How I Live Now

My (public library) copy has the golden Michael Printz Award seal, the ALA's relatively new award for Young Adult literature. This novel for teens and up also won the Guardian Children's Fiction prize for 2004 and was shortlisted for the Whitbread in the same year. http://books.guardian.co.uk/childrensfictionprize2004/

On first reading, and with no reading of reviews yet, here's how it went. Daisy's voice grabbed me right away: here is a unique person yet identifiably a teenager speaking. The premise is terrific: she's off the England to stay with her cousins because her dad has a horrible new wife. She's fifteen, between child and adult. She falls in love with one of her cousins and has sex with him, and she bonds strongly with another, nine-year old Piper, a wise little girl. Then life really changes: terrorists occupy the country and keep it under siege. Army troops take over villages and people's houses, families are split up, the men and boys sent mysteriously away. Suddenly we're in a thriller, one with very strong characterization, great plot, and a genuine voice. And teenage sex. I have to say that because a lot of parents and librarians in the US would prefer that we not spotlight a book that includes this element of modern realism. But, like the novels of Melvin Burgess, another award-winning author of books for teenagers ("teen and up" is what I call it), Rosoff's novel is a gripping read and shouldn't be kept out of the hands of teens.

I recently read Penelope Lively's Cleopatra's Sister and am struck with the similarities in themes and situations in these two novels. The threat of terrorism is alive and present in our minds these days, and both of these books present scenarios which could happen, given the imperialist heritage of both the UK and the US, and the present neo-colonial mindset of some of our leaders.

The theme of love is strong in both: erotic love, familial love and its absence, the fierce protective love a person can discover when a child is threatened, the strong bond between people and animals (dogs, here). Teenage love that turns into a lasting relationship. The fortuitous meeting of two people. The energetic love that can get people through anything. (Cormac McCarthy's The Road is maybe the strongest example of this last motif since the setting is so bleak and stripped to the earth's bare bones.)

Recommended for teens and up.

Great Book Recs for Children and Teens

I discovered a truly fine resource for book recommendations for children's and teens' books. It's at the Guardian, http://books.guardian.co.uk. On the left are links to various departments, and you will find treasures there. There are old and new favorites, from P.L. Travers to Pullman, and several I didn't know about. And they're not stodgy lists, either, not the sort that assume twelve year olds will necessarily be enthralled and enriched by Silas Marner and Emerson's Essays. Some of the books are light hearted; all are sure to be well-written and unique.And the lists give a variety of types, too, for differing tastes, which young people have as pronouncedly as adult readers. there's suspense, domestic tales, science fiction, and lots of good realistic fiction )(NOT problem novels, just excellent stories, well told), from both sides of the Pond. there is a British slant, which is good to see from our side. Most of the current reviewing I see in the US slights UK books, unless they're major prize winners. Add to that the fact that the Carnegie awards include books by Americans, since it covers books written in English as long as they're published in the UK, where the Newbery winners are all American.

East and West of the Atlantic, Teens Have Restless Parents

This week I read two young adult novels, Jan Mark's Turbulence and Will Weaver's Claws. Both were completely enthralling, and both were about really nice teenagers with basically good parents who were going through mid-life madness. It's a real topic: my own children went through it as did those of my friends. It's a valid idea for a novel. And in the hands of such fine writers as Mark* and Weaver**, the results are fully realized portraits of young people in their families, with friends -- mostly educated and middle class people, all. Even the pink-haired punk girl isn't what you think at first.
In both books the teenage protagonist cooks a lot for the family and generally plays the part of a responsible adult, though one with teenage yearnings. Both have troublesome younger siblings. Parents are going crazy or withdrawing from their problems.
Both books end on a hopeful note. I wonder if Will Weaver has read Jan Mark, or vice versa, because the books are so similar in some elements. But both authors' voices are unique. And both stories are engrossing and believable, with admirable adolescents and hope for most of the rest of the characters.

* Will Weaver has written a trio of novels about a teenage farm boy in Minnesota who is a great baseball player. Striking Out, the first, gripped me from the start, with its evocation of an intense and committed teenager with a stubborn father. While I've not yet gotten into his adult novel Red Earth, White Earth, I have summer hopes for it.

** Jan Mark is a goddess, our late captain. Oh Captain, my Captain! She is gone but leaves a shelf of very fine fiction about young people. The first for me was Handles, about a girl who loves motorcycles and prefers hanging out with the guys at the shop to anything else besides riding. Jan Mark was my age when she died and was someone I would have liked knowing. That's why we write about books -- to keep them and their creators alive.

Tamar

Mal Peet's Tamar won the Carnegie Medal last year, for 2005.

When I put up a cover image earlier, the color was wrong. I didn't realize until now that the lettering too was wrong. This is the American edition , published by Candlewick Press is Cambridge, Massachusetts (2007). Mal Peet's named is not blazoned across the cover, I guess because he's not widely known here.

While promoted as a Young Adult novel (or, as they still consider it in England, children's fiction) the book centers around an older adult, Tamar, a grandfather and former World War II resistance fighter in Holland during the war, working undercover in dangerous territory. Another Tamar, his granddaughter, undertakes a present day journey of discovery into the past, providing the frame for the novel.

Throughout, the story is completely absorbing, combining suspense and intrigue, romance, memory and discovery, friendship and betrayal, anticipation and surprise. Peet's writing is deft and enchanting. The novel transcends age designations -- it's for teenage and above and demonstrates why people should pay more attention to "children's fiction."

Carnegie Medal Books

I'm reading Mal Peet's Tamar, and while not ready to write about it I'm engrossed in the world of British children's and young adult books. It seems to me, without having researched the topic, that the Carnegie Medal winners are, on the whole, much longer and meatier books than those chosen in the US for the Newbery Medal. What's behind this? One immediate answer is that maybe British young people are smarter, or more inclined to read, because, after all, the US is way ahead in wealth and therefore gizmos, so our kids are more likely to be playing the World of Warcraft than to be reading a hefty novel. But this seems too easy an explanation to be true. Maybe here we consciously choose books for the 8-12 year old range for the Newbery (they're all pretty "safe") and relegate the YA novels to another sphere, one formerly unvisited by award-givers but now recognized by the Michael Printz award. (The Coretta Scott King winners span a wide range and are, of course, self-limited.) If this is the case, then why have the teenagers been neglected for so long here, but not in Britain? I don't know but will look it up.

In the meantime, I've found a treasure trove of stuff at the Carnegie site at http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk and have just spent an hour or more on a Sunday evening scanning the site and viewing interviews and other great stuff.

More to come. And as for tonight's bedtime reading, choosing between Aciman and Peet, I think I'll go with Peet and leave Aciman for tomorrow's sunny afternoon. Very different books they are, and both very fine.

I'm getting messages in my brain

In M. T. Anderson's Feed, people's brains are fitted with an implant that feeds pop and consumer culture to them all day long, and people shop just to be shopping. Sound familiar? It could almost be now but instead is an imagined future, where teens party on the moon for spring break, and all anyone cares about is what's new. For Titus, a thoughtful boy, meeting a girl, Violet, who has never had the feed causes him to question the conditions of his life. Violet cares about things that others don't even think about. Titus's efforts to be her friend and include her in his social group are encouraging but in the end frustrating. A quick read, with refreshing new slang, this novel should make people think hard about what influences us today, in our own consumer culture. Recommended for teens and up.

A Baseball Novel for all ages and both genders

I first read my school library's paperback copy of Striking Out by Will Weaver and was immediately engrossed and also surprised that a young adult sports novel could be so fine. The book had been well-reviewed, and it didn't look too long, so I picked it up. Now there are three "Billy Baggs" novels: Striking Out, then Farm Team, and then Hard Ball , which I've just read and want to comment on here.
Hard Ball is an immediately gripping novel of a freshman in high school, a farm boy, who happens to be a rising star as a pitcher. As the book opens, it's late summer, just before school opens, and a bunch of western Minnesota kids are on a bus, on their way to see the Twins in the big city. In the course of the game, our hero, Billy, will be hit in the mouth by a fast ball and will as a result come into possession of a signed major league glove and two partially silver front teeth. A good beginning for a year in which he will first endure and then face his rival, the other star pitcher in the school, a rich kid who wants the same girl as Billy. Add into the mix two problematic and controlling fathers (on opposite sides of the track socially, and one father a judge who has once sent the other to jail), and an insightful coach who could rival King Solomon, and you've got a great story that mixes together high school life, teenage romance, farm kids and rich suburban kids, plus two kids who hate each other but come to find some deep similarities , make it all revolve around baseball , and you've got a deep but fast-moving novel. As a female reader, I had a few tears in my eyes at a few points. But I don't think male readers would cry.

Suitable for junior high and up.
Now I've got to get hold of Farm Team.