In Sunday's NY Times Book Review the author Sue Monk Kidd said she tries "to read a poem every morning" with her coffee. I think this is a marvelous practice ... provided you can find the quiet space in the morning maelstrom to actually savor the poem.
I'm still crushing on Mary Oliver (see last Monday's post) so here we go with another one of hers. This one fell open this morning, which was a little scary because only yesterday I was talking to someone about despair.
Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
In other news from the Times: author Jo Knowles wrote a very good review of Laurie Halse Anderson's latest novel, The Impossible Knife of Memory. These two are among the best writers in young adult and middle grade fiction right now, and I want to rush out and get Knife as well as Living With Jackie Chan, which is Knowles' latest.
Showing posts with label Laurie Halse Anderson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Laurie Halse Anderson. Show all posts
Monday, January 13, 2014
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Our Right to Read
Imagine going into your public library to pick up a copy of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, only to find that it’s not available. Not because another patron has taken it out: because it’s been removed from the shelves. Permanently.
Maybe you’re not the questioning sort, so you figure what the heck, I’ll just find another classic … how about … F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby? But then you discover that’s missing, too. Disappeared from the collection and struck from the catalogue.
The list goes on: John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Even Harry Potter is gone. Hemingways are missing. Nobel prize winners (I’m thinking of Beloved by Toni Morrison, one of my all-time favorite books) are not to be found. Heck, you can’t even find a decent Jodi Picoult novel (although they’re readily available at most airport bookstores.)
If this scenario seems ridiculous and unlikely let me tell you: there are people in our country who are actively working to make this a reality. Every book, and every author I’ve mentioned here, have been targets, numerous times, of book banning. If you don’t believe me, ask the American Library Association. This is National Banned Books Week, and the nation’s librarians have a lot to say about our national right to read.
Just last week this issue raised its ugly head. A fellow named Wesley Scroggins out in Missouri called upon the powers-that-be in the Republic, Missouri schools to ban Laurie Halse Anderson’s young adult novel, Speak. He described it as “soft pornography.” He objected to the novel’s portrayal of dysfunctional families and insensitive teachers. I don’t know … I guess he thinks authors should only write about happy families and classrooms run by the Teacher of the Year?
Speak is a moving, empowering fictional account of a girl who is raped the summer before her freshman year in high school. She is emotionally scarred by this event, to the point where she can barely speak. It’s a story about how she ultimately deals with her attack and finds her voice again.
It’s not easy to read. But it treats, sensitively, an important topic. The author has received countless letters from girls, thanking her for writing this novel, which helped them cope with their own sexual assault traumas. When I read this book it confirmed my own decision to write for teenagers. It’s possible, through fiction, to touch young readers in ways that help them, and move them. Laurie Halse Anderson is one of our best YA authors out there.
Luckily, there is an army of teachers, writers and librarians out there ready to take on the Wesley Scroggins of the world, and while the citizens of the Republic, Missouri school district still haven’t taken any action regarding Speak, they’ve sure heard from a lot of people who strongly approve of the book. Librarians, especially.
And if there’s one thing I know, Wesley, you don’t want to make a librarian mad.
Every day this week, in honor of Banned Books Week, I’m going to recommend a recently banned Young Adult title. Thanks to Wesley, I’ll start with: Speak.
Maybe you’re not the questioning sort, so you figure what the heck, I’ll just find another classic … how about … F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby? But then you discover that’s missing, too. Disappeared from the collection and struck from the catalogue.
The list goes on: John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Even Harry Potter is gone. Hemingways are missing. Nobel prize winners (I’m thinking of Beloved by Toni Morrison, one of my all-time favorite books) are not to be found. Heck, you can’t even find a decent Jodi Picoult novel (although they’re readily available at most airport bookstores.)
If this scenario seems ridiculous and unlikely let me tell you: there are people in our country who are actively working to make this a reality. Every book, and every author I’ve mentioned here, have been targets, numerous times, of book banning. If you don’t believe me, ask the American Library Association. This is National Banned Books Week, and the nation’s librarians have a lot to say about our national right to read.
Just last week this issue raised its ugly head. A fellow named Wesley Scroggins out in Missouri called upon the powers-that-be in the Republic, Missouri schools to ban Laurie Halse Anderson’s young adult novel, Speak. He described it as “soft pornography.” He objected to the novel’s portrayal of dysfunctional families and insensitive teachers. I don’t know … I guess he thinks authors should only write about happy families and classrooms run by the Teacher of the Year?
Speak is a moving, empowering fictional account of a girl who is raped the summer before her freshman year in high school. She is emotionally scarred by this event, to the point where she can barely speak. It’s a story about how she ultimately deals with her attack and finds her voice again.
It’s not easy to read. But it treats, sensitively, an important topic. The author has received countless letters from girls, thanking her for writing this novel, which helped them cope with their own sexual assault traumas. When I read this book it confirmed my own decision to write for teenagers. It’s possible, through fiction, to touch young readers in ways that help them, and move them. Laurie Halse Anderson is one of our best YA authors out there.
Luckily, there is an army of teachers, writers and librarians out there ready to take on the Wesley Scroggins of the world, and while the citizens of the Republic, Missouri school district still haven’t taken any action regarding Speak, they’ve sure heard from a lot of people who strongly approve of the book. Librarians, especially.
And if there’s one thing I know, Wesley, you don’t want to make a librarian mad.
Every day this week, in honor of Banned Books Week, I’m going to recommend a recently banned Young Adult title. Thanks to Wesley, I’ll start with: Speak.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Adults: MIA in YA?
I just finished reading a fun, paranormal young adult romance called Shiver by Maggie Steifvater and it got me thinking about how adults are portrayed in books written for teens. This is something I wrestle with in my own novels, especially since the formula in a lot of YA these days seems to be that adults are either Missing in Action or idiotic.
In Shiver, the adults are inept/neglectful at best, and murderous at worst. Don’t get me wrong: I really loved Shiver (and just added it to the Book Talk section on my website) which is a wonderfully imaginative, beautifully written girl-meets-boy-who-is-also-a-werewolf romance. Much of the plot is driven by the premise that the protagonist’s parents are fairly indifferent guardians, leaving her free to host a wolf-boy not only in their house but in her bed, unbeknownst to them.
It’s a Teen Theme: Parents Don’t Get Us. Parents don’t communicate with us. They don’t understand our pain. Adults are pretty stupid. In Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, the parents communicate with their clearly depressed daughter by leaving notes for her as they zip off to work. In Carl Hiassen’s Hoot, adults are highly comic idiots. In Libba Bray’s Going Bovine, parents are incapable of understanding or easing their teen son’s pain, whether that’s emotional or physical pain.
“Kids don’t want to read about adults,” my agent tells me. Under her direction I’ve slashed and burned countless pages containing scenes with grownups. Granted, she was right about those cuts (she tends to always be right) but I’m one of those YA authors whose teens inhabit a world where adults are clearly present and involved, for better or worse. Balancing readers’ desires for peer-centric fiction with my desire to create authentic stories has been challenging.
In the book I’ve just completed, Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best, overinvolved parents are one of the main problems facing the teen protagonists. I’ve got the stage mother and a sports-sidelines screaming father from hell in this book, so I couldn’t very well have eliminated adults completely. Still, I had to trim and cut and streamline all the scenes with the parents, in the interest of holding my readers’ attentions.
In my first book, Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress, one of the main characters is the protagonist’s grandmother. My guess is that if the plot outline and synopsis for that book had ever come before an editorial board, it would have gotten dinged. (Luckily my editor just bought the whole book outright; no board.) I can imagine the comments: “Teens don’t want to read books about grandmothers.”
Well … sure they do. If grandma is funny. If grandma has something interesting to say. If grandma actually listens to the teens in her world, and gets what they are about. In Speak, an art teacher throws the main character the lifeline she needs to save herself from drowning in depression. In Robin Brande’s Evolution, Me and Other Freaks of Nature, one of the coolest characters who helps put the whole science versus religion controversy into perspective is an adult (again, a teacher.)
Part of writing YA is understanding how important, developmentally, it is for teens to test limits, push back at authority and take ownership of their lives. Perhaps they need to see adults as inept and clueless in order to take those steps. I get that this is a device in YA; I’ve used it myself.
But if we want to write authentic stories for young adults, should “old” adults necessarily be missing in action or foolish? I don’t think so.
In Shiver, the adults are inept/neglectful at best, and murderous at worst. Don’t get me wrong: I really loved Shiver (and just added it to the Book Talk section on my website) which is a wonderfully imaginative, beautifully written girl-meets-boy-who-is-also-a-werewolf romance. Much of the plot is driven by the premise that the protagonist’s parents are fairly indifferent guardians, leaving her free to host a wolf-boy not only in their house but in her bed, unbeknownst to them.
It’s a Teen Theme: Parents Don’t Get Us. Parents don’t communicate with us. They don’t understand our pain. Adults are pretty stupid. In Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, the parents communicate with their clearly depressed daughter by leaving notes for her as they zip off to work. In Carl Hiassen’s Hoot, adults are highly comic idiots. In Libba Bray’s Going Bovine, parents are incapable of understanding or easing their teen son’s pain, whether that’s emotional or physical pain.
“Kids don’t want to read about adults,” my agent tells me. Under her direction I’ve slashed and burned countless pages containing scenes with grownups. Granted, she was right about those cuts (she tends to always be right) but I’m one of those YA authors whose teens inhabit a world where adults are clearly present and involved, for better or worse. Balancing readers’ desires for peer-centric fiction with my desire to create authentic stories has been challenging.
In the book I’ve just completed, Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best, overinvolved parents are one of the main problems facing the teen protagonists. I’ve got the stage mother and a sports-sidelines screaming father from hell in this book, so I couldn’t very well have eliminated adults completely. Still, I had to trim and cut and streamline all the scenes with the parents, in the interest of holding my readers’ attentions.
In my first book, Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress, one of the main characters is the protagonist’s grandmother. My guess is that if the plot outline and synopsis for that book had ever come before an editorial board, it would have gotten dinged. (Luckily my editor just bought the whole book outright; no board.) I can imagine the comments: “Teens don’t want to read books about grandmothers.”
Well … sure they do. If grandma is funny. If grandma has something interesting to say. If grandma actually listens to the teens in her world, and gets what they are about. In Speak, an art teacher throws the main character the lifeline she needs to save herself from drowning in depression. In Robin Brande’s Evolution, Me and Other Freaks of Nature, one of the coolest characters who helps put the whole science versus religion controversy into perspective is an adult (again, a teacher.)
Part of writing YA is understanding how important, developmentally, it is for teens to test limits, push back at authority and take ownership of their lives. Perhaps they need to see adults as inept and clueless in order to take those steps. I get that this is a device in YA; I’ve used it myself.
But if we want to write authentic stories for young adults, should “old” adults necessarily be missing in action or foolish? I don’t think so.
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