  I love her.  I also hate her.  A lot.  My jealousy knows no bounds...

Next, is Chris Crutcher’s Deadline for the achingly beautiful balance of grief, loss, realism and searing sarcasm.  I wish this man were my neighbor so that I could bring him hot cups of coffee in the morning and talk about politics or people, or flavors of bubblegum – whatever.  I will listen oh, Chris.  I will hear you.

I will also listen to John Green, who wrote a similarly gorgeous book about loss, The Fault in Our Stars.  However, Mr. Green has such a following of post and pre-pubescent fans (who self identify as the "nerd fighters") that I might get trampled on my way to bring him said cup of hot (now hopelessly splashed across the imaginary wraparound, oceanfront porch) coffee.

Winter Girls by Laurie Halse Anderson, takes us inside the teenaged girl’s mind and heart and brings us out again with a sense of forgiveness both for her flaws and for the broken and blemished youths we all were.  I saw Laurie speak about teen girls in fiction when she accepted an Amelia Bloomer award a few years ago.  The snot sodden tissues I left at the table are a testament to how moving she is on paper and in person.

The British originated Georgia Nicholson series by Louise Rennison makes me laugh so hard beverages squirt from my hooter (vair, vair cool!)  I am ridiculously proud that my friend MJ includes me when she refers to her writer friends as the "four aces."  I also recently discovered the American equivalent to this, The Jessica Darling series, which is slightly bleaker but just as much fun.

And last a tie (I am a notorious cheater on lists of favorites limited to only five) between, I am the Messenger by Markus Zucac and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.  Both of these books are carried by the voices of self-esteemless, uproarious and wise teen boys.  They are the only books my own teen son has read more than once.  He keeps them next to his bed and has learned to like himself better through the grace of these tender, generous stories.  In short, they rocked his world.

What are your top five (ish) and why?

How to be Really Daring

By Juliet C. Bond

Recently, I came across an online article about those Daring Boys/How to Survive Anything etc., books for kids.  As a mother of three, I’d already noticed the difference between the chosen topics and presented advice in these gender-stratified manuals.  But the article http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/scholastic-books-sends-girls-misogynistic-message did a great job of breaking down the antiquated messages (especially present in the How to Survive series) and, moreover, it made me worry.

Not that worrying is some new pastime for me.   I worry about everything from the state of my son’s fingernails to the state of the world.  But with the tide turning towards curbing women’s rights in general, with the onslaught of negative imagery and sexualization of younger and younger girls, my level of anxiety has been steadily climbing the charts.

What the heck IS this turning back the clock trend in reading content for girls?  With the fantastic exception of The Hunger Games (thank you, Suzanne Collins) and a few other worthy gems here and there (many of which haven't been marketed with the same zeal as Twilight) a heavy amount of what we have to choose from is predictably gender limited or subtly sending twisted messages about relationships.

So back to those how-to manuals out there for kids.  In the Dangerous Book for Boys, one finds detailed advice on:

·               Spies

·               Navajo Code

·               Astronomy

·               The Declaration of Independence

And while there are some good, gender-neutral activities in the companion Daring Book for Girls, there are also a host of rather mundane undertakings.

·               Spanish (and French) Terms of Endearment

·               Pressing Flowers

·               Putting Your Hair up With a Pencil

·               How to Tie a Sari

Right, as my daughter said, “uh, verrrrry daring…”

Each book also includes a chapter about the other gender.  In the Dangerous Book for Boys, the chapter entitled "girls," begins by pointing out, “that girls are quite different from you,” and that they can’t fathom your games, “involving wizards, or your understanding of Morse code.” 

Huh, the fabulous girls I know who just finished their summer Wizard Camp (under the awesome tutelage of Clare Tallon Ruen) might beg to differ.

And let me just point out that while the daring girl's book contains some basic information about navigating relationships and being kind, the dangerous boy's book includes very little on that topic.  Don’t we want our boys to be just as capable in this area?

Dangerous Book for Boys, goes on to list some strict (and ridiculous) guidelines on what girls will like, including:

·               They all love flowers (My daughter is allergic – so, no.)

·               They love mysterious Valentine’s Day cards with no name on them (What? Girls don’t want to KNOW who likes them?  Girls enjoy wondering who may be looking at them askance while they finish their science test – eyes crawling across their neck?  Yeah?  Well girls also love restraining orders...)

·               They prefer boys who have a “ruddy glow” from playing a sport rather than the “corpse-like pallor of the computer programmer.” (I hate sports.  My daughter hates sports.  And every time my husband bypasses a football game on the television to watch an episode of “Sherlock Holmes” with me, or opts for a trip to the library over something more athletic, I thank my lucky stars that he is a pasty non-lover of sports and then I swoon just a little.)

So the Dangerous/Daring books (and let’s just admit that “daring” is safer than “dangerous” so girls can handle it ya know? See, that’s why they didn’t call them both dangerous.  Girls couldn’t do dangerous, just daring * face plant *) are a wee bit sexist. 

But it seems that the new How to Survive Anything books are even more stereotyped than Dangerous vs. Daring series.  For boys, there are a host of natural disasters and wild animal/zombie attacks to navigate, while girls are told that they should be wary of:
         
            * Taking bad school photos
            * Knowing just how to keep a secret (healthy advice for anyone who appreciates the
               damage lying can cause to all genders and relationships)
            * Surviving crushes
            * Babysitting
            * Fights with your BFF
            * Pimples

Also, it contained a section on how to teach your cat to sit.

Woah, what?

The bad news is that the Daring and Dangerous books have been a huge hit.  They have a four star rating on Amazon and have sold like hotcakes.  In fact, their popularity spurred a sequel and a video game.

But there is good news.

After the more transparently sexist How to Survive series was released, people wrote in to Scholastic to passionately complain about the damaging messages these books send to boys and girls.

Consumers are powerful.

Some of my favorite comments include:

Carol: Am ordering copies. Too good a chance to pass up such great examples of outdated ideas that are still in circulation. Beginning teachers are hard to convince that gender bias still exists. These will be great examples.

And Rue, who included a list of improved topics including:

·               
How to Survive a Kidnapping


·               How to Survive Getting Lost


·               
How to Survive a Power Outage


·               
How to Survive Drowning


·               
How to Survive on $10


·               How to Survive the Death of a Pet


·               
How to Survive Shyness

THAT book, I would buy for my daughter.

Scholastic has made a public apology asserting that, “no further copies would (sic) be made available.” 

Except, they are still available.

So if you really want some advice on how to be daring, I have some for you.  Sit down with your son and/or daughter (or your own wonderful self) and add your voice to a host of others who want to see better content for kids.  Just use this link to shoot off a short email encouraging Scholastic to get rid of the How to Survive series.

And if you're looking for books with better messages about gender, check out the Amelia Bloomer Project where, every year, a committee of writers and readers nominate books based on excellence in writing and better stories about girls.

Now that's daring.

The journey of Suzanne Collins

by Kim Van Sickler

As many people did, I inhaled the Hunger Games series. I deemed author Suzanne Collins to be ridiculously brilliant. I put her on a pedestal and aspired to someday being half as good a writer as her.

And then in April 2012, I drove my daughter and her friend on an obnoxiously long car trip (2,780 miles in one week) and decided to make the most of that dead time by listening to Collins' earlier series, "The Underland Chronicles." They are five books about an eleven-year old Overlander (regular human) boy who turns twelve before the series is complete. In Book One he crawls through an air duct in his NYC apartment building to retrieve his two-year-old sister, and finds himself transported on an extraordinary air current to the Underland.

Listening to Gregor's exploits in Gregor the Overlander, Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane, Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods, Gregor and the Marks of Secret, and Gregor and the Code of Claw, I came to see Suzanne Collins in an entirely different way. I felt like a proud mother watching her child grow up.

The series is good. But it's not brilliant. In so many places I see Suzanne grappling with story arc, pacing, and conflict. Character development of all but a few characters is sketchy. In this series, she spends most of her time wowing us with her gigantic Underworld creatures: fliers (bats), crawlers (cockroaches), gnawers (rats), nibbles (mice), spinners (spiders), cutters (ants), shiners (fireflies), stingers (scorpions), diggers (star-nosed moles), hissers (lizards) and  killers, (humans who are so pale as to be translucent, with silver hair and violet eyes.) Totally appropriate for a middle grade audience, but still, lacking the polish of her later works.

She cut her teeth on this series. She did not spring fully formed into a New York Times best seller and recipient of about twenty-four other prestigious book awards. Rather, she slogged her way through 1,757 pages, developing her trademark style. I got excited whenever I saw a glimpse of the Suzanne Collins to come.

Gregor, her reluctant hero, is endearing because he becomes the caretaker of his two-year-old sister, Boots, while busily trying to fulfill prophecies in the Underland. In Book Two: Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane, when he is charged with killing the Bane, who turns out to be a baby rat, Gregor struggles to decide what to do. A hero with a big heart. Traces of Katniss.

In Book Three: Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods, Gregor and company travel to The Jungle and the Vineyard of the Eyes where carnivorous plants, sentient plants with eyes, lure them into traps they must band together to fight their way out of. Not so different from the bizarre forces of nature in the Arena.

Solovet is the female commander of the human Underlanders, someone who takes her job so seriously that she crosses some very clear ethical lines. Foreshadowing of President Snow.

Ripred is a battle-scarred rat with a heart buried somewhere underneath all the cynicism. He's a master manipulator and reminds me of Haymitch.

Suzanne Collins didn't get where she was with sheer talent. She practiced her craft and honed it admirably in the Underland Chronicles series. It appears that for most of us, even Suzanne Collins, we must put in the time before we reap the rewards. We've got to keep slogging away.