Anger Management

Those Bad, Sad YA Novels: Get Off My Lawn Version

2011-06-06T20:12:00.000-07:00

#yasaves

A few weeks ago, the New York Times brought us this anxious, hand-wringing take on all the bad, sad YA novels (possibly? sort of?) poisoning the minds of teens. Now we have the finger-wagging, crankypants take on the very same idea from the Wall Street Journal.

Well. I guess it's nice that liberals and conservatives can agree on something.

The two articles share three basic tenets:

1) that we parents didn't read such bad, sad novels back when we were teens (as we were too busy reading Ulysses and/or Anne of Green Gables)

2) that swearing and drugs and stomach-turning descriptions of abuse are "just part of the run of things" in modern teen novels and no one besides anxious and/or angry moms seems to care

3) that anyone under the age of 18 reads for no other reason but to learn valuable -- or in this case, destructive -- lessons.

All of these are wrong, of course. The first proves that the writers of these articles have completely forgotten all the lurid garbage they devoured as teens. Flowers in the Attic, anyone? Go Ask Alice?

The second is the result of the same stupid exercise we've seen again and again. A writer unfamiliar with contemporary teen lit gets ahold of this or that book and is shocked to find, well, whatever it is that shocks and alarms him/her most — sexuality or swearing or violence or bad writing or melodrama or "darkness." He/she then assumes these things can be found in all teen novels and proceeds to have a very public nervous breakdown.

But for every "dark" teen title that has NYT and WSJ columnists wringing their hands or shaking their fists, there are ten others that don't feature "kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings." Any YA librarian or well-trained bookstore clerk could name dozens upon dozens of sunny, thoughtful, well-written, challenging, and/or werewolf-free titles, a lot of them on the bestseller lists. So why aren't these the ones written up in the Wall Street Journal?

Setting aside the fact that realistic teen fiction — so-called "problem novels" — aren't half as popular as fantasy and sci-fi right now, these books seem to be lightning rods for parental anxiety. Which makes some sense. Teen novels illuminate teen culture, interests, and experiences, and these things can be particularly scary to adults trying to keep teens safe and healthy. Though the writer of the NYT article seems to be more of the "teen lit is about as artful as a sledgehammer" school of literary criticism, she doesn't deny that teen lit can sometimes accurately reflect what's going on in the lives of teens (even if she really doesn't want to hear about it, thank you very much).

On the other hand, the writer of the new WSJ article seems to belong to the "adolescence is a time of bunny rabbits and rainbows" school of thought. She writes that teen novels do not reflect teen culture as much as distort it, and that such distorted portrayals of teen life will create a hunger for ever more distorted portrayals. Ugliness begets ugliness, this columnist writes. Such books will ruin children's happiness, break their tender hearts, and normalize pathological behavior.

In other words, dark books will put dark thoughts in the kids' heads, ideas that they never would have come up with themselves. Dark books teach dark lessons.

Not be outdone by the NYT in the fearmongering department, this is when the WSJ columnist really starts brandishing her cane at the sky. She indicts booksellers and reviewers for failing to notice coarse language. She mocks writers for valuing free expression, and accuses librarians of "delighting" in banned book lists. She blames video-game-addled, aesthetically-challenged young whippersnappers at publishing houses for "bulldozing misery into the lives of children." She tells parents to stand strong against the tsunami of swill and the evil designs of writers, editors, and librarians.

And then she undercuts all this magnificent hysteria by declaring that teens don't read teen novels anyway.

So, why are we talking about this again? Oh, right. Comment-baiting!

Not surprisingly, the twitterverse and blogosphere have erupted, with many YA writers, readers, librarians and teachers talking about how teen lit can save lives (#yasaves). And I believe this is true. But I also think this bit from Roger Sutton's blog is interesting:

"Gurdon's argument about why gritty YA books are published is classic straw-man stuff:

The argument in favor of such novels is that they validate the teen experience, giving voice to tortured adolescents who would otherwise be voiceless. If a teen has been abused, the logic follows, reading about another teen in the same straits will be comforting. If a girl cuts her flesh with a razor to relieve surging feelings of self-loathing, she will find succor in reading about another girl who cuts, mops up the blood with towels and eventually learns to manage her emotional turbulence without a knife.

Who actually believes this is how reading works? It was Sheila Egoff who pointed out that the audience for Go Ask Alice was not drug-crazed runaways but nice little middle-class junior high girls with a taste for melodrama. People like reading about people like themselves whose problems are more interesting than their own. Unfortunately, the Twitterati are buying into Gurdon's thinking from the other way around, claiming that "YA saves," and that YA writers are brave and heroic and helpful, none of which qualities being particularly useful for a writer. Give me an author who is truthful and talented; spare me an author who writes to save lives."

What neither the NYT nor the WSJ columnist seems to understand is that teens read for all the same reasons that adults read. Sometimes a book will help a teen feel less alone in the world, or validate his/her personal experience (which, I'm sorry to say, can be all kinds of dark and abuse-filled). And in this case, individual books really can save lives.

But for other teens, books are a window onto lives and experiences entirely unlike their own. (As Roger Sutton says, they like to read about people with more interesting problems.) And we can't forget that a lot of teens, like adults, read simply because they want to lose themselves in a cracking good story filled with all sorts of drama.

Before we get ourselves all tied up in knots because teens occasionally read "dark" books, let's not forget that teens read all kinds of "dark" stories -- that is, violent, strange, bloody, and fabulous stories -- in their English classes. I'm talking about Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Antigone, Beowulf, Lord of the Flies, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Canterbury Tales, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Lottery, etc. etc. etc. Why would we assume that Romeo and Juliet will be less triggering than, say, 13 Reasons Why? Why would we assume young adults are smart enough and sophisticated enough to handle Mary Shelley's Frankenstein but too dim, immature, and impressionable to be trusted with the latest vampire novel (or to put it down if they don't like it)?

And if our teens are too dim, immature and impressionable to set loose in the teen section of a library or a bookstore, don't we have a much bigger problem than books?

Not again, NYTBR

2011-05-20T13:55:00.000-07:00

Why oh why does the NYTBR like to give YA novels to reviewers a) who claim to have never read one, b) don't respect them, and/or c) have teens of their own, so are already suffering PTSD from all things adolescent? Said reviewer then goes on to write a review that isn't really a review as much as it is a whole lot of hand-wringing over the sad, dark or just plain bad books teens are reading. What are we going to do about all the sad, bad books teens are reading????

I hadn't yet read last Sunday's issue of the book review until someone told me about this column and the subsequent follow-up post on the Motherlode blog. I found both these articles so wrong, so many times that I was exhausted even before I started composing a response. Other people, like Sarah Ockler and Bennett Madison, are more on top of these things.

I did manage to comment on the Motherlode blog yesterday, hopefully not too snarkily or ineptly. What I objected to most was this reviewer's notion that "The purpose of young adult literature is often twofold: to tell a story, and to send a message, usually in the form of a much-needed lesson."

Please. The purpose of teen lit is to tell stories teens want to read. Sure, every writer has a worldview, and we can't escape that, but I don't write any book with the idea I'm about to impart a "much-needed lesson." (Though Bennett Madison does point out on his blog that some YA authors, editors and gatekeepers seem to be confused on this point themselves, so why wouldn't the NYT be confused as well?)

And then there was requisite insistence that the worried parents of all these sad, dark teens never read any of this rot back when they were kids. No, no, they read books for adults. Like Go Ask Alice. (Yes, she used this as an example, though how she got the idea this was written for adults I'll never know. Also, who would use Go Ask Alice as an example of anything but scaremongering?)

Go Ask Alice aside, I can't understand what this comment is supposed to mean. It's better for teens to read sad, dark books as long as they're for adults? We should be handing out Tess of the d'Urbervilles in the seventh grade? Besides, if YA is all darkness and rot, well, I read plenty of rot when I was a teen, and I happen to be one of "today's parents." Judy Blume, Lois Duncan and Robert Cormier were particular favorites of mine. (Is there any YA writer darker than Robert Cormier?)

The reviewer complains that today's YA novels don’t even pretend to appeal to grown-ups. Which is sort of hilarious, given the millions of Twihard moms and the uproar over the casting of "The Hunger Games." And again, sort of irrelevant. Who cares if the books appeal or don't appeal to grown-ups? Is it because the typical adult won't pick them up, so then won't be aware that all the teen books are so sad and dark?

Now that I'm thinking about it, I think this is the point of both the review and blog post, the point of every hand-wringing not-review about YA that the NYTBR does. The reviewer imagines he or she is alerting naive and unsuspecting parents to the horror lurking on the bookshelves. I'VE UNCOVERED THE TRUTH, the reviewer says. THESE BOOKS ARE DARK, PEOPLE. And then, WHY ARE THESE BOOKS SO DARK? (I imagine the reviewer saying this with both hands clapped over her cheeks a la Munch's Scream).

In my response on the Motherlode blog, I said, "They're not," and posted examples of a whole bunch of authors who weren't writing problem novels about cutting and bulimia. (Which is not to say we don't need those sorts of novels). And then I said, "So what if they are? As a teen, I plowed my way through horror novel after horror novel, because it seemed to me that middle school and high school bore a remarkable resemblance to hell." And this is true, too.

I remember sitting at a salon, chatting with my stylist as she cut my hair. The customer in the chair next to me learned I wrote for teens and fretted out loud that her daughter was reading way too many "depressing" books. Kids should read cheerful things, this mother said. But what I believe she was really saying was that her daughter was too depressing. That her daughter should be more cheerful. And you know what? Teens can be dark. They can be depressed. And angry and moody and combative. It is scary at times, terrifying even, to parent dark, depressed, angry, moody, combative people who change their hair color every forty seconds and want to pierce random bits of themselves.

But the books are not causing this teenage turmoil. They reflect the turmoil. And reading the books can give teens the opportunity to reflect on that turmoil it in a way they sometimes can't when they're screaming that they hate you and that they're so getting that tongue stud when they move to Thailand to get away from you.

Reviews like Lisa Belkin's seem to insist that teenagers only read one sort of book -- the dark kind, the sad kind, the sex-and-drinking-filled kind that terrifies their parents. But, like adults, teens don't read only one sort of book. The kid who spends a year devouring everything they can about Dachau suddenly decides that what they're really interested in is organic farming. And isn't that what's so great about books? That, no matter what your age, you can read so deeply and so widely, about dark things and light things and everything in between, experiencing it all in the safety of your imagination?

My question? Why doesn't the NYTBR know this?

Mortification Monday #BlogInARound

2011-04-25T13:54:00.000-07:00

Shannon Hale (@haleshannon) asked authors for embarrassing event stories after blogging about her own tales of mortification. Since it's a cold and miserable day, it seems like a fitting topic.

The first event I did to promote my first novel Lily's Ghosts was a visit at my then 13-year-old's school as part of a celebration of the arts. I was introduced as "Jessie's stepmom" which meant that every teen in the room promptly ignored me while the teachers chatted loudly in the back of the room. (Never a prophet in your own country?)

Another event I did was at a local book festival. I'd heard it could be a challenge to get families to attend book festivals in the summer, and even harder to get kids to sit and listen to an author when these festivals usually had clowns and guys like this performing as well. So I was happily surprised to see a sizable crowd gathered at the tent where I was supposed to present. I sat in the audience to listen to the man who was speaking before me. The man started to talk about his love of children, his fondness for gardening, his hopes, his dreams, his wish for peace and goodwill toward men. The sun got high in the sky. People began fanning themselves. He talked some more. Hopes! Dreams! Fresh vegetables! People fidgeted, checked their cell phones for messages. I'm not sure if the man was a writer because he hadn't yet mentioned a book, and the crowd was getting restless. Children were starting to whimper. Adults hushed them and consulted programs, most likely looking for the nearest snack bar or the time of the next Bubble Man performance. People started to leave in dribs and drabs, then in droves. When it was my turn to speak, the only people left in the audience were three people I'd invited, plus one child and his long-suffering mom. (Possibly the child was scared of clowns and/or bubbles?).

My book for adults, I'm Not Julia Roberts, was released in January in 2007. The first event for this book was a reading at a bookstore on a dark, wind-whipped Monday night, the temperature hovering around two degrees, the air filled with stinging needles of snow. The bookstore manager was the optimistic sort, and had set out, oh, about nine thousand chairs. Which were empty. Finally, one guy who ducked into the store to get out of the cold sat with the manager and listened to me read. A few years later, the bookstore closed. (I like to think that I had nothing to do with it.)

Around the same time as that ill-fated bookstore event, I was doing a tour of area libraries to talk about my middle-grade books. At these events, I was usually getting about twenty-five to thirty-five kids, which I thought was a great turn out. At one of the libraries, however, I was surprised to find a crowd of three hundred students and their teachers waiting in an auditorium for me. Awesome, right? Except I didn't have a microphone, or a PowerPoint presentation, or back-up dancers, or anything. So, I stood on stage and PROJECTED as loudly as could while waving my books over my head. Still, the kids were great and everything was going remarkably well, until I noticed that one of the teachers sitting dead center in front of me had fallen asleep. Not quietly. Think Homer Simpson: head thrown back, uvula vibrating, audibly snoring. I tried to ignore her, as well as the students around her, who were pointing at her and snickering (though these students were not as loud as the teacher). Finally, during the Q&A, the teacher woke up, stretched, noticed me yammering away on the stage, and raised her hand. When I called on her she asked me if I knew any agents I could recommend to her. I said, "Literary agents?" Clearly irritated by my stupidity, she said, "No, movie agents."

Most recently, I attended an author breakfast at which a local author was seated at every table to chat with attendees between main speakers (some of whom were quite famous). When I arrived, I went to my assigned table only to find every seat taken. A woman with pink hair noticed that I was looking for a seat. She said, "I'm sorry, this table is full." I said, "Yes, but I'm the author." She stared at me blankly. I said, "An author is assigned to sit at every table." She frowned and said, "But this table is full." I said, "I'm here for the Author Chats. It's in the program." She frowned even more deeply and said, "There's no room." I said, "Well, I can find somewhere else to sit, but you're going to have the same problem when they rotate the authors between tables." As I glanced around the ballroom, wondering if it would be strange to sit on the floor, someone else at the table realized what was going on and made room for me.

But I did end up chatting with the woman with pink hair between speakers. Because it was an author breakfast, and people usually came to these things to talk about books, I asked her what kinds of books she liked to read. "I don't really read," she said. "I'm just here to see Weird Al Yankovic."

"Yes," I said. "Me, too."

Resurrecting Lily's Ghosts: from OP book to ebook

2011-04-16T09:21:00.000-07:00

So, while I've been preparing for the Highlights Whole Novel Workshop in Fantasy that I'll be leading with the fabulous Anne Ursu, I've also been working on something else: turning my first novel, Lily's Ghosts, into an ebook.

When people ask me which of my own books is my favorite, I usually say that it's the book I'm currently writing, because that unfinished book still has a shot at becoming a shining jewel of abject perfection. But if I have to pick, I pick Lily. Lily's Ghosts was my first published novel, and you don't forget that. You don't forget that Kirkus Reviews -- yes, crankypants Kirkus -- called it "a slightly spooky, romantic mystery, capped by that rarest of animals: a twist ending that's totally earned. This should be a movie just so teens and tweens will come ask for the book."

So, I was sad when it went out of print.

But not as sad as I would have been had it happened a few years ago.

More and more people are putting their backlists online themselves — sci-fi/fantasy writers Diane Duane and Art Slade to name some entrepreneurial people comfortable with technology. Me? I'm easily frustrated and somewhat technologically challenged. When I have to look at long strings of numbers -- like ISBNs -- my eyes cross, the numbers get jumbled, and I have to snack to fortify myself. I don't even like the words "upload" and "format." I'm too disorganized, too distractible, too, too, too. But it made no sense to allow my book to disappear when I could keep it alive myself.*

And I was glad for the opportunity to give Lily's Ghosts a fresh look. I've always loved the old illustrated cover, but I wondered if it skewed a bit young for the tweens and teens I had in mind when I wrote the story. I wanted art that was photographic rather than illustrated, more iconic, darker and spookier. Here's the new cover, which I love, designed by Janie Bynum:

Right now, you can only get the ebook on Amazon US and UK; hopefully, it will appear on B&N soon. Still working on getting it into the iBookstore and elsewhere. (I was planning on using Smashwords for that purpose but I'm not happy with their kookoo-bunny formatting. Hmmm.) I'm also planning a print-on-demand version. Perhaps even an audio edition one of these days.

Today's my birthday, normally not that big a deal for me. But having Lily back on the (virtual) shelves? That's a great birthday present.

-- Laura

*Well, not entirely by myself. I hired Rob Siders at 52novels.com to do the formatting for me.

UPDATE: Now up at Barnes and Noble too.

Anger management and the coming apocalypse

2011-01-23T08:23:00.000-08:00

When I was a college freshman, a close friend decided to record everyone on our dorm floor saying the one phrase she felt best captured his/her personality, the phrase they said most often. Mine? "I hate that. It bothers me."

Sigh. So flattering.

But, after a lot of thought, after going through most of the posts on RL LaFever's fabulous Shrinking Violets Promotions (a fabulous blog for all the introverted writers and artists out there), I've decided to change the name of my blog. Earth-shattering news this isn't, I know. But my own essentially rage-y nature is the reason I'm an author. Something irritates the sweet baby kitties out of me and I have to write about it, just to sort out my own feelings on the subject. Thus, the new name "Anger Management." In which I write about managing anger. Sometimes well. Mostly badly.

There's another thing I'm doing, and that's more blogging, more often. I'll be blogging here, and over at a new website eisforbook, about ebooks and the changes in the publishing business, or the publishing apocalypse, depending on your point of view. My first post here. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

As proof how ill-prepared I am for the "erevolution," I just learned how to put that follower widget thing on this blog. Awesome.

Highlights Foundation Whole Novel Fantasy Workshop

2011-01-19T09:43:00.000-08:00

Highlights Foundation is now taking applications for our Whole Novel Fantasy Workshop that will take place May 1st through the 8th. Last year was the first year that the amazing Anne Ursu and I led this workshop, and I have to say, it was one of the best weeks I've spent with a group of writers. The thoughtful critiques, the intense discussions of craft, the immediate sense of camaraderie, the food, oh my goodness, the FOOD — awesome.

If you or someone you know has a completed fantasy manuscript — middle-grade or YA — and would like to spend a full week steeped in monsters and magic with fellow fantasy lovers, being inspiring and getting inspired, then this Whole Novel Workshop is for you.

Snorting the coffee out of my nose

2011-01-19T08:48:00.000-08:00

Ursula LeGuin's response to Harpercollins' new "morality clause" in its publishing contracts.

December 7th, Columbia College, Chicago

2010-12-06T09:49:00.000-08:00

Anyone in the Chicago area want to come hear me yammer about strong characters in YA lit? Head down to Columbia College Tuesday, December 7th -- TOMORROW -- at 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm.

Strong Female Characters in YA Lit
Discussion with Laura Ruby

Description: Join award winning Young Adult author Laura Ruby for a frank discussion about strong female characters and feminist themes in YA lit. Ms. Ruby is the author of "Good Girls," "Bad Apple" and "Play Me." All of her books for teens include themes of female sexuality and the societal consequences of being a strong girl in today's fragile climate. Her books for teens are notable for their "heartbreaking" characters (School Library Journal), "pertinent, provocative, and dramatic" storylines (Kirkus), and their "frank, realistic portrayal of teen life," (VOYA).

E-mail 5bonds@comcast.net

Tue Dec 7 2010 4:00PM -- 6:00 PM
Columbia College
600 S. Michigan, Classroom #1

The Story That Ate My Brain

2010-11-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

Great visit with some gifted/accelerated/fabulous kids -- including my niece -- at Holmes Middle School in Wheeling, IL yesterday. So many great questions about so many different things. My favorite, however, was the one I had the most difficulty answering. A girl asked, "How do you know if your work is any good?"

I said, "You have radio U-SUCK playing in your head, don't you?" The class laughed, and I went on to recommend Bird by Bird and told her that she had to focus on the feelings she was experiencing as she wrote. That if her writing was moving her, she had to trust that feeling. That she was the writer, but she was also her own first reader, and that if her work didn't move her, well it wasn't going to move anyone else.

And that's true, except when your despair and self-loathing drowns out every other feeling. Or when you've read your work so many times you have it memorized, and everything on the page sounds like the worst kind of cliche, and you're about as emotionally responsive as the half-dead ficus in the corner of the dentist's waiting room. The truth is, a lot of times you don't know if your work is any good. But you keep working anyway, in the hopes that you'll find your way to your story. And if helps any, kids of Holmes Middle, you're not alone . We all feel like we're right in the middle of the story that is eating our brains, and will, we are sure, be the death of us. Welcome to the wonderful world of writing. The thrills! The glamour! Who knew?

Right after I got home from my visit, my agent called with the good news that she liked my latest novel, and the somewhat deflating news that she wants me to revise the whole thing from the POV of a different character. Or maybe it was the POV of a chicken or cumulous cloud, I'm hazy on the details. I can do it. I can't do it. I change my mind every fourteen seconds or so. Maybe more coffee will help. Maybe the cats have advice. Maybe I can hire the children of Holmes Middle to write the book for me a la James Frey . I'll pay them entirely in Mountain Dew and Warheads. We will call ourselves Patheticus Gore and make a million little dollars. Or at least, I will. (Don't look at me like that. Kids love Warheads.)

But I wasn't lying when I told the kids that revision was my favorite part of writing. That I'd much rather wrestle with a malfunctioning manuscript than face a blank page. What I'm not sure I got across was the little period of mourning you endure when you hear that your story -- your baby -- is kind of cute but also a malformed and quite possibly psychotic, that it's got no arms, a couple of extra legs, fingers poking from the top of its wee furry head, and a single eyeball where its nose should be, and that the eyeball is staring RIGHT AT YOU, demanding you love it anyway. And when you stop feeling sorry for yourself, you find that you do love it anyway, and you get back to work.

Testing

2010-11-16T12:48:00.001-08:00

This is a test. This is only a test.

Huh?

2010-11-06T08:55:00.000-07:00

An update about Tanya Lee Stone's book challenge: it was successfully handled by the librarian and principal. The book will remain in the library. Yay!

But now, I'm confused about this. I can't for the life of me understand what would lead a parent to challenge Newbery honoree Susan Campbell Bartoletti's book, They Called Themselves the KKK . Yes, I can see that the material could be disturbing. But isn't that the point? Teenagers shouldn't be exposed to American history if some aspects are disturbing? Why teach history at all?

Yikes. I'm glad there are librarians like this one .

I'm tired.

2010-10-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is just the kind of thing that I was referring to in my previous post about book challenges. You don't think a certain assigned book is appropriate for your teenager, then you can ask for another selection. But stop, please stop, calling the books "porn" simply because you don't like them.

Every Week is Banned Books Week

2010-10-23T09:13:00.000-07:00

Banned Books Week has come and gone, but it’s not as if the book banners have packed up their outrage and gone home. While my friend Tanya Lee Stone is enjoying the launch of her newest book , she’s also dealing with a challenge to her YA novel: A BAD BOY CAN BE GOOD FOR A GIRL. Apparently, she told me, a few parents think that this spare and elegant verse novel is nothing but a “how-to,” and want it removed from a high school library.

“I’m assuming they didn’t mean that the novel is a ‘how-to’ on making good choices, surviving betrayal and being true to yourself,” I said.

Tanya said, “Uh, no.”

After I had gotten all my sighing and sputtering and snarling out of the way, we spoke about how horrible* it is to have your work called inappropriate and your intentions deemed suspect. But of all the frightening things that can affect teens—crime, poverty, hunger, bullying, drunk driving, suicide, drug abuse, date rape — I have to wonder why certain people are so determined to be terrified of books.

Not all books, though. While sexuality in teen books drives some people nuts, we don’t seem nearly as disturbed by violence. Where are the ardent challengers of THE HUNGER GAMES**, for example? Is it because we believe that any book honestly dealing with war must contain some violent content? Is it because all the adults are too busy devouring MOCKINGJAY to complain? Or is it because we can see more perverse brutality on a single episode of Criminal Minds? Why are we so much more freaked out by a naked guy than a guy with an ax?

Tanya’s situation reminded of that man who wrote to his local newspaper to call Laurie Halse Anderson’s SPEAK “filth” and “pornography.” In his letter, he said, “This is a book about a very dysfunctional family. Schoolteachers are losers, adults are losers, and the cheerleading squad scores more than the football team. The cheer squad also gets their group rate abortions at prom time. As the main character is alone with a boy who is touching her female parts, she makes the statement that this is what high school is supposed to feel like.” Female parts? Really? If this man actually read the whole book, he didn’t understand a word of it. He couldn’t recognize the deep pain and suffering underneath the layers of irony, and took the narrator’s acid sarcasm literally. (Actually, the sarcasm seems to have gone entirely over his head, a problem more commonly experienced by eight-year-olds). He missed the entire point of the novel, which was the main character’s hard-won battle with depression in the aftermath of a crime. If teens have no trouble getting this book***, why was this grown man so scared and confused? Was he conflating his horror over the crimes depicted in the book with the book itself? Or is he just crazy?****

Book challenges are usually classified as battles between conservatives and liberals: “You conservatives just want to deny the reality of teens’ lives,” vs. “You liberals just want teens to read smut and learn how to be ho’s.” But I wonder if this is not so much a fight between conservatives and liberals as it is an argument over the purpose of reading. That is, people who view stories as a way to experience different perspectives and think through problems versus people who view stories, even fictional ones, as lists of “facts” or “instructions.”***** (Or worse, lots of boring, useless stuff punctuated by naughty bits that can be read aloud at school board meetings.)

Like all authors I’ve talked to, I believe that parents have a right to tell their own teens which books they can and can’t read. It’s only when one or two parents try to decide for everyone else’s kids that I get frustrated and sad. I have an in-law whose religious beliefs make a lot of books — including almost all of mine — off limits for her kids. When her son was young, she would request a different selection if she found an assigned novel objectionable. Some of the books she objected to were favorites of mine; A WRINKLE IN TIME was one, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD was another. It was hard to hear that her son wouldn’t be allowed to read books that had meant a lot to me when I was his age. Then again, I had to admire the lack of drama with which she asked for another choice. There were no letters to the paper, no press conferences, no self-righteous speeches, just: “Can he read something else, please?”

I think this lack of drama showed her kids that though she believed they weren’t ready for some of these books, she wasn’t freaking out over the books, she wasn’t scared of them. So, neither were they. They were curious about the books, maybe, but not scared. I believe it was Chris Crutcher who said that people who go ballistic over books dealing with sex or homosexuality or suicide or violence ensure that if/when their own children have to deal with these issues, their parents will be the last people they’ll ask for help. Why would they, when their parents are clearly so very frightened already?

And raising teenagers is frightening sometimes. But I believe you can be frightened and still act bravely. That means that you don’t start screaming porn! porn! porn! simply because you don’t like what a book has to say. If pornography can be defined as sex without context or redeeming social value, than books like A BAD BOY CAN BE GOOD FOR A GIRL and SPEAK are anti-porn, that is, they are powerful and empowering stories that put issues of sexuality, betrayal, rape, and depression in meaningful context. They help teenagers think through these issues without having to experience them themselves, yet offer solace to teens who have. To turn these books into examples of porn, you must become a pornographer, you must strip away the context, strip out the characters, the plot, the poetry, the pain, the irony, the intelligence, the heartbeat, the story. You must slice up the pages, dice up the paragraphs and the sentences until all you have left are a few words or phrases -- Underwear! Backside! -- you can use to titillate your friends.

You can do this to every book. You can do this to any book. (Clifford the Big Red Dog? Well, what do you mean by “big”? What do you mean by “dog”?)

I lurk on a listserv for YA librarians.****** Something written by one of these librarians – forgive me, I forget his name — has stuck with me. I’m paraphrasing, but it went something like: “every day kids are living the kinds of lives we wouldn’t want them reading about.” We’ve watched the news, we’ve seen the reports of teens committing suicide after being brutalized or bullied or betrayed or outed, unable to envision a better future for themselves, or any future, for that matter. Do we really want take away stories of survival from teenagers struggling to survive?

Uh, no.

* It sucks. I don’t know any author who delights in a book challenge, or sells more books because of one. Unfortunately, I speak from experience; challenges are humiliating and depressing.

**Not hating on HUNGER GAMES, I like HG.

***Here’s a link to Laurie HA reading her poem called “Listen” that includes actual teen reader responses to SPEAK. Scroll down for the video.

**** Let's go with crazy .

***** Or maybe they assume that all people under the age of eighteen view books this way, which is just annoying. If teens read BAD BOY like a “how-to” then they read everything like a “how-to,” no? So why am I not seeing legions of girls perched in the oak trees around my neighborhood, picking off other kids with their homemade bows like Katniss Everdeen?

******No matter what some people would have you believe, librarians take into account the needs and wishes of their individual schools and communities when they purchase books for their collections. And every day librarians knock themselves out helping parents find books for their teens, no matter what kinds of requirements/restrictions those parents have. “I’m looking for adult novels for my 7th grader, but we don’t want sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, historical fiction or novels with bad language or bad behavior or cats or kissing. Must be between 272 and 365 pages. Blue covers only.”

Five in Focus

2010-10-12T16:37:00.000-07:00

So some guys at the Focus Features website asked me -- and four other YA authors -- what our favorite teen movies are and why. This was a stupidly hard question to answer, almost as hard as trying to pick my top five favorite books. But after much thought -- probably too much -- I came up with these . I'm sure if you asked me the same question tomorrow, I'd have five other picks. Because I'm like that.

Chicago Area Appearance July 17th

2010-07-16T12:51:00.000-07:00

It's last minute, I know, but any Chicago-area teens who want to talk art and writing, come see me at the McKinley Park Library in Chicago on Saturday at 11:00 am. Details here.

Funny.

2010-06-08T07:53:00.000-07:00

From Amy Kathleen Ryan :

Twitter

2010-05-16T08:19:00.000-07:00

Still not sure how I feel about Twitter, but I thought this Twitter experiment from Kathleen Duey was very cool. You can read the whole thing here . Also, you can read Kathleen's thoughts about why she decided to write Russet's story this way at Cyn Smith's blog .

Highlights and Lowlights

2010-05-10T07:51:00.000-07:00

Haven't blogged in a while, but I have an excuse: I sold one house, bought another, scraped miles of ancient wallpaper off plaster, painted seven rooms, gutted a kitchen, sanded floors, patched up 80-year-old plumbing, and moved, not necessarily in that order.

My mom tells me that the memory of the pain will fade, but I'm not buying it. When your own movers mock you for the amount of stuff you have, and then they're forced to make THREE trips with the moving truck over a couple of days, and then you must live in the middle of a construction site while the cats have little kitty nervous breakdowns in a tiny attic room more fitting for Mrs. Rochester, well...the experience is sort of burned into your brain.

But one bright spot in all the chaos of the last five months was the truly blissful week I spent at the Highlights Whole Novel Workshop in Honesdale, PA. When my friend Anne Ursu told me that this workshop would be focused on fantasy and asked me to lead it with her, I thought, sure, that could be fun. A week in rural Pennsylvania, hours of writing time in my own private cabin, students fascinated by faeries and elves and demons, fabulous food prepared by a gourmet chef, what could be better? But it WAS better, better than I ever thought. I've never met such hardworking, intelligent, warm and funny people who not only took their own work seriously, but took the work of the other students just as seriously. It sounds hokey but it can't be helped: I learned as much from them as they did from me.

There. I said it.

Now I'm back home and trying to get back to work. But stuff like this is making it difficult to focus.

Yet Another Example...

2009-12-23T16:11:00.000-08:00

...of what not to do when you get a bad review. Report the reviewers to the FBI.

The Great and the Weird

2009-12-10T17:29:00.000-08:00

Great news: the nominees for a brand new award in non-fiction were announced, and my friend Tanya Lee Stone's book, the fabulous Almost Astronauts is on the short list! If you're in the mood for some girl power, you should check it out.

Weird news: Kirkus Reviews magazine is kaput. Dead. Done. Out of print. If you're not a book person, this won't mean that much to you. If you are a book person, well, it might not mean that much to you, either. Kirkus is -- er, was -- a review source for librarians, a source best known for its huge number of reviews and its overabundance of snark. I don't know how I feel about its demise. Yeah, yeah, I know I just blogged a few weeks ago about how writers should avoid looking for reviews, that they're for readers not writers, yadda yadda. But even if I think it's problematic for writers to read their own reviews, it is important that they actually get some reviews. And this means that there is one less source for reviews in the world. Also, because the publication was meant for readers -- librarians specifically -- but also for consumers, as the reviews are posted at various book websites like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc., this means that there's one less source for individual readers to rely on when they want to choose a book.

So...I don't know. I've gotten some great reviews from Kirkus's stable of anonymous snarksters, and some not-so-great ones, but that's not the point. I like what Alex Flinn said about it:"The end of Kirkus is like the death of an ex-boyfriend who was kind of a jerk, but with whom one has a few fun memories. Like, I'm glad I didn't marry the guy, but that doesn't mean I wish him dead...For all their flaws, Kirkus did review a lot of books, and in a competitive market, even a bad review is better than silence."

Hmmmm.

-- L.

Some of My Favorite Things

2009-12-06T20:10:00.000-08:00

Roses! Kittens! Kittens with roses! Interviews, like this one here. And more Bad Apple reviews, including a star from The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books. Woo-hoo!

And of course, other people's books. (Reading is my reward for writing.) I was happy to see that both Francisco Stork's riveting Marcelo in the Real World and Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me on their Notable Children's Books of 2009 list. The NYT says that When You Reach Me is a "thrilling puzzle: a complex mystery, a work of historical fiction, and a story of friendship." And though it is all these things, it's so subtly, delicately written, that you don't necessarily notice the complexities as you're reading. RS keeps about 90 balls in the air and makes it look easy. It's a book I enjoyed reading as an adult, but one I would have been mad for as a kid.

About Marcelo: I have to admit that when I first heard about this book, I didn’t have much interest in it. (Did we need another Curious Incident?) But Sarah Aronson recommended it to me, so I picked it up. She was right: this book is not a rehash of Curious Incident. And simple plot descriptions simply don’t do it justice. The novel, about a young man with an Asperger-like condition forced to work in his father's law firm for a summer because his father wishes him to become a part of the “real world,” is wonderful. There are so many things about this novel I just love — the voice, the vivid secondary characters, the seamlessly unfurling story that reads in part like a thriller — I could go on and on. The novel takes seriously the formation – and erosion — of personal morality. And it takes seriously the possibility of love and commitment between people most would believe too young and too damaged to be capable of it. And though it’s cliché to say so, I could easily see this being a movie. One of my favorites of the last year.

That said, I’ve got a teetering stack of books that I’ve got to plow through, so I might have a few more favorites to talk about over the next month. (Like Justine Larbalestier’s Liar, a controversial book for more reasons than one. But I’ll save that for another day).

-- L.

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You

2009-11-29T10:30:00.000-08:00

Okay, here it is, the new website! Please comment/email if you like it. Took tons of work to do all this reorganization, and my designer could use the love.

Speaking of love, I want to thank bloggers Jenn and Kim for their recent interviews. They were both exceedingly patient with the perpetually-disorganized me, and asked some great questions.

Also, thanks to Jennifer Hubert of Reading Rants who posted this about Bad Apple: “Cleverly told in a full-on snarky tone that hides a smile behind its snarl, BAD APPLE is a thoroughly modern and highly entertaining anti-fairy tale that is as sweet and sour as the Granny Smith on the cover.”

About reviews. There are some, like the above, that make you so grateful to be understood that you feel like you owe the reviewers a cut of your profits. There are the mixed kind that can rankle, but don’t wound, at least not deeply, and not for long.

And then there are those other ones.

Last week, I found a new review, or rather, an old review that I’d blissfully missed. I don’t even know why I was scratching around the Internet, why I opened the document. (Satan??? Is that you???) But I did open it. Yikes. I’ve had my share of critics, but apart from online commentators who call themselves things like monkeybutt432, no one has ever been so spitefully, sneeringly dismissive about one of my books before. At least, that’s how it seemed in the moment. After I read this review, I felt like someone had broken into my house, slapped me in the face and then peed on my living room rug. I responded to these feelings with much howling and wailing, rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth.

Now that some time has passed, I just feel stupid. Not because of the review, but because of my own overheated reaction to it. No, I didn’t pull an Alice Hoffman and twitter the reviewer’s phone number and encourage fans to crank her. I didn’t spit on the reviewer a la Richard Ford, nor scrounge up a copy of the reviewer’s book and put a bullet through it. I didn’t scour the Internet looking for the reviewer’s blog and post I WILL HATE YOU TILL THE DAY I DIE the way the Alain de Botton did. And I didn’t slap her like Stanley Crouch slapped one of his critics (though I must admit I understand these impulses all too well).

No, I did nothing so Gawker-worthy. But I did flap around my house like a dyspeptic duck. I did let it ruin my dinner, and my evening. The worst part is that I violated my own rules. I did this to myself.

Back in 2006-2007, I had three books published in three different genres, one book right after the other. I spent months and months paralyzed by the onslaught of critical feedback. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think. I ate my way through a mountain of Pirate’s Booty, and got a booty the size of a mountain.

Here’s the kicker – though I received dozens and dozens of professional reviews that year, only one was an outright pan. Just one. The rest of the reviews were pretty good, and some were so packed with praise they read as if my mom had written them. I got lots of nice letters from readers. So why was I so terrified, so tortured, so paralyzed? What was WRONG with me?

I think it’s because reviews are meant for readers, not writers. In a perfect world, writers wouldn’t have to see their own reviews at all.

I know. It feels weird to even type that out. Don’t writers want to know how their work is received? Yes. We do. We crave it, absolutely. But I don’t think we’ll get the things we need to write the next book from those whose job it is to rip apart the previous one.

I’ve heard people advise writers to try and learn from their reviews, and I’ve heard writers claim to do this. And I don’t get it. Firstly, by the time a review is published, the book is done. Even if a reviewer is correct in his or her assessment that the book is, to paraphrase Anne Lamott, a stupid, self-indulgent sack of spider puke, what can I do about it after the fact? (Note to self: do not be stupid and self-indulgent! Stay away from spiders!)

Then there’s the fact that I believe writing a book teaches one only how to write that particular book. I’ve published seven books and written several other manuscripts. The process of writing of every single one of them was completely, utterly different. No review — no matter how intelligent or insightful — can ever help me with the creation of a new book. That’s what writing groups, editors, insomnia, outlines, research, revisions, coffee, etc. are for.

And then there’s the fact that it’s a crapshoot as to who actually reviews your book. What if your vampire title is assigned to a person who is suddenly, violently sick of vampires? Or your funny book is handed to a person who doesn’t key into your sense of humor? Sometimes the difference between a good review and a not-so-good one is simply the desk on which the book lands.

I think the only thing a writer can learn from reading reviews is how to deal with reading reviews. For the last year, my way of dealing has been to read as few of them as possible. I do look at pieces sent by my editor or friends, and I love getting emails and letters directly from readers. But no Amazon. No Goodreads. No Shelfari. No Technorati. No Google Alerts.

It was difficult to do this at first, difficult to change my own mindset, difficult to convince myself that no, I really didn’t have to know what every single person on the Internet thought — or didn’t think — of my book(s). But I did manage to shut out a lot of the noise. And it worked. I slowly emerged from my slump. I took cooking classes. I made lots of homemade soup. Soup is warm and delicious.

But, last week, I was feeling happy and safe, and I violated my own rules. I let my fingers do the Googling. And I got burned. One of the interview questions I get asked most often is what advice I’d give to teenagers who find themselves the victim of online bullying because I write so much about the subject. One of the things I say is that enough nastiness is going to find you, so you never go out looking for more.

Yeah. I know. I’m an idiot. Shut up.

After the wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the embarrassment that followed, I soothed myself by reading Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You, a title that seemed appropriate to my melodramatic mood. This novel is a funny but achingly moving book that almost begs to be read out loud. Because it features a disaffected 18-year-old narrator with a powerful and engaging voice, and because it’s set in NYC, it’s hard not to compare to Catcher In The Rye, but I found it richer and more absorbing than Catcher (and I say this as a Catcher fan.) The story made me glad that there were writers like Peter Cameron in the world, hopefully ignoring what few critics he has.

On her blog, the lovely Shannon Hale suggests — through gritted teeth — that no publicity is bad publicity. That writers should try to be grateful even for the attentions of Angry People Who Type. That review space is so limited these days, it’s good that our work provokes enough passion that certain reviewers are compelled to use that precious space to protect the public from hacks like us. Because that means that, at the very least, our work is getting attention.

I don’t think I’m as evolved as Shannon is. I’m not sure I can bring myself to thank the Angry People Who Type. But I’ll be happy enough to enjoy my reading and my dinner, and then get back to work.

-- L.

Bad Apple

2009-11-17T18:15:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, I haven't posted much (uh, at all lately). I'm working on a new novel and a complete site redesign so things will be easier to find. That will be coming soon. In the meantime...

It's official! It's the pub date of my new novel, BAD APPLE! I'm uploading a picture of the cover here, because I love it so much:

Here's the description:

For Tola Riley, life is not a fairy tale, it only feels like one. She’s got evil classmates, a runaway dad, a wicked stepmother, a possible Prince Charming, and her very own troll. But it’s only when someone accuses her of having an affair with her art teacher, her whole world turns into something out of Grimm’s. Because the person accusing her is her own mother.

"If I really wanted to open up, I'd confess that I really am the liar everyone believes I am."

High-school junior Tola has green hair, a nose ring, an attitude problem, and a fondness for fairy tales, which are a great escape from real life. Everyone thinks she's crazy; everyone says so. Everyone except Mr. Mymer, her art teacher. He gets her paintings and lets her hang out in the art room during lonely lunch periods.

But then rumors start flying and Tola is suddenly the center of a scandal. The whole town is judging her—even her family. When Mr. Mymer is suspended for what everyone thinks is an affair, she has no choice but to break her silence. Fairy tales won't help her this time . . . so how can she tell the truth? And, more importantly, will anyone believe her?

“…by turns hilarious and touching, almost heart-poundingly suspenseful. The protagonist, who is unconventional, insightful and full of angst, charms, and readers will be hoping for her success.” — Kirkus Reviews

“…a different perspective on the whole student-teacher affair. The ending was absolutely fabulous, probably the best part of the book, and had me in fits of laughter. “ — Teensreadtoo.com