Short Takes on YA Fiction
I have an article in this week's Publishers Weekly about the growth of YA fiction for Christian readers in the 12-18 set. (Which means they are being read by kids as young as 9, which is the new 12. As the mother of a 9-year-old, that scares the pants off me.) Personally, I have some serious reservations about the idea of doing "Christian knock-offs" of Gossip Girls and the like (and I am always disturbed by cover art that objectifies women's bodies at the expense of oh, I don't know, their faces). How "Christian" is it to continue glorifying shopping, glamour, and materialism, or to suggest that some people have "it" and the unlucky ones simply don't? My own read of these books is that Christianity is a veneer of niceness and good citizenship; the Christian girls don't have sex or do drugs, but their faith is "In Prada We Trust" more than in any recognizable biblical deity. However, as usual I'm in the minority here. Christian girls are eating this stuff up. They love the clothes, the hair, the elite private school setting. And if I'm being honest with myself, I have to admit that I probably would have loved this series too when I was fourteen.
But there's a lot of other interesting stuff out there these days. I read an absurd amount of secular YA fiction just for fun, so here are some short takes on three I've read recently.
HERO by Perry Moore; B-
This is a fun read that came out last summer. It seems aimed primarily at GLBT youth, but just about anyone enjoys a good superhero story, so it's worth checking out. The story is about Thom, a high school student with unusual healing powers and a strange set of parents: his dad, an aging ex-superhero, is bitter and evasive about the past, and his mom has mysteriously skipped out on the family. Thom joins a League of superheroes-in-training (shades of Sky High), with some of the most entertaining scenes introducing these characters and their various powers. Moore uses the traditional superhero-secrecy/double identity thing in tandem with Tom's gradual and uncomfortable coming out as a young gay man, which I thought was sensitively handled. There's a very cute boy-meets-boy love story, complicated of course by the fact that both boys are sub rosa superheroes. Thumbs up on this one, with my only complaints being that the plot is occasionally too derivative of other superhero sendoffs (e.g., The Incredibles and Heroes), and that I thought we all could have done without a certain Internet porn sequence.
THE LUXE by Anna Godberson; D
I wonder how many readers bought this book only for its sumptuous cover? I picked up this galley at BEA last year and was hoping for a Jennifer Donnelly-type read. I also wanted to like it simply because the author went to Barnard, where I used to teach. But -- Ugh. If you took Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210 and set them in 1899 Manhattan, you would have this book. Godberson gives us the usual array of stock victims and stock victimizers, throws in some sex and the Gilded Age equivalents of drugs and rock-n-roll, and mixes it all up with a hackneyed cast of clueless, unreasonable parents. It's well-researched from a historical perspective, and I appreciated the attention to period detail. The trouble is that there is simply no one to root for here. Not one character is well-rounded enough to make a discerning reader care. There is also no moral center, no real conflict. These characters are so silly, shallow and self-centered that I almost didn't finish the book, which is rare for me with fiction. I made it to the all-too-predictable ending, but I will be avoiding the sequel no matter what the cover looks like. That designer deserves a raise and a corner office. Godberson deserves both a year in an MFA program and a remedial course in basic humanism.
THE MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY by Trenton Lee Stewart; A
What tremendous fun this is! My friend Lil Copan of Paraclete Press gave me a copy at the Calvin Festival in April. I brought it with me on a visit home and read the first 100 pages aloud to my mother after she had surgery. Then the book got so compelling and engaging that I had to race through silently and leave poor Mom to fend for herself. (I gave her a copy of her own for Mother's Day.) This novel is for a slightly younger audience than the other two, more of a middle reader audience -- although great children's lit is always enjoyable to adults. At nearly 500 pages, it's a hefty doorstopper for that market, though a certain boy wizard has already repeatedly blown through our expectations about desirable book lengths for middle readers.
The story centers around four gifted children who respond to an ad promising "special opportunities" for select applicants. The application process is fun in and of itself (with riddles the reader can solve right alongside the characters), and then the adventure begins as these unlikely kids set out to save the world. One thing I liked about the story is that three of the four are unheralded poster children for the schoolage afflictions du jour: ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder), and PAD (Pervasive Anxiety Disorder). Part of the fun of the novel is watching these kids realize that their quirks and disabilities are actually assets. Another wonderful aspect of the story is their teamwork and cooperation; each child contributes something unique and essential to the mission. The novel is clever, funny, and warm-hearted. I have just checked the sequel out of the library (after waiting for nearly three weeks, as every middle school kid in Cincinnati had signed up first).
