First, hello to any visitors from BlogHer!  Recently I was fortunate enough to have my post, Why I Use The F Word be featured there, so welcome to any visitors that are stopping by via BlogHer.  Please feel free to look around and I hope you enjoy what you find. Comments are moderated here, but I get to them fairly quickly, so please comment!

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This post was inspired by my BIG LOVE for Suzanne Collin’s Hunger Games trilogy and by the following thoughtful, incisive blogs: Malinda Lo’s Why I’m Team Katniss and Nancy Werlin’s The Hunger Games, Casablanca, and the Madding Crowd

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When you love a fictional character, love them so much it can ache, it’s hard to say good-bye.  It’s hard to know that, for you, in that giddy first-time-what’ll happen next way, it’ll all be over!  When other people complained about The Deathly Hallows epilogue, I  loved and defended it.  I did that for a lot of reasons, one of which is that I think it’s absolutely necessary to the text, but another main reason was that *I* needed to see Harry that one last time, knowing that all was well.

So, that’s what I feel (impractically, I know) the day before Mockinjay takes flight.

I feel so sorry that it’ll all be over!

The Hunger Games trilogy are the kind of books that light up reader’s eyes, the kind of books I have literally seen teenagers push into each other’s hands.  They’re the kind of books you feel: gut-punches, breath-stealing, oh no! gasping.  They’re the best of what young adult literature can do: the best ambassadors for when you’re telling friends who don’t read “kid’s books” about just how amazing the genre is.  They’re what we hold out when we say, “Wanna read something great?”

I can’t wait for Mockinjay, I can’t wait for that moment that so many of us all know, that we all get to the end of this intense, emotional, unforgettable story.

And I’m Team Peeta.

But what does that mean?

For some readers, I think that has come to mean that I only validate Katniss through her external relationships with boys, that unless she’s “with” a boy in the story, I’m not interested.

But it’s not like that at all for me.  See, I’m Team Peeta and Team Katniss.  For me,  the romance makes me Team Katniss just as much as Team Peeta, because it means I think Katniss deserves to live, to have joy and beauty in her life, to have someone who’ll stand by her and respect and admire the woman she becomes.

And I think Peeta is the obvious (and perfect) choice to be this someone.  Which brings me to the other thing: I’m Team Peeta regardless of Katniss.

I love Peeta Mellark just as much as I love Katniss Everdeen. (which is a heckuva lot!)

I love how he is totally guileless and open (he’s actually shocked, to some degree, at the end of The Hunger Games when he finds out Katniss was “faking” in the arena) and an uncanny, savvy media manipulator (the interviews he so carefully prepares for Caesar Flickerman, the way he traps Katniss with the locket.)  I love how he not only will he die for Katniss, he’d kill for her too.  I love that he’s brave, angry, and charming.  I love that he’s so fierce and yet so easily wounded.  I love what he sees in Katniss and I love how they interact.  I love that he paints and decorates cakes.  I love that he doesn’t show all of his cards at once, that he’s running several plans at once, that he’s in the Games to live and to win.

A teen patron told me, “I have to know what happens to the Boy with the Bread.”

That kind of character identification?  That’s about Peeta, that’s about what Suzanne Collins has created in his character.  That has nothing to do with Katniss.

And also?  I HOPE KATNISS AND PEETA END UP TOGETHER!!!!!!1111oneone

What’s so wrong about that either?

Love is what makes Katniss more than the Mockingjay, more than a killing machine in the arena that slaughters for people’s amusement.  Love for Prim is what starts the whole fucking story off, love for Rue is what reminds Katniss that she has a soul.  And, in the end, it’s love for Peeta that starts the spark that changes their world.

Yes, love.

Because when Katniss stands up in front of Panem and says that either they both get out or they both die, Panem thinks they’re seeing a romantic love story.  (and, of course, to some degree they are. It’s how Katniss doesn’t quite realize that yet that twists the knife so beautifully at the gasping end of the first book.)  But they are also seeing the moment when two tributes from one District stand up and say NO MORE.  This is platonic love in its purest, this is the moment before the Quarter Quell when the tributes hold hand, expose the Games as the pure barbarity that they are.

It’s the power of love that starts this revolution.

When I say I’m Team Peeta, I mean that I am Team Peeta for who he is and that I’m Team Peeta because I’d like him to “end up” with Katniss.  (assuming they both live, naturally.) Their connection is part of the appeal of the story, for me.  I think Collins’s has worked in their narrative in a heartbreaking and aching way: the pull of wanting to be with someone but not being entirely sure where your feelings came from,  how learning the little details about someone can show you bigger parts of their story, how maturing and changing personally makes your emotional feelings evolve too.  This is smart, this is deep, this is romantic to me in the truest sense of the word.  What’s so wrong about admiring the authorial skill it took to seamlessly weave in a compelling love story in a book where people get their heads chopped off and are eaten alive by monsters?

When we, as readers or librarians or critics, are dismissive of romance, we’re dismissive of HUGE reader bases that are, let’s face it, most frequently made up of women and girls.  If romance isn’t your cup of tea, that’s cool.  But why does it get so summarily dismissed out of hand as useless or a distraction or “bad” for readers?   I think that’s a question worth asking.

I think it’s profoundly feminist to suggest that Katniss can be the bow-wielding-kick-ass spirit of rebellion who never retreats and who rallies people to challenge the status quo while also being a person who needs love, comfort, passion, and companionship.  Since when is the message that you have to choose one or the other?

If fans of romance find themselves drawn to The Hunger Games, shouldn’t we welcome them?  Shouldn’t we say, “Pull up a chair and join the conversation!”? Isn’t it it our job (librarian’s jobs, that is, those of us who do reader’s advisory, run book clubs, get teens talking about and interested in books) to facilitate deeper conversations not just assume that they only part of the story they’re interested in, the only part they MUST be able to grasp is “so, like, which boy?”

I’ll be happy to lead a “Team Gale” or “Team Peeta” conversation at my Hunger Games event but we’ll also be discussing strategy in the arena, the mechanics of how the rebellion could legitimately work, and looking at fan-drawn maps of what Panem might look like and how that might change things.  It seems dismissive to assume that it has to be one or the other.

For me, it’s both.

For me, the romance is a crucial element in a fantastic, one-of-a-kind story I feel so lucky to have experienced, a story I just don’t want to be over.

And it’s one element I won’t apologize for.

Team Suzanne Collins!

“My reality is filled with young people who don’t see themselves reflected in books. And if you don’t see yourself in books, do you exist? Do you matter? Does anyone care about your life? Your story? Well, I know that we all matter, and my goal as an artist is to make sure others know, too.” -Charles R. Smith, Jr. in his 2010 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award acceptance speech

I live and work in a small town.  According to the 2000 census, the population was 11,909.  In many ways, my town is an “average” small town.  We have one four screen movie theater, one grocery store, and no restaurants open after 10 PM.  It’s the kind of place where you can spend ten minutes in the one grocery store and see ten people you know.

But something is different about where I live (which means something is different about where I work) … in my small town is one of the largest science and technology institutions in the world.  People come from all over the world to work here and they live in our community.  For the most part, these people are highly educated and make a whole lot of money.  37% of the population has a graduate or professional degree.  This means that while I work in a small town, my patron base is international.  A few weeks on the job, I complimented a smiling 8 year old on her purse.  She replied, “Thanks, we bought in Singapore.  We stopped there on our way to New Delhi for vacation.”  I would soon find that in this town, that was the norm.  When I look around a story time, I see parents from (among other places) China, Mongolia, India, France, Russia, Nepal, Spain, Israel, Germany, Jordan, Korea, Scotland, and Japan.  Our library has a thriving, circulating foreign language collection that includes books, magazines, newspapers and DVDs.  I live and work in a small town, but I am often reminded it’s not like many other small towns I have known.  I have learned a lot working here and it’s made me more attuned than ever to issues of visibility and why it matters.

When I think of the latest round of cover whitewashing that is slated to occur when Cindy Pon’s Silver Phoenix comes out in paperback with a barely disguised white girl on the cover instead of an accurate representation of Ai Ling, the kick-ass Asian protagonist actually featured in the book, I think about Jenny.

Jenny is twelve years old.  She’s an avid reader.  She’s also Chinese. One day several months ago we were talking about manga.  She asked me, with disgust, if I knew about the upcoming Avatar movie.

“Did you know they cast white people in that movie?” She said, disgust rolling off her every word in that way only twelve year olds can manage.

“I did.  That’s so dumb, isn’t it?”

“What is it?”  She asked, practically vibrating with anger.  “Do they think Asians aren’t cool enough or something?”

This, this simple question, is everything you need to know about visibility.  This is the question I think M. Night Shyamalan and everyone involved with Avatar the Last Airbender should have to answer to Jenny’s face.

Many people have written much more eloquently than I could about the problems with changing the cover of Silver Phoenix. (and its forthcoming sequel Fury of the Phoenix)  Here’s a sample of some of those posts:

Inkstone: I Guess I Still Have One Post In Me
Steph Su: Why I Want More Asians on YA Book Covers
Trisha: Asian-American Characters and Me
Miss Attitude: Guess What This Post Is About? (with a great link roundup)

But one point I never really saw addressed was this: what about libraries (like mine) that bought Silver Phoenix when it first came out?  How do these covers look together? My library system purchased it for a variety of reasons: great reviews and huge demand among our patrons for fantasy with strong female characters, for instance.  But we also bought it because we have large Asian patron base, because we see dozens of readers like Jenny every day, because it’s our professional responsibility to put books that reflect their faces, their identities, into their hands and their hearts.

For all of these reasons, and due to the success we’ve had with the first book, it’s a no-brainer that my library will be purchasing Fury of the Phoenix. So what now, Greenwillow Books?  How do these covers look together?

How will these books look to Jenny if she sees them together?  What message is she going to be getting?  What are we saying to Jenny?  How should my library display these books together?  What should I say when I am booktalking, promoting, and hand-selling the series and showing both books to my patrons?  Do you think they will not notice this difference?  Do you think it doesn’t matter?

VISIBILITY MATTERS.

There’s a reason Queer Nation took to the streets and shouted “We’re Here!  We’re Queer!  Get used to it!”  There’s an equal reason that, in 2002, The Simpsons would have Lisa tell the Gay Pride parade marching down her street and chanting this once radical statement of purpose: “You do this every year.  We are used to it!”

About a month or so ago, I was researching Justin Bieber (no, seriously.  He’s a youth cultural phenomenon librarians should at least be somewhat cognizant of.) and I discovered that he has a duet with Sean Kingston.  The duet, Eenie Meenie, went platinum in the US and the video has over 12 million hits on YouTube.   That part isn’t much of a surprise, Bieber collaborates with everyone (a key to his success and appeal, for sure) and, really, he and Kingston have a lot in common.  They were both discovered as teenagers through their presence on social media sites and built huge fanbases online that translated to “real” album sales.  When I looked up the video, however, I admit I was kind of blown away by the plot.

Basically, Bieber and Kingston are unwittingly competing for the affection of the same girl at a party.  She flirts with one and the other as they are in different parts of the house party.  Bieber and Kingston eventually meet up and realize that GASP this “eenie meenie miney moe lova“ has been PLAYING THEM BOTH!  Neither one seems to have hard feelings, they roll their eyes and embrace as the girl stomps off.

On the one hand, besides the problematic “girls, never flirt with more than one dude at a time or else you’re an unfaithful skank!!!” messaging, this is a pretty typical video.  Bieber and Kingston aren’t in the video as super-famous-musicians, they’re just two guys at a party who happen to be flirting with a girl that seems equally interested in both of them.  Why get blown away?

I was blown away that this simple narrative of “one girl is equally interested in two guys and is perhaps coyly leading them on simultaneously” was presented featuring one guy our society would absolutely consider “fat” and one we would consider “normal.” (NOTE: obviously, I’m not assigning or claiming either of these words to or for Bieber and Kingston, but in contemporary American culture, I think it’s inescapable and obvious that they’d be labeled with them.)

Sean Kingston and Justin Beiber nonchalantly competing for a girl is VISIBILITY IN ACTION.

When I see Sean Kingston flirting, dancing, looking hip and suave, and wooing a girl – I have a new way of rejecting the preconception that everyone has to look one single way, that there is only one standard for what makes you desirable, noticeable, what makes you, as Charles R. Smith, Jr. might say: exist.

When I see Sean Kingston, to some degree, I see myself.

We all deserve that experience.  That’s why these conversations are so important.  That’s why it matters that we keep discussing what Ai Ling should look like on the covers of the books she lives in, what it means and what messages it sends when she disappears into a black blur and turns into an oblique and ambiguous pair of lips.

Like Queer Nation so many years ago, we should ALL stand on the rooftops and march through the streets and shout: WE’RE HERE! until our stories are told, until attention is paid.

We owe it to Jenny.

The DUFF: the designated ugly fat friend.  The one girl in a group that’s just not “as pretty” as the others.  DUFF: it’s a “real” thing, you know.  You can look it up on Urban Dictionary, where it’s been an entry since 2003.  The DUFF, the girl in any group who’s just not as pretty, not as skinny, not as noticeable, not as special as the friends she’s with. And, regardless of the group, regardless of the situation, you already (and always) know who the DUFF is…don’t you?  She’s you.

“For a girl with such a fat ass, I felt pretty invisible.”

FINALLY, you are saying to yourself SHE’S GOING TO WRITE ABOUT A FAT BOOK (AS PROMISED) AT HER FAT BLOG.  IT’S ABOUT TIME!

Well, about that . . .

But!  But!  It says “fat” right there, in the title!  Yet one of the things that works about The DUFF is that we don’t really know if our protagonist, Bianca, is “actually” fat.  And one of the things that doesn’t just work but that makes The DUFF brilliant is that it still manages to be about the complicated and often painful politics of body image.  Bianca might be fat.  She might not be.  The DUFF challenges readers to ask: what does fat look like and what does fat mean anyway?

The DUFF starts one night out when Bianca is out with her friends.  She is approached by Wesley, school hottie and well-known player, who attempts to chat her up so her friends will like him.  Why would that work?  Because, as Wesley explains, Bianca is The Duff among her friends.  She knows it and they know it, he assures her.   If they see him talking to her, why, they’ll think he’s sensitive and kind for deigning to talk to her and probably make out with him.  Bianca, naturally insulted, throws her Cherry Coke in his face and stalks off.

Of course, you can probably guess where this is headed.

One of the things that works the best about this book is that though many plot developments seem inevitable and predictable (Bianca and Wesley’s hostility is also chemistry?  You don’t say!) Kiplinger still manages to give them an extra dimension, something just a little different than what you thought you guessed.

Like I said, we don’t know “how fat” Bianca is, but we do get to hear some of her thoughts on how fat she feels.  She refers to herself as having “big thighs” (p. 12), as being “chubby” (p.39),  and as having a “fat ass” (p. 139). But, again, Kiplinger knows that everyone feels that way sometimes, that feeling like that doesn’t always describe how we actually look.  Is this a book about a fat girl?  Kinda.  But it’s also a book about how society sometimes makes you feel like “a fat girl” by making you feel like “fat” is the worst of who you are.

Another nice touch: Bianca’s best friends, Casey and Jessica, also have insecurities about their looks.  Though Wesley opens by telling Bianca she’s the DUFF, Casey and Jessica are only human.  At one point, Casey protests SHE’S the DUFF.  Casey thinks she’s “Sasquatch” (p. 44) … but tall girls are all models, right?  They never have anything to worry about! Kiplinger knows that’s not true, and she knows that’s the heart of the DUFF.  One particularly nice, subtle moment comes when Bianca says something dismissive to Casey about the girls on the cheerleading squad, a squad Casey happens to be a member of:

“…He wouldn’t even date a girl on the Skinny Squad–”

“I really hate it when you call us that.” (p. 190)

Such a nice touch!  Slamming of the other cheerleaders who have “skinny” bodies doesn’t pass without comment.  Casey lets Bianca know that makes her uncomfortable, that the language is reductive and hurtful.  In less than 20 words and without beating you over the head with it, Kiplinger gets the point across, loud and clear.

So, Bianca finds herself pulled into a quickly escalating physical relationship with Wesley in an attempt to get through some rough personal times. (again, an refreshingly honest detail: sometimes, we use physical and sexual intimacy in a way that’s not always healthy or fair.  But it feels good and it makes us feel connected.)  They banter, bicker, have sex, and start to scratch each other’s surfaces.  But can they ever be more than just “enemies-with-benefits?”

(This is one of the book’s less believable parts: it’s so honest about sex that when the plot starts to veer off to “and the guy you have random hook-ups with could totally turn into awesome boyfriend material if you just stick it out and give him a shot!!!” it feels a little unrealistic.  Yeah, that happens, but, in my experience, not that often.  But this is, in many ways, a romance novel so it’s not entirely jarring or unexpected within the genre.)

The relationship between Bianca and Wesley is good, don’t get me wrong.  For one thing: their sexual relationship is sizzling and integral to their relationship as a whole. (This is one of very few YA book I can think of that discusses cunnilingus.  [maybe the only non-lesbian one?] And discusses it in a way that seems totally believable and real to a teenage girl’s mind.) No hand-holding here, Edward Cullen!  The way the book deals with sex is definitely for mature readers but it’s also good to see YA fiction moving beyond the billowing curtains.  And Bianca and Wesley’s banter is good too: natural, unforced, and kind of mean in all the best ways.  So are the moments when they start to really connect.  She stands up to him, calls him on bullshit, and doesn’t let him treat her like crap.  He likes her more because of that.  That’s believable, that works.

But, for me, what makes The DUFF really work is Bianca’s relationship with her girlfriends, some other girls at school, and herself.  This is a feminist book.  It’s a book about owning your identity, about not feeling bad for feeling good about sex, a book about rejecting “sexist” labels and words that tear girls down.  (yes, Kiplinger uses the word sexist!  HURRAH!)

Reading The DUFF and not knowing how ugly or fat Bianca “really” is doesn’t just show how subjective and individual measures like that are.  Keplinger knows it helps readers understand that everyone feels like the DUFF sometimes.  Perhaps that seems a little simplistic, but I think it’s a message teen readers NEED to hear.

Hell, I think it’s a message we ALL need to hear.

Recommended for: Language and sexual situations make this one for older teens only.  I recommend this as a first purchase for public libraries and for teens in grades 10-12.  I think this has the potential to be one of those books teen girls pass around from friend to friend.

A NOTE ABOUT THE COVER!

You’ll note that my post features two covers.  The one of the left is a picture I took the ARC cover.  The one one the right is the one that’s shown on Amazon, Kiplinger’s site, etc.  I IMPLORE YOU, POPPY, PLEASE USE THE ONE ON THE LEFT.  Not because the girl on the left is “fat” (maybe she is, maybe she isn’t…which fits the text!) but because the cover on the right seems all wrong for the book.  Funky eyeshadow?  Blowing a bubble with bubblegum? What does that have to do with anything?  It seems almost tween-ish.  AND THIS IS NOT A TWEEN BOOK.  That model looks almost flippant and uninterested.  The girl on the left is looking right at you: up close and unblinking.  I can practically see the smirk on her lips.  She’s Bianca.

Comment for a Chance to WIN A COPY OF THIS BOOK!

I hope you can’t wait to read this book!  It doesn’t come out until September 7, but after ALA I ended up with two advance reading copies.  (thanks to Little & Brown!)  I knew that meant I had to give one away!  So, as I did with Some Girls Are, I’m going to use random.org to select a random winner from the comments.  It could be you!

All you have to do is leave a comment with your thoughts about the word DUFF and you’re entered. (details: contest is open until August 12, US entries only please, don’t forget to use an e-mail address when you comment so I can contact you.) And if you don’t win,  don’t forget to go into your local library and request they buy a copy.

In the meantime, I suggest everyone take a moment to embrace their inner DUFF, the first step in working towards letting go of any power a word like that might have over you.

We *are* all The DUFF.

And that’s OK.

This was life in Gentry — going to school every day, blending into a world where everyone was happier to ignore the things that didn’t fit, always willing to look away as long as you did your part.

Otherwise, how could they go on living near their neat suburban lives?

When I was little, all I really wanted to be was my sister.  I wanted to wear her clothes and her earrings and listen to her music and do what she did.

Most of all, I wanted the things in her world that were forbidden to me, specifically the shelves of books in her collection that were literally out of my reach, on a high shelf  in her room.  Those were her “grown-up” books, the ones I wasn’t old enough for yet.

Of course, eventually, I managed to sneak one off the shelf and out of her room.  I was 11 years old.  It was the biggest book I had ever seen and my first “grown-up” book.  I settled in one summer afternoon with my sister and mother out of the house and started reading It by Stephen King.

Naturally, I had nightmares for weeks after, got in trouble for stealing my sister’s book, and never looked at sewer grates or clowns in the same way.  That was the first time I understood what horror fiction was, how different it was from every book I’d read before: how exciting and frightening and weird and challenging it was.  Twenty years later, that summer afternoon and that creeping, crawling fear in the pit of my stomach and back of my neck came back to me in a rush when I sat down with Brenna Yovanoff’s The Replacement and found myself pulled, entirely, into her fictional world of Gentry, where very bad and very scary things happen while the citizens pretend not to see.

What I Love About This Book

Yikes.  I loved that this book scared me.  I loved that this book freaked me out.  I loved that this book stuck intense, vivid images in my head that wouldn’t go away.  I loved that this book wasn’t messing around.  I loved that this book had a messed up, complicated romance but wasn’t a paranormal romance.  I loved that this book was about the power of love, fierce, angry, insistent love, that can keep you alive against all odds.  I loved that this book got under my skin.

The Replacement of the title is Mackie Doyle.  Mackie was left in a crib in place of a human child but instead of dying like most replacements, Mackie lived.  Now 16, the human world is slowly poisoning Mackie, because he was never meant to live this long amongst humans.

Let’s look a little closer at that description, shall we?  One thing I love about Yovanoff’s universe is the fact that everyone in Gentry knows that something is wrong in their world: there’s no dancing around the fact that horrible things happen there.  It adds to the sense of impending doom, of something ominous and terrible happening.  Yovanoff knows it’s worse, it’s so much worse, to know that something is wrong but to not make that something explicit.  So, Mackie is a replacement, his family knows it, his friends suspect it, and everyone in Gentry knows that replacements exist, that sometimes human children go missing and other things, other creatures, not meant to live long in the world show up in their place.  Why the citizens of Gentry are OK with knowing this happens and why they don’t really do anything about it, well . . . finding that out is part of tension of the story.

Now onto the “human world” part.  Yes, another thing that makes this book so special is the seething, teeming other world that exists alongside Gentry, a place called Mayhem.  Mackie will, of course, eventually find his way to Mayhem and confront the many creatures who live there, those that are both kin and enemies of his.  Yovanoff’s writing really takes off here, Mayhem is a fantastic, upsetting place, where things are both threatening and familiar.  My favorite part of Mayhem is definitely the ruler: the Morrigan, a little girl you won’t soon forget.  The Morrigan is cruel and kind, helpless and powerful, playful and lethal.  She springs to life off the pages, fully formed and feral.  Like Mackie, you find it hard to understand or resist her.  Besides Mackie, the Morrigan is  probably my favorite character in the book.

And, oh, Mackie.  I LOVE YOU, MACKIE DOYLE.  Mackie’s a great character, that strange boy from school who was oddly out of pace with everyone else, something was off about him, but you never knew what.  The world literally hurts Mackie, but he can’t help but want to be a part of it, to feel and taste and experience rock shows and hanging out with his friends and flirting with a popular girl at a party.  But the lingering wrongness of Gentry, of what Mackie is and how he’s lasted so long, makes that almost impossible.  In other words, all this is really a clever, sharply drawn metaphor for adolescence itself: the pain of growing up, of fitting into a world that sometimes hurts, of feeling you’re a freak in a  literally hostile world.  But it’s also a story of rejecting the status quo of “looking away” and pretending that everything in Gentry (in the world) is just fine.  Mackie’s existence proves that’s a lie and now, finally, he’s got to confront what that means and just how far he’s willing to go to look the truth of his town, of his life, in the eye.  Terrible things happen in Gentry, you see, but now it’s time for Mackie to decide what price he’s willing to pay to make them stop.

Yovanoff’s writing is intense and unsparing: there’s violence and gruesome descriptions.  All of this makes Gentry and Mayhem seem very real and very present, that’s what creates good horror fiction, after all, the unsettling, persistent  feeling that all this could maybe happen to you.  And, wow, is this good horror fiction!  Creepy, intense, gross, exciting: characters with claws, characters with slit throats, characters with a mouth full of razor sharp teeth, characters who demand awful sacrifices…this is great, graven, shocking stuff!

I can’t stop talking about The Replacement and one day, while I was babbling about it to one of my teen employees, she threw up her hands and said, “How can you read such scary books?!”

Because when they are as good as The Replacement such scary books are so much fun, that frisson of fear running down your spine, because they keep you constantly on edge, desperate to know what happens next.  The answer, I think, is because such scary books, horror novels, invoke primal reactions, things that ping our “reptile” brains.  The best ones reassure us scary things, monsters, and horrors, might exist, but so do other things, like best friends that stick by you, sisters who love you, good rock and roll songs, odd girls who challenge you, and the ability to stand up and not look away.

The Replacement is one of the best ones!  Perfect for teens looking for intense, quick reads, seriously creepy horror, and something truly original in the YA pack.  It has romance, action, mystery, and dead girls who smell like rotten meat.  I highly recommend it for grades 9-12, it’s going to be a book that gets them talking and keeps them up!

The Replacement doesn’t come out until September, my review copy was picked up from the Penguin Booth at Annual. I’d be giving mine away now, except I plan to make it an end of summer giveaway for my teens, who are already salivating for it after hearing me talk about it. (don’t forget to buy a copy or request your library order one come September!)

In the meantime, you can check out some of Brenna Yovanoff’s awesome short fiction online at the LiveJournal Merry Sisters of Fate,  where she writes with Maggie Stiefvater and Tessa Gratton.

And get ready to stay up late for Mackie Doyle!

Thanks to the amazing Amy Reed (You guys have read Beautiful, right?!  It’s like Go Ask Alice but only 100 times better and less full of crap and more full of awesome writing.) I was alerted to the Huffington’s Post recent feature “13 Great Books For Gay Teens.”  First, I want to applaud the Huffington Post for publishing such an article, it’s always good to see positive content about teen books in more “mainstream” sources.  Also, kudos go to Jessie Kunhardt and Alexandra Carr, the piece’s authors, for putting together a good starter list of 13 titles.

But, wow, that list is old!

Ron Koertge’s The Arizona Kid was published 22 years ago.  Jack, A.M. Homes’s story about a 16 year old who discovers his father is gay, was published 20 years ago.  Jack, were he real, would be 36 today.  There was even mention of the well-loved classic Annie on My Mind.  But, believe it or not, Nancy Garden’s groundbreaking book was published a whopping 28 years ago.

Young adult literature has sure changed in 28 years and young adult literature about the LGBTQ experience has changed right along with it.  Reading 13 great books for LGBTQ teenagers today would be scratching the surface of a field that is rapidly expanding and contains, frankly, some of the best young adult literature being published.

As many of you probably know, research and writing about LGBTQ teen books is my first love, so I decided this Huffington Post list was the perfect opportunity for me to compile my own list  of  “Great Books” and include some of the newest, lesser known, and what I consider really special books in this genre.  Almost all of these books were published in the last  two years, but there were a few that were just tooo good, so I set my limit at five years.  With the way this genre expands, re-invents, and grows, even five years was pushing it!

Gosh, I’m so excited this is a whole freaking genre.  What a long way we’ve come, huzzah!

• Gay America: The Struggle for Equality by Linas Alsenas (2008)

In my opinion, EVERY public and middle/high school library should own this book.  Perhaps more than any other, it speaks to the giant leaps in publishing we’ve seen in this area.  This non-fiction title covers not only the history of LGBTQ life in America but on the struggle for equality and civil rights.  Alsenas incorporates personal narratives and historical documents  to make perfectly clear to teenagers struggling with their sexuality and gender identity that not only are they not alone but that, as a community, they have a rich cultural and historical legacy and they are, and have always been, part of America’s story.  So far the only book of its kind, but we can hope for more!

• Of All The Stupid Things by Alexandra Diaz (2009)

A good read-alike for fans of The Bermudez Triangle, this is another story of three friends dealing with coming out.  Tara, Whitney Blaire, and Pinkie have always been best friends, but bow Tara is discovering feelings for her marathon-training partner and new girl in town Riley.  What I liked about this one was the realistic way Diaz dealt with all of the friends coming to terms with how Tara’s new relationship changes their interactions, there’s complications and negative reactions and all kinds of realistic things teens in this situation might face from friends.  Pinkie and Whitney Blaire must really examine their assumptions and weigh them against their life-long friendship.  And, nicely, Tara and Riley have a charming, interesting romance.

• Mariposa Club by Rigoberto Gonzalez (2009)

What’s the genre still missing?  DIVERSITY.  (shocker, that.)  This book is a worthy heir to Alex Sanchez’s neo-classic Rainbow Boys.  It tells the story of Maui, Trini, Isaac, and Liberace: four gay Hispanic teens who are best friends and who decide in their senior year to start their high school’s first GSA, which they dub The Mariposa Club.  What I love about this book:  the close-knit, supportive  friendship between the gay teens (there’s token straight friends in this book!) and the wide diversity of gay identity presented.  Just because they’re gay and Hispanic doesn’t mean they’re all the same.  A under-the radar gem from Alyson Books! (But a better cover please!! Liberace, my favorite character, is an unapologetic fattie!)

• A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner (2010)

Sweet, funny, sad: this debut from Horner is a subtle, aching, sweet delight.  The coming out and sexuality angst-ing is kept to a minimum and the focus is kept instead on the main character’s charming courtship.  This story is a tear-jerker, though!  Cass is trying to pick up the pieces after her best friend Julia’s tragic death and the last thing she needs is to start to feel drawn to her middle school enemy Heather.  Cass and her friends are “putting on a show”, specifically the musical Julia wrote before she died: Totally Sweet Ninja Death Squad and Heather has Julia’s part.  It’s not so much that Heather replaces Julia (because Julia and Cass really were just best friends) in Cass’s life, it’s about how Cass learns that, even when it hurts, life goes on after death.  I’ll probably write a longer review of this book later, but if you can read Cass and Heather’s climactic, romantic final scene together without sighing a little, you might have a heart of stone.

• Wide Awake by David Levithan (2006)

This was one I couldn’t leave behind.  You’ll see plenty of “Best Of” or “Essential” LGBTQ teen lists that have Levithan’s ground-breaking Boy Meets Boy, but  I think the real jewel in Levithan’s crown is this lesser known work.  Set in the future, after America has just elected our first openly gay Jewish President, this is a book that takes Boy Meets Boy gay-topia premise and puts in a real world with hard choices and angry opposition, it makes makes it work.  It’s a story of political activism, of choosing love over hate and fear, of finding your voice, and, of course, it’s a romance.   Levithan’s best work by far, it’s moving, wrenching, and (best of all) a call to arms.

• Gravity by Leanne Lieberman (2008)

A Canadian title from Orca, this is another title I think deserves a wider audience.  Lieberman’s story is, at first look, just another about a teenager coming to terms with her sexuality, but the “complication” here is that the main character, 15 year old Ellie, is an Orthodox Jew.  Lieberman does an excellent job showing not just Ellie’s issues with her faith but the struggles of all the women in her family.  And this isn’t just a story about a teenager who abandons her religion because of her sexuality, it’s much richer and more complex.  Great writing, strong characters, a magnetic romance, and a completely original premise, what more could you want?

• Ash by Malinda Lo (2009)

Hey, you know what the teens these days just love?  Fantasy.  Mix that up with some epic-destined-drawn-together-by-irresistible-forces-big-swoony romances and you’ve got the next big thing.    What else would be good?  Ah, how about a retold fairy tale!  Yeah!  Oh, and don’t forget the strong female character who kicks ass!  Totally!  Yes, when it comes to what’s “trendy” YA publishing, Ash has it all!  Except in this take on the Cinderella story, it’s not the Prince who is the dashing, magnetic love interest but the bold, brave Huntress.  Lo’s writing is rich and very literally sensual. It’s so wonderful to have some LGBTQ leading characters in fantasy to add to the canon.  (as an aside: this is a book that I’ve seen have lots of success with straight-identified teens: Strong females!  Big romance!  Fantasy!  Faeries!  Magic! it’s just the kind of book they gobble up.)

• grl2grl: short fictions by Julie Anne Peters (2007)

Another book I couldn’t leave off and another title from a widely read, widely loved author that I think gets too often neglected.  Julie Anne Peters, justly well-known and loved for writing titles like Luna and Keeping You A Secret, outdoes herself with this collection of stories ranging far and wide in the queer teen community.    There’s a little bit of everything in this collection from boi, a well-drawn, agonizingly immediate story about a teen wrestling with gender identity and gender presentation to After Alex, a drama-filled, passionate break-up story. I think Peters has particular talent as a short story writer and this is another book that gives a wide representation to the queer experience.  I hope she works on another short story collection soon.

• Freak Show by James St. James (2007)

Believe me when I tell you: there is nothing like this on your YA shelves.  This is because, really, there is no one in AY fiction like Billy Bloom, the utterly fabulous drag queen/”gender obscurist” who stars in James St. James’s novel.  Billy comes to school in full drag, gives a book report as Zelda Fitzgerald, wears beehive wigs and glitter boas, and he never apologizes for who he is.  He runs for Homecoming Queen and implores his fellow students to embrace their own inner freak shows.  Funny, audacious, joyful, sweet, even!  This is an essential YA novel about what it means to be an awkward teenager who longs for more, about finding that dreamy boy, about rising above fitting in, about “the universal freak show” within us all.  (Please write another YA novel, James St. James!!)

• Kiss by Jacqueline Wilson (2010)

This British import is by Jacqueline Wilson, one of the grand dames of Brit kidlit, a writer who is exceptionally skilled at creating immediate, realistic stories about daily life.  It’s an interesting take on the “straight girl has a crush on her gay best friend!” convention, particularly because the friendship, the look at how friendships change and last, is so carefully and truthfully rendered.  I also have to mention that this is one of the very few titles with LGBTQ content that is suited for a middle grade audience.  The main characters have only recently turned 14 and it is very much appropriate for a middle school audience.  There’s a huge gap in the literature for books for this age group, so more are needed and always welcomed!

KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR

• I Am J by Cris Beam, forthcoming in 2011 from Little & Brown, I just finished the ARC of this book.  It’s an amazing, wonderful, powerful story about a FTM trans teenager.  Gonna be a great addition to the canon!

• Queer: The Ultimate LGBT Guide for Teens by Kathy Belge and Mark Bieschke, forthcoming in October from Zest Books.  More non-fiction, thankfully. (from the high quality non-fiction publisher Zest) This one looks great, it’s a bit of  everything from an activist’s handbook to a dating guide.  (Read about it in Zest’s Fall 2010 catalog)

And even after all this talk, I feel like I’ve only just begun!  There are so many others I want to recommend.  You know what that means … I’ll just have to make this a series.

So, until then, please feel free to chime in with your own new favorites and suggestions!

A few housekeeping notes.  For reasons you might expect, comments are now moderated.  Don’t despair if you don’t see your comment immediately appear, I’m getting to it right away.  And a big, heartfelt thanks to everyone who has recently encouraged and supported me and, more specifically, this blog.  It meant more than you probably know.

Next: I have a few YA book reviews to write about books that don’t directly relate to fat acceptance and body image but that I must write about, my love is so great.  HOWEVER, I also have an upcoming detailed review and critique of Sasha Paley’s Huge (like that awesome new cover with a big NO sign through the S’mores?  NO S’MORES FOR YOU, FAT-ASS!) which is the basis for the ABC Family Show Huge.  I haven’t seen the show yet (it’s on my summer to-watch list, I swear) but I’ve heard good things about it.  I hope it’s enjoyable and positive, which would make it much different than the book.  Here’s a sample of the closing lines of the book, wherein one of the fatties is fat no more and so, so happy!

“nothing — that Hershey’s Kiss included — was as sweet as being a brand-new skinny April.”

How sweet it is indeed! That’s all coming, stay tuned.  In the meantime, here’s a review of one of my favorite books of the year…

He grinned then, his dark eyes gleaming, and she lost any hope of turning and running before it was too late.  It was already too late.  Something about that wide, unrestrained smile. . .

If you were to ask me what my favorite “kind” of book is, (which is what a teenager would most commonly say) what my favorite “genre” was, (a more adult way of phrasing it, perhaps) I would be one of those infuriating people who says, “Oh, I like them all!”  But this would be true.  I honestly can’t think of a genre I won’t try: mysteries, horror, romance, realistic, non-fiction, graphic novels, and on and on and on.  More than that: I can’t think of a single genre I don’t have at least one beloved book in.  There’s really no scale in my mind: literary fiction down to bodice-rippers, I love ‘em all.  I’m not one of those people who says things like “I’m a big fantasy fan!” or “I hate paranormal books.”  I don’t actually think of it that way, I guess.  I am genre-venturous, let’s say.

Why am I starting my review of Mistwood off this way?  I guess because when I read it, every twist, every turn, every richly detailed plot point sunk me farther and farther into another book.  It was a hundred genres, a thousand stories, a million possibilities, each opening up on each other.  As I was falling into the romance, the fantasy, the mystery, the period detail, the coming of age story, all of these genres, all of these stories, in Leah Cypess’s beautiful book it occurred to me: these kind of books are my favorites.

Mistwood is the story of The Shifter, a magical creature who lives in the Mistwood and has one duty: to protect the kings of Samorna. The Shifter has been called to serve the crown prince Rokan, but when she awakes in the castle in the form of a girl named Isabel she finds holes in her memory.  Why had she returned to Mistwood?  Why has she been called back to court now?  What loyalty does she now owe Samorna and Rokan?  Who, exactly, is she?

What I Love About This Book

And you know?  I can just bet that first sentence made everyone reading this who says Eh, fantasy, not really my thing. tune out and think of puppies.

But wait!  Mistwood is so much more than that.  As Isabel starts trying to figure out her past, it’s a puzzlebox mystery that is expertly plotted.  When Isabel starts to consider the implications and costs of being The Shifter, it’s an aching coming of age story.  As Isabel tries to navigate the dangerous intricacies of court life, it’s a political thriller.  Sometimes, it’s even a romance of equals (my favorite) a romance of possibilities, passion, loyalty, and humor.  (but to tell more about that would be to spoil the pleasure of watching it evolve in the text!)

And I can’t really spoil or spell out any more of the plot, because so much of the pleasure of Mistwood is simply experiencing it: sinking into the entirely real and entirely foreign universe.  Like The Shifter, we are instantly caught up, unable to turn away.  Cypess’s writing is rich with detail and very precise.  It manages to be evocative but also clear, there’s no purple prose here, even when the narrative is in dramatic overdrive.

I was instantly drawn to Isabel, because for all the magic and intrigue and world-building, her story is the quintessential YA lit story.  What’s the quintessential YA lit story?  It’s about figuring out who you are, not just who everyone tells you that you are.  It’s about learning that being an adult means making tough choices that sometimes suck, that it means leaving behind easy moral universes for more complicated ones, with less “right” answers, but greater personal rewards.  Mistwood is all that, with an awesome side of magic, spells, and shape-shifting thrown in just as a bonus.

Recommended for: Fans of Kristin Cashore’s Graceling and Julia Golding’s Dragonfly, readers looking for a more nuanced and complicated fantasy narrative.  I’ve read some reviews that mention that girls will be more drawn to this, but I don’t think that’s exactly true:  the mystery, the intrigues of court life, action and chases – I think this has good cross-gender appeal.  And the romance?  Well, boys like that too, ya know, especially when it’s one as rich and rewarding as the one here.  This book will earn a wide audience and it deserves it.

–

Why don’t you go into your local library and check out Mistwood today?  If they don’t have a copy, request they buy one.

Visit Leah Cypess’s website for more information, including purchasing information.  The best news: she’s working on a companion novel to be released in 2011.  Awwwww, yeah!

(I might die if I don’t get an ARC of it at Midwinter…I had such a long, exciting conversation about the book with the Greenwillow/HarperCollins reps at their booth during Annual I missed out on loading up on any Harper ARCs … but it was worth it!)

my response to the 2011 Quick Picks Committee

I always knew I was going to end up making this post, but I really didn’t think it was going to be within my first 10 entries.  Good to get it out of the way, I suppose.

Mainly, this post is a response to some comments from the 2011 Quick Picks committee that were made in my post about This is Why You’re Fat. I already gave a cursory response there, and I recommend that you read that and their original comments, because I made several points there which I won’t bring up again here, but there were some points that I felt deserved a rebuttal post of their own.  I will be quoting from the first comment left on behalf of the 2011 Quick Picks Committee, you may view the complete comment and our dialogue in the comment section.  I want to say I really do appreciate the Quick Picks Committee reading my post and responding and that I was especially glad for the expanded context of the purpose of Quick Picks for my readers who might not be as familiar with the list.

First: no where in my post did I make the ridiculous and specious comment that This is Why You’re Fat will “turn” teenagers anorexic or make them “become” anorexic.  This is a simplistic distortion of my argument.  What I did do was point out that the book deals with problematic imagery and messaging regarding food and body images and these problems overlap with a thriving subculture that harms teenagers. Moreover, the book doesn’t deal with these problems, it pretends they don’t exist, it pretends that this is just funny-ha-ha and not wrapped up in humiliation, not sending the not so subtle message that “food” is why you’re fat. (on the “This is Why You’re Fat” website there are actually several pictures of junk food in a single serving.  How, again, is a single serving of any “unhealthy” food why anyone, anywhere, ever is fat?)

I wanted to start a dialogue of what this book might mean for teenagers who struggled with disordered eating, I wanted to genuinely ask who the “extremes” in this book are speaking to.  Not, maybe, the 80% but the 20% instead.  They’re reluctant readers too, they’re our patron base too.  I asked you, as a committee, to consider if this book meets the selection criteria of “objectivity” and “accuracy.”   I wasn’t trying to sway your opinion, I wasn’t trying to dismiss what you work so hard to do.  All I was trying to get across was something I have tried to stress, repeatedly: none of these things happen in a vacuum.

As to some other points in the comments:

Again, I would like to point out that the book is subtitled, Where Dreams Become Heart Attacks. It does, in fact, address the blocked arteries of which you speak.

No, it doesn’t.  Including that in the title is not “addressing” anything.  The book (which I have seen) includes recipes and photos, there’s nothing addressing blocked arteries or eating healthy.  At ALA, I talked with Liz Burns about my post and she mentioned the Eat This, Not That series (a 2009 Quick Pick) actually does offer more healthy alternatives to food that is “bad” for you.  This book doesn’t, because it doesn’t care about your “heart attacks” and “blocked arteries” or about you, the reader, being healthy.  It just wants to gross you out.   And please bear in mind that “Ew, that’s so gross!” isn’t so very far away from “Ew, you’re so gross!”   Here’s where we start seeing overlap, again, between the pro-ana and pro-mia movements.  Why is the word “gross” even in the discussion?

Frankly, I liken the whole thing to “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.” Yes, America, this IS why WE’RE fat. As a nation, we eat crap like this, and as a nation, we are obese. This is fact.

This is the moment where this comment begins derailing.  This is not “a fact.”  No, eating sandwiches with eighty slices of bacon and forty slices of cheese isn’t why I’m fat, but thanks for assuming as “fact” that all I do all day is sit around and stuff my face with food.  Right before this, the comment stated that the whole point of the book was that the items featured are “not foods that are intended to be eaten as part of a healthy diet.” But now this “crap” IS why we’re fat.  (and fat = obese and obese = death, naturally.) Here, the commenter is caught up in the inherent problem I tried to point out: either the book is all in good fun “we’d never really eat this every day, haha!” OR a legitimate commentary “you eat so much of this, this is why you’re obese and about to die!!!111“   So, which is it?  If it’s “just in good fun” we can’t criticize it, now can we?  But if it’s legitimate?  Then it better be able to stand up to an in-depth critical analysis.

(also, commenter, I am assuming that you are not familiar with the numerous studies that show “the obesity epidemic” is essentially exaggerated fear-mongering.  I recommend you read Rethinking Thin by Gina Kolata and these FAQ at Kate Harding’s Shapely Prose.)

As for Jamie Oliver?  He is a fat-hating-fat-shaming-self-promoting jerk.  I think he fits right in with the hateful message in This is Why You’re Fat. Please, take a moment to read Melissa McEwan’s thoughtful and incisive take-downs of  his mean-spirited show. (or to just see him in a fat suit because, lol, fat people!)

And this is where the comment gets personal and, in my opinion, insulting.

“Unfun” is a word that my best friend Elliot and I mostly made-up.  We use it for the moments when we feel like we’re “ruining” someone else’s fun by pointing out the problems within a text, a movie, or a commonly-held belief.  We use it for that feeling we get when we raise a legitimate objection to something problematic and are met with “why do you have to take everything so seriously/analyze everything to death/see the worst in everything/ruin everyone’s fun?!“  Unfun is the feeling for when you have to ask a friend to not say “bitch, please” or “that’s so lame.”  Unfun is the feeling that you’re just being a pedantic killjoy, hung up on semantics and nitpicking.  Unfun is going against the conventional wisdom that, gosh, all this is really harmless, all this is just a joke, just for a good time, why’s everything gotta mean something?  Unfun is also the embarrassment that goes along with this, when you know you should speak up, but part of you dreads doing so, because you don’t want to be that “unfun” spoilsport.

For instance, at Annual there was this super-cool event: the ALA 2010 Dance Party.  Everyone was invited!  There was a playlist and tweets and a hashtag and 100s of librarians showed up and hung out and danced and had a great time.  And there I was, being “unfun” about it, because of all the clubs they could have chosen to have it at, they chose a gay club.  I am super-uncomfortable with large groups of almost entirely straight people coming into gay spaces for their own “fun and leisure.”  Straight people, even allies like me, have the whole entire world.  What’s so wrong with the queer community having some spaces of their own where we straight people don’t come to get down and boogie for our own lolz?   There was no reason this event had to be held at a gay club and no organizers ever bothered to address my concerns about why it was.  (and why would they?  I’m a nobody.)   I wanted to go to the Dance Party.  I wanted to have fun and meet people and network and be all ironic about librarians being funky and stuff.  But my objections, the problematic location, it was all too much for me.  See, I’m unfun.

So, at this point the response written on behalf of the 2011 Quick Picks committee stops trying to engage me as a peer, as a fellow librarian, as a person with genuine, legitimate concerns.  At this point, the commenter just tries to tell me I’m unfun.

“I think you’re just reading too much into this!  …  Just be frivolous and stop trying to make everything AN ISSUE. Enjoy life…”

First, let me assure you: I enjoy life plenty.  In fact, being critical and analytical gives me a lot of enjoyment.  But this is a not so thinly veiled version of a common derailing technique: “Don’t You Have More Important Issues To Think About?” Why worry about this when there are real things I could be concerned about, when this is a nothing issue that I am reading too much into?  Heck, why make everything an issue at all?  This is also related to the derailing technique “don’t take this personally!”  But it is personal for me.  It’s personal to me as a librarian who doesn’t think my duty to teenagers is “frivolous” and it’s personal to me as a fat person.

You see, 2011 Quick Picks Committee, you are not breaking any news to me,  I already know I am unfun.  But I like to think that I am unfun for a reason.  I am unfun for all the times someone else has been unfun for me, for the moment when someone else has spoken up and said “Hey, this is problematic!” and made me feel less awkward and less alone.  As my friend Angelo said once about advocating and speaking up, “there are moments when others do this, and you feel like someone has just…rescued you in a way.”  Other people have rescued me.  I am unfun for the moments when I hope I might be able to rescue someone else.

It’s how I enjoy life.

I’ve been absent for a bit because I was attending the 2010 ALA Annual conference in Washington, D.C.  You can read about my top five experiences at ALA at the PLA blog.

I was super-excited and nervous about it, because this year is my first year on a selection committee and we were having our first meeting at Annual.  Of course, it turned out splendidly, sitting around talking about books for hours is basically a dream come true, right, so I was in heaven.  It’s such a challenge and so exciting and I can’t wait to continue committee work throughout the year.

Thanks to Wendy, I had a chance to participate in a Friday YALSA pre-conference about using web 2.0 tools.  I presented a segment on having a 2.0 Teen Book Club during the “speed dating” practitioner’s portion.  It was so fun and made me so proud of my teen patrons. If you happen to be stopping by because of that segment, feel free to say hello/drop me a message!

Another major highlight was the chance to attend Library Advocacy Day, which I had the chance to participate in thanks to a stipend from the Friends of YALSA.  Having the opportunity to rally at the capital and speak with representatives from my state was empowering and inspirational, I’m excited to implement some of the things I learned.

All of Annual was great, as per usual.  Last year one of the ALA twitter accounts referred to Annual as “Brigadoon for librarians” which tickled my heart so much….that’s just what it’s like.  I always get excited and inspired by Annual and leave every year feeling like part of such a community and so ready to DO things.  I still have the handouts from the first year I ever went to Annual in 2006 as a library student.  When I look at the sessions I attended then, I see the course of my career now.  It made me know I was doing the right thing with my career!  I even saved a brochure about “how you can get involved in YALSA!”

Oh, and the books!  I mailed home 42 (!) pounds of books and I know I had at least 25 pounds checked/carried on the the plane.  Lots and lots of good stuff, not just the ARCs! I also bought many hardcovers for cheap prices and got them signed, so those will make some great teen prizes.  And I did get some great ARCs, many of which I can’t wait to review for the site, so look forward to that sooner than later. (I offered up a spirited defense of the exhibits on the PLA blog.  I am so sick to death of the jokes about how librarians go to conference and cram as much useless, free junk into their bags as they can.  First of all, these criticisms always come off as inherently gendered and classist, which is weird in library circles, but I definitely feel it.  “Those rubes, grabbing up free junk, they’re so provincial and stupid!”  Second of all, the exhibits are a main drawing point for me, part of what I pay my money for, so I expect a return on that investment: they power my programming and I *never* think of what I get as useless.)

Don’t get me wrong, Annual is always such a huge investment of time and money and energy; it’s draining in every imaginable way.  But it’s also, every year, been worth it for me.  If you ever have the chance to attend conference, especially Annual, I can’t recommend it enough.  You’ll be worn out and frazzled and exhausted and spun around by the end, but you’ll be glad you went!

Now back to the business of this blog . . .

First, thanks to all the amazing responses on my last blog, being linked from Courtney Summers own blog definitely made my week!  Using random.org the winner of my copy of Some Girls Are is Claire, hooorah, who I have contacted via e-mail.  If I don’t hear back from her, I’ll try again.  Definitely keep reading for more reviews and giveaways.

I loved Some Girls Are SO MUCH I wanted to *make sure* it was nominated for both the 2011 Best Fiction for Young Adults list and the 2011 Quick Picks list, so I headed over to YALSA’s site to check out the current nominations list.

That’s where I saw one of the books nominated for a Quick Picks was the offensive and super problematic This is Why You’re Fat.  I really felt like I needed to write this open letter to the Quick Picks committee, trying to address some of the issues I think are worth discussing about this book and its possible inclusion on the final 2011 list.  I hope this gives people, both on the committee and in general, something to really think about and discuss!

Dear 2011 Quick Picks Committee:

First. let me thank all of you for your work on this committee.  Right now, I’m in the middle of my first term on a YALSA selection committee and I KNOW what hard and exciting work it is; how you start to think, for a few seconds, staring at a huge pile of books you have to read that maybe, just maybe, you might be getting sick of books right before a wave of euphoria at how many damn good books there are being published washes over you.  I know, too, the weight of the responsibility you feel: knowing these lists will be used by literally thousands of librarians and teachers across the entire country.

Because, of course, these selection lists mean something, it’s an honor to be on them, it helps sales, it gives authors traction, it’s something librarians can use when they are justifying purchases, it counts to be included.  That’s why I’d like all of you committee members to seriously think about what it means to include a book like This Is Why You’re Fat.

For those of you who don’t know This is Why You’re Fat is the book form of a blog.  Well, it was a tumblr, actually, and basically it was nothing more than pictures of “disgusting” food posted.  There was no witty commentary like there is at say, Cake Wrecks or Regretsy.  There was just pictures, thrown up on a tumblr dashboard, all under the moniker This is Why You’re Fat. You can’t see the blog/tumblr anymore because it’s been removed (by the creators)  but the pictures ranged from the infamous Krispee Kreme Hamburger to “giant” Oreos.

What this really was, though, was more of the continued fucked up messaging our culture gives about food, eating, and health.  See, we fatties get constantly told about how people are just trying to shame us because they care so much about our health. But if that’s the case, why wasn’t the tumblr called “This Is Why You’re Unhealthy” or, even, say, “This Is Why You Have Blocked Arteries!!!” Oh, right, because it wasn’t about that, it was about TEH FATZ!  The dreaded, disgusting, worst thing you could ever be: this, America, THIS IS WHY YOU’RE FAT!

I’d like to ask all of you who work with teens to take a moment to consider where a book like This Is Why You’re Fat fits in with teens who are suffering from disordered eating and looking for some thinspiration. If you’re not familiar with that term, it’s a word used within the pro-anorexia movement to describe tips, slogans, and, most especially, pictures that encourage continued weight loss and starvation.  And, yes, I just said pro-anorexia, otherwise known as the movement to promote anorexia as a “lifestyle choice” and not a disease.

You can Google thinspiration or thinspo or pro-ana, if you’d like.  Here’s some of what you’ll find: pictures of girls showing off their rib cages, posters sharing tips about how to go for long periods of time without eating, posts of “before and after” pictures of celebrities where you can see wrist bones and clavicles sticking out, and posters positively encouraging each other as they become sicker and sicker.  There’s even many YouTube videos to go with the pictures.  It’s not hard to find, it’s not inaccessible, the most you might ever have to do is register for a free forum or click a button PROMISING you are 18.  You can literally find dozens of examples in one Google search.  Just this week the American Journal of Public Health posted a comprehensive analysis of pro-ana and pro-mia websites, finding that 91% of these sites had public access.

And who is doing all that Googling?  Statistics show it’s mostly teenage girls.  According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Eating Disorders Association, and the Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness, one in five women has an eating disorder or disordered eating, and 90% of these women are aged 12 to 25. Anorexia is the third most common chronic illness among adolescents.

And while it’s not pictures of models with their shoulder blades poking through their skin, a book like This Is Why You’re Fat is MADE for thinspiration.  It acts as motivation, inspiration, and a driving force to adolescents who are desperate for justification about their “lifestyle” choices and on the hunt for visual proof to keep them vigilant about not eating.  This is re-enforcement of the worst, most harmful kind of thinking: don’t eat cookies, donuts, bacon, ice cream, hamburgers, cheese, meat, bread: don’t  eat it because  this is why you’re fat! FOOD IS WHY YOU’RE FAT. This has real-life consequences.  (I know, I must have said that phrase about 20 million times on this blog, but it’s a really important context to put these things in, a frame, and it needs to be said and repeated.)

Am I taking this to the extreme?  Probably.  But that’s the entire premise of the book, isn’t it?  The thought process behind the pro-ana and pro-mia movements?  Dealing with extreme ends of the spectrum, thought taken to its most grotesque and overwhelming ends?  That’s how they end up being so perfectly, nightmarishly suited for each other, this book and thinspiration within the pro-ana and pro-mia world. Maybe only one in five teenagers might see this book and get “food is why you’re fat!” from it (although I would argue this is the not so thinly disguised premise from the start) but the point is: we know there’s that one in five teenager out there.  And that the one in five figure is probably a  modest estimate.   What are we saying to them?

Thousands of libraries across the country will purchase This Is Why You’re Fat if it is selected as a 2011 Quick Pick.  That means even more teenagers will have access to it, will see it on library shelves.  What messages will they be getting from it?  That they should try to live “more healthy lives” or that eating a burger is what has made them so disgustingly fat? Is that none of our concern as librarians?  Does that have nothing to do with the books we chose, from the thousands published every year, as worthy of this distinction and honor?

I see that selection criteria for Quick Picks informational titles includes “Accuracy” and “Objectivity.”  I know that you, as a committee, will be sitting down to discuss all these nominations during Annual.  As a fellow librarian who works with teens, a YALSA member, and a librarian who uses YALSA’s lists for collection development, I’d like to ask you to really consider and discuss if This IS Why You’re Fat is either accurate OR objective.

What we do matters, don’t you think?  I do, it’s why I do it, after all.  I don’t think that this book shouldn’t exist, that it should be pulled from all library shelves and bookstores.  But I think it’s worth questioning what purpose it serves, what audiences it is geared for, and what purpose we, as a librarians, would serve by selecting it as a 2011 Quick Pick.

Thanks for your time and hard work on the committee.  Like so many other librarians, I appreciate all your work and I do know, first hand, what a significant commitment it is.  I know you don’t take that commitment lightly and I thank you for taking the time to read and really consider my thoughts and point of view.

I hope to see you at Annual,

-Angie Manfredi

“We’re the kind of popular that parents like to pretend doesn’t exist so they can sleep at night, and we’re the kind of popular that makes our peers unable to sleep at night.  Everyone hates us, but they’re afraid of us too.”

At least, that’s the kind of popular Regina Afton used to be.  But this?  This is a freeze-out.

I was a mean girl in high school.  (yes, a mean fat girl.  I know, a head-spinner.) I know that term has kind of lost its sting after the movie, after Tina Fey turned it into a punchline.  Don’t get me wrong, I like that movie a lot too, but it’s a comedy, a good comedy, yeah, but it’s a haha look at “mean girls” in high school.  Ah, how quickly we forget.  There’s nothing haha about it.  The Booklist review suggested this book was good for libraries “where Gossip Girl maintains a loyal following” … but there’s nothing glossy, glamorous, or deliciously soap operatic about the betrayals and hurts in this book: that’s what makes them sting.

Courtney Summers’s Some Girls Are is a look at what mean girls are really like, what it REALLY takes to hang with the most popular and most ruthless girls in high school, the ones that make it impossible for their peers to sleep at night.  It is a raw, riveting, unforgettable look at what it means to suffer through high school hell and still have the courage and determination to not give up.  It’s an amazing book.

Regina is part of the clique that runs her school but after one party goes very wrong and she tells the wrong person about what happened, the group quickly turns on her.  Some Girls Are is the story of how Regina faces high school, and her own past sins, in the aftermath of this incident as her friends quickly go about making her life hell.

And make no mistakes: Regina has done wrong.  Kara, the girl in her group who betrays her, was previously humiliated and  ignored by Regina.  Interestingly, Summers suggests that Kara’s (serious) disordered eating was encouraged by Regina’s pressure.  (acting on behalf of Anna, the Queen of their clique.)

Everyone knows Kara used to be fat until the second half of tenth grade, when she learned to stick her fingers down her throat and started popping diet pills.  She had to wear a wig in her class photo because she was losing her hair; you can see it if you look really closely.  It was the pills or the purging.  And those were only suggestions, anyway.

It’s not like I told her she had to do that to herself. (pg. 28)

Wow.  This is an amazing passage that confronts the real-life consequences of all that supposedly harmless body snarking and constant peer pressure regarding weight and looks that happens all too frequently among teens.  Regina has other memories of how badly she treated Kara:

I stood next to her at Ford’s while she bought the over-the-counter diet pills.  And then, from that point on, I watched her melt.  It made Anna happy. (pg. 86)

Kara didn’t just “think she looked fat in these jeans!” – didn’t just say one or hear one negative thing about her weight: she realized that her standing in the group depended on how she looked and decided that standing was worth her health.  This happens more than we’d like to admit, as adults who work with teens, as adults who live in a culture that constantly tells us “just a few pounds more!” and it’s part of what I liked best about this book.

What I Love About This Book

The list could go on forever: The prose!  The characters!  The tension!  The messed up, compelling, utterly irresistible romance!  But, really, all of that comes down to one thing: IT TELLS THE TRUTH.

The truth, the truth I remember, is that high school can be a blood sport.  It was not a laughing matter.  The truth was that adults can look the other way, that the  people you think are your friends can turn on you in the blink of an eye if the “mood” goes against you, that all it takes is a few words to make someone’s life hell.  There’s no looking away from what happens to Regina OR what Regina, herself, did.

There are big questions with no easy answers in this narrative: Regina did terrible things (not the least of them how she pressures, shames, and guilts Kara when it comes to her weight) and now terrible things are being done to Regina.  What I love about this complication is that there’s not an easy answer to if this is fair…  it’s a question that doesn’t really have one answer, just the kind of question teens deserve to be asked more often.  (What else do I love?  Regina doesn’t remain a passive, helpless victim in this cycle: she remembers how the game is played and strikes back in anger and even physically.  Now the story is even more complicated: is it “right” or justified that she does this?  What are the consequences of this striking back?  Can this self-perpetuating cycle ever be broken?  Another big question!)

Summers makes everything happening to Regina feel so immediate, so helpless, so suffocating, that when Regina actually connects with someone else,  a boy named Michael she helped ostracize, their connection feels like a lifeline: urgent, confusing, and vital.  This makes their connection seem tangible and real and oh-so irresistible.  To me, this is 100x more dramatic than some 100 year old vampire.

Everything about this book feels so damn true.

Recommended for: All public libraries and all high school libraries, content and language make this definitely a high school level book.  Also recommended for reluctant readers and fans of realistic stories with a edge.

Comment for a Chance to WIN A COPY OF THIS BOOK!

I hope you can’t wait to read this book!  If you’ve already read it, I hope to hear your thoughts and opinions about it in the comments!   St. Martin’s Press generously provided me with this copy and my library already has a copy, so I’m going to use random.org to select a random winner from the comments.  It could be you!  And if you don’t win, why don’t you go into your local library today and see if they have a copy.  If they don’t, request they buy one.

As for me: I can’t wait to see what Courtney Summers writes next.