Dear Aunt Debbie,
I'm afraid we've reached the limit of my recent YA series knowledge, but I have been thinking about what these series we're calling keepers have in common: Harry Potter, The Golden Compass, the Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings.
Part of it, I think, is the pleasure of getting to know a complete universe. Each of these series allows you to become familiar with a world over a period of time. They are rich worlds, filled with detail, like our world in some ways but totally unlike it in others.
And they are worlds we want to inhabit. There is some kind of magic in each of them that is deeply attractive. In Narnia, there is the portal to another world, the prospect of going through the back of your closet and into a forest populated with talking animals and other fantastic creatures. In The Golden Compass, there are the daemons: each person in this alternate world has one, an animal of the opposite gender who is part of that person and travels with them throughout life, able to change shape until the person hits puberty, then choosing its permanent animal form. How can you read Philip Pullman and not wonder who your own daemon would be, what form he would take? And then of course there's Hogwarts. Even without Harry, Hermione, and Ron there, who wouldn't want to get the letter from that first owl, proving that the strange sense of not-belonging you've been experiencing was an indication that you are secretly a wizard? Though all these worlds are mired in war, there's a sense of what they would be like in peace as well. There is an invitation to join them.
I loved reading Chaos Walking and The Hunger Games, but the worlds they describe are not places I would ever want to be. Their dystopian strength seems to me to be about showing me dark things about the world I live in already, rather than opening an aspirational escape. I wonder whether this makes them more of our moment, and whether they will last.
Love, Annie
Showing posts with label Tolkien. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tolkien. Show all posts
Friday, September 23, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
The male equivalent of YA chick lit?
Dear Aunt Debbie,
You and I are clearly on the same wavelength. I was planning to write about Lois Lowry tonight, and then on Friday to talk about my conversation with Jeff on the same exact topic. (I also have in the pipeline recommendations for YA books about queer teens and multicultural YA books -- this thread is inspiring a lot of great conversations in my life.) So I'll save Lowry for another day, and get straight to the question: what is the boy version of YA chick lit?
When I asked Jeff what he read obsessively as a teenager, he didn't have an exact equivalent to the stable of authors I remember loving. The closest, he said, was probably The Lord of the Rings, which led him deep into Tolkien's other works, the ones where he made up more than 17 complete languages and societal histories. Tolkien definitely provided Jeff with immersion in another world.
Then there's Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. We have Jeff's old beaten-up copy on our main bookshelf; I read it a few summers ago and really enjoyed it. Human society is at war with an alien race (the Buggers), and Ender is one of a number of kids bred to be a super-intelligent soldier. He's taken from his family to a training camp where he plays intensely difficult war games (including battles in zero gravity) with a group of similarly talented kids, under the tutelage of a group of adults. Ender is the boy version of some of the heroines we've been writing about: very smart, lonely, and sensitive. The major difference, of course, is that he's fighting battles rather than engaging in more domestic questions.
*Spoiler Alert -- skip this paragraph if you don't want to know the end of the book.* In the climactic scene, Ender acts as the general in a giant video game simulation in which he successfully eradicates his opponents. Turns out that it wasn't a game: he has, in fact, led the eradication of the Bugger race. The triumph is tainted with intense guilt, which is explored in the sequel, Speaker for the Dead. Orson Scott Card is extremely prolific, and he's written many, many other books, some of which also involve Ender and Ender's world.
From what I remember of Ender's Game, it probably feels a little dated in the way that some of my favorite old chick lit does -- but is that necessarily a bad thing? Is it current teenagers who are determining that they don't want to read late '80s books, or is it publishers?
So there's a start -- historical war, historical war in fantastical places with newly-created languages, and science fiction video game-type war. I'd love to hear from other people on this subject.
Love, Annie
P.S. This is our 200th post. Pretty awesome, no?
You and I are clearly on the same wavelength. I was planning to write about Lois Lowry tonight, and then on Friday to talk about my conversation with Jeff on the same exact topic. (I also have in the pipeline recommendations for YA books about queer teens and multicultural YA books -- this thread is inspiring a lot of great conversations in my life.) So I'll save Lowry for another day, and get straight to the question: what is the boy version of YA chick lit?
When I asked Jeff what he read obsessively as a teenager, he didn't have an exact equivalent to the stable of authors I remember loving. The closest, he said, was probably The Lord of the Rings, which led him deep into Tolkien's other works, the ones where he made up more than 17 complete languages and societal histories. Tolkien definitely provided Jeff with immersion in another world.Then there's Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. We have Jeff's old beaten-up copy on our main bookshelf; I read it a few summers ago and really enjoyed it. Human society is at war with an alien race (the Buggers), and Ender is one of a number of kids bred to be a super-intelligent soldier. He's taken from his family to a training camp where he plays intensely difficult war games (including battles in zero gravity) with a group of similarly talented kids, under the tutelage of a group of adults. Ender is the boy version of some of the heroines we've been writing about: very smart, lonely, and sensitive. The major difference, of course, is that he's fighting battles rather than engaging in more domestic questions.*Spoiler Alert -- skip this paragraph if you don't want to know the end of the book.* In the climactic scene, Ender acts as the general in a giant video game simulation in which he successfully eradicates his opponents. Turns out that it wasn't a game: he has, in fact, led the eradication of the Bugger race. The triumph is tainted with intense guilt, which is explored in the sequel, Speaker for the Dead. Orson Scott Card is extremely prolific, and he's written many, many other books, some of which also involve Ender and Ender's world.
From what I remember of Ender's Game, it probably feels a little dated in the way that some of my favorite old chick lit does -- but is that necessarily a bad thing? Is it current teenagers who are determining that they don't want to read late '80s books, or is it publishers?
So there's a start -- historical war, historical war in fantastical places with newly-created languages, and science fiction video game-type war. I'd love to hear from other people on this subject.
Love, Annie
P.S. This is our 200th post. Pretty awesome, no?
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Caveat Lector
Dear Annie,
Part of my job when I'm selling books is to issue the occasional warning. One category of those warnings is: the first chapter is tough, but stick with it. I say this almost every time someone says they're thinking of getting The Hobbit for their child. It's true, the beginning drags. But just stick with it, I say, until Bilbo hits the road. As soon as he gets moving, so does the plot. Another book which gets this warning is The Borrowers by Mary Norton, which was a big favorite of Mona's: little people living under the floorboards. After we read it the first time, she always refused to let us read the first chapter, which explained why the full-size human boy was living in his elderly relative's home, and had nothing to do with little people.
Scary, as you so eloquently put it, is a little more complicated. Each child -- and each parent -- reacts differently. The wonderful Santore-illustrated Wizard of Oz whose praises we've sung here -- is often rejected by parents because they think their children aren't ready for the scary parts. When I read it with my girls, I kept a post-it in the book reminding me of the three pages where I would skip a line or rework something scary: the one I remember is the decapitation of a cat, which takes place in half a sentence.
I've run into quite a large number of kids who can tolerate -- even enjoy -- scary stuff in the context of fantasy writing: as long as they know it's taking place in an imaginary world, it's okay. But they will reject books with real-life bad situations that they can imagine happening to them or those they love.
So much depends on what age a child is. The death of Babar's mother is often much harder on the parent who is reading than on the child who's listening and, like Eleanor, doesn't quite yet understand what death is. I have vivid memories of the specific moment at which each of our girls was devastated by realizing someone we were reading about was dead. In Lizzie's case, it was Andrew Jackson; for Mona is was Casey Jones. There was nothing exceptionally traumatic about these deaths over other ones that had come up in their books. The difference was their growing awareness. Both girls were around 5 or 6, and had matured to the point of understanding the finality of death.
Leaving scary for a moment, the other place it's clear that kids reach different levels of understanding at different ages is sense of humor. A wonderful school librarian I used to work with told me she never recommended The Phantom Tollbooth -- which is full of wordplay -- before the third grade. Second graders, she said, can sit and listen to it straight-faced. But try reading it to the next grade up, and it's hilarious.
You ask about when is the right time to introduce your child to books with scary bits -- but there is no clear answer. It sounds like Eleanor is figuring out how to handle scary stuff -- and that she likes it enough not to reject it. I think parental comfort with the level of scary is equally as important as the child's. Stopping and talking about something scary can help. A friend's child would simply reach out and shut a book his mother was reading if it got too creepy: a clear message.
I'm going to leave fairy tales for another post -- lots to explore there in the wonderful world of the subconscious.
Love,
Deborah
Part of my job when I'm selling books is to issue the occasional warning. One category of those warnings is: the first chapter is tough, but stick with it. I say this almost every time someone says they're thinking of getting The Hobbit for their child. It's true, the beginning drags. But just stick with it, I say, until Bilbo hits the road. As soon as he gets moving, so does the plot. Another book which gets this warning is The Borrowers by Mary Norton, which was a big favorite of Mona's: little people living under the floorboards. After we read it the first time, she always refused to let us read the first chapter, which explained why the full-size human boy was living in his elderly relative's home, and had nothing to do with little people.
Scary, as you so eloquently put it, is a little more complicated. Each child -- and each parent -- reacts differently. The wonderful Santore-illustrated Wizard of Oz whose praises we've sung here -- is often rejected by parents because they think their children aren't ready for the scary parts. When I read it with my girls, I kept a post-it in the book reminding me of the three pages where I would skip a line or rework something scary: the one I remember is the decapitation of a cat, which takes place in half a sentence.
I've run into quite a large number of kids who can tolerate -- even enjoy -- scary stuff in the context of fantasy writing: as long as they know it's taking place in an imaginary world, it's okay. But they will reject books with real-life bad situations that they can imagine happening to them or those they love.
So much depends on what age a child is. The death of Babar's mother is often much harder on the parent who is reading than on the child who's listening and, like Eleanor, doesn't quite yet understand what death is. I have vivid memories of the specific moment at which each of our girls was devastated by realizing someone we were reading about was dead. In Lizzie's case, it was Andrew Jackson; for Mona is was Casey Jones. There was nothing exceptionally traumatic about these deaths over other ones that had come up in their books. The difference was their growing awareness. Both girls were around 5 or 6, and had matured to the point of understanding the finality of death.
Leaving scary for a moment, the other place it's clear that kids reach different levels of understanding at different ages is sense of humor. A wonderful school librarian I used to work with told me she never recommended The Phantom Tollbooth -- which is full of wordplay -- before the third grade. Second graders, she said, can sit and listen to it straight-faced. But try reading it to the next grade up, and it's hilarious.
You ask about when is the right time to introduce your child to books with scary bits -- but there is no clear answer. It sounds like Eleanor is figuring out how to handle scary stuff -- and that she likes it enough not to reject it. I think parental comfort with the level of scary is equally as important as the child's. Stopping and talking about something scary can help. A friend's child would simply reach out and shut a book his mother was reading if it got too creepy: a clear message.
I'm going to leave fairy tales for another post -- lots to explore there in the wonderful world of the subconscious.
Love,
Deborah
Friday, July 2, 2010
The Scary Parts
Dear Aunt Debbie,
Oh, I hope that they'll reprint the Michael Hague-illustrated The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I'll have to check out his Tolkien, too, when we get to that age. I wasn't a huge Tolkien fan myself, though I did eventually read them all (and saw all the movies). I remember getting stuck on the beginning of The Hobbit at least three times, as Tolkien went on and on about every detail of the entrance hallway, just before Bilbo Baggins left his house for the rest of the book. But I know Lizzie loved the books; I remember visiting your house when she was in high school and marveling at the life-sized cutout of Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn propped up in the corner of her room.
So what is the right age to introduce your kids to books with scary bits? After my last post, my good friend Cyd commented about her daughter Rebekah's strong reaction to the dog running away in Beverly Cleary's Ribsy, saying that she couldn't believe Eleanor (a month younger than Rebekah) was ready for Narnia. This got me thinking about what does and doesn't scare Eleanor, and why.
My theory is that things like witches (which she knows are imaginary) and death (which she doesn't fully understand), are far less scary to Eleanor than things closer to home. Rebekah really does have a wonderful dog of her own, so I can imagine that the thought of a dog getting lost and not being able to find his way home would be extremely frightening. When we watched the movie Up with Eleanor, the moment which upset her most was when Carl, the old man, lost his house. Eleanor burst into tears: "But where is he going to live?" Out of all the frightening and sad things that had happened in the movie, this was the one she could relate to most.
We've read a number of fairy tales with Eleanor, and I've been surprised by her hardiness in the face of awful plot developments. We have a gorgeous edition of Rapunzel illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman from the library right now, and of course I didn't pre-read it before we read it together, and I had forgotten how dark it is. Rapunzel's parents have their baby taken from them by the witch, and never see her again; Rapunzel grows up with no contact with anyone but her witch-mother, and is locked away by her when she turns twelve (such interesting puberty-related issues there!); after the witch has discovered Rapunzel's relationship with the prince, she attacks him and he falls from the tower, landing on thorn bushes which poke his eyes and blind him. Rough stuff. When faced with this (or with the White Witch, or Aslan's death), Eleanor has taken to doing what she does during the scary parts of movies: she gets a blanket and hides in it. She doesn't want me to stop reading, and in fact will say "I like the scary parts," but she wants to hide nonetheless, and will turn away even from a book, like Narnia, that doesn't have pictures on every page. It's a measure of control, I suppose.
I'm trying to go along with where she seems to be, prepping her for some of the scary parts when it's something I've read beforehand (that's what we did with The Wizard of Oz, and with Narnia), and stopping when she wants to. As in so many other aspects of life, we do our best to follow her lead and enjoy the surprises along the way.
Love, Annie
Oh, I hope that they'll reprint the Michael Hague-illustrated The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I'll have to check out his Tolkien, too, when we get to that age. I wasn't a huge Tolkien fan myself, though I did eventually read them all (and saw all the movies). I remember getting stuck on the beginning of The Hobbit at least three times, as Tolkien went on and on about every detail of the entrance hallway, just before Bilbo Baggins left his house for the rest of the book. But I know Lizzie loved the books; I remember visiting your house when she was in high school and marveling at the life-sized cutout of Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn propped up in the corner of her room.
So what is the right age to introduce your kids to books with scary bits? After my last post, my good friend Cyd commented about her daughter Rebekah's strong reaction to the dog running away in Beverly Cleary's Ribsy, saying that she couldn't believe Eleanor (a month younger than Rebekah) was ready for Narnia. This got me thinking about what does and doesn't scare Eleanor, and why.
My theory is that things like witches (which she knows are imaginary) and death (which she doesn't fully understand), are far less scary to Eleanor than things closer to home. Rebekah really does have a wonderful dog of her own, so I can imagine that the thought of a dog getting lost and not being able to find his way home would be extremely frightening. When we watched the movie Up with Eleanor, the moment which upset her most was when Carl, the old man, lost his house. Eleanor burst into tears: "But where is he going to live?" Out of all the frightening and sad things that had happened in the movie, this was the one she could relate to most.We've read a number of fairy tales with Eleanor, and I've been surprised by her hardiness in the face of awful plot developments. We have a gorgeous edition of Rapunzel illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman from the library right now, and of course I didn't pre-read it before we read it together, and I had forgotten how dark it is. Rapunzel's parents have their baby taken from them by the witch, and never see her again; Rapunzel grows up with no contact with anyone but her witch-mother, and is locked away by her when she turns twelve (such interesting puberty-related issues there!); after the witch has discovered Rapunzel's relationship with the prince, she attacks him and he falls from the tower, landing on thorn bushes which poke his eyes and blind him. Rough stuff. When faced with this (or with the White Witch, or Aslan's death), Eleanor has taken to doing what she does during the scary parts of movies: she gets a blanket and hides in it. She doesn't want me to stop reading, and in fact will say "I like the scary parts," but she wants to hide nonetheless, and will turn away even from a book, like Narnia, that doesn't have pictures on every page. It's a measure of control, I suppose.
I'm trying to go along with where she seems to be, prepping her for some of the scary parts when it's something I've read beforehand (that's what we did with The Wizard of Oz, and with Narnia), and stopping when she wants to. As in so many other aspects of life, we do our best to follow her lead and enjoy the surprises along the way.
Love, Annie
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Hague and some Housekeeping
Dear Annie,
Your Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe experience sounds just wonderful. And the illustrations -- wow, I'd never seen those. We became very familiar with Michael Hague illustrations the many times we read Lizzie The Hobbit in the paperback oversized edition. I liked the pictures you posted so much that I e-mailed my Harper sales rep (they're the current C.S. Lewis rights-holders) and asked if anyone's ever considered re-issuing that edition. She passed the question along -- will post the answer here if I get one.
I have no memory of reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe as a kid. My father (your grandfather) had little patience with those Oxford guys. I remember his railing against Tolkien -- he felt the language and the stories were both too fussy -- whom I also didn't read as a kid. And I can imagine Grandpa having little patience with the C.S. Lewis brand of Christianity. We read The Lion, The Witch with both girls -- I really like it, despite the crucifixion/resurrection thing. I'm curious to see if you and Eleanor charge on into the other Narnia books. I think we slogged through them all at least once. Nothing as magical as Lion, but I remember feeling Dawn Treader was probably the most kid-friendly.
So now that you've read the book, are you going to see the movie?
That last sentence, of course, is a reference to an earlier discussion on this blog. Leading me into today's other topic: Annie and Aunt are (is?) entering a contest. The Third Annual Book Blogger Appreciation Week is September 13-17. The week encourages people to explore book blogs across a range of topics, and it also gives awards to the best blogs in a variety of categories. We are, of course, hoping to be named Best Kidlit Book Blog. One of the requirements for entering the contest is to post our intention to do so (yes! we intend!), and to list five blog entries on which we would like to be judged.
Here they are:
Mother Goose was a Poet
The Bard of Columbus
Bravo for Frances
More on Starter Chapter Books
On Twilight. Oy.
(We figure, given how many fifth and sixth graders have been reading Twilight, that it qualifies for a younger-than-YA blog category.)
So here we go, venturing further out into the blogosphere.
Love,
Deborah
Your Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe experience sounds just wonderful. And the illustrations -- wow, I'd never seen those. We became very familiar with Michael Hague illustrations the many times we read Lizzie The Hobbit in the paperback oversized edition. I liked the pictures you posted so much that I e-mailed my Harper sales rep (they're the current C.S. Lewis rights-holders) and asked if anyone's ever considered re-issuing that edition. She passed the question along -- will post the answer here if I get one.I have no memory of reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe as a kid. My father (your grandfather) had little patience with those Oxford guys. I remember his railing against Tolkien -- he felt the language and the stories were both too fussy -- whom I also didn't read as a kid. And I can imagine Grandpa having little patience with the C.S. Lewis brand of Christianity. We read The Lion, The Witch with both girls -- I really like it, despite the crucifixion/resurrection thing. I'm curious to see if you and Eleanor charge on into the other Narnia books. I think we slogged through them all at least once. Nothing as magical as Lion, but I remember feeling Dawn Treader was probably the most kid-friendly.
So now that you've read the book, are you going to see the movie?
That last sentence, of course, is a reference to an earlier discussion on this blog. Leading me into today's other topic: Annie and Aunt are (is?) entering a contest. The Third Annual Book Blogger Appreciation Week is September 13-17. The week encourages people to explore book blogs across a range of topics, and it also gives awards to the best blogs in a variety of categories. We are, of course, hoping to be named Best Kidlit Book Blog. One of the requirements for entering the contest is to post our intention to do so (yes! we intend!), and to list five blog entries on which we would like to be judged.
Here they are:
Mother Goose was a Poet
The Bard of Columbus
Bravo for Frances
More on Starter Chapter Books
On Twilight. Oy.
(We figure, given how many fifth and sixth graders have been reading Twilight, that it qualifies for a younger-than-YA blog category.)
So here we go, venturing further out into the blogosphere.
Love,
Deborah
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