From: Sally Miller <derbymiller>
Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2005 20:14:02 -0400

Thank you to Maia and Karen for articulating their points of view concerning Block's books so cogently. I am one of the minority, I guess. I don't love the books or hate them. I've read Dangerous Angels (the Weetzie Bat stories) and I was a Teenage Fairy, and while I found them entertaining, I don't feel any particular desire to retain or reread them. For me, the characters just don't seem real. It's not that I am unacquainted with kids confronting issues like those in the books, even if I am a seventy year old middle-class Midwesterner, it's just that Weetzie and Witch Baby, Barbie and Todd -- Cherokee -- almost all of them seem like magazine illustrations, like movie poster figures, like someone acting a scene for MTV. And I don't get a sense of real feeling in the books. Maybe that's what might be upsetting Maia. Is we know someone is suffering, we should care, we should hurt for them, we should be looking for a way we can help. But by book's end I don't foresee much that's positive in store for any of the characters, and I don't really care. It bothers me that I don't. Sally Derby
Received on Wed 08 Jun 2005 07:14:02 PM CDT