Kids today, vol. LCXVIII

I am way late to this particular dust-up but thought I'd weigh in anyway. Saturday, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece bemoaning YA (that's young adult) literature as too violent, degenerate, disturbing, etc. etc. I might agree there are a few too many vampires -- thank you, Stephenie Meyer! -- but the notion that we're damaging fragile young minds with upsetting content ... oh, PUH-LEEZE. Which is a point many others have made very well, mainly on Twitter through a hashtag called #yasaves (you don't have to have a Twitter account to search it, did you know?).  There has been a lot of response, from writers and others -- accounts of the dust-up here and here and one I particularly like, by Linda Holmes from NPR's blog Monkeysee, here (my favorite line: "I also took an entire class in high school where we read books about killing your family, double suicide, drowning, being murdered in your bed ... it was called 'Shakespeare,' I believe."). Another funny piece about trends in YA lit by writer David Lubar dating from 2002 is here. And now the formidable Sherman Alexie, whose YA book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, was singled out for censure in the original essay, has responded in the WSJ.

Literature about adolescence, aimed at adolescent readers, often deals with turmoil. It's a turbulent time of life, even if you're not dealing with abuse, cutting, anorexia, vampires or other trauma. And that's OK, even the realistic turmoil that is the most upsetting, in my experience. I still shudder when I think about the books that upset me the most as a young reader: The ones where they have to kill the animals (The Yearling, Old Yeller). Anything by John Steinbeck. One I can't remember the title of for the life of me but it was about a family of kids were trying to stay in their house after their parents died; it was set in the '30s, I think, and the oldest sister was being pressured to marry a creepy neighbor guy. All of these were assigned to me in my wholesome rural public school in the 1970s.

Like many of the commenters on this subject, I also read a lot of adult literature with graphic content when I was pretty young, like in junior high school  -- Fear of Flying,The World According to Garp, Wifey, other, various paperbacks I somehow got hold of at friends' houses. I read The Outsiders, the book that the Wall Street Journal writer considers the founding text of this evil trend -- and its sequel, That Was Then This Is Now. Conservative family types take note: that book effectively scared me off ever trying LSD.

And even though some of those books were disturbing and upsetting, I'm glad I read them. I would hate to have somehow made it to 18 thinking the world was the one depicted in Anne of Green Gables or Narnia or the Little House series -- books I loved and kept reading as into adolescence, by the way. What a terrible shock it would have been, on reaching adulthood, to learn the terrible truth at such an advanced age.

This idea that childhood should be extended through adolescence, and kept in some kind of bubblewrap of niceness and good behavior is delusional and I don't think you're doing kids any favors, either. As Judy Blume put it, kids are pretty good judges of their own reading. If they don't like it, they'll put it down. That was always my reaction to the insanely popular -- and disturbing -- Flowers in the Attic series by V.C. Andrews. Same thing with the works of Stephen King.  I took a look and decided they weren't for me. Then I went back to reading Jane Eyre and Jane Austen and the gentle sex-free romances of Georgette Heyer that we had around the house. Sounds like a conservative family values book reviewer's dream, right? Except for the Garp and Wifey parts, I suppose.

Last rant: the aspect of the WSJ piece that REALLY irritates me is their recommended titles for young readers -- separated by gender! What the hell!??!!! What is this, 1952???? One of the truly great things about reading is that you can learn about all kinds of experiences from anyone. Pigeonholing kids and their recommended reading, by gender or any other division, is stupid. And, I might add, pointless.

Mostly local

Key West writers are in the news, folks. First of all, there's James Gleick, the esteemed science writer who has recently published his book about information called The Information. And so far it's getting boffo reviews, in Big Important Publications like The New York Times and the New York Review of Books and coverage on NPR's All Things Considered. I only hope future generations of library and information science students get to read this book instead of the ... stuff I'm having to read for my current course. But the less side about that on a public forum the better. Another interesting read is Gleick's blog, Bits in the Ether. I'm told he'll be doing a reading and signing at Voltaire Books some time this month; I'll update here when I learn more. The other item of local interest which I cannot resist posting is this video of our own Meg Cabot, promoting her forthcoming young adult novel Abandon, a modern take on the myth of Hades and Persephone. I like this because it's shot in one of my favorite places in our tiny town, the Cemetery -- which, by the way, is now open to access at the Frances Street gate again. Thank you, City Commission!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n6XZbgqTSk]

Finally, on the subject of local authors, please keep in mind that this week is the final week of One Island One Book, which will wrap up on Thursday morning with the library's Cafe Con Libros program -- featuring a talk by Alison Lurie herself about her novel set in Key West, The Last Resort.

You can (sort of) go home again

I was one of those Narnia kids. I read the books over and over (I was a big re-reader; I also read the Little House series and many others multiple times) -- though I eventually limited myself to once a year, perhaps fearing the effects of over-exposure. I think some of my love for Narnia was in reaction to the Tolkien dominance I felt in the house -- my older sister and cousins were all hard-core Tolkien devotees and those books were big and, in the hardcover boxed set we owned, rather forbidding. Narnia, on the other hand, was welcoming and manageable. And it was mine. My adoration for Narnia did not lead me far into the fantasy genre, or Christianity -- brought up with little exposure to religion, I managed to miss the obvious parallels in the tales until they were pointed out to me later and even then I just accepted them as part of this particular story and not something that was supposed to apply to my life. Eventually I grew up and during adolescence transferred my affections to books intended for adults, like Jane Eyre and the works of Jane Austen. I did read The Lord of the Rings, once, and enjoyed it but never felt the fierce connection to that world that I had to Narnia. I always wondered how Narnia would feel to me as an adult -- especially once my friends started having kids and the kids grew old enough to read the Chronicles or have them read to them. I both envied them and worried that they might have the childhood magic erased. Like pretty much everyone else on the planet, I was drawn back to kid lit by the Harry Potter series and I felt a little reconnected, in a strange way, in reading (and being entranced by) Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, even while understanding it could not, in many ways, be more opposed to Lewis' work. I read and loved The Magicians, Lev Grossman's novel that was widely described as Harry Potter with sex and drugs but obviously owes a lot more to a childhood obsession with Narnia.

So when the movie version of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe came out I got a copy of the book and re-read it and, as I had feared, it felt strangely flat. I was sorry I had done it. Narnia was lost to me -- I still fondly remembered loving the books so intensely, but I felt a little like the characters in the books who, once they reach a certain age, are told they cannot return.

But Narnia, and C.S. Lewis, just will not go away. About a year ago, unexpectedly, one campus of my alma mater was sold off and to become the new home of the start-up C.S. Lewis College. And the movies keep coming, too, most recently the third installment, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. (In a slightly related side note, I am glad to see the movies are appearing in what I believe is the correct sequence, which was the order of publication and the order that my paperback boxed set back in the '70s, rather than the series order now espoused by the Chronicles' publishers, which conforms to the internal chronology of Narnia but makes less sense to me.)

A couple weeks ago I was shelving books in the Children's Room at the library -- always a dangerous occupation -- and came across a copy of Dawn Treader with the familar '70s paperback cover, glued onto one of those hard buckram library bindings. I opened it up and read a few lines and to my own surprise felt drawn in. So I checked it out and brought it home. (If any of my bosses is reading this, I swear don't do a lot of reading while I'm supposed to be shelving books. Really.) I read it and enjoyed it, even while recognizing Lewis' crankiness toward co-education and practical knowledge was a little, well, cranky. But it was also kind of funny. I thought I just might give some other Chronicles a try. I also came across Laura Miller's recent essay in the Wall Street Journal about how the approach of the Narnia films differs significantly from the source material, especially in their emphasis on FAMILY VALUES.

That led me to pull of the shelf a book I have owned since it was published, Miller's The Magician's Book. It's subtitled "A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia" and Miller, who was one of the founders of Salon, is my favorite literary critic so I knew the chances were pretty good I was going to like it. And I did, though I also did not want to read too far until I had re-read the rest of the Chronicles.

On the day after Christmas, disaster struck. Our beloved dog died of liver failure. She was only 3 1/2 and my husband and I are one of those childless couples who are  devoted to our dog beyond all reason. Plus, she was an outrageously lovable dog, as many of our friends can attest. And it came as a huge shock. So I was in a state. I needed comfort, familiarity, and distraction. At some point, late in the day (I think; those first couple days are actually a little fuzzy), I reached for Narnia. I think it was Prince Caspian, since I decided I needed to return to the correct order and had already gotten the next few books out of the library. And it was a relief -- a tale that offered an escape without challenging my brain. It had been long enough that I had forgotten the details of the story so reading was interesting but as I went along I recognized and remembered the characters and plot points as old friends.

In the week since, I have blown through the rest of the Chronicles and finished Miller's book and yes, it is as excellent as I had expected it to be, both in its appreciation for Lewis' achievement and its clear-eyed view of his flaws. I was a bit shocked in reading The Horse and His Boy to come across the nasty descriptions of the clearly Arab-inspired villainous Calormenes with their turbans and scimitars and swarthy skin and nasty smells of onion and garlic -- not like those virtuous, fair-haired, upstanding (and odorless) Narnians! And of course I thought, oh no, how much of that did I absorb as a kid? Though as Miller points out, for many of us, if Lewis intended the Chronicles as religious treatises we didn't take them that way -- so perhaps the ethnic prejudice also rolled off. She also spends quite a bit of time discussing the differences in approaches and attitudes between Lewis and Tolkien, who were famously friends in Oxford, and the literary sources and inspirations for their respective creations.

So thanks, Narnia -- which means thanks, C.S. Lewis. Even if you didn't succeed in making me a believer as a kid and even if I am disturbed and offended by some of your attitudes as an adult, I appreciate the experience of immersion in literature that you provided for me back then -- and the welcome distraction this week. I'll continue to think fondly of the books, mostly, even if they are also now irrevocably associated with Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell's brilliant Lazy Sunday video (which pops into my head every time I check out one of the Narnia DVDs at the library, usually for someone who's about 8 years old). And thanks, especially, Laura Miller for an intelligent and interesting assessment of Lewis and the power those books in particular and literature in general can have for kids, and for writing about books in an appreciative accessible way for regular people, wresting criticism and literature back from the academics who seem to want to dissect it if not kill it for what reason I don't know. It's like they don't even like books.

By the way, if Narnia is not or never was your cup of tea, a fantasy series for kids that held up even better in a lot of ways -- no religious message or ugly stereotyping! -- was Lloyd Alexander's excellent Chronicles of Prydain. I re-read those a year or two ago and now recommend them wherever I go. And if you are ever in a time of crisis and need literary distraction, I strongly recommend Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, which starts with The Eyre Affair. The first time I read that book I bounced off it but I tried again in my annus horribilis 0f 2005, a year in which I was editor of the local paper, we were coping with relentless successive hurricanes that culminated with Wilma and both my husband and I went through major medical crises. Those books were exactly the right level of distraction and entertainment without taxing my already overtaxed brain and I am eternally grateful to them. And wish Fforde would return to that series already.

Mock-ing-jay, yeah!

It's always fun to get caught up in one of those mass movements of reading -- that way you can discuss books with complete strangers and/or friends on Facebook. Mockingjay, the final installment in Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy, suddenly became one of those books this summer. This seemed to catch a lot of people by surprise ... but not those of us who had read the first two installments, Hunger Games and Catching Fire.

The popularity of YA literature in general and dystopian YA lit in particular was recently examined in an insightful essay in the New York Times. I thought this had just dawned on me since I started working in a public library and suddenly had daily contact with YA books. But now that I think about it, I have been reading more stuff intended for young readers since the Harry Potter phenomenon hit the bigtime -- especially Phillip Pullman's magnificent His Dark Materials trilogy (though I feel like I need to go back and read Paradise Lost to really understand it and, darn it, I just haven't gotten around to that). I've also read The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1, and enjoyed it.

But The Hunger Games and its sequel, Catching Fire, were on a whole different level. They're set in an unspecified future, after the nation has destroyed itself via nuclear weapons and is divided into impoverished districts that are all governed oppressively by the decadent Capitol. One of the methods and symbols of oppression is an annual spectacle called the Hunger Games in which a pair of kids from each district are sent into an arena to fight to the death. Naturally, our heroine, Katniss Everdeen, is chosen in the first eponymous volume. Actually she volunteers -- she's a skilled hunter and outdoorswoman and it's her timid and beloved little sister's name that is drawn on the horrible day.

The final volume is a showdown between the rebel districts and the Capitol and our heroine has become the symbol of the rebellion, the Mockingjay. I'm not going to reveal any further plot points but I'll say that the book is, like its predecessors, compulsively readable and thought provoking at the same time -- more nuanced and multi-level than a lot of your good-versus-evil fantasy tales. I felt a slight sense of letdown for two reasons, neither of which I can blame on Collins. 1) I had elevated expectations, from my own anticipation and abetted by all the public excitement -- I had a similar issue with the final Harry Potter volume. In the future, I'll have to try to wait until after all volumes in a series get published before jumping on the bandwagon. (Yeah, right.) 2) A related problem -- I was reading too fast. I do that when I'm gulping down a book purely for plot, which I was here. I'd like to go back and re-read -- maybe all three volumes since there's only three and they're reasonably sized, not Harry Potter-like tomes. Overall, though, I'll give this one 4 stars and the series as a whole 4 1/2.

Queening it up

I've had an Eleanor of Acquitaine thing for a long time. It hasn't been as virulent as my Elizabeth I thing, probably because there are a lot fewer novels, movies and TV shows made about the Plantagenets than the Tudors. The 12th century was a long time ago and we have a lot less to go on about how they lived, what they wore, said, ate, etc. Still, there's some good stuff -- the book that got me started was A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver by the great E.L. Konigsburg. She's better known for From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the story of two kids who run away and spend a week or two at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (how DID that woman get away with those crazy hard-to-remember titles???). But her book on Eleanor is superb, especially for a kid who's into history and appreciates a strong woman character. And what a woman! Eleanor was a significant landholder in her own right -- her holdings dwarfed the smaller lands that then made up the kingdom of France -- and she was queen of France AND England, annulling her marriage to Louis of France in order to run off with the future Henry II of England, 12 years her junior. It was an alliance of power and property, to be sure, but appears to have been a love match, too, at least in the beginning. By the end, Eleanor joined her sons in rebellion against their father and when that rebellion failed, was imprisoned by him. After he died, her son Richard the Lionheart let her out and she kept the country together while he went off on crusade, got himself held captive then was killed. Very dramatic all around.

Eleanor is probably best known fictionally via Katharine Hepburn's portrayal in the movie version of The Lion in Winter and that's good, too, though I've always thought the movie came off as one of those stagey let's-take-a-play-and-perform-it-outside-and-call-it-a-movie movies. I prefer the younger Eleanor, the one who insisted on joining her first husband on Crusade and on dumping him for the more suitable young Henry Plantagenet. Now that would make a great movie. Starring Cate Blanchett.

It looks like Eleanor might be coming in for a Tudor-like popular revival -- there are several new novels out about her and I snapped one of them up as soon as it arrived at the library, especially since it was by Alison Weir, a historian/novelist I knew had written a well-regarded popular (as opposed to academic) biography of Eleanor. But I'm sorry to say Captive Queen was a severe disappointment (2 stars). More on that later -- I'm reviewing it for Solares Hill and don't want to scoop myself here -- but it just wasn't good. I checked A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver out of the library just to check up on my Eleanor and found that it holds up very well and was a good reminder of a good fictional treatment (4 1/2 stars!).

I would still like to read a good one meant for adults and I keep seeing references to Sharon Kay Penman's trilogy on Eleanor and Henry II -- When Christ and His Saints Slept, Time and Chance and Devil's Brood. We have all three of them in the library collection -- but they are big books, especially the first, and I just haven't been in the right place to take them on. So instead I went with Penman's mystery series set in the same era, featuring a bishop's bastard son named Justin de Quincy. The first is The Queen's Man (the queen of the title is Eleanor) and found it was a very capable historical mystery. So if you like that Ellis Peters sort of thing, check out this series. (3 1/2 stars). Another enjoyable medieval mystery featuring Eleanor (this time as a murder suspect after the death of Henry's mistress Rosamund de Clifford) is The Serpent's Tale, second in Ariana Franklin's Mistress of the Art of Death series. Finally, one I haven't read but that is recommended by a library patron with whom I am sympatico in literary taste is Eleanor of Acquitaine and the Four Kings by Amy Kelly.  Unfortunately it's not in our library collection but this patron got it via Interlibrary loan -- and you could, too!

I've also started Weir's own biography of Eleanor and am finding it very informative and enjoyable -- which just makes it all the more heartbreaking that the novel turned out so badly. It shows, too, how difficult historical fiction can be. You can have all the settings and facts right, but if the characters are wooden and implausible, it just doesn't work. I should have realized this was a possibility -- Weir's first foray into fiction was a novel about Elizabeth I, whom she has also written about as a biographer. I started that book with the same sort of high hopes and could not proceed past about 50 pages, which is very unusual for me. But I thought her novel about Lady Jane Grey, Innocent Traitor, was just fine, so I thought she'd figured it out.

One last queen: Tudor popularizer extraordinaire Philippa Grey's new series ventures back into Plantagenet territory, with the Wars of the Roses between the Lancasters and the Yorks, the wars which were finally resolved with the arrival of the Tudors.  The second installment arrived at the library recently and I grabbed that one, too. The first in this series, The White Queen, focused on Elizabeth Woodville, who married Edward IV (York).  The second is called The Red Queen and its narrator/heroine is Margaret Beaufort (Lancaster) who was mother of Henry VII (Tudor). It was OK -- better than Captive Queen -- but something of a slog, because Margaret just isn't a very compelling character. She's pious, cold, and ambitious, all of which I'm sure was perfectly normal and appropriate for her time and station but who wants to spend all that time inside her head? I'll give that one 3stars. And I'm looking forward to a small break from all this queenship and a return to the dystopian YA world of Suzanne Collins, with Mockingjay, the final installment in her excellent Hunger Games trilogy.