The cool thing about this one is that the heroine is a U.S. Navy pilot, who has to eject from her jet into the ocean, and a few times her training is very useful. She gets to do an especially cool thing near the end.
Plot elements: heroine is stranger in a strange land; hero is ship captain. Pirates have been wronged by society, are seeking revenge, and have a code of honor. Pirates have a base on a tropical island. Heroine befriends various of the crew, who are loyal to her. The equator is crossed, with appropriate rituals. There is a perky cabin boy. There is a sea battle, with cannon. Bonus heroine crossdressing; she wears her flight suit, which is strange to her hosts.
Avi's YA novel The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle isn't really a pirate novel, but a sea adventure. Charlotte ends up alone on a ship with an evil captain, whom she initially trusts because he is of her own social status, despite warnings from the ship's cook, an old black man. One of the best things about the book is that her opinions are very much of her time, and when her opinions change, it's fairly realistically portrayed. After she realizes the captain is evil, she sides with the crew and learns to be one of them, working the sails, etc.. When she is returned to her parents, she can't handle the restriction and refuses to forget her experiences; she is out of place in her own society, and returns to sea.
Plot elements: heroine is stranger in a strange land and also hero. Most of the sailors have a code of honor. Heroine befriends various of the crew, who are loyal to her. Bonus heroine crossdressing.
I've got a couple more pirate romances on the TBR.
Flora is the youngest child of a family of soldiers; her mother is a general, and her father was tortured by the Huitzils and is a wee bit shellshocked. Flora doesn't want to be regular army, she wants to be a Ranger, which is essentially a spy. Her idol is Nini Mo, the Coyote Queen, greatest ranger ever, and she religiously reads the yellowback novels depicting Nini Mo's adventures as well as Nini Mo's guidebook to ranger skills. Whenever she gets the chance, she practices her ranger skills, which get her into and out of scrapes. And it's much better than I can describe. Just read it.
I highly recommend this and the first book in the series, Flora Segunda.
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I like angsty Young Adult books.
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Yes.
14 (34.1%)
No. 1 (2.4%)
Only when No Animals Die. 16 (39.0%)
Maybe. 8 (19.5%)
Clicky. 2 (4.9%)
In an angsty alternate-world YA fantasy, I'd like these things:
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Animals dying. 2 (4.8%)
NO ANIMALS CAN DIE. People are okay to die. 26 (61.9%)
Dead parent/s. 19 (45.2%)
Dead sibling/s. 13 (31.0%)
Caring, supportive parent/s. 14 (33.3%)
Ticky. 13 (31.0%)
An evil wizard friend who turns out to be, well, evil. 16 (38.1%)
Horrible Physical Suffering. 4 (9.5%)
Horrible Emotional Suffering. 24 (57.1%)
Horrible Physical AND Emotional Suffering. 16 (38.1%)
Finding a new friend! And bonding about angst. 27 (64.3%)
Being betrayed by a friend and ending up in bad situation. 23 (54.8%)
Being betrayed by family member and ending up in bad situation. 22 (52.4%)
Doing something stupid and ending up in bad situation. 23 (54.8%)
Suffering at end about to get worse SEQUEL on the horizon! 12 (28.6%)
My favorite you-only-hurt-the-ones-you-love torture is:
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losing a body part (already tm Turner and Wein) 2 (4.8%)
losing family members 15 (35.7%)
losing friends 16 (38.1%)
losing entire village/tribe/household/etc. 16 (38.1%)
losing magical abilities 19 (45.2%)
recovering from physical torture 14 (33.3%)
held captive for years 14 (33.3%)
THE HORSE CANNOT DIE 19 (45.2%)
alone and friendless 21 (50.0%)
horribly betrayed by trusted teacher 24 (57.1%)
amnesia 10 (23.8%)
exile from all that is familiar 28 (66.7%)
sold into slavery 20 (47.6%)
stranded alone in a desert 13 (31.0%)
ticky 15 (35.7%)
"I'm old enough to still be excited by the 'newness' of multicultural art, but I know my students have grown up thinking of monoculturalism as the exception rather than the rule."--Kris McDermott on the Interstitial Arts message board. How aware are YA authors of their readers' expectations for multiculturalism? How do you meet this expectation if your own background is less than worldly? How do you create a reasonably and realistically multicultural set of characters without resorting to tokenism? How do multicultural tales differ depending on whether the multiculturalism is incidental or integral to the plot, and what does each kind of story tell its readers about the nature of culture?
I would appreciate input, and to know what, if you were an audience member, you might want to know about the topic, or specifically from the panelists, who are: Victoria Janssen (L), Alaya Dawn Johnson, Anil Menon, Vandana Singh, Jean-Louis Trudel.
Thanks!
All that sounds like every other scary YA novel, but there are a couple of really good twists that moved it up about ten notches in my mental list of vampire books I actually like. Read!
Adam Rex, THE TRUE MEANING OF SMEKDAY
Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, THE SHADOW SPEAKER
Elizabeth Wein, THE LION HUNTER
These will join the books that made the preliminary ballot:
Steve Berman, VINTAGE
Sarah Beth Durst, INTO THE WILD
J.K. Rowling, HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS
Ysabeau Wilce, FLORA SEGUNDA
Congratulations to all the nominees!!!
I enjoyed Diana Wynne Jones' The Pinhoe Egg, but don't have any detailed comments on it. I liked that the adult characters were not guaranteed to be trustworthy, and I liked the way that characters' perceptions of each other changed throughout the book, as they learned more about each other. And I always like it when a girl gains power.
Kate Elliott's The Spirit Gate was a deep and satisfying read, as I've come to expect from her. I liked the complexity of her worldbuilding. Even the good guys had shades of gray, that made me want to read more about them. She made people being carried around by giant eagles seem realistic, and made the eagles individuals. She did not make the eagles at all cute, for which I was extremely grateful. I think one of the reasons it was so gripping was that I as a reader did not doubt she would kill off characters, so their safety was not assured. To find out who survived, I had to read on.
There was one white-skinned character who was considered an exotic oddity by all the other characters, and passed from hand to hand as a slave.
( Spoiler. )
Various point of view characters had terrible things happen to them. Some ended up reasonably happy. Some ended up changed. I was interested in all of them, even the ones I didn't particularly like.
I'm definitely up for reading the sequel.
Dylan lives in a town called Pine Mountain that's currently undergoing conflict with "flatlanders" and "weekenders" who are taking over the economy and adding gated developments. That conflict underscores the problems when a new girl, Cate, starts in their school, and Dylan finds herself confiding her psychic ability. She's never told anyone except her mother and the town's deputy, not even her best friend, Pilar. Since Vrettos gives plenty of time for us to get to know Dylan and Pilar's friendship before Cate enters the story, the emotional impact is higher.
Dylan's first vision happens when she's five, and a boy in her kindergarten class is murdered. Clarence's murder dramatically influenced the town and her friends, so when another murder occurs, with evidence that it was the same "Drifter," Dylan begins to wonder if she could somehow prevent further killing, instead of just seeing where to locate the bodies.
Though the solution to the mystery isn't that surprising, it has a satisfying resonance.
Here are excerpts..
Not yet convinced? Not yet speaking like a Boov?
I don't think there's another book out there like SMEKDAY, YA or otherwise, and I'm not just talking about the occasional illustrations. It's narrated by Gratuity Tucci (nicknamed "Tip"), who starts out writing an essay for a time capsule contest, detailing the months after aliens first invaded Earth. For the most part, the narrative style is light, and if you read the excerpts you've seen the wacky humor, but there are also important issues addressed, among them race and colonialism, which are treated with serious intent.
( Some spoilers. )
Besides being funny and an entertaining read, it's got a lot of food for thought in there.
Go, read! Or I will do my DEVASTATING EYE LASERS!
Skin Hunger: A Resurrection of Magic, Kathleen Duey: this was a really good book, but too depressing throughout for me to lose myself in. There are two stories going on, separated widely in time but linked, and it takes a little time to realize the implications of the links, which are not necessarily good for any of the characters. The character I liked most, Sadima, seemed to be the only one who was not obsessed with magic above the business of living; a character in the parallel story, Hahp, has to become obsessed with magic to survive. The wizard school is the creepiest thing ever.
The Children of Green Knowe, Lucy Boston, was written in 1954, and has simple, gorgeous descriptions of the countryside of England in that time. WWII and its effects are never mentioned [edited to add: I forgot! Boggis mentions both WWI and WWII]; the present mingles instead with the distant past and the children who lived in the house at that time. I have read other books in which a child meets ghosts from the past, but am I wrong, or do those not appear much any more? Have they all been replaced by time travel stories? I'm thinking of books like The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope and Margaret Mahy's The Tricksters and Patricia McKillip's The House on Parchment Street.
Carla Jablonski, Silent Echoes: though, in the end, I felt it was a bit too tidy an ending, I enjoyed a lot of things about this book, particularly the historical detail and its attention to class and gender issues of the late nineteenth century. Also, girls work together! Lucy Phillips works with her father to con rich people by pretending to be a medium, during the heydey of the spiritualist movement in 1882. She's shocked to actually hear a voice in her head, a girl named Lindsay Miller, who is terribly worried about her addict mother and new stepfather. Lucy thinks Lindsay is dead. Lindsay, who is actually alive in our era, thinks she is schizophrenic. Gradually, they discover the truth and begin to help each other with their problems. I especially liked that Jablonski showed nineteenth century birth control activists and showed how thinking about those issues changed the way Lucy thought about herself.
Staton Rabin, The Curse of the Romanovs: I didn't like this one, as the historical detail was very shallow, especially compared to the Jablonski book. The last Romanov prince, using a method given him by Rasputin, travels forward in time, meets a girl who's studying hemophilia because her father died from related causes, and with her help tries to save his family from massacre. They have a romance for no apparent reason. The ending was almost unbearably twee; also, I was bothered by the wacky Russian-style diction. Read something else instead.
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Which of these factors do you think is necessary to make a young adult book "classic"? [i.e., one that will be enjoyed by future generations]
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An involving story. 25 (100.0%)
Memorable characters. 24 (96.0%)
Skilled prose. 8 (32.0%)
Unusual prose. 0 (0.0%)
Uncommon setting. 2 (8.0%)
Original ideas. 8 (32.0%)
Classic ideas. 4 (16.0%)
Clever dialogue. 8 (32.0%)
Worldbuilding that seems real. 18 (72.0%)
Complex dilemmas for the characters. 9 (36.0%)
A glossary. 0 (0.0%)
A great evil that must be overcome. 1 (4.0%)
Internal turmoil. 3 (12.0%)
Turtles. 4 (16.0%)
Ticky box is always classic. 12 (48.0%)
Which qualities do you think are most important in a classic book?
Standalone or Series?
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Standalone. 4 (16.7%)
Series. 1 (4.2%)
Clicky button. 4 (16.7%)
Neither. 0 (0.0%)
Both. 15 (62.5%)
I think it's impossible to determine if a book will become classic before it becomes classic.
The last YA book I read was [blank] and it [was/was not] a future classic.
Right now, I would rather be:
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at work. 2 (8.3%)
at home. 7 (29.2%)
doing something else. 5 (20.8%)
taking a poll. 2 (8.3%)
sleeping. 8 (33.3%)
I didn't enjoy The Winter Prince as much, and I think it had to do with three things: one, that it was a first novel, and felt a little disjointed to me at times; two, I'd already read Wein's later novels, and of course this one hadn't yet reached that level of accomplishment; and three, knowing the story of Mordred/Medraut, I could guess that he wasn't going to achieve his main goal, or what he thought was his main goal. He did achieve a goal, and a good one, after a sequence that reminded me, again, of Dorothy Dunnett, a bit in the last section of The Game of Kings. The author's notes say The Winter Prince was composed over a long period; I think that made it more episodic, and is why I didn't get swept along like I have with her other novels. It was still quite good. I suspect I would have liked it even more had I not read her very superior The Sunbird first.
Anyway, I recommend these books.
Sarah Beth Durst, Into the Wild: this is a lot of fun. The Wild, which forces everything it can get its hands on into a story, is living beneath Julie's bed. Julie's mom escaped the Wild and brought all her friends with her, long ago, and has been guarding The Wild ever since. You can see where this is going, right? The Wild escapes, of course, and it's up to Julie to save her mom and her town. I was actually scared a couple of times.
Elizabeth Wein, The Lion Hunter: agh the story is split in the middle! Telemakos is left in peril! Otherwise, a very good book, absorbing and emotionally engaging. I wish the cliffhanger ending had been announced at the front end, though. I was unprepared, as the book before this, The Sunbird, was complete in itself.
I am not an overwhelming fan of Arthuriana, but I love Wein's take on it, especially in the Telemakos books; he is related to Artos, but lives in the African kingdom of Aksum (essentially, Ethiopia & Eritrea) and goes through terrible, exciting perils. Upon finishing The Sunbird, in which Telemakos is a pre-teen spy for the emperor of Aksum, I had a flash memory of how I felt reading Dorothy Dunnett, only these books are much shorter, of course, and not nearly so wacked.
Dead High Yearbook has wonderful design; it's a graphic horror anthology about the size and shape of a real high school yearbook, except everyone is dead. Inner pages have little blood smears at the corners. The stories are loosely tied together by "Zombie Boy" and "Zombie Girl" preparing the yearbook. All the stories had grossout moments. Some felt a bit preachy or were too short, but none were actively bad. It was nice to see a good number of non-white characters (Japanese, Latino, Black) though of course they came to horrible ends as well as the white characters. Everybody died. The end.
Hex Education by Emily Gould and Zareen Jaffery is, essentially, paranormal chicklit for teens. Sophie Stone is the daughter of a horror-movie director and his costumer/muse, and when the book opens, they've just moved from L.A. to her dad's hometown of Mythic, Massachusetts. Sophie isn't happy about this and snarks about it in first person. Her mysterious headaches break a window in their spooky new house. She makes friends with three girls whom she considers a "fashion oasis" and whom, coincidentally, also get magic powers! They're the new coven! Quel shoque! There is at least one surprising twist at the end. It's not bad, but it was pretty fluffy.
Is there anyone who has not read the book yet, who cares? I guess I'll do a cut anyway, for the sake of length.
( Spoilers for book and movie. )
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