Hitting Close to Home

I like the way Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life as We Knew It opens. Miranda is supposed to watch an an asteroid hit the moon and write a report on it for school, becasue even the adults don't know that things on Earth are about to go horribly wrong. It's like when the Titanic is about to go down, and there's prople out on the deck playing hockey with the ice cubes. Or when the Great Storm hit Galveston in 1900 and tons of people went out to play in the waves. Creepy stuff.

Because in Miranda's world, that rock striking the moon brings on a series of catastrophies that make a measley little hurricane look like a kid splashing around in a bathtub. Suddenly prom and swim meets aren't the most important things in Miranda's life. She's more concerned with finding food and not freezing to death.

There are a few minor details in the novel that don't ring true. Threatened with starvation, a lot of people would have eaten the cat, right up near the front of the book. I'm a cat person, so I would like to think I wouldn't have. But I certainly would have eaten the cat's food! Overall, though, this is a really good book, and Miranda is an awesome protagonist. Life as We Knew It ends leaving the reader wanting to know more about Miranda's world.

And Pfeffer certainly delivers. The Dead and the Gone examines the same series of events from a different point of view. Alex's parents disappear, leaving him to traverse the bold new world which used to be New York with only his two younger sisters. It's pretty harrowing, but if you read that one and still haven't had enough, the third book, This World We Live In will be released in January 2010. It's supposed to take place a month after the first book and will be a return to Miranda's point of view.

In the meantime, Pfeffer has an offer on her blog where you can get a bookplate that she's signed to put into the front of your copies of the first two books.

On a Planet Far Far Away

Some events in history are so dark, so horrific that they are hard to wrap our brains around, even today. That may be why YA literature has so many books that deal directly with the Holocaust -- or that dance around it, giving it other names, setting the events in other places. The Island of Nollop (see previous post) is just one.

Another compelling take on this is The Diary of Pelly D by L.J. Adlington. It's a story within a story, and it's hard to describe this one completely without ruining the shocks. The framing story is that of 14 year old Tony V. He lives on another planet, in a future marked by war and genocide where free reading is forbidden. While doing his demolition job, he unearths Pelly D's buried diary. Through her life, he begins to understand the power struggles that led to his own world.

Interviews with Adlington reveal that the book was inspired by a famous historical diary. By the time you're done with the book, you'll understand whose.

Cherry Heaven, the companion novel that came out earlier this year is high on my To-Read List. She's got another book coming out in July. It's called The Glittering Eye, but I don't think it is set in the same world as the first two. L.J., please correct me on that if I'm wrong.

Speaking of interesting use of language (as I was in my last post), who out there has read Ella Minnow Pea? It's Mark Dunn's debut novel, which came out in 2001. You'll probably find this shelved with literary fiction rather than in YA, though the protagonist is obviously a teenager.

Ella lives on a fictional island where the people revere Nevin Nollop, the man who penned the famous sentence that uses all the letters of the alphabet, "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." There's even a statue of Nevin. But when letters start falling off the statue, the island's council bans the use of those letters of the alphabet. The whole thing is written as a series of letters, and the islandfolk have to become more creative in use of word choice as each letter disappears.

At the TLA conference a couple of years ago, I sat in on a session where Nancy Pearl was discussing this book with a bunch of librarians. Somebody said they saw Ella Minnow Pea as a farce. Even though the premise is outrageous, and some of the events are funny, I don't agree. Unless you think of Orwell's Animal Farm as a farce. There's something dark and dangerous in the power the island council wields. They're threatening death, banishment or imprisonment for disobediance as early as the first letter Ella sends to her cousin. And there's nothing funny about the courage it takes in the face of that for Ella to stand up for what is right.

What's in a Name?

No discussion of of strong female characters in modern YA would be complete without Tally Youngblood, protag of Scott Westerfeld's Uglies trilogy. Okay, it's not a trilogy anymore, but the fourth one has a different protagonist, Aya, and I'm hoping in my heart of hearts that she's eventually going to get her own trilogy. How about it, Scott? Please?

The existing books are Uglies, Pretties, Specials and Extras. This is one of my absolute favorite series. It deals with serious issues, such as body image, the pervasiveness of the media, and the apathy of society in general. But you hardly notice, because of all the hoverboard chases, anti-grav jackets that let people jump off buildings in a single bound, and, most importantly, the great love story.

At the same time, Westerfeld plays with language, inventing an entire future slang that leaves you thinking in it by the time you're done reading. This effect lasts about a week. You flip on the TV and see America's Funniest Home Videos, and you think, "That really is brain-missing." Or maybe it's just me.

The best part is how you can tell how the characters feel about each other based on the use of nicknames, which consist of adding a suffix. Tally becomes Tally-wa, Shay becomes Shay-la. I don't know if every name would be able to survive this treatment. Dandylyon-wa? Too many syllables. Dandy-la? Better. What do you guys think?

The main reason I despair of there ever being another Aya book is that Westerfeld has moved on to a new series, which begins with Leviathan, coming out in October. His blog shows stacks of the ARCs, just waiting to be cracked. I guess *sigh* that after I see it, I'll get attached. After all, it's an alternate history involving biotechnology and big robot-looking things.

Spy Girls

I just love books with strong female characters. And Cammie Morgan from Ally Carter's Gallagher Girls series is, on the surface, extremely strong. After all, she's a second generation spy who could probably disable a bad guy with an Oreo cookie and some drier lint. She's known as the invisible chamelion because she is good at blending in anywhere and not being noticed. Yet, that invisibility is her way of hiding from the realities of life. And, since she's still in high school -- albeit a spy-girl high school -- she's worried about what being hard to notice means in terms of the relationships she's trying to form. That's what makes her a well-rounded character. That's probably what kept me up until four in the morning reading the second book, Cross My Heart and Hope To Spy, all in one sitting. I highly recommend it and the first book, I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You.

I can't wait to get my hands on the third Gallagher Girls book, Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover, which is coming out in June. Ally, if you're out there, I'd love to review an ARC!

dandylyon