Graphic Novels

American Born Chinese was short and sweet with multiple narratives which were charming and drove the theme home. The illustrations were nice, almost cartoonish like a lot of stuff younger people watch on Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon. Personally, I love graphic novels. They're a perfect combination of art and storytelling. Often the author is also the illustrator, which allows them to express their story in more than one way. The pictures can say just as much, sometimes more, than words on a page. Often the stories in graphic novels are very intense and the images compliment that. Perhaps its something about the way graphic novels are paced or maybe there's just a lot of really great graphic novelists, but I find that most graphic novels are very exciting and interesting. I can't say I've ever read one that I didn't enjoy. I feel that the graphic novel works well for young adult fiction because not only can it discuss serious issues that teens are interested in, as many graphic novels are gritty and serious, but it also has that fast paced, easy to consume reading which appeals to younger audiences. It especially appeals to those who don't like to read and prefer movies, because reading a graphic novel is a lot like watching a movie. I know I will personally continue to read graphic novels, but I've always like them so that's nothing new.

Novels in Verse

As I said in class, I read "What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know" which is a really fast paced verse novel through the perspective of a 14 year old boy. The article we read was really helpful to help me see the value in novels in verse because the one I read, along with Brown Girl Dreaming, didn't really show me that. I like the way the author showed the graph of a novel in verse surrounded by drama, poetry, and novels. When put that way, it starts to make more sense. The comparisons to drama throughout were also helpful to imagine the character as someone presenting a speech on stage or multiple characters having their chance in the spotlight to tell a story. I would have like to read a novel in verse with multiple perspectives because it does sound like a good use of that form. I have read a few young adult novels with multiple perspectives and I really enjoyed it. I think it was also helpful when the author of the article compared novels in verse to drama in that we need to set the stage in a way for ourselves and it's very based on character's voice. Although I still am not totally sold on novels in verse, I do see a lot more value in them after reading the article and I think if done well, it can be really successful and beautiful. Unfortunately, the one I read was not done well, the poems were simply broken up paragraphs, and it felt like lazy writing. I would like to give novels in verse another chance some day.

Brown Girl Dreaming

I was completely underwhelmed by this book and I think perhaps it had everything to do with the lyric style. I felt this was a very character driven piece in which the characters are not discussed as much as I would like. There was a lot more I wanted to know about her father, her younger brother's father, her mom, her grandparents, and her siblings. It moved so quickly that everything felt almost inconsequential. It was a memoir of her life, and as important as it might be to her, it was not important to me at all. My other issue with it is that I just wasn't convinced that the narrator was really a child. She wrote like an adult and didn't even try to give the impression that she was the age that she was trying to write as. It was hard to take it seriously. Overall, it was an easy read, but an incredibly forgettable one and I don't think that had to be the case. I certainly don't feel that this deserves a national book award, but that's just my opinion.

The House of the Scorpian

This was the second book that we've read that I really enjoyed reading and kept me interested the whole way through. The other one was, of course, The Book Thief. I think the reason I enjoyed those two the most is because they really got at a lot of deeper questions and I was able to empathize with the characters more. When I connect with a book on a deeper level, I tend to enjoy it more because I can get more out of it. The fact that it was science fiction really gave it more of an entertainment value for me as well. I had read this book in the past, but I only remembered it up to a certain point so the ending was just as much a surprise to me as it was for the rest of the class, though it wasn't exactly a surprising ending. I really enjoyed the subtle way that it touched on big issues because it gave the reader the ability to either leave it or dig deeper. I think personally it's hard not to dig deeper when given subjects like cloning and slavery, but I can see how other people would rather sit back and be taken on the ride that the book is offering them. All in all, I really appreciated this book not just for its plot, but for the amount of thought that went into it. It didn't feel like a simple story told simply for entertainment. It was not forgettable either despite having read other books about the same thing.

The Graveyard Book

I'm going to try to take into consideration that this book is meant for ten year olds and above. I have a little brother who just turned nine and I think about how immature he still is and how he wouldn't know a lot of the words in this book and I'm not sure if he would like it or not. The book starts out with a murder, with the description of a wet knife. Perhaps a young child wouldn't immediately understand how creepy and dark that is, but maybe they would be smart enough to piece it together and realize the knife is wet with blood.
Any way, regardless of whether or not a ten year old would like or even understand this book thoroughly, I personally did not really find it all that great. I was just bored by it. Luckily, it was a quick read so I can't complain too much. I think the reason I didn't enjoy it as much as the others is the same reason that I didn't enjoy Looking for Alaska. I just simply didn't feel connected to the characters. In this book, it was more because the book was very plot and setting centered, and less centered on the characters. I didn't really get to know the people in the book, like Bod's ghost parents or even Scarlet, so I didn't really care what was happening. I liked Bod a little bit, but he was kind of boring as a character. I wasn't really interested in the magic and supernatural things happening, but I can see why a kid would be entertained by it. Yet, this book isn't really for kids, it's for young adults (sort of, the earlier side of the spectrum).
This book to me seemed like a lot of other books which rely on supernatural elements to carry the story, but don't really have impressive writing or much that really sticks with the reader once it's finished. Overall, it's a pretty forgettable book for me. Sorry if I'm being too harsh and some of you loved this book.

Irony in YA Lit

I won't pretend like this critical reading wasn't a difficult one. I feel like I understand it to an extent, but perhaps it goes too deep down the rabbit hole for my comfort. It's true that there is irony in adult authors writing young adult literature in the voice (typically) of a young adult. An adult can't really take back all of the experiences and knowledge that they've gained since they were a young adult and therefore can't prevent their own voice from leaking onto the pages, no matter how hard they may try to stay true to the young adult voice. Maybe it was only me, but I remember realizing as a young adult reader that most of the books I was reading were written by adults who had already gone through all of the stuff in the book. It made me wonder why they continued to write young adult fiction or how they were even able to remember what it was truly like. For me, there was questioning, but maybe for most there wasn't. However, I think that the author of this critical reading assumes that young adults aren't capable of questioning the voice of the author and that they need some hints or clues to make them question the voice that they're reading either by making the narrator unreliable or by creating other characters and voices which offer a different perspective. I think that she is possibly underestimating the intelligence of young people or the adult-ness of young people and their ability to relate to the adult voice. Perhaps I'm steering away from the conversation in the article at this point.
I would say that Dante and Aristotle offered several voices in the book which would allow the reader to take form their own opinions. It might not be the perfect example of what the author of this article is looking for, but I think it counts. Looking for Alaska, however, seems to be exactly what the author is arguing against. There's definitely irony in the relationship between the author and the reader and the voice of the narrator is not very diverse. I'm not sure if Northern Light went with Bahktins theory, but I know it offered several different voices at least. It's difficult for me to tell, but I know that all books were written by adults. Not all were written in first person, though. Perhaps that allows for more double-voiced discourse in and of itself. Any way, for those of you who understand the article better, please leave you comments and throw me a bone here.

A Northern Light

This book was actually pretty refreshing after reading Looking for Alaska. There are a lot of issues in this book like abuse, sexism, racism, love vs independence. Using the time period was a great technique to bring these issues to light, but they are still very relevant today. Many young women are still asking the question, do I get married and have children or continue my education and further my career? I thought this would be a book about murder or even a book about a moment in history, but really it was a coming of age story about a girl who needed to figure out for herself what she truly wanted out of life. I especially enjoyed this book because it was our first book so far with a female protagonist and I felt like any girl can relate to what she's going through, even though our lives are so vastly different. My only complaint was that I had the expectation of it being a book surrounding a real life murder and so it often felt like it was moving very slowly and going on too long about things that didn't seem to matter. Of course, it all mattered in the end. Her life on the farm, her friends and family, her teachers and coworkers, all ended up playing their part and having significance. I think this book is great for teens because it gives us a story that is far enough from our own lives to enjoy the story, but close enough to take something from it.