From: Kathleen Horning <horning>
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 15:17:31 -0500

Terri, Thanks for giving us your 15-year-old son's review of "Smack." The conference panel on YA literature you described sounds intriguing. It's especially interesting to hear that "Smack" has had enough young readers that it would be discussed at a library conference. Was your son the only one who had had a chance to read it, or were there other panelists who commented on it? If the latter, was there general agreement among them that "Smack" was a good book?

Kathleen Horning

Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education University of Wisconsin-Madison Room 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 N. Park St Madison, WI 53706 Telephone: 608&3720 FAX: 608&2I33 ccbcinfo at mail.soemadison.wisc.edu www.soemadison.wisc.edu/ccbc/


My fifteen year old son, Chris, just served on a panel discussion of
"dark" YA literature at the Maine Library Conference. The session was incredibly popular and all feedback was positive. All of the librarians in the audience
(myself included) appreciated the chance to hear kids' take on the books under discussion. One of the titles was SMACK.

I read Kathleen's questions to him this afternoon and his response was:

"Teens identify with both Tar and (definitely) Gemma at the beginning of the book but Gemma becomes distasteful for a bit when she first starts associating with the squatters. After that, Gemma as an individual is less significant than the Gemma-on-heroin character, so her personality becomes less important."

Chris, a voracious reader of YA and adult literature, loved this book.

Toni Buzzeo, MLIS Longfellow School Library Media Center Portland, ME
Received on Wed 10 Jun 1998 03:17:31 PM CDT