This & That

How did I not know The Lovely Bones is being made into a movie? It has a great cast; I hope they don't butcher the plot.

Kathleen Newman-Bremang has a post on the MTV Movies Blog about "The Top 5 Teen Movies - Other Than Heathers - That Should Be Musicals." (1) Not too sure about being made into a musical, but I loved Heathers (and Christian Slater) when I was a child, so this is exciting news for me. I think it would be great to expose a new generation of teens to its fabulousness. (2) I love her suggestion for The Breakfast Club as a musical. I think it would be perfect. (3) Other teen movies or books you think would make great musicals? I'm going to think about this one.

Prom: Pro & Con

John Green wrote an article for the Washington Post called "Why We Should Get Rid of the Prom." Okay, before I get to discussing it, can I just say that I would be fascinated to know how the Washington Post, John Green, and "the prom" came together for an article. Kind of like, why is John Green giving dating advice on Seventeen.com?

Anyway, I agree with some of JG's points about the ridiculousness of prom. It's unnecessarily expensive. It brings all kinds of unnecessary drama with it (which I'm seeing lots of in the library right now). It puts pressure on teens to get dates and/or spend lots of money. Supposedly there is an expectation of having sex/losing your virginity on prom night, but I never personally experienced that as a teen or as a teacher observer/mentor. I also don't know that I know anyone who had a really good prom. Myself, I went with a friend from another school who wasn't allowed to leave his county to go to the after-prom party with me because while he was getting my corsage at the florist, two guys came over to buy pot from him and when he wasn't there, they let themselves in and set off his house alarm. The police came and found drug paraphernalia. Then he was smoking pot on the way to the prom and we didn't dance a single dance together.* All my girlfriends I went with ditched or were ditched by their dates by the time we got to the after-prom party at school. One of my college friends came home from prom to find her dog had ripped out all the stitches from her surgery and was dripping blood all over the house. She had to take her to the emergency vet clinic in her prom dress.

However, I think there is something to be said for prom. It's fun to get dressed up. Sure, you could do this for some other event of your own making, but parents are less likely to foot the (usually very expensive!) bill for it. Plus, there just aren't as many opportunities or places to go. (And in this economy, do you really want to be responsible for telling people to spend less? Think about the hotel workers, DJs, dress shops, hair salons, etc. that depend on prom revenue!) Prom also has a mythical quality to it. Whether good or bad, you always have your prom stories. I mean, that is one of my best high school stories now. The number of books related to prom can attest to this: Prom, Prom Nights From Hell, etc.

Seems to me you can always just not go to prom if you agree with John Green, or if your agreement with him outweighs the pros of prom.

* Postscript: Now we're friends on Facebook!

City of Glass by Cassandra Clare

I have been eagerly awaiting City of Glass. My bottom line is that it was what I expected, it was good but my least favorite of the series, and I thought it was a satisfying end to the trilogy. It took me a while to get into it, partly because I had to remember back to all the characters and their relationships. I had in my head all this time how much I couldn't wait to read this book, but once I started reading it, I realized I didn't even remember what happened at the end of the last book. I liked the setting in NYC better than Idris, and this seemed to be more of tying up loose ends than anything else. I was a little annoyed at Clarissa because she did seem to be acting foolishly at times in insisting on going to places and participating in things when she had no idea what she was doing. But I was satisfied at the end, and I had some laugh out loud moments. And I'm happy to hear that Clare might be writing more about Magnus Bane (love him!).

Dear Matt,

This is what I'd like to tell Matt De La Peña:

Dear Matt,

I've booktalked Mexican Whiteboy in about 50 classes. In every single one, when I said the title of Mexican Whiteboy, there was a twitter of amusement, sometimes along with a "Hey, that's So-and-So!" or "Hey, that's me!" This tells me two things: (1) It's a great title. No other title I've booktalked elicits this kind of response. (2) They'd love to read a funny Mexican Whiteboy. Granted, you'd have to call it something else now, but there must be something left. I know you love the gut-wrenching, sad, emotional "highs" of tragic and depressing stories, but I think you have funny in you if you wanted to do it. Maybe something like The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Or maybe something totally different. I'm just saying, I think you could do it well and I think teens would love it. I think you could give the masses what they want and something you'd want to give them too.

Second, it's not what the masses want necessarily, but it is what I'd like to read by you: a book with a female lead or near-lead. I really like your female characters so far, even though they've been secondary. They're interesting, fun, and sometimes kind of badass. They're familiar as real people but unique as YA lit characters. I could see you writing a really good alternate perspectives novel, alternating between the guy and the girl's perspectives. It doesn't even have to be a romance (indeed, I'm still reeling from Perfect Chemistry).

Thank you in advance for your consideration in these matters, as I'm sure this will be paramount in your mind as you decide what to write your novels about,
Sheryl

We Were Here by Matt De La Pena

Teens Miguel, Rondell (two L's), and Mong sneak out of the group home they've been court-assigned to. They steal $750 from the home and make their way to Mexico where they plan to become fishermen. The novel is mostly an account of their journey (literal and emotional). Mong has had a really hard life and is a bit crazy. Rondell is a kind of Lenny figure--he has his heart in the right place but is intellectually slow, physically large, and not completely in control of his substantial physicality. Miguel is the main character: half Mexican, half white, feeling guilty about what he did to end up in juvi, smart, a burgeoning reader, and struggling with his conscience.

I really liked it. I liked the friendship that develops between the three guys, particularly between Miguel and Rondell. I think what I liked most of all is that this novel is written in first-person and Miguel has a strong, engaging, and authentic voice. It was also very existential. Miguel tries to come to terms with what the point of his continued existence and actions are, especially since he has already stepped over the proverbial line of "bad" and "wrong" (not to mention illegal) and now can't ever really go back again. Once he has done x, what does it matter if he does y (or z or f or q...)?

"Nothing matters. Not when you break it all down like I been doing in my head all tonight. Trust me. Nothing. Not me. Not you. Not the guy in the liquor store with the bat. Not the Bible. Not the pretty girls. Not being the watcher-over of this park. Not The Catcher in the Rye. Not this damn book I'm writing.

Nothing, man.

It's all meaningless.

Everybody.

Is.

Nobody."

Love that part. The exisistential themes made me really appreciate the title as well. When I first heard the title, I didn't think much of it. To be honest, I thought it was kind of boring, especially compared to Mexican Whiteboy.* However, while it might not be the attention-grabber that MW is, it is a really great and fitting title. By the end of the book, I thought it is not only appropriate but it underscores the significance of the book, of what Miguel discovers. It's a title that you get more from at the end, and not just because you read the line that it came from in the text.

The one thing that was a little distracting for me is the journal format of the book. There are no chapters, just dated sections. This is fine except that most of it is written in past tense (as if it's a retelling of the story), but occasionally Miguel slips into present-tense, as if he's writing in his journal in real-time. As long as I thought of it all as a retelling, it was fine. One of my students who is reading this right now actually told me the journal style is what he really likes about it. He said he likes how you get a sense of how long things take and that you are "going along" with the characters.

I like the cover on this book better than BDL and MW. They were very artistic but not very attractive for teens.

* More on this in my next post.

Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen

If you're a Sarah Dessen fan, you'll almost certainly like this book. If you're not . . . then you probably won't. It's very "Sarah Dessen." Sort of like how Jodi Picoult has different characters and plots and issues, but her books are unmistakably her and she does what she does well. In Along for the Ride, the female main character discovers new things about herself and confronts internal emotional issues, while the strong secondary character(s) does the same. It includes some romance (but nothing too sexually explicit!) and some very clear but not too heavy-handed metaphors.

Auden is the daughter of two (now divorced) academics: a mother who is a successful English literature professor and ardent feminsit and a father who is also an English professor but who once had a very successful novel years ago and is now trying to write another. Auden decides to spend the summer after her senior year with her father, her step-mother, and their new baby at their beach-front home. While there, she ends up liking her step-mother a lot more than she expected to (she isn't as dumb and ditzy as her mother would like to believe), and she realizes how selfish and self-absorbed her father is. Auden also realizes how much of a childhood she's missed out on by growing up with parents who expected her to act maturely. She makes friends with the girls at her job and likes a guy who works at the bike shop nearby. He's struggling with his own issues, of course. I won't tell you how it ends, but you can probably guess since it's a classic Sarah Dessen novel.

I'm a Sarah Dessen fan. Just Listen is my favorite SD novel and one of my all-time favorites. This didn't quite reach that status (I don't know if anyone will ever equal Mallory or Owen for me), but I did like it better than Lock & Key. One of the things Dessen usually does that I like is to give the male character a very concrete interest (ex. music, bikes) and use that to develop characterization and create metaphors for life lessons. The female main characters don't tend to have that as much, though. I wish they did. I guess the books focus on the internal development of the female leads, so maybe that explains why they seem to be the ones with the "issues" while the guys tend/seem to have things figured out more by the time they meet the girl. Lock & Key was a little different in this regard, but the other books seem to follow this pattern. I mean, don't get me wrong; I always like reading the books, but it just seems very familiar. Of course, there are a lot worse things in life and in reading than knowing what you're going to get and knowing you like it.

Love v. Romance

I am in the midst of TLA and thought I'd post about one of the author sessions I saw. It was Margo Rabb, Cassandra Clare, Nancy Werlin, Justine Larbalestier, and Patrick Jones. Patrick Jones was moderating and trying to get some discussion of gender issues going. Somehow the issue of YA being devalued in comparison to adult lit was raised, and Nancy was commenting on how the same is done to romance books even though they are the largest percentage of book sales. Justine was then saying that she thinks all books are love stories. Whether or not that is true, I think a love story is not necessarily a romance. If you look at the definition from RWA, a "romance" makes a love story central to the plot and has an emotionally-satisfying/optimistic ending. Certainly not all books meet that definition. I'm bringing this up because of another tangent that followed closely on the heels of this discussion. The panelists went on to talk about how guys will read books not only with female main characters but also with romance. My personal take on this is that guys will indeed read books with love stories or romantic elements, but they must also include action (like the Uglies example that Justine gave or like Cassandra's Mortal Instruments series). If there is little action and/or a focus just on the emotional struggles and interior character angst, guys are not into it. "Boy meets girl" stories aren't very popular with guys at all.