Yay for YA!

I'm not a big reader of YA.  Too much sappy romance, too many vampires, too many dead parents.  I know, there's plenty of YA that does not include any of those elements.  But I don't have the time or energy to seek those out.   But every now and then, a YA book will grab me.  A friend will recommend it, or a review will catch my eye, or I'll hear about a book that interests me and only realize later that it's been classified as Young Adult by... someone!  (Whom?  The publisher?  The Library of Congress?  The author?)

In the last 6 months or so, I have read three stand-out novels that someone, somewhere, has deemed Young Adult.

Conviction by Kelly Loy Gilbert, seems at first to be a book about baseball, but is really about faith, love, parenting, siblinghood, morality, the justice system, and a tug-of-war between familial loyalty and truth.  When I first started the book, I assumed the title referred to a belief system, but as I kept reading, I realized it also referred, cleverly, to a finding of guilty in the criminal justice system.  A fabulous book for adults, young and otherwise.

I picked up Burn Baby Burn for it's NYC 1977 Summer (Son of Sam, the blackout) setting.   Although I am too young to remember that summer, I lived through it, and am convinced I have a sort of collective memory about it, combined with living in NYC through the 80s and 90s.  Author Meg Medina, thankfully, does not wear rose-colored glasses and lament the gentrification of the city since then (yes, artist could afford apartments here back then, but they often got mugged as they traveled to and from them!).  Her 1977 Queens is the real deal, with a serial killer on the loose and looting erupting during the blackout.  But her characters have their problems writ small (although not to them), too.  Nora is eager to graduate high school and start her "real life" but her teachers are trying to convince her she's college material.  She has a crush on a coworker and there is domestic violence at home, of a sort not often addressed in fiction.  Again, you don't have to be a young adult to enjoy this book.  In fact, you will probably enjoy it more if you lived through that summer or lived in New York during its grittier days.

I've lately become intrigued by books set in the Middle Ages, possibly because there suddenly seem to be a slew of them being published (it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario),  or maybe because of my daughter's fifth grade class trip to a place called Medieval Times.  With the publication of the highly anticipated The Inquisitor's Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog in September, the trend continues.  In the meantime, pick up The Passion of Dolssa (written, strangely enough in my opinion, by the author of The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, a perfectly fine book, but far inferior to this one) to satisfy your medieval cravings.  Dolssa believes she has a direct relationship with Jesus, who she says appears to her, and who endows her with the power to heal and work other miracles.  The Church has labelled her, and other women like her, a heretic. Dolssa takes refuge in a medieval village where three sisters protect her.  The middle sister, the local matchmaker, narrates the story.  However, I must make one confession.  At the very end of the book there is an epilogue of sorts.  An old woman is in prison and is speaking to someone outside the prison with instructions.  I could not figure out who the woman is.  Apparently I was not the only one who was confused (sigh of relief!), because the author posted an explanation online.  Nonetheless, the book is wonderful despite this lack of clarity (or perhaps despite my denseness!).

What YA books have you read and enjoyed?

Library Round-Up #15: Part 1: Chapter Books

Mini-reviews of middle-grade and young adults books we're reading now.

Chapter Books

I Kill the Mockingbird.  Three friends harness the power of social media and supply and demand to get people to read To Kill a Mockingbird to honor the memory of a beloved English teacher.  The plot, however, intrigued me less than the role of Catholicism in the main character's life, something I have never seen in fiction, for adults or children.  Rather than emphasize the rites and rituals of Catholicism (which do appear in fiction), the author portrays Catholicism as a guiding philosophy, and a very beautiful one at that.  "We're taught [in Catholic school] that sometimes the world is a puzzle waiting for us to solve it.  Other times it's a mystery to appreciate and accept."  The protagonist's father says, "I don't believe that God has motives that we are supposed to understand or enjoy."  Lucy responds "But you still say thank you."  Her father rejoins, "Good manners never hurt anybody."  And at the end, Lucy explains the concept of Ordinary Time.  "In our church calendar, Ordinary Time is when we're supposed to be living our lives without feasting or penance or other drama.  It's not a quiet time exactly.  It's more like the days are supposed to be filled with expectation."  This novel's real gift is in bringing these concepts to young readers, whatever their religion.  And it has a great cover!

We Were Liars.  Compulsively readable, this novel's much ballyhooed "twist ending" felt more like a gimmick to me.  Perhaps if I read it again, I will find some foreshadowing that would make it more plausible?  This is a young adult novel, with themes of romance, death, and guilt.

Like No Other.  This modern Romeo and Juliet story of a Hasidic girl falling in love with a black boy in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, has a happier ending than the Shakespeare play, but is not what you expect.  Devorah is a strong character who knows her own heart and mind.  It sounds cheesy, right?  It's not, I promise.  I loved it.  And it has another great cover.

Another Day as Emily.  Written in free verse about a girl who decides to become a hermit like Emily Dickinson when her younger brother commands attention for saving an ill neighbor by calling 911, this middle-grade novel was enjoyable, but ultimately forgettable.

Ava and Pip.  I had high hopes for this middle-grade novel about two sisters, the younger outgoing and social, the older one shy to the point of having emotional problems.  A good read, but nothing more, although my 9-year-old enjoyed it.  Word lovers will love the family's obsession with palindromes - hence the names Ava and Pip.

Have you or your kids read any of these?  What did you think?

Almost-Orphans, Crazy Father Figures, and Medieval Castles

I just finished reading A Brief History of Montmaray by Michelle Cooper, a historical novel about young royal cousins on an fictional island nation on the cusp of World War II.  I was immediately struck by its similarities to I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, a YA classic that I had missed and recently read on my quest to fill in some of my children's literature gaps.  I wasn't the only one - one of the blurbs in my paperback edition made the connection too.  The similarities are so numerous and specific that I made a list:

• Orphans or de facto orphans who have to largely fend for themselves, check.
• Said almost-orphans live in genteel poverty, check.
  
• Mentally ill father or father figure, check.
• Isolated medieval castle, check.
• 1930s setting, check.
• Teenage narrator who narrates by writing in her journal, check.
• "Plain" narrator and more beautiful older sister/cousin, check.  
• Love interest named Simon, check.

There are, of course, some differences, the major one being that A Brief History of Montmaray addresses politics and the impending world war whereas those go unmentioned in I Capture the Castle.  A Brief History of Montmaray is also the first book in a trilogy. 

Can you think of any other two books with so many similarities?  I wrote about others that came to mind here, particularly Roald Dahl's classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Wendy Mass's recent book, The Candymakers and here.