Non-Fic for Booktalks December 27, 2007

Here are a couple of newly published titles which might interest young readers at your next booktalk. 

100 Marvels of the Modern World by Various

It’s kind of a hefty volume, but worth it’s weight in picturesque photos and fascinating facts about the world’s most amazing engineering marvels. From bridges, buildings, tunnels,  to dams every man made engineering feat from around the world is covered in this fascinating book.  Some of my personal favorites were Egypt’s Alexandria Library, The Ice Hotel In Sweden (you can connect this to Missy Elliot’s/Tweet video), and the Asahi Super Dry Hall in Japan.  

99 Ways to Cut, Sew, Trim, and Tie your Shirt into Something Special by Faith Blackney et al.

I’m a Project Runway addict and thought this book would be fun for aspiring designers. And you know what? It totally is.  Like the title states, it’s 99 projects and patterns to turn a mundane t-shirt into a fabulous skirt or any other clothing article. You could also pair this book with Generation T: 108 ways to transform a T-Shirt by Megan Nicolay.

                     

 

(Shepard Fairy’s Obey)

Sticker City: Paper Graffiti Art by Claudia Walde.

Ever notice that random sticker placed on the exit sign on the freeway? Well this book chronicles the artists who create the graffiti sticker art you may see all over your urban jungle. 

 

What if..? 75 Fascinating Questions and Answers by HowStuffWorks.com.

This book is an easy crowd pleaser for boys and girls from 7th to 12th grade. Brought to you by HowStuffWorks.com it is a plethora of interesting and fascinating questions and their scientific answers.  For my booktalk I started off with the question “What if the Hoover Dam Broke?” and related it to the movie Transformers, where in the finale the evil robots threaten to blow up the Hoover Dam.   Other questions that tickled their fancy were “What if we had no eyebrows?” and “How would you un superglue yourself?”

 

Villainology: Fabolous Lives of the Big, the Bad, and the Wicked by Arthur Slade

A great book to bring along if you’re doing a booktalk around Halloween.  Slade takes a humorous look at some of the most meanest and creepiest Villains in history. (Real and fictional.)  Personal favorites included The Invisible Man(who apparently tried to date the Invisible women, but they were never able to find eachother), The Headless Horseman, and Mephastopheles.   You could also pair this book with How to Be a Villian: Evil Laughs, Secret Lairs, Master Plans, and More!! by Neil Zawacki, which shows you how to formulate your own villainous name, I’m Mistress DoomHeart.

2 ways to get Trisha to read a book about an Asian-American December 26, 2007

In the next two months, at least five YA books featuring Asian-American or part Asian-American protagonists will be published. Shocking, isn’t it? I mean, that’s almost like a whole year’s worth of what typically gets published. Two of these books will be published by HarperTeen two weeks apart. At least, I think HarperTeen is publishing two books about Asian-Americans.

 vs.

Here’s Good Enough by Paula Yoo (February 5, 2008), the one that is for sure about an Asian-American:

How to make your Korean parents happy:

1. Get a perfect score on the SATs.
2. Get into HarvardYalePrinceton.
3. Don’t talk to boys.*

Patti’s parents expect nothing less than the best from their Korean-American daughter. Everything she does affects her chances of getting into an Ivy League school. So winning assistant concertmaster in her All-State violin competition and earning less than 2300 on her SATs is simply not good enough.

But Patti’s discovering that there’s more to life than the Ivy League. To start with, there’s Cute Trumpet Guy. He’s funny, he’s talented, and he looks exactly like the lead singer of Patti’s favorite band. Then, of course, there’s her love of the violin. Not to mention cool rock concerts. And anyway, what if Patti doesn’t want to go to HarvardYalePrinceton after all?

Paula Yoo scores big in her hilarious debut novel about an overachiever who longs to fit in and strives to stand out. The pressure is on!

*Boys will distract you from your studies.

And She’s So Money by Cherry Cheva (January 22, 2008):

Question: What do you get when you take . . .

1 overachieving girl + 1 insanely cute guy + 1 massive fine + 1 scheme involving a little dishonesty and a whole lot of cash?

I’ve always been the good girl—working seriously long hours at my family’s restaurant and getting straight As. And Camden King was always just that hot, popular guy I’d pass in the halls, whose ego was probably much bigger than his brain. I didn’t think there’d ever be a reason for us to actually, like, interact.

Then again, I never thought I’d mess up so badly that my family might lose our entire restaurant if I didn’t come up with a ton of money, and fast. So that’s where Camden comes in—he and his evil/genius plan to do kids’ homework for cash.

I know cheating’s wrong, but it’s better than being dead, right? Which is what I’d be if my parents knew about what happened. I never expected things to spin so far out of control. Or that I’d be such a sucker for Camden’s lopsided grin. Or that falling apart could be the best thing that ever happened to me.

Answer: The time of my life.

Okay, so there is no mention of race or ethnicity in the She’s So Money book description, but one of the Library of Congress subject headings assigned to the book is Thai Americans––Fiction, so I’m assuming that it is about an Asian-American after all.

Anyway, if there’s one thing guaranteed to make me not want to read a book (besides seeing the words vampire and/or werewolf on a romance novel), it’s a YA book that seems to be primarily about an Asian-American struggling with the high academic expectations of strict parents. So no offense to Paula Yoo, who I’m sure is a very lovely person, but my initial reaction to the Good Enough description and the Booklist review of it in the November 15 issue was, I may buy it for my library, but there is no way I’m reading this. Because, really, don’t we already have enough books like this? But then I read Little Willow’s review, and I think she just convinced me to give it a try. Especially because, spam. That does intrigue me.

She’s So Money, on the other hand, I’ve been totally looking forward to since I first read the book description, before I even knew that it just might be about an Asian-American. I’d like to think it’s because it just sounds a lot more fun and that, even though the protagonist is smart, her parents are mentioned only in the context of them owning a restaurant. You know, nothing about them wanting their daughter to attend HarvardYalePrinceton or become a DoctorLawyerEngineer. But I do wonder, if Good Enough didn’t mention the fact that Patti is Korean, would I be more inclined to read it? Because while I do want to read more books with Asian-American characters, combine Korean (or Chinese or Japanese or any other kind of Asian) with parental expectations of the academic or professional sort and I immediately lose interest. I personally would much rather read about a character who just happens to be Asian-American, or who may be a stereotypical smart overachiever after all, but whose problems have less to do with parental expectations than, well, anything else. Something else. And She’s So Money simply seems more like that type of book.

So there you go. Two ways to get me to read a book about an Asian-American. 1) Downplay the whole race/ethnicity issue, or 2) Make sure spam is an important enough part of the book that two different reviewers mention it. Or, you know, if a book actually meets all five points I mention here.

Class in YA lit? December 21, 2007

No, not like school classes. Class, as in socioeconomic background. Sherman Alexie is interviewed at Pop Candy, and here’s what he has to say:

There isn’t a lot of poverty literature in the young-adult world. And I don’t know why that is, but I think certainly I felt a gap. I don’t think there’s a whole lot of class literature at all. I think most of that has become racially based, and people don’t think of it as being class literature.

I was actually thinking about this last night/early hours of this morning after listening to the audio version of Missing You by Meg Cabot. Seriously. Because while the whole Rob-is-a-Grit thing had been an issue since the first book in the series, the class conflict, especially on the part of Jess’s mother, seemed so much bigger as I was listening to Missing You. I’ll go into more detail about this in my review of the audiobook, coming soon. I hope.

Also, I really want to read Alexie’s next YA book.

I will be delivering another one soon. I can tell you the title of it: Radioactive Love Song. It’s about an urban Indian kid’s epic odyssey in a car with an iPod stuffed with his mother’s favorite love songs.

Remember when I said December 17, 2007

Julie Halpern’s Get Well Soon should be recorded as an audiobook? Apparently the folks at Listening Library think so too.

You can see more of their upcoming audiobook releases here, including Carpe Diem, which will be released in February 2008. I really want to listen to it, if only to hear how the narrator interprets Hanks. I probably won’t buy it for my library, though I may get it for myself. I tried building a YA audiobook collection at my library, with mixed results. It circulates, but mostly because of requests at other libraries. I suspect this largely due to people at those libraries having long commutes, so most of the money I spent on audiobooks I now spend on manga, which gets checked out a lot more.

Early New Year’s Resolution: Read more YA non-fiction December 8, 2007

At the Nonfiction Matters blog, Marc Aronson asked why people weren’t listing non-fiction among their favorites of this year, and if they even notice the omission. So, here’s why there is no non-fiction on my favorites list right now.

But first, a little background. I used to read a lot more non-fiction than I do now. The decline started pretty much ever since I stopped going to the main library, which has a lot more of the non-fiction I’m interested in than the branch library I work at. And especially since starting this blog, which is my own fault, because I’m the one who didn’t want to write about adult books here. Even then, though, I read mostly adult non-fiction, so even if I still was reading a lot of non-fiction, I’m not sure how many titles would go on a list of favorite YA books.

Getting back to the original question, most of the YA non-fiction I’ve read this year are rather lacking in the narrative department. I could be like Gayle and put Aranzi Aronzo’s The Cute Book on my list, but… Nothing against Quick Pick-type non-fiction, and maybe my standards are too high, but I personally need some sort of narrative to call a book a favorite. Arbitrary, perhaps, but hey, it’s my list so I can follow my own criteria. The Cute Book is definitely, well, cute, but do I like it as much and does it matter as much to me as the fiction that I comfortably call favorites? At this point, no. In a few years, maybe it will be elevated to favorite status. But right now, I can’t say I’ll be as enamored with it in the future as I currently am. All the fiction on my list, on the other hand, have had a larger impact on me than the creation of a few felt mascots, whether by broadening my literary horizons or having something that simply blew my mind or simply by being a book I know I’ll read again because I loved the writing and/or characters. Non-fiction is capable of doing this as well, but not when a book consists solely of instructions, anecdotes, etc. There is a place for Quick Pick-type non-fiction on some lists, but they don’t measure up to the fiction and narrative non-fiction books I love best, and hence don’t make my favorites list.

The second factor is simply that I don’t have the opportunity to read all the non-fiction I want to. I want to read books like Who Was First: Discovering the Americas by Russell Freedman and Muckrakers: How Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, and Lincoln Steffens Helped Expose Scandal, Inspire Reform, and Invent Investigative Journalism by Ann Bausum. But considering that these type of books barely circulate at my library, not like those Chicken Soup for the Soul or getting into college books, or the majority of the fiction and graphic novels we have, it’s hard to justify buying a book that will likely only get borrowed by me. Yeah, I do have books like With Courage and Cloth: Winning the Fight for a Woman’s Right to Vote, Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX: The Law That Changed the Future of Girls in America, and Dear Miss Breed in my collection, but I can hardly make an exception for every book I’d like to purchase. I therefore don’t have all the non-fiction I want in my collection, and because I don’t have it, I can’t read it and put it on my favorites list.

Now, as to whether people in general making favorites list notice the omission and what they think about it if they do, I’m not exactly sure. I wonder if part of the answer is the amount of quality non-fiction that’s published for adults and how many of us bypass YA non-fiction in favor of the adult stuff. And I do think that most YA non-fiction is tarnished by a school taint. If it looks anything remotely like a book you’d have read to write a report when you were in school, it would have to be a pretty amazing book to get you to overlook the association with school and make it on to a favorites list (though maybe not a Best of list). Given the choice, I would always pick the adult stuff, even back when I was a teen and borrowing books for school assignments. Plus, I’m not sure all the adult non-fiction I’m interested has YA equivalents. I mean, can you imagine Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography, which is one of my favorite adult non-fiction books, as a YA book? And there is a children’s version of Salt: A World History (can you tell I’m a sucker for microhistories?), but no YA version. I do have high hopes for the Groundwork Guides series, though, so once Cybils season is over, and the books are finally cataloged, maybe I will have some YA non-fiction to add to my favorites list.

Apparently I’m a Fan of New Wave Music December 6, 2007

Okay call me stupid, but I’ve just come to the realization that I like New Wave music.  *Trisha and Jolene are probably rolling their eyes and shaking their heads as they read this.*  I was surfing around the iTunes store this weekend and found a bunch of cool 80’s songs that I had forgotten about. 

Flock of Seagulls, check

Thompson Twins, check

The Police, check

Blondie, check

XTC, check

Now what about Depeche Mode, The Cure, The Pet Shop Boys, Duran Duran, and Red Flag?  Are those considered new wave?  I’m thinking they are more electronica, but who knows what I like anymore?  Jolene can probably help me sorting this one out.   

Anyway our library system has some pretty cool “old” music.  Check out our catalog for some of your favorite groups.  Haha!  We have OMD!

Fablehaven by Brandon Mull December 4, 2007

If I were looking for the next best series to turn into a movie it would be Fablehaven.  I’m a little late to the party of praising this gem of a fantasy read.  But this is one of those books you could easily recommend to Harry Potter fans, Spiderwick Chronicles fans, and other fantasy fans in general.  Although most of our copies of Fablehaven have been put into the children’s fiction section, this book has wider appeal ranging from fourth graders to adults like myself.  It fills a nice niche of being age appropriate for the younger set but having a fully developed plotline to satisfy more sophisticated readers. 

While their parents go away on a mandatory cruise, Kendra and Seth are sent to stay with grandparents whom they’ve only met on a few occassions.  At first they find their grandfather’s rules oppressive and they assume he does not like them.  Later when they discover a new world that they thought only existed in fairytales and myths do they begin to understand why their grandfather has set so many rules.  A new world of fairies, golems, satyrs, and witches enchants and frightens the two protagonists as they venture forth into a quest to find their grandfather who has been mysteriously abducted.   

I don’t want to give too much away on this blog so for more details on Fablehaven check out the Fablehaven wiki.  Oh, and just to whet your appetite: giant cow.