After a hard couple months of medical and rabbitty hole hardship, I’m back! To start off, I give you NPR’s list of the Best 100 Teen Novels. I think some are missing and some are missplaced. Any thoughts? Sound off!
Enjoy some of the highlights and lowlights below and click on the link above to read through the entire list. As always, paint the roses in the comment section!
1. Harry Potter
2. Hunger Games- maybe a bit high there?? I mean–I love the series, but it is not the second best ever. Everyone needs to CALM DOWN.
21. Mortal Instruments Series- Seriously? …………………………………………………………….Seriously? I will leave my ranting out of this. But SERIOUSLY? It beats out Tuck Everlasting?? The Giver? Bridge to Terabithea and A Wrinkle in Time (which were missing)? Ugh.
Let’s get to partying!!! It’s been a hard week at school, but I have stumbled across some great articles and youtube parodies! I can’t wait until I have a better grip on my finals so that I can catch up on blog reading!!! Don’t forget to look at my blogroll! It is full of solid gold reading material!
5. The AV Club had an awesome discussion on whether or not dystopian stories need to elaborate on their backstories. Seeing on how frustrated I was with Delirium’s swiss cheese foundation, I found this very interesting. Enjoy all the references to Panem!
4. What could possibly be funnier than the HIPSTER HUNGER GAMES?
3. We have a short list of directors for Catching Fire!!! Alfonso Cuaron for the win!!!! Head over to the LA Times for more information!
2. I loved Maggie Stiefvater’s Scorpio Races , and I was VERY excited to see EW give us a taste of her new book, The Raven Boys! Enjoy the first two chapters here! Thank you EW’s Shelf Life!
1. Remember how I said the HIPSTER HUNGER GAMES were the best? Well…..Beanie Babies for the WIN!!! This is long but VERY WORTH YOUR TIME INVESTMENT!!!!
No book trailer (sad face…these cheesefests are my favorite) but here is Lauren Oliver discussing her book! I might add these in to the reviews. Apparently they are really common. Enjoy!
Cover and Title Critique: I like this cover. I like the blue one more than the newer one (pretty girl mug face again!!!). It reminds me of a haze, which is how I felt while reading this: walking through a muddled college drunkfest. I think the title is semi-perfect for the content of the book. It fits in with thinking that love is a mind-eating disease that takes over and makes you into a sad zombie (sad zombie= no fun or blood/gut eating, just living your life in a haze). It’s also just a great word. DELIRIUM. I like it. I need to use it more.
Alice says: It was meh.
Ok…so I am going to use some zombie analogies here because I think they are appropriate. I am also going to bring up The Giver (YAY) because I think Lois Lowry deserves a HUGE nod in this review as well. So…..let me give this to you straight. Love, in this dystopian world, is a virus. Let me paint the picture for you. It is the most dangerous virus ever–it is worse than being a leper with brain-eating cancer mixed with a dash of dandruff and ecoli (lets throw in some medically explained zombie blood). That is how frightening love is. It is so bad…so UNBELIEVABLY BAD…that all of society has allowed themselves to be vaccinated from LOVE (SHUDDER) when they turn 18 (no questions asked– no, “Hey…um….I like my thoughts and hormones, thank you.”). You just become an unfeeling, unemotional zombot who is then matched with someone to breed and live an unfeeling life. YAY!!!!
Anyone else not buying this?? See….in The Giver, Jonas lives in a world with no love, but hes been taking pills that control his hormones and emotions his entire life. You know why? Because Lois Lowry knew how stupid it sounded to think that people would just NOT LOVE and NOT FEEL. Lauren Oliver? She just expects some myth about love to be enough to hold everyone over until they are 18 and old enough to get vaccinated. Lauren….even a fake bible (it was an interesting concept) about how horrible love is and some brainwashing is not going to stop the HUMAN DRIVE for closeness, love, sex and, you know, BEING HUMAN. I fell in love in Kindergarten (Toby, you out there???). It just makes no sense to think that a world of under 18-year-olds is just going to FEAR love and intimacy (unless we are going for this weeks episode of GCB with that HECK HOUSE–that was awesome).
There are no excuses for how flimsy this premise is. Yes, she talks about how sometimes there are rebellious girls who are caught kissing a guy–but they just end up in a mental hospital or are administered the vaccine early (and serve as spokespeople for how happy they are). Yes there are rumors of outsiders who have fought the system–but its a small percentage. Overall–everyone under 18 seems fine with their zombie families and goes through with the vaccine. Also, anyone notice how this is very “blame the girls???” You don’t here about the guys losing control. I hate books that slut-shame. SHAME on the slut-shaming. Honestly…its hard to simply get past the premise….but if you do…..
Lena.
Oh Lena…..
I want to like you. I really do. Here is the thing. You are a bit of a whiner, and a bit of a flake. Things that should be basic for a girl seem just a bit too complicated for her (like human interaction, or how to have a best friend–even eating). She acts like she has already had the vaccine before she has had it because the writing is really choppy. She is a zombie among the ACTUAL zombies. Who is that scared of people, places, dust even? It is only when she is running that I actually like her–and you can’t run for an entire book. That would be a really weird book. Also, I think I like the running because I like her best friend (non-zombie-like running mate Hana), but then Hana seems to have a strange 180 towards the end that makes no sense….so ARGH! (avoiding spoilers here). Where is the continuity??? WHY AM I BEING SO DRAMATIC? AM I IN A DELIRIUM?
And of course there is a boy…and he is wooden. It just all feels really wooden and heavy-handed. I don’t know. Why does it seem that I can’t find something that great to say. YES–there is a dystopian world (albeit a crappy one). YES there is a love story (OBVIOUSLY)…..I just….I read it. I finished it. I felt annoyed at the end. The end felt rushed and Lena didn’t feel like the same character we started off with. Did we jump on a spaceship at hit LIGHTSPEED?? Sure….she evolves–but it happens in a disjointed way. I would expect people to want to act human prior to 17. We go back to my main issue. This dystopian world just FALLS APART AT THE SEAMS. It does not work: Lois did it better. She had a solution for the world that Oliver was trying to RECREATE. There….I SAID IT. I feel better now. Just because there was no rushed loved story in the Giver doesn’t mean it wasn’t the same dystopian world. @#%!@ Also…..give your characters time to grow. This character development: thumbs down.
I feel better now. So….take it to a beach, on an airplane….whatever. Enjoy. But know that this has been done better. Oh….and if it feels like there are holes that you just can’t fill with your suspension of disbelief…its because you can’t. This thing is like SWISS CHEESE.
Rabbit says: Ages 14 and up.
I can agree with this. Nothing too controversial. The reading is easy and light. The themes are pretty standard. There is some religious overlap with the pretend “bible quotes” and religious implications throughout the book (relating to Magdalena (Lena’s real name) and her back story through a different dystopian lens (Mary Magdalene for you non-religious folk). Overall….no issue with Harper Teen’s age guide here.
Caterpillar says: Crappy Heroines, WHY?!
Is anyone else tired of crappy heroines who need to be saved by the every awesome and more enlightened “dude”? If I read one more novel where the heroine stresses to me how “ordinary” she is I am going to scream!!!!! Seriously….what is it with the self-hatred!!!!! What is it with the guy SWEEPING in with every piece of information and bravery needed to save the “totally normal and uninspiring girl (she doesn’t even deserve the title heroine).
SPOILER: And why ruin HANA? She was awesome and questioning everything and then BOOM! She is scared and turns to the vaccine??? Seriously? Was it because there was no boy?? Without a man you just get SCURRED? ARGH!
I blame Bella Swan…..(not really….there are others, I’m just grumpy).
This week, the New York Times paid special attention to Young Adult Literature! I invite you to join in on their very interesting and diverse discussion for this weeks Tea Party!!!
So what do you think of the debate? Do you think Adults should only read adult books? Do you think YA authors are doing some daring work? Is social media “hijacking” YA lit?? Paint the ROSES!!!!!!
(CNN) -- “What if no one watched?” Gale Hawthorne asks at the beginning of the first "Hunger Games" film. What if not one citizen of the dystopian post-American country of Panem watched the annual competition where children from 12 districts compete to the death as penance for their insolence against the governing Capitol?
Here is the CNN article mentioned below. Danielle Tumminio is the same Harry Potter Scholar who wrote "God and Harry Potter at Yale: Teaching Faith and Fantasy Fiction in an Ivy League Classroom. I like these discussions. Not only are they meta--they are pushing those who love the Hunger Games to think about the CENTRAL MESSAGE. This is really gnawing at me!!!! I can't help but think of Gale. What if we all chose not to watch?
Being passive spectators of violence and injustice, even if mournfully so, is not just a thing of Panem, it is our everyday reality.
In The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins takes the reality of an unjust society and gives it an imaginative makeover. In Panem, most people are kept at such extreme levels of hunger that even when they do eat they cannot fill the hollowness that has settled in their stomachs, while others are deciding on the next cosmetic alteration they will undertake – whiskers, jewel implants, or green-tone skin color?
Xochitl Alvizo reflects on ritual and the Hunger Games at Feminism and Religion (again...a GREAT BLOG). Touching on Danielle Tumminio's CNN article (which I will reblog above), Xochitl reflects on the question of whether or not something is missed by a Hunger Games reader by actually watching the movie. I keep wondering about this as well. If you think the series was about political action and inaction, do yo end up being just as bad as a Capitol Citizen?? Is this what John at Hogwarts Professor was touching on? Read the blog and let me know what you think. Paint the Roses! Reviews coming soon! Sorry it has been a week: papers this week have been draining!!
I wanted to start a new type of post on Fridays! I read quite a few of the YA literature blogs (way toooooooo many and not nearly enough) and thought I would post my top three favorite posts of the week in a Friday roundup called the The Mad FRIDAY Tea Party! This is an easy way to share what I have been reading and to share with you how great the YA literature blog world is! So here we go! My favorite posts of the week!
3. Clockwork Reverie’s review of Shatter Me blew me away. I have been following her on goodreads and I can honestly say this is one of the best reviewers I have ever read. This is one of her older reviews but it is just an example of how great her work is. She is brutally honest, dynamic, thorough, and just so smart. She is also funny. I like funny when being sarcastic about a crappy book. That is the only way to go really…..
2. The ladies of Love Ya Lit commenting on 5th Annual Audiobook Tournament (at Audible.com) made my day. Brent and I are audiobook junkies and sometimes feel like we are the only ones….. We even have favorite narrators (Jim Dale anyone?). This is like March Madness for me. Thanks for letting me know!!!!
1. Forever Young Adult takes the number one spot with their amazeballs drinking game for the Hunger Games movie. My friends and I have decided to wait until the DVD release to try this gem (mostly because we probably would have drunkenly “hunger-gamesed” some screaming tweens at our midnight showing while simultaneously heckling the Twilight trailer) but I love them for this. POUR ONE OUT FOR RUE made me die laughing and secretly shed a tear and reminisce about Dobby for some reason!
Editor's note: Colette Bennett, aside from being Geek Out's main otaku, is an obsessive fangirl. Recently, her love of "The Hunger Games" series led her to call it the "thinking woman's YA series." As fans across the country camp out to buy tickets to "The Hunger Games" movie premier, Bennett explains the singularity and relevance of Katniss worship.
In the era of obsessive young adult literature fandom, a new heroine towers above all the others -- Miss Katniss Everdeen.
While I agree with the title of the CNN post, I disagree with the sentiment that Bella is an "okay" role model for girls and Katniss is a better one. A girl who says "SAVE ME" to a boy and goes along for the ride is not a role model for anyone....period. A lost girl does not need to be saved by a boy and that message needs to be stopped PRONTO. It is so harmful for girls AND boys. Young girls and women have agency and are perfectly capable of being the persons they were born to be--even when the "odds are NOT in their favor". They can rise above every circumstance through their own uniqueness and do ANYTHING. SPARKLY VAMPIRES BE DAMNED! Bella may be the worst thing to hit literature and girlhood since the early Disney princesses. Katniss is a fantastic role model for girls (hearts for Katniss!!!!!), but she is not a novelty--and we should celebrate those that came before. She stands in a long line of female heroines and female leads that teach girls (and boys) what badassness looks like. So today I offer a toast to Hermione, Lyra, Luna, Minerva, Molly, Lily, Ginny, Anne, Leia, Juniper, Galadriel, Arwen, and the many other strong girls and women that have paved the path for our GIRL ON FIRE! Have any more? Paint the Roses!!!
Genre: Young Adult, Dystopian, Fertility, Polygamy
ISBN: 1442409053
Publisher Description:
By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. She can thank modern science for this genetic time bomb. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years. Geneticists are seeking a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children.
When Rhine is kidnapped and sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can’t bring herself to hate him as much as she’d like to. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband’s strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement. Her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next, and Rhine is desperate to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive. Will Rhine be able to escape–before her time runs out?
Cover and Title Critique: I like this cover. It was what first attracted me to the books. The broken down doll look of the girl fits so well with Rhine and her character. I can’t pretend to not find it beautiful and haunting. Well done Simon and Schuster. I know I complain about the pretty girls on the covers but there is something haunting about this cover. I like it–bordering on love it.
Alice says: OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!
Ok…I have a love and hate relationship with this book. I read through it really quickly because it reads like a fun read–think Davinci Code. That makes for light, fun reading, but this is not light fun reading. I hate getting all dark and GOLLUM up in here but Wither has to receive my lowest score because it glorifies some of the most horrible things in my world–child rape and child marriage. There is a time and place for these things in dystopia, but it takes a strong author to repeatedly condemn them. Oh wait, no it doesn’t. Even a five-year-old knows to condemn these things. This can not go unnoticed and it can not go tween love story glorified. DeStefano’s world is creepy and sad and wonderfully dystopian but she begins her world by marrying off Rhine and her sister brides, a 13-year-old and 18-year-old, to Linden and not drawing some clear lines. These are forced marriages. This is clearly wrong–it will NEVER BE OK. Rhine and Cecily’s are statutory rapes if and when consummated. Jenna’s is rape. All of it is abuse of women, their bodies, their free will, and their unimaginable positions in a horrible world. Even with the rape and forced marriages–ok, its dystopia–fine lines, or even blurry lines, are not drawn about how it is wrong. There are flowers and Lisa Frank stickers all over the place about how it MIGHT not be the worst think in the world. Is this a joke? Am I on hidden camera YA Book Edition? The author proceeds with her story telling in a way that I can not pretend was not romanticized. Linden and his shiny black hair and sad eyes now lives in a world where any 14-year-old reading might confuse these him and these convoluted relationships as normal or romantic (a million times worse than when it was deemed ok to have Edward sneaking into Bella’s room and watching her sleeping without her permission). Money, doe eyes, and looks are made to soften the blows of horror–they are used to confuse Rhine, the reader, and obviously the author.
In reagrds to the plot, there is intrigue and mystery in regards to why the virus kills all the new generation at 20 and 25 and outrage at how the older generation is using young “brides” to populate the wealthier survivors with “younguns” to keep the human race going. The grotesque imagery of older men buying young brides for themselves and for their many sons is worthy of discussion and did give me chills–I just could not get over the building of a love story/triangle in this horribleness and trying to hand this down to the reader. Without handing out spoilers–it just was not PLAUSIBLE. It was impossible. It was really pathetic. I don’t think I’ve ever been that annoyed with anyone romanticizing something so harmful to women (or men–Rhine was taken from her twin brother and sees the virus harming everyone–particularly the young (the poor young?)). It was like looking at Atwood through a lens she would be horrified by.
I don’t have an opinion on Rhine because she seems unreal. Everything is spelled out for me by the author. I am told she loves her brother tremendously, that she is trying to escape, that she is daring and smart–but she does not act like it. She is very one-dimensional and very dense. Her inability to see Linden as an agent to her horror makes her one-dimensional.
So, what did I like (to make me say I had a love hate relationships?) I think the groundwork for a world that I could have like is laid. I think the issues are all in Rhine and the decisions she makes (or should I say what is decided for her by the writing). I have never said that before which feels weird. Maybe the second book will redeem this one–I don’t know. I don’t see how but I am not one to leave a story on the first book–especially one that makes me this furious. Ugh. I will have to read the second one to see what is going on. Like I said, there is a great foundation for a dystopian world, but Rhine acts like a love-sick confused girl who does not seem to understand the world around her, the horrors around her–what is being done to her sister-wives and herself. Does the author? I hate picking on an author–I never have– but I have serious beef. I hope the sequel redeems itself and doesn’t turn into a taboo celebrating trashy novel again but I don’t want to get my hopes up.
Rabbit says: Ages 14 and up.
I could not find an age recommendation for this book. I leave it at at least 14 and up. There is child rape and continuous rape and romanticization of rape and child marriage (child brides) in this book. Dystopia does not make it any better. There is the constant discussion of older men with younger women. Just because Linden is younger does not make it any better. I can’t wrap my head around it. Even the publisher description says that Rhine can’t bring herself to hate Linden, a boy who rapes a very young girls. I am sorry but I draw the line in dystopia there. I would hope 14 is old enough to understand how horrible the themes being discussed and romanticized by the author are in this book but I also hope that parents are aware that these themes are becoming prevalent in books, though other authors and reviewers have condemned this book as well. The idea of girls as wombs is condemned more heavily than the rape so at least that is dealt with well.
Caterpillar says: Manor of Horrors
Ok…so this was just a weird book, but it did bring up so many different topics. SPOILER ALERT!
1. This reminded me so much of the child brides that have been taken out of fundamentalist compounds lately (which is why the making it romantic bugged the F*&#$ out of me). This felt like a carnivalesque fun-house discussion on compound polygamy. Did anyone else get this feeling?
2. Another fertility genre book–any thoughts on why this is emerging?
3. Is Linden a villain? Does he willingly participate in murder? In the experiments?
4. How does Cecily read to you? Does she read like a child? Does she read like an adult? Does she have agency? Is she a villain? A victim?
5. Does there seem to be a discussion of rich vs. the poor here? Is DeStephano commenting on how only the rich will rise above?
Am I the only one who found this book so disturbing? Paint the Roses!!
