THE DAUGHTERS OF YS by M.T Anderson and Jo Rioux

Anderson, M. Daughters of Ys, (2020). New York, NY: First Second. 

13-17 years according to Amazon

I love M. T. Anderson! We have been friends for over 20 years. Okay, Facebook friends, but he would know me in real life! I have slept over at his house  - hell yeah, I’m going to drop that name! He is in the pantheon of talented YA writers and has such a breadth of topics that he is incomparable. Feed was a game changer for YA. His National award winning Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party is a masterwork. Heck, even his deceptively light Landscape with Invisible Hand was made into a film that premiered at Sundance this year. 

That being said, I didn’t love Daughers of Ys. 

It is beautiful to look at. Jo Rioux has so much movement in her drawing, and her color palette is perfect for showing the differences in the sisters. And the story is interesting and beautifully written. A review from NPR made a connection that I just loved - “Rioux also borrows the glowing lights and velvety shadows of Maxfield Parrish's work for certain scenes, including a wonderful interlude set inside a circle of standing stones.” (Lehoczky, 2020) It’s a feast for the eyes. I think it was just too murdery for me. 

The idea of two sisters, a dead mother, a father who is weak but plays strong - it has a lot going for it and according to Lehoczky, the original Breton tale is far more misogynistic. But I feel like Rozenn is too good to be true and Dahut is slut-shamed (and I guess murder-shamed) for things that are outside of her control. 

As I think back, I read this a few weeks ago when I had a bad cold and perhaps it wasn’t the right book at the right time. And flipping through the pages, I am practically reading it again with a much more enchanted eye. Perhaps I have erred and I do like it after all!

From a school library perspective, it makes me sad that the bare cartoon bums would be much more of a content problem than, you know, the murders, but that is the world we live in. Still, and art class could definitely benefit from looking at Rioux’s work and an ELA class could discuss this more feminist retelling of an old folktale. 

Lehoczky, E. (August 16, 2020) Feeling Deluged By News? Let 'The Daughters Of Ys' Wash Over You. NPR.

IF THESE WINGS COULD FLY by Kyrie McCauley

McCauley, K. If These Wings Could Fly, (2020), Katherine Tegen Books, HarperCollins Publishers.

13-17 years according to Amazon

I wanted to like this book. But I did not. If you are looking for extraordinarily books about teens surviving parental abuse, try N. Griffin’s Trigger, Nancy Werlin’s Rules of Survival or Rainbow Rowell’s damn near perfect Eleanor and Park. None of these books have the magical realism element of If These Wings Could Fly and I would argue they are the better for it. 

Neal Schusterman pushed child abuse into the speculative fiction realm with Unwind and Paolo Bachigalupi references it in Shipbreaker, but that is not the whole story in either of those novels. 

First, I should say that there were aspects of the book that I did like. The writing itself is strong and the middle sister in particular was an interesting and nuanced character. The romance wasn’t heavy handed and didn’t stand in the way of the story. And the crows were actually awesome. They are the only reason I kept reading. I was perusing Goodreads to see why people gave this book such a high score and many mentioned the crows, and damned if they didn’t add a nice aspect to the very rushed ending. 

I also liked the way that Leighton found an escape in her journalism. It was barely sketched out in the beginning of the book but the impact of her essay on people looking the other way at her family’s abuse was well done. 

Maybe I just didn’t like Leighton. She seemed bland and her snobbishness about state school rubbed me the wrong way. I am sure it was her father’s insistence she go that she was rebelling against, but it still seemed like a YA trope - going to NYU to get out of this oppressive town. If every fictional kid in a YA book that got out of their town by attending NYU actually went to NYU there wouldn’t be room for the actual human high school graduates. 

This was not a book that spoke to me. I know that not every book is for every person, and I believe that there are teens who would respond to this, but compared to the rest of the books I have been introduced to in this class, this one falls short. 

[Starry.ai didn't seem to like the book any better than I did if it's response to this possibly flawed prompt is any indication - "“A 17 year old girl, a 14 year old girl and an 8 year old girl are jumping off the roof of a house out in the country that is on fire and are caught by crows who help them get to the ground.”]

BLACK GIRL UNLIMITED by Echo Brown

 

Brown, E. Black Girl Unlimited: The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Witch, (2020), New York, NY: Christy Ottaviano Books, Henry Holt and Company. 

14-18 years according to Amazon

Thank God Echo is okay! This book was beautifully and delicately written, but I had such a hard time getting into it. The subject matter is so painful, and the “magic” aspect was confusing for me. I eventually gave up on reading it and listened to the audiobook instead and I was so glad I did. Echo Brown does an incredible job narrating her work. 

In the print version I was distracted by the mid-paragraph splits in the action and I was uncomfortable with the dialect of the mother’s speech in particular. But hearing Brown delineate the generations in this way was brilliant. According to her author bio she is an actor as well as a writer and it shows. 

There were so many rich character details in this book, which was surprising because it is all in Echo’s perspective. But her mother and the teacher who takes her in (a character that could have felt very white-savior and somehow did not) in particular were fleshed out just by their interactions with Echo.

The end of the book was as joyful as the beginning was painful and the balance definitely helped me love it. I appreciate books that understand that not everyone has the same kind of homelife and I think as an educator, it is particularly important for me to keep that in mind. 

This book is a definite pick for any school library (I just bought it for mine!) and would be an excellent bibliotherapy title for any kids struggling with family addiction issues, poverty or just the trauma of systemic racism. It also points to the liberation found in storytelling. 

Brown uses the movie Titanic as a conduit for a magical incident intended to help Echo’s brothers recognize the need to believe in themselves. This is a brilliant illustration of storytelling on top of storytelling! Black Girl Unlimited would be an excellent source for monologues for a drama class or illustrations for a creative writing class of unique methods of storytelling.

Speculative Fiction

Yes, I am just filling this blog with all my YA homework. Hey, I want to remember it! Here is my 250+ words about sci-fi, fantasy, steampunk and gaslamp -

My grandfather's binoculars from the 1920s, the goggles that my son bought in Poland, the USB jump drives made out of old glass tubes that my husband orders from Latvia - I am surrounded by SteamPunk and have lived like this pretty much since SteamPunk was invented. I started dating my husband in 1987, the same year that Jeter first described “a genre of speculative fiction in which steam, not electricity, drove technological advancements.” (Jeter, 1987). He was an Asimov-reading, Renaissance-Faire-attending hottie and he made it look cool. Which is the short answer to why these genres are popular with young adults - they look totally cool!

But wait, there’s more!

The idea of another world where the problems are so very, very different has always appealed to teens. Jules Verne and his Journey to the Center of the Earth, H.G. Welles poor Eloi being hunted by the Morlocks - these problems are so far away from the teenage problems of bad skin, evolving family relationships and friendship drama that have plagued teens since teenager-dom existed that they are a welcome escape. 

I have always defined sci-fi as spaceships and fantasy as dragons. If the technology is overwhelming it is steampunk. I was unfamiliar with gaslamp as a genre until reading Keyes’ blog post but I love the addition of supernatural elements. 

Brock’s chapter on speculative fiction seemed to mostly consist of recommended books and since it included three of my all time favorites - Kristin Cashore’s Graceling, Lanai Taylor’s Strange the Dreamer and Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows - I heartily approve. She also has an interesting section from Neal Schusterman about world building that taps into the real magic of this kind of fiction - escaping to a different universe, or a different version of the multiverse. 

But don’t get me started on the multiverse!

Brock, R. (2019). Young adult literature in action. Libraries Unlimited.

Jeter, K. (1987). Steampunk [Letter to the editor]. Locus Magazine.

Keyes, L. (2011, October 10). A past that never was. Enchanted Inkpot. https://enchantedinkpot.livejournal.com/104323.html

Finally - an explanation!

I just want to put this here so that I don't forget. 

In my YA course, the professor Dr. Catharine Bomhold made two points that finally gave me the language I needed to explain how I view YA. 

The first, when arguing about LITTLE WOMEN not being a young adult book (a hill on which she says she is willing to die) Dr. Bomhold said that it isn't YA simply because young adults did not exist at that time in American history - or really anywhere. You went directly from childhood to adulthood, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Brilliant and consice. 

The other point was explaining the difference between the Lamberts and duJardins and grittier books like THE OUTSIDERS. The point is that the "malt-shop books" were written by adults showing what a "perfect teen life" would be as opposed to showing what actual teen life was like - as teenaged Susie Hinton was able to do. 

I coined the phrase - "Suggest, rather than reflected" teen life. I really think it is going to catch on. 

It may seem that this theory doesn't leave room for more nuanced books like Cleary's FIFTEEN or the Betsy Tacy high school books, but I do think that, while they are much more emotionally rich, they are still constrained by their time. That bleaker honesty simply wasn't allowed. It was fine for Holden Caufield to struggle with mental illness as a teenager, as long his story wasn't marketed at teenagers. Yes, Jane could have her sad night watching the fog come over the bridge and Betsy could repent after Margarets eyelashes burned off, but ultimately, there was a happy ending. 

Even Tony, the Dally of the Lovelace stories, runs away, but writes to tell that everything has turned out FINE. 

There is more here, but I don't have time, but I want to revisit this. 

Everything Sad is Untrue: (A True Story) by Daniel Nayeri

Nayeri, D. Everything Sad is Untrue: (A True Story), (2020), Montclair, NJ: Levine Querido.

Ages 12+

I am in the midst of teaching a professional development series on how to provide services to EL/ML students in the school library and this book is what I opened the course with. Yes, Daniel’s English was excellent and his refugee experience was uniquely his, but the focus on storytelling as a means of making connections, even with so much resistance, was a great illustration about how communication isn’t just about the nuts and bolts of understanding the language, but rather it is about understanding your fellow human.
I listened to this book, rather than reading the paper copy and I had to pull over to write this nugget down - “Every story is the sound of a storyteller begging to stay alive.” Good grief, I am crying a little bit just retyping it. And there are so many beautiful slices of philosophy.  “Reading is the act of listening and speaking at the same time, with someone you’ve never met, but love. Even if you hate them, it’s a loving thing to do. You speak someone else’s words to yourself, and hear them for the first time.” This description blew my mind.

Daniel, like Schererazade, is telling his stories to me, the listener (In the book, the reader, nice touch audiobook version!) and he says, ““Dear listener, you have to understand the point of all these stories. What they add up to. Schererazade was trying to make the king human again. She made him love life by showing him all of it, the funny parts about poop, the dangerous parts with demons, even the boring parts about what makes marriages last.  Little by little, he began to feel the joy and sadness of others. He became less immune, less numb, because of the stories.” And Daniel does that for us as well. 

Finally, this book talks about faith in a way that makes it irresistible. From Daniels offhand comment, “But like you, I was made carefully, by a God who loved what He saw.” to his deconstruction of how his mother had to give up everything for Jesus, it is powerful stuff. 

I laughed out loud so many times, and I feel a little bad that all the taglines on Amazon talk about how powerful and heartbreaking it is, because it is also hysterical in parts. 

The cover art is absolutely beautiful and might have some young reader appeal, but this strikes me as one of those middle grade books that adults absolutely adore, but that needs to be a little bit pushed on actual kids. Starry.ai did a pretty good job with an illustration ( I needed to see Mr. Sheep Sheep.) but it was no match for the glorious tornado of story.

It Sounded Better in my Head by Nina Kenwood

Hey, at least I'm posting! Here's another one from my amazing YA literature class! Spoiler - I loved it. 

Kenwood, N. It Sounded Better in my Head. (2020), New York, NY: Flatiron Books. 

Ages 12-18 according to Amazon. Who doesn’t trust Amazon?

This was a pure delight and likely to be a shoe-in for my school’s summer reading list. I may just end up making my summer reading list based on the books that I read in this class. (Other than the ones that haven’t been on my list in the past - Ooh, foreshadowing!) 

I was a fat girl during my teen years. (Well, during my whole life. But I like being a fat lady. It is cozy.) Being a fat teen is perhaps not quite as traumatic as having aggressively cystic acne, but it is a close second. So much of what Natalie said, did and thought brought me back to my late teens. While I didn’t get that much thinner between high school and college, I gained the confidence to recognize that I wasn’t the hideous beast I had been led to believe I was. 

But I digress. 

It is hard for me to believe that this is Kenwood’s first novel because her writing is so surefooted. I should probably be persecuted for all the dog-earring I did to mark quotes. But mark quotes I did. And here they are in context for your enjoyment. 

When getting dropped off by her mom, Natalie says she might be having sex that night. In part, she wants to freak her mom out for revenge, but she also realized that saying it is a step on the way to doing it and that other people might just look at her and think, “This person could feasibly have sex with someone. “ (p.26)

At the party they start playing a drinking game. She thinks, “I’ve never actually seen a drinking game played before, so I’m quite fascinated. I cross my legs on the chair and settle in. It feels anthropological.” (p.43)

I just love her inner life. She says, “Everyone knows you can’t really trust any feeling you have at night - and the later the hour , the less trustworthy it is. Anything you feel after ten p.m. is suspect, anything after midnight should be discounted altogether.” (p.52)

There are some desperately teenaged truths as well. “I hate that desperate clutch of hope before you turn your phone over and then the feeling of sick disappointment when nothing is there.” (p.75)

Her “Don’t Let Me Die!” prayer is a hoot all the way around. Particularly, “Don’t let me die before I launch my podcast series about current teens watching old teen shows from the nineties.” (p.93) I would listen to that podcast! 

Her rumination about what she wants to look like when Alex sees her on the beach made me laugh out loud. “ I would be simply walking along, lost in my own deep thoughts, beautiful but oblivious to my beauty. Like footage from The Bachelorette, when they’re reflecting on the lead’s journey as an emotionally troubled but extremely desirable woman looking for True Love. Except I would be thinking about important things, like housing affordability and climate change and healthcare.” (p. 107)

When she is feeling raw about her mother potentially dating again she is classically teenagedly passive aggressive, but it doesn’t make her feel better. And then she learns an inevitable truth, “I feel like I want to cry but tears don’t come. I scream into a pillow, which feels good the first time I do it but very over-the-top the second time.” (p.169)

Her explanation of how her standards of who she would have sex with evolved is heartbreaking, as well as relatable to anyone who grew up a fat girl, “When I was younger, I thought I wouldnt’ have sex with anyone unless they loved me with an all consuming movie-star love. Then I got bad skin and I changed my stance – maybe the person didn’t have to love me, they just had to like me a whole lot and have really good shoulders. Or like me a little bit. Or be willing to look at my face without making fun of me. Or just be simply willing.” (p. 198-9)

She speaks another truth when Vanessa is about to hurl in the car, “I’m sure teachers get drunk all the time.” (p. 235) As a long-time educator, I have found this to be quite accurate. 

I love it when the author can distill the message of their book in a way that is appealing without being preachy and Kenwood beautifully navigates it during the Zach’s-apology scene, “Alex can’t be the hero who saves me from my low self-esteem. It goes against every feminist narrative I’ve ever read, every lesson I learned at my progressive all girls school, every positive, healthy, empowering message I’ve ever seen someone share on Instagram. A woman saves herself. Be the hero of your own story. Be Katniss, not Bella. Even though I always related to Bella's angst more than Katniss’s trauma.” (p.249) Nailed it! 

As I said previously, the strength of this novel is the unerring ear for teenaged thoughts. It also introduced me to such concepts as Tim Tams and Icy Poles, for which I am grateful.

Apple (Skin to the Core) by Eric Gansworth

[This is another one I read for my YA course at SMU which I ADORE - the book and the course.] 

Gansworth, E. Apple (Skin to the Core), (2020), Montclair, NJ: Levine Querido.

Ages 12+ according to the publisher. 

This book had been recommended to me so much, and I resisted. Stupid, stupid me. This is a beautiful exploration of growing up in a community, the importance of family and the impact of popular culture, particularly when you are in a group that is outside the “norm.” It doesn’t hurt that the author is almost exactly my age, so the references brought up my own memories of adolescence. 

I kept the windows open for all the searches I did on my phone while reading this book. I investigated “eee ogg” (gossip), Iroquois False Face masks (unsettling), David Bowie on Dinah Shore (She kept asking him back!)Tuscarora Reservation (Dog Street is there, called Mount Hope Road!)Lewiston Reservoir and ribbon shirts. I learned so much. 

I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to see if the poems inspired by the Beatles’ songs shared the rhythm of their namesakes and was thrilled to find that sometimes they did. 

But the thing that made me swoon over and over was the language. I am not a poetry person, but I found myself re-reading big swaths of the text, out loud, even. In part it was the way the words worked together, but mostly it was just how visceral the writing was. 

There is not a lot of us/them language - other than in the boarding school sections - but there doesn’t need to be. The consequences of American imperialism are so perfectly drawn that they barely need to be called out, and yet Gansworth does here, to perfection.

p.75 [My Brother Tries Quietly to Wake Us Up] - As we stare at this static image, we realize that even on color TV, Indians are frozen in the past, designed for a black-and-white world instead of the brightly colored one where we live together, and breathe current air, feeding trees and taking oxygen from them, an exchange we did for centuries before others arrived, claiming new borders and driving us away because we didn’t use land the way they did. 

The pop cultural references are so familiar to me. And the way that your music feels when you are 13 is universal, Rez or no Rez. 

p.90 [Metamorphosis] - …guided by Top 40 streaming in from some unknown tower, maybe in Montreal or quebec City, “Wildfire,” Young Americans,” “Listen to What the Man Said,” “Stand by Me,” “Love Will Keep Us Together,” strung together so they feel like a message that I’ll get when I can successfully tune in directly instead of the phasing in and out reception you get on every Rez I’ve spent time on.”

Anyone who grew up in a world of religious conservatism (as I did) recognizes the way that the pious can make you feel. 

p.122 [Masks Unmasked] - [Darth]Vader’s gleaming metal skull, even poorly rendered, spooked my aunt, so she always sat where she couldn’t see it, convinced Star Wars, like The Exorcist and Salem’s Lot and Carrie, and anything else I loved, was the work of the devil, and that I was playing with fire. She tended to see the devil everywhere, but especially lurking inside me and my idea of fun. 

Anyone who spent any time in any Spencer’s Gifts in the 70s or 80s recognizes this perfect description of the inventory!

p. 125 [In Spencer’s, I Become Someone Else for Under Ten Dollars] - The back is filled with carousels of posters, giant decks of cards featuring every sweating rock star you know.

The most powerful sections were the Hunger Tests. As someone who has never been hungry for more than an hour in my life, the descriptions of the circumstances of not having food were more powerful than the descriptions of the feelings of hunger ever were. 

p. 147 [Hunger Test 3. Cumulative Exam] - …your stomach forgets its empty state long enough for you to fall asleep and dream of a time, a place where you might have leftovers, because there was enough prepared, for you to have taken too much to start with…

The writing in this book is some of the best I have ever read in YA - it’s up there with The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation by MT Anderson or Melinda Marchetta’s Jellicoe Road. And the content is equal to the art. A few weeks ago I read the young readers version of Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians But Were Afraid to Ask by Anton Treuer, and I thought it was great. But I learned more by reading this work of art than I did reading a work of nonfiction.