Tuesday, July 11, 2006

The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler

Virginia Shreves thinks she must have been switched at birth. She is blonde, unpopular, overweight, and can’t speak French. The rest of her family (mom, dad, older brother and sister) is dark, beautiful, thin, popular, and speak fluent French. Furthermore, Virginia’s best friend is away for the year and she’s all alone at school. She’s begun an unfulfilling and secret relationship with a classmate that she can’t even speak to in school. When her mother decides to be more proactive about her weight problem and under the pressure of disapproving parents and cruel classmates, Virginia begins a dangerous starvation diet. Before it goes too far, though, her brother Byron is sent home from college under allegations of date rape. Virginia is shattered and must reevaluate her idea that Byron and the rest of her family are perfect. She returns to overeating for comfort but with a little help slowly finds herself as a confident individual who’s come to terms with her imperfections.

The glittery cover and weird title initially put me off of this book, but I was interested in reading it as a Printz Honor book (the Printz is like the Newbery award for teen books) and one that has recently been banned in several school libraries around the country. Virginia is a good narrator – funny, self-depreciating, and ultimately strong, and any girl who is or was unhappy with her image will see some hope there. Supporting characters such as Byron and Froggy Welsh the Fourth (her secret boyfriend) are complex and we learn more about them as Virginia does.

Issues include: body image, date rape, eating disorders, sexuality, rebellion, dysfunctional families, occasional profanity.

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Feed by M.T. Anderson (Audio)

Titus is a typical teen in the US in some unspecified time in the future. There are flying cars, vacations to outer space, domes over underground houses and subdivisions that control the weather and light, conceptionariums for custom test-tube babies, and a host of other technological advances that have contributed to a planet maimed by pollution and resource stripping. However, the most pervasive advance is the Feed – an internet-like system that is surgically implanted into children’s brains and grows up with them. Titus goes to the moon with some friends for spring break and meets Violet, the strange but beautiful girl who actually reads and writes, is interested in the news, and wants to go to boring places like the mountains. She tags along with them to a night club where a political hacker gets into their system and they must go to the hospital for tests before being reconnected to the Feed. In the hospital, Titus and Violet get to know one another and embark on a romance. Life soon returns to normal for Titus, but a Feed malfunction in Violet’s system wreaks havoc on their relationship, their lives, and their perception of the world around them.

I took the advice of others on the listserv YALSA-BK (you can join, too! See info at http://lists.ala.org/wws/info/yalsa-bk) to listen to Feed before reading it. It was good advice. Much of the book is dialogue, and the rest is told from Titus’ perspective, so just begs to be heard. The performer, David Baker, perfectly emulates the bored teens’ slang, tone, and timing, which turns out to sound somewhat like the “Valley Girl” and “Surfer Dude” slang of the 80s, and underscores the teens’ disconnection from real life. (Interestingly, Titus’ parents also use this slang, but in more mature voices, and this also shows that the suburbanites of mainstream America are also unaware or uncaring about the state of their country and their world.) This was a disturbing and thought-provoking read. I would love to do a book discussion with it and see what others think!

Issues include: technology, pollution, big business, advertising, world politics, some sexuality, realistic profanity, conformity, illness, class division, consumerism, alcohol use, drug use.

Rats Saw God by Rob Thomas

Steve York, who two semesters ago was a straight-A honor student, is failing his senior English class, stoned most of the time, and isolated from his peers at his new San Diego school. A surprisingly sympathetic guidance counselor gives him two options – retake English during the summer and thus delay graduation, or write a 100 page paper on the subject of his choice, to be turned in a few pages at a time. Steve decides to write the paper and after a few corny attempts at fiction, goes with what he knows and thus begins the real story. Turn back to Steve’s sophomore year. He’s living in Houston with his father – the rigid and strict former astronaut whom Steve blames for his parents’ divorce and avoids at all costs. His countercultural tendencies lead him to befriend a group comprised of the school club G.O.D. – the Grace Order of Dadaists, formed to fulfill a bet. Through the club, Steve meets Dub, his first love, and we learn that their relationship is key to Steve’s move to San Diego and plummeting prospects. In the end, Steve confronts and conquers his demons and we’re left with hopes for his future.

I really enjoyed this book. Published in 1996 – the year I finished my freshman year, I identified with the characters, the pop culture references and general mid-90s atmosphere and attitude of the novel. The characters participated in a lot of the behaviors that I stayed away from in high school – the usual sex, drugs (weed), and alcohol – but they’re realistic depictions that I recognized in my peers and sometimes in friends. However, I was completely reliving my high school days with the characters activities and motivations: hanging out, staying up late, resisting the mainstream to the point of being pretentious in our need to prove our disdain for the popular crowd, the naïveté and bluster of those days, the joy of finding a class or a teacher that really understands and challenges you, discovering friends through mutual music tastes, and all of the heightened emotions and strong ideals. It didn’t make me want to be in high school again, but it did create a nostalgia and I enjoyed looking back at my experiences. I would only recommend the book to older high school students and young adults as far as content goes, but I really think that those a couple years away from high school would be at the ideal stage to really appreciate the deeper themes.

Issues include: divorce, sexuality, drug use, alcohol use, realistic profanity, dysfunctional families, conformity.