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maeve66I love reading Young Adult Fiction. I loved reading it when I WAS a young adult, and I still do now. I don't even really try to pretend that it's because I teach middle schoolers, though I suppose I *could* claim that. But it wouldn't be true. I mean, I read a lot of stuff... occasionally political works, but much more often historical novels, mysteries (especially historical mysteries), sci fi (especially by women), chick lit, and middle-brow lit. But whatever else I am reading, I am almost always also reading something aimed at people between the ages of ten and eighteen. Roughly.
Months ago, at this point, I said something about intending to write about authors of young adult fiction, but then I let it drop. I've decided to pick it up. I think it will be an ongoing feature, because (much like movies, and especially Bollywood movies) I sort of feel like I'll never run out of things to say or think about, on this topic. So, diving right in: Eoin Colfer is coming to speak at Books, Inc., a nice independent bookstore in Alameda, California, tomorrow night.
Eoin Colfer is probably best known as the author of the Artemis Fowl series, which is quite wonderful. I don't think anyone writes slash or fanfic about it, though. It's not really on the mega level that, say, J. K. Rowling's stuff about whatshisname is. But I started reading Colfer with some of his earlier novels, to wit, Benny and Omar and Benny and Babe. The first of these must have been published in 1999 or 2000, and the sequel, in 2001. His books are comic, a little antic, and very rooted in their native soil, which happens to be Irish sod, even though Benny and Omar is actually set in Tunisia. He reminds me a bit of an Irish Louis Sachar in how unerring his aim at the preteen and younger adolescent funnybone is.
Benny and Omar is a story of an Irish boy whose family moves to (as I say, I THINK it's Tunisia; I don't have the book by me now; it's in one of the 22 or so boxes of YAF I have yet to bring to the school I now work in, i.e. it's in one of my closets, denying me storage space) North Africa because his father is middle management for an oil company. This, in itself, is kind of emblematic of the New Ireland and the Irish economic "miracle" of creating a technical and skilled petty bourgeois layer in the larger cities of the South.
Benny's family expects to live the life of expat employees in a walled compound, but Benny escapes over (or under; I can't remember) the wall, and ends up palling around with Omar, a kid his age with a motorbike, street smarts, and loads of ambition. The friendship is very well done, and the contrast of cultures is excellent. It was written just before 9-11, ironically, and I'd recommend it strongly as a subtle cultural counter to Western bigotry.
The sequel is about Benny back in Ireland, befriending a girl -- a townee -- in a fishing village. It's excellent, too, and offers an unselfconscious portrait of contemporary Ireland. It's funny -- all I could get about Ireland when I was in middle school and high school were agonized soap operas about the North of Ireland, some by Joan Lingard (forbidden romance between a Catholic boy and a Protestant girl... or else a Catholic girl and a Protestant boy, I can't remember, but it was a long-assed series... okay, it was a Protestant girl, because I've just remembered her name was Sadie, which is clear enough) and one by James D. Forman called A Fine Soft Day about the choice a teenager makes as to whether to join his older brother in the IRA. I don't think I ever saw a book about the South until the past few years, except one muddled magical fairytale that was crazily long and indulgent called The Hounds of the Morrigan.
Colfer has remedied that lack. I think he's leading the van, in fact, in terms of Irish YAF. I just saw another new book about contemporary Ireland and some amount of folklore -- and folk music -- and the author clearly owes a debt to Colfer, who did a blurb for her, as well. I cannot find that book's title and author right now, but when I do, I will edit this to include it.
Colfer's more famous Artemis Fowl series unites Irish folklore -- fairies, leprechauns -- and other magical European beasts (trolls, gnomes) and high technology and mixes these with a teenage genius criminal mastermind, the eponymous Artemis Fowl. The whole series is well worth a read -- the books are funny and fast-paced, and the plots are inventive. I own all of them so far, and am looking forward to the next entry in the series, which should be out this year. They are not as portentous as Harry Potter's epic struggle of Good and Evil, and there is much, much more humor. The books in this series are, in order: Artemis Fowl, in which we meet the underground technically advanced remnants of the Sidhe, Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident, in which Artemis rescues his father from the Russian mafia, Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code, in which he succumbs to more hubris than normal for him, Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception, which involves cloning and a goblin plot, or something like that, Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony, which is sort of about redemption and trolls, and the new one, Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox. Well, he had to get around to time travel eventually.
One other book of his which deserves mention (though I think they're all readable) is The Supernaturalists, which is kind of a Euro-Irish Bladerunner for kids, with a hardcore moral about violence. I've read that aloud a few times to classes in the past few years, and it gets kids' attention pretty well.
Penultimately (obviously I am adding this bit a little late), his contemporary Irish fiction/humor novel Half Moon Investigations is important because there are not really enough YAF authors who aim even halfway at boys, and this book has a plot that involves a horrible ring of stuck-up girls who badly pervert the cause of preteen feminism (apparently by failing the class issue -- the ringleader is quite the upper class child of privilege) and organize a secret cult that wears pink on the outside, but matte black underneath, and vow loyalty to a hidden portrait of Mary Robinson, the first woman President of Ireland. It's pretty hilarious, while showing strong sympathy to gormless middle school BOYS. Again, this puts me in mind of Louis Sachar.
Finally, he also has a new novel which I need to finish tonight, because it is on loan from my school's super excellent librarian -- it isn't officially available yet, but she got a special pre-publication copy -- called Airman. So far, I like it a great deal. It does have sort of fascinating elements which are reminiscent of several sources (which is the problem when you read as much -- as obsessively -- as I do; everything recalls everything else): Civil War balloonists and escape artists from Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island; retrieval of a secreted fortune by a brilliant prisoner who escapes a trumped-up charge, like Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, imprisoned nobility of spirit and an escape which involves stitching pleaded-for silk linens, like Stephen King's The Eye of the Dragon and the history of early aviation, like one of my favorite YAF books of all time, by one of my favorite YAF authors of all time, Laurence Yep's Dragonwings. Maybe I'll write about that next time, because I think I want to write about Laurence Yep.
Laurence Yep, as stated.
Michelle Magorian
K. M. Peyton
Zilpha Keatley Snyder
E. L. Konigsberg
Carolyn Mackler
Philip Pullman
Peter Dickinson
Robin McKinley
Diana Wynne Jones
Shannon Hale (even though she's a Mormon, like Anne Perry)
Gail Carson Levine (more updated fairytales, like Hale and McKinley, except Levine has made it into movies)
Sharon Creech
Louis Sachar
Andrew Clements (a powerhouse of book production for pre-teens, moving into teenagers now)
Kathryn Lasky
Scott O'Dell
Jean Craighead George
Joe Cottonwood
Mildred C. Taylor
Connie Porter
Rita Garcia Williams
Sharon Flake
Jess Mowry
Elizabeth Enright
N. M. Caldwell
Rosemary Sutcliff
Rumer Godden
Edward Eager
Enid Blyton
Robert Arthur ("The Three Investigators")
Lynne Reid Banks (but god, not the Indian in the Cupboard books)
Elizabeth Speare
Elizabeth Marie Pope
Gloria Whelan
Suzanne Fisher Staples
Malcolm J. Bosse
Deborah Ellis
Harriette Gillam Robinet
the factory that is Ann Martin
Paula Danziger
Francine Pascal
Norma Fox Mazer
Trudy Krisher
Ron Koertge (the four foregoing authors address class in interesting ways)
Frances Temple
Joan Aiken (though I don't think I can do her justice; also, obviously this subsection is YAF authors who are now dead)
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Mark Twain
L. M. Montgomery
Gene Stratton Porter
Rudyard Kipling
L. Frank Baum
Robert Louis Stevenson (and equally obviously, this is a subsection of 19th c. authors for children)
Horatio Alger
Louisa May Alcott
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Ruth Sawyer
J. D. Fitzgerald (the Great Brain books)
Sydney Taylor
Beverly Cleary (even though she aims at children a bit younger than most of these)
Lois Lowry
Karen Cushman
Alex Sanchez
Nancy Garden
Yuri Suhl
Ellen Klages
Kashmira Sheth
Kate Thompson (new Irish bump in YAF)
Indi Rana (this subsection is kind of one-off authors, or one-off so far)
Cynthia Voigt
Clare Bell
Margaret Haddix
Ursula K. Leguin (her Earthsea stuff, and the short stories)
Vonda McIntyre (she has at least one sci fi book that would be classified as YAF)
Pamela Sargent (more sci fi)
Katherine Paterson
Ann Rinaldi (these last two, I really don't much like; I'll do them if I want to be critical and meanspirited)
Wow. I could go on and on and on. Should I put this all under a cut?
ETA: Oh, my god, SHOUT OUT: In Airman, one of the characters, a blind former aeronaut (e.g. balloonist in the American Civil War whose eyes were put out by a youthful Jesse James when he was a Yankee spy among the Missouri border ruffians) tells the protagonist, Conor Broekhart, about his dead wife, in India, AISHWARYA. Oh, awesome, Eoin Colfer, way to display your crush on The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, and link to my other favorite obsession, Bollywood.
Months ago, at this point, I said something about intending to write about authors of young adult fiction, but then I let it drop. I've decided to pick it up. I think it will be an ongoing feature, because (much like movies, and especially Bollywood movies) I sort of feel like I'll never run out of things to say or think about, on this topic. So, diving right in: Eoin Colfer is coming to speak at Books, Inc., a nice independent bookstore in Alameda, California, tomorrow night.
Eoin Colfer is probably best known as the author of the Artemis Fowl series, which is quite wonderful. I don't think anyone writes slash or fanfic about it, though. It's not really on the mega level that, say, J. K. Rowling's stuff about whatshisname is. But I started reading Colfer with some of his earlier novels, to wit, Benny and Omar and Benny and Babe. The first of these must have been published in 1999 or 2000, and the sequel, in 2001. His books are comic, a little antic, and very rooted in their native soil, which happens to be Irish sod, even though Benny and Omar is actually set in Tunisia. He reminds me a bit of an Irish Louis Sachar in how unerring his aim at the preteen and younger adolescent funnybone is.
Benny and Omar is a story of an Irish boy whose family moves to (as I say, I THINK it's Tunisia; I don't have the book by me now; it's in one of the 22 or so boxes of YAF I have yet to bring to the school I now work in, i.e. it's in one of my closets, denying me storage space) North Africa because his father is middle management for an oil company. This, in itself, is kind of emblematic of the New Ireland and the Irish economic "miracle" of creating a technical and skilled petty bourgeois layer in the larger cities of the South.
Benny's family expects to live the life of expat employees in a walled compound, but Benny escapes over (or under; I can't remember) the wall, and ends up palling around with Omar, a kid his age with a motorbike, street smarts, and loads of ambition. The friendship is very well done, and the contrast of cultures is excellent. It was written just before 9-11, ironically, and I'd recommend it strongly as a subtle cultural counter to Western bigotry.
The sequel is about Benny back in Ireland, befriending a girl -- a townee -- in a fishing village. It's excellent, too, and offers an unselfconscious portrait of contemporary Ireland. It's funny -- all I could get about Ireland when I was in middle school and high school were agonized soap operas about the North of Ireland, some by Joan Lingard (forbidden romance between a Catholic boy and a Protestant girl... or else a Catholic girl and a Protestant boy, I can't remember, but it was a long-assed series... okay, it was a Protestant girl, because I've just remembered her name was Sadie, which is clear enough) and one by James D. Forman called A Fine Soft Day about the choice a teenager makes as to whether to join his older brother in the IRA. I don't think I ever saw a book about the South until the past few years, except one muddled magical fairytale that was crazily long and indulgent called The Hounds of the Morrigan.
Colfer has remedied that lack. I think he's leading the van, in fact, in terms of Irish YAF. I just saw another new book about contemporary Ireland and some amount of folklore -- and folk music -- and the author clearly owes a debt to Colfer, who did a blurb for her, as well. I cannot find that book's title and author right now, but when I do, I will edit this to include it.
Colfer's more famous Artemis Fowl series unites Irish folklore -- fairies, leprechauns -- and other magical European beasts (trolls, gnomes) and high technology and mixes these with a teenage genius criminal mastermind, the eponymous Artemis Fowl. The whole series is well worth a read -- the books are funny and fast-paced, and the plots are inventive. I own all of them so far, and am looking forward to the next entry in the series, which should be out this year. They are not as portentous as Harry Potter's epic struggle of Good and Evil, and there is much, much more humor. The books in this series are, in order: Artemis Fowl, in which we meet the underground technically advanced remnants of the Sidhe, Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident, in which Artemis rescues his father from the Russian mafia, Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code, in which he succumbs to more hubris than normal for him, Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception, which involves cloning and a goblin plot, or something like that, Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony, which is sort of about redemption and trolls, and the new one, Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox. Well, he had to get around to time travel eventually.
One other book of his which deserves mention (though I think they're all readable) is The Supernaturalists, which is kind of a Euro-Irish Bladerunner for kids, with a hardcore moral about violence. I've read that aloud a few times to classes in the past few years, and it gets kids' attention pretty well.
Penultimately (obviously I am adding this bit a little late), his contemporary Irish fiction/humor novel Half Moon Investigations is important because there are not really enough YAF authors who aim even halfway at boys, and this book has a plot that involves a horrible ring of stuck-up girls who badly pervert the cause of preteen feminism (apparently by failing the class issue -- the ringleader is quite the upper class child of privilege) and organize a secret cult that wears pink on the outside, but matte black underneath, and vow loyalty to a hidden portrait of Mary Robinson, the first woman President of Ireland. It's pretty hilarious, while showing strong sympathy to gormless middle school BOYS. Again, this puts me in mind of Louis Sachar.
Finally, he also has a new novel which I need to finish tonight, because it is on loan from my school's super excellent librarian -- it isn't officially available yet, but she got a special pre-publication copy -- called Airman. So far, I like it a great deal. It does have sort of fascinating elements which are reminiscent of several sources (which is the problem when you read as much -- as obsessively -- as I do; everything recalls everything else): Civil War balloonists and escape artists from Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island; retrieval of a secreted fortune by a brilliant prisoner who escapes a trumped-up charge, like Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, imprisoned nobility of spirit and an escape which involves stitching pleaded-for silk linens, like Stephen King's The Eye of the Dragon and the history of early aviation, like one of my favorite YAF books of all time, by one of my favorite YAF authors of all time, Laurence Yep's Dragonwings. Maybe I'll write about that next time, because I think I want to write about Laurence Yep.
Laurence Yep, as stated.
Michelle Magorian
K. M. Peyton
Zilpha Keatley Snyder
E. L. Konigsberg
Carolyn Mackler
Philip Pullman
Peter Dickinson
Robin McKinley
Diana Wynne Jones
Shannon Hale (even though she's a Mormon, like Anne Perry)
Gail Carson Levine (more updated fairytales, like Hale and McKinley, except Levine has made it into movies)
Sharon Creech
Louis Sachar
Andrew Clements (a powerhouse of book production for pre-teens, moving into teenagers now)
Kathryn Lasky
Scott O'Dell
Jean Craighead George
Joe Cottonwood
Mildred C. Taylor
Connie Porter
Rita Garcia Williams
Sharon Flake
Jess Mowry
Elizabeth Enright
N. M. Caldwell
Rosemary Sutcliff
Rumer Godden
Edward Eager
Enid Blyton
Robert Arthur ("The Three Investigators")
Lynne Reid Banks (but god, not the Indian in the Cupboard books)
Elizabeth Speare
Elizabeth Marie Pope
Gloria Whelan
Suzanne Fisher Staples
Malcolm J. Bosse
Deborah Ellis
Harriette Gillam Robinet
the factory that is Ann Martin
Paula Danziger
Francine Pascal
Norma Fox Mazer
Trudy Krisher
Ron Koertge (the four foregoing authors address class in interesting ways)
Frances Temple
Joan Aiken (though I don't think I can do her justice; also, obviously this subsection is YAF authors who are now dead)
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Mark Twain
L. M. Montgomery
Gene Stratton Porter
Rudyard Kipling
L. Frank Baum
Robert Louis Stevenson (and equally obviously, this is a subsection of 19th c. authors for children)
Horatio Alger
Louisa May Alcott
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Ruth Sawyer
J. D. Fitzgerald (the Great Brain books)
Sydney Taylor
Beverly Cleary (even though she aims at children a bit younger than most of these)
Lois Lowry
Karen Cushman
Alex Sanchez
Nancy Garden
Yuri Suhl
Ellen Klages
Kashmira Sheth
Kate Thompson (new Irish bump in YAF)
Indi Rana (this subsection is kind of one-off authors, or one-off so far)
Cynthia Voigt
Clare Bell
Margaret Haddix
Ursula K. Leguin (her Earthsea stuff, and the short stories)
Vonda McIntyre (she has at least one sci fi book that would be classified as YAF)
Pamela Sargent (more sci fi)
Katherine Paterson
Ann Rinaldi (these last two, I really don't much like; I'll do them if I want to be critical and meanspirited)
Wow. I could go on and on and on. Should I put this all under a cut?
ETA: Oh, my god, SHOUT OUT: In Airman, one of the characters, a blind former aeronaut (e.g. balloonist in the American Civil War whose eyes were put out by a youthful Jesse James when he was a Yankee spy among the Missouri border ruffians) tells the protagonist, Conor Broekhart, about his dead wife, in India, AISHWARYA. Oh, awesome, Eoin Colfer, way to display your crush on The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, and link to my other favorite obsession, Bollywood.
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