Beyond action and intrigue

Dear Annie,

I'm so glad you mentioned Brat Farrar. I'm quite fond of it.  Our 16 year-old in question had already read it.  He's definitely been wandering into more complex literature, away from the thrillers.  Books he's read recently include:

• Slam by Nick Hornby, about a 15 year-old father, which appeared on here back in December.
• 
  The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, a  funny and moving story of a boy who's the first from his reservation to go to the white kids' school 22 miles away.  It's a diary full of drawings and wonderful writing.  An example of the art:

(Click on illustration to be able to read it.)

• I've mentioned Godless by Pete Hautman before, but it's so good, I'm doing it again.   It's about a boy from a Catholic family who with his friends invents a religion centered on the local water tower: the Ten-legged God.  Her are the first four stanzas (chapters? verses?) of the religion's text:

In the beginning was the Ocean.  And the Ocean was alone.

***

And the Ocean did not know where it ended or where it began, and so it created Time.  And the Ocean passed through Time.

***

Still, the Ocean was alone in Time, and Time was endless, and so the Ocean drew in upon itself and became finite, a writhing ball of water and foam surrounded by nothingness.  And the Ocean Passed through Time and Space.  But the Ocean was still alone.

***

The Ocean created Land, so that it did not have always to be with itself.  And it cast off fiery bits of itself to light the sky, and it created Wind, and it filled itself with tiny nodes of Energy called Life.  And still it passed through Time and Space, but now it was not so alone.

So why doesn't anyone worship water?

The story of this boy who went from resisting reading to thrillers to much better-written novels with complex realistic characters added a new chapter the other day in the store.  His mother and I discussed many different books, but the one that caught her eye -- and she's been reading his changing taste for some years now -- was The Knife of Never Letting Go, the first in the Chaos Walking trilogy about which you and I have both written.  It's extremely well-written science fiction.  It fits in the progression this young man is going through into more complex language and plots, but for him, as for the characters in the book, it's a whole new world.  An excellent reminder that there's so much to discover out there, especially when you're a book-hungry 16 year-old.  I hope they come back to visit again next year.

Love,

Deborah

YA, Part 2

Dear Annie,

We read The Ruby in the Smoke with Lizzie and she liked it, but didn't want to rush on into the others. A couple of years later I read and loved Tiger in the Well, the one about 19th-century identity theft. I'm such a huge fan of The Golden Compass and sequels that I've always thought of the Sally Lockhart series as good, but one notch below. I love the many-layered aspect of The Golden Compass, and Pullman's hostility to organized religion. So much is going on in his books at once. I should go revisit Ruby.

My favorite YA book – and by that I mean, say, 8^th grade and up – is probably
Feed, by M.T. Anderson. It’s set in a dystopian future where everyone has computer chips in their brains (“wetware”) so that they can access the internet (the Feed) just by thinking about it. IM-ing is constant. And the Feed can access your thoughts, so it’s always beaming thought-specific advertising directly to your brain. It’s kind of fascinating at the beginning of the book, and evolves darker as the story progresses. The main character meets a young woman who’s trying to resist the Feed, and although he’s intrigued he ultimately retreats into his programmed world. The beauty of the book is in the language: Anderson has created teenspeak which is completely understandable and just a bit off from the present day. There’s a great audiobook of Feed also. Our girls listened to it a lot.

Marcelo in the Real World, by Francisco X Stork is another I’ve become quite fond of. Marcelo is an Asperger’s kid, in the summer before his senior year in high school. His over-controlling lawyer father wants him to leave his special school and mainstream into the local high school. Father and son make a deal that if Marcelo can work all summer in the mailroom at his father’s law firm, then he can choose what school he goes to. Marcelo’s voice is pitch-perfect: he explains in his slightly-detached way how he analyzes and interacts with the world. The law firm gives him an array of fast-talking, sarcastic, and occasionally just plain nasty people to try to figure out. The ending wraps up a bit too neatly, but the journey is quite wonderful.

And as long as I’m on a roll with contemporary YA with male main characters, I’ll toss in
Godless, by Pete Hautman.A high school boy creates a new religion that worships the local water tower. Chapters are preceded by quotes from the bible that he writes: they all make a lot of sense – after all water is very primal. It’s all about questioning of faith and, because the object of worship is a huge water tower, risk-taking. Another piece of good writing.

Love,

Deborah