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Favorites of the year
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From: Cassie Wilson <cwilson2>
Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2001 03:02:49 -0500
One more rant about favorites for the year, if you please.
I didn't get to read as many YA books as I'd like to have read this year, but I did read some good ones. After I got past the negative attitude of the main character of "You Don't Know Me," by David Klass, I could enjoy his wit and the book nearly left me breathless at the end. Still, some sort of final polish is missing from the book. "Artemis Fowl" is extremely well done, a real show of writing talent and much better than I expected. However, its technology will leave it sadly outdated in only a few years and Artemis will only be an old Tom Swift---with an attitude. The book has good character revelation but not really character development or growth (maybe too short a period of time), and the author's note at the end of the book to promote the further adventures of Artemis dispel its stature as a stand alone book and one worthy of the Printz award, I think. "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" is better than I expected, too, and knits four short stories into a longer piece that offers more possibility for character development than the stricter length limitations of a regular short story would allow. The result is much more satisfying because the reader spends a greater length of time with each character as the lives of the four girls intertwine, and their connections and interactions add to the stories of more than one girl at the time. Still, the book lacks real star quality, even though the girls come to some life changing realizations and decisions about realistic problems that are plenty big. I suppose that the thing that bothers me is that the solutions turn out to be too pat, too easy, depending a bit too much on the skinny metaphor of the "magic" pants. All three of these books are above average in quality and possibly deserve to be at least Printz honor books.
Far and away the best YA book I've read this year, however, is "Fighting Reuben Wolfe." Let me say from the beginning that I hate boxing, not only because it is violent, but because it is insanely boring, and I didn't want to read the book at all. But it isn't really about boxing, I found, even though some of the boxing matches are described. It's about coming of age, in a setting different from any other that I've read about. It's about brotherhood and familyhood and standing up to the hard knocks of life. The scene that takes place on the morning of the brothers' first professional fight captures more of what being a mid-teens boy is about than anything I can remember reading
(speaking as one who has never been a boy of any age). The younger brother, Cameron, wakes up so nervous that he needs to throw up but has to wait for his father to vacate the bathroom. As he enters, the smell left by the father's gas expulsion is so chokingly bad that he postpones the nausea while he goes to get his brother out of bed to come savor the stink so they can laugh hysterically together, their nerves temporarily forgotten. The author has expressed the essence of the poor, hard-working family, no matter what year or what country; he has expressed the state of every teen boy who has to deal with hormones, budding sexual desire, the pressures brought on by loyalty and character, and a body that is neither a boy's nor a man's.
This book is deserving of the Printz award. It is a book that boys will probably read because of what they think it will be about. It is a book girls will read because it is about boys and because it has so much tenderness and humanity in it. It is a book adults can read because it contains truth; a real depiction of real life. I recommend it to you as I recommend it to the young people who come into my library.
Happy New Year to you all! Cassie Wilson
Received on Sun 30 Dec 2001 02:02:49 AM CST
Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2001 03:02:49 -0500
One more rant about favorites for the year, if you please.
I didn't get to read as many YA books as I'd like to have read this year, but I did read some good ones. After I got past the negative attitude of the main character of "You Don't Know Me," by David Klass, I could enjoy his wit and the book nearly left me breathless at the end. Still, some sort of final polish is missing from the book. "Artemis Fowl" is extremely well done, a real show of writing talent and much better than I expected. However, its technology will leave it sadly outdated in only a few years and Artemis will only be an old Tom Swift---with an attitude. The book has good character revelation but not really character development or growth (maybe too short a period of time), and the author's note at the end of the book to promote the further adventures of Artemis dispel its stature as a stand alone book and one worthy of the Printz award, I think. "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" is better than I expected, too, and knits four short stories into a longer piece that offers more possibility for character development than the stricter length limitations of a regular short story would allow. The result is much more satisfying because the reader spends a greater length of time with each character as the lives of the four girls intertwine, and their connections and interactions add to the stories of more than one girl at the time. Still, the book lacks real star quality, even though the girls come to some life changing realizations and decisions about realistic problems that are plenty big. I suppose that the thing that bothers me is that the solutions turn out to be too pat, too easy, depending a bit too much on the skinny metaphor of the "magic" pants. All three of these books are above average in quality and possibly deserve to be at least Printz honor books.
Far and away the best YA book I've read this year, however, is "Fighting Reuben Wolfe." Let me say from the beginning that I hate boxing, not only because it is violent, but because it is insanely boring, and I didn't want to read the book at all. But it isn't really about boxing, I found, even though some of the boxing matches are described. It's about coming of age, in a setting different from any other that I've read about. It's about brotherhood and familyhood and standing up to the hard knocks of life. The scene that takes place on the morning of the brothers' first professional fight captures more of what being a mid-teens boy is about than anything I can remember reading
(speaking as one who has never been a boy of any age). The younger brother, Cameron, wakes up so nervous that he needs to throw up but has to wait for his father to vacate the bathroom. As he enters, the smell left by the father's gas expulsion is so chokingly bad that he postpones the nausea while he goes to get his brother out of bed to come savor the stink so they can laugh hysterically together, their nerves temporarily forgotten. The author has expressed the essence of the poor, hard-working family, no matter what year or what country; he has expressed the state of every teen boy who has to deal with hormones, budding sexual desire, the pressures brought on by loyalty and character, and a body that is neither a boy's nor a man's.
This book is deserving of the Printz award. It is a book that boys will probably read because of what they think it will be about. It is a book girls will read because it is about boys and because it has so much tenderness and humanity in it. It is a book adults can read because it contains truth; a real depiction of real life. I recommend it to you as I recommend it to the young people who come into my library.
Happy New Year to you all! Cassie Wilson
Received on Sun 30 Dec 2001 02:02:49 AM CST
