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.

TLA Dreams

I'm going to the Texas Library Association conference tomorrow. It's one of (or maybe the?) the largest state conferences. First, a list of some of the YA authors I know I'm excited to see:

Joan Bauer

Meg Cabot

Cassandra Clare

John Green

Justina Chen Headley

Justine Larbalestier

Cynthia Leitich-Smith

Melissa Marr

Walter Dean Myers

Judson Roberts

Neal Shusterman

Nancy Werlin
Scott Westerfeld

Sara Zarr

I'm also excited to see authors I don't even know I'm excited to see! Here is the complete list. One session I was interested to see was the Readergirlz one with Dia Calhoun, Lori Ann Grover, and Justina Chen Headley. But it's scheduled at the same time as Teri Lesesne who is booktalking new YA titles, and her session is always huge. Not good timing.

I love TLA. It makes me excited about librarianship all over again, and I usually get at least one or two really helpful ideas. The vendor area is at least as important as the sessions. I have several booths I know I want to visit to ask some questions about reference titles and databases for next year. Then, of course, there are the publisher booths and ARCs. I can't wait to see what new titles they are promoting! Off the top of my head, the two books that I'd most like to get ARCs of (that I think are realistic hopes anyway) are Matt de la Pena's We Were Here and Frank Portman's Andromeda Klien. Any others I should be on the lookout for?

Movie News

Some movie news from the MTV Movie blog:

1. Chris Columbus has cast Uma Thurman as Medusa, Pierce Brosnan as Cheron, and Sean Bean as Zeus in Percy Jackson.  With such big name producers and cast, I'm thinking this movie might be really good.

2. Baz Luhrmann is going to direct The Great Gatsby.  The MTV blog speculates on Leonardo DiCaprio as a good Nick.  I personally think that'd be a great choice, but any other thoughts on the cast?  I realize this isn't a YA book, but it is actually pretty relevant to YA lit other than just being a book-to-movie adaptation.  Students read this in school, and I think having a contemporary film version will be fantastic for the English teachers.  I think Luhrmann will do a great job with it too.  Can't wait to see the cast.

3. I guess I'm out of it because I didn't realize that World War Z was being made into a movie.  Of course, it's perfect for a movie.  The title alone screams "movie!"  This is an extremely popular title in my library.  I have reluctant readers who read this and love it, and this is not some lightweight thriller.  There's some serious social commentary in it.

4. In even more "I didn't know this movie was in the works" news, Courtney Love is producing a biopic of her life with Kurt Cobain that will star Scarlett Johansson as Courtney and Ryan Gossling as Kurt.  I'm even going to relate this back to YA lit!  I recommend Kurt Cobain's Journals for YA collections.  It has images of Kurt Cobain's actual journals, and students now even really still like him and find this to be an incredibly cool book.  I have to point it out for them to discover it, but they love it once I do.

What They're Reading for Fun

This article from School Library Journal entitled "What Are They Reading for Fun" inspired this post.  I recently got a list of my most frequently circulated titles from Nov. 11 to Feb. 11.  I wish they could take the manga titles out of the report, but so far they haven't.  It is in order of greatest to least.  Nothing too surprising or illuminating:

Bleach. 1, Strawberry and the soul reapers

Naruto. Vol. 1, The tests of the ninja

Fruits basket. Volume 1

Skip beat!. 10

Fullmetal alchemist. 1

Tsubasa. 10

Chronicles of the cursed sword. Volume 1

Death note. Vol. 1 Boredom

Vampire game. Volume 1

M*ar : M*archen awakens romance. Vol. 13

Mars. Volume 10

Twilight

Case closed. Volume 1

W Juliet

Breaking dawn

Ceres, celestial legend. Vol. 1, Aya 

Negima!. 6

Love hina. Vol. 14

Faeries' Landing. Volume 11

D.N. Angel. Volume 1

Slightly more interesting are the top authors:
Kubo, Tite

Meyer, Stephenie

Kishimoto, Masashi

Nakamura, Yoshiki

Arakawa, Hiromu

Akamatsu, Ken

Takaya, Natsuki

Ohba, Tsugumi

Judal

Cast, P. C.

Anzai, Nobuyuki

Schreiber, Ellen

Shan, Darren

Soryo, Fuyumi

Beop-Ryong, Yeo

Watase, Yuu

Takaya, Natsuki

Aoyama, Gosho Emura

Hopkins, Ellen

Here is the same thing but for all the high schools in my district:
Meyer, Stephenie

Kubo, Tite

Kishimoto, Masashi

Arakawa, Hiromu

Shan, Darren

Akamatsu, Ken

Takahashi, Rumiko

King, Stephen

Takaya, Natsuki

Watsuki, Nobuhiro

Ohba, Tsugumi

Kishimoto, Masashi

Nakamura, Yoshiki

Hatori, Bisco

Hopkins, Ellen

Clamp

Westerfeld, Scott 

Dessen, Sarah

Soryo, Fuyumi

Pelzer, David J.

If I were going by observation of what people are checking out and asking for a lot, I'd say the P.C. and Kristin Cast series, The Mortal Instruments series, and Sarah Dessen.

By the way, my most circulated title, Bleach vol. 1, circulated 166 times in that 90 day period.  That is one copy checked out 166 times in a 90-day period.  That gives you an idea of how they read manga.

Book Covers

In thinking about the repackaging of Judy Blume's books (and others), it has me thinking about how ruthless I've become about book covers. I know the saying is "never judge a book by its cover," but people obviously do. I have lots of books that I'm sure are great that no one ever checks out because the cover doesn't attract them. I've already mentioned several times how I have to practically beg people to read Lockhart's The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks because of the cover (hopefully the paperback will have a better cover).* Therefore, unless it's an already-popular author or series, I pretty much always consider the cover before I decide to buy something now. As I go through my review magazines and circle the books I want to order, on many of them I write "cover." On those, I look at the cover before I decide if I want to add it to my Follett list. There have been some books here recently that I wish I had the paperback version of instead of the hardback just because of the cover (examples: Dairy Queen and How to Ditch Your Fairy). I agree with pretty much everything that Jennifer at YAbooknerd said in this post about the topic. The only thing I disagree with is the preference for the original DQ cover. Someone else's blog (I forgot who!) was also saying recently that they liked the original Audrey, Wait cover better than the paperback because the paperback is just like all the other girly YA books. The girly covers are pretty popular with my students. They are attracted to those because they know those "types" of books are the ones they enjoy. I haven't seen anyone checkout out Dairy Queen all year, but I know a lot of my Sarah Dessen fans would enjoy it. They have no interest in it, though, because the cover doesn't give you any hint that it might appeal to that kind of reader.

* [Side note: I'm sure no one else reading this ever watches "Platinum Weddings" on WE, but the art from Frankie is the same as that on "Platinum Weddings."]