Book Events: Children's Literary Cafe - Book Jackets

Last time I wrote about one of these I attracted a little bit of controversy - let's see if I can make it through unscathed this time!

While half of the country was digging out from Snowmageddon this weekend, NYC had a few flurries and some vicious winds. Yet that was apparently enough bad weather to knock the subways out of whack for awhile, meaning that instead of arriving 10 minutes early for this month's Cafe, I was almost ten minutes late, but the first speaker, John Rocco, didn't seem too far into his remarks, so I don't think I missed much more than introductions.

John Rocco, probably most famous now for illustrating the covers for the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, went over a bit of his biography and how he ended up on track as the "re-do" guy. He was illustrating another Hyperion book when he was sent the original version of The Lightning Thief which had a rather un-inspiring cover. When asked if he could re-do the jacket, he said "of course!" despite never having done a jacket before! After sales of The Lightning Thief shot through the roof, he's re-done several more covers, either when the original jacket just wasn't working, or updating a cover for a new printing.

In the wider blogosphere discussion about race and representation on book covers, it's been said often that jacket illustrators don't often read the manuscript of the book they're given. I didn't have a chance in the question portion to ask if this really was standard, but John says he reads every book he's given to work on. He tries not to show faces, choosing to either obscure them shadow or have a character facing away from the reader, appearing to look into the book, which he finds to be more inviting than a character looking out at him. Like I said, I didn't have a chance to ask if his way of doing things was standard or not, but I imagine he might have more leeway than other jacket illustrators because he's currently enjoying quite a bit of prestige and since he's the re-do guy, the publisher's are acknowledging that something didn't work the first time around and they want someone else to take a stab at it.

The next speaker was Laurent Linn, the art director for Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. He had some really great insights and an entertaining slide show!

He opened by talking a bit about how the dreaded economy has affected the publishing industry - kids books (including YA) are doing slightly better than adult books, but everyone's hurting right now. Because all of the publisher's are still vying for your dime, the sales and marketing departments have a lot more say over cover design now than they used to. Basically, the publishers are scared and don't want to take chances - if covers with girls on them have been selling well, the marketing department doesn't want to veer too far away from that into an arty cover. It's the same reason why all of the movies now are remakes of other movies or media franchises and the shows on Broadway are revivals - the sales and marketing people think we consumers will only spend our hard earned money on sure bets for entertainment.

Laurent works with both picture books and YA books and has a slightly different process for each. With children's picture books, he gives the manuscript to the artist and doesn't say anything else - after all, he's hired that artist because of their skills, and doesn't want to interfere there. The cover is usually the first thing an artist will create so it can go to sales & marketing and be seen by all sorts of other people while the artist finishes the rest of the book.

Of course, sometimes this process is smoother than others. Laurent walked us through the absolutely nightmarish process of completing the cover for the book The Lion Who Hugged - first the artist refined her style over the course of illustrating the book, which meant the cover didn't quite fit with the rest of the book. Then some people didn't like how one character on the cover looked. Then someone decided the cover illustration was too broad and needed to be narrowed, and so on and so forth. I think the illustrator had to totally redo the cover three or four times! What a nightmare.

For YA books, there are different "rules" for what covers "should" look like - children's books obviously are almost always illustrated covers. Middle Grade novels are also usually illustrated. Young Adult novels, however, must have a photographic cover - unless it's fantasy, then you can go back to illustration. Want to convey that your novel is truly a literary work rather than mere entertainment? Add "a novel" under the title.

For photographic YA covers, it seems like Laurent is often the designer for the whole process, especially since he rarely has the budget to order a photoshoot to create original art for a book. So he spends his time going through stock photography and playing with images and fonts in Photoshop until there's a final image everyone is happy with. When books move from hardback to paperback, every title is considered individually when it comes to redesigning the cover. Sometimes serious, literary covers in hardback will be changed to something lighter for the paperback release, since paperbacks are seen as more for pure entertainment than hardbacks.

Several questions were asked in the Q&A session that I didn't get to take down because I was trying to figure out how to phrase my own question (which I finally figured out just when we were told there was time for one more question! Since I was in the back of the room, thanks to being late, I wasn't seen in time). However I did make note of one - there was a question about ebooks and how that's affecting children's publishing. Laurent said that the numbers he'd heard were 20% of adult books being sold were ebooks, while just 2% of YA and MG books being sold were ebooks. However, those numbers represented additional readers - the people downloading ebooks are the ones who wouldn't consider buying a traditional book anyway, so these additional formats are just helping to get books into the hands of more people, which I found quite interesting.

Thanks to the NYPL for hosting another great event!

Regarding my next Twilight post: that's going to be another few days - I've finished the book but now I have to go over my notes and read up on a lot of critical responses to Granger's work; I feel like I'm in college again! I'm definitely enjoying it, but now I'm coming down with a cold (ugh) and tomorrow I have an interview for a new job! So keep your fingers crossed for me tomorrow morning, that I do well in the interview and don't sneeze all over everyone there, and regularly scheduled blogging will continue on Thursday (I hope!)

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Review: IraqiGirl ed. by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field

Found via: Galleycat Blog

In elementary school, I loved reading diaries from girls in war-torn areas; I had a strange preoccupation with war, actually. I read Anne Frank's diary, of course, and I actually bought Zlata's Diary at a book fair (I didn't, and still don't, actually buy many books, thanks to finite shelf space). So even though it's been a long time since I read either of those books, I figured I'd devour IraqiGirl with the same enthusiasm.

Not quite true.

IraqiGirl is a compendium of the blog kept by a girl called Hadiya (a pseudonym) from mid-2004 through the end of 2007. She lives in Mosul, Iraq, which of course has been a hotbed of violence since the beginning of the war in Iraq. Hadiya writes often of the effect the war is having on her life - car bombs blowing out the windows of her house and curfews cancelling exams - as well as her attempts to pursue a normal life: babysitting her niece, studying for exams, worrying about her grades as she nears the end of high school and must choose where to study in college.

While an on-the-ground perspective is always interesting, there is so much that is foreign about life in Iraq that goes unexplained in the book that I quickly grew tired of trying to keep track. It seems like Hadiya is constantly taking exams, and then there are idiosyncrasies like every student in the country taking their Islam exam on the same day. In the US we all take the SAT exam around the same time, but that of course is a multi-subject exam. It's also difficult to follow how much time has passed, as Hadiya isn't a consistent blogger (for multiple reasons - after all, it's hard to blog if your neighborhood doesn't have any electricity).

Occasionally there are notes in the text about events Hadiya references, explaining about the rash of doctors being kidnapped or a prominent blogger who was punished. There are also a few excerpts from the comments in Haidya's blog and chat transcripts with the people who eventually arrange for her blog to be published. Haidya's whole family actually blogs, so there's even a blog post from her father. I actually think it would have been most interesting to compile the blogs of the whole family into one book (Hadiya's mother, father and one of her sisters all blog, as well as various extended family members) since Hadiya will sometimes say something like "you can read this on my sister's blog"...but since books don't have hyperlinks and the editors didn't choose to add the pertinent entry from her sister, we don't get any further information.

Current fans of the diary format might find more to enjoy in this one than I did. And anyone who's interested in more of Hadiya's story can continue to follow her blog here.

Thanks to Great Kids Books for hosting Nonfiction Monday this week!

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Book Events: Spotlight on Twilight (Part 1)

While looking for something to do "out on the town" last night, I came across a press release for a Twilight event happening at a branch of the New York Public Library. I had nothing better to do, so I figured why not go waste an hour there? I actually read the first Twilight book back at the end of December, and I've spent the last month trying to figure out how to put my thoughts into a relevant blog post; this seemed like a perfect hook! Some guy yammering on about how Twilight actually has a deeper meaning, and then me saying "Nope, wrong!" and pulling apart the book! Slam dunk blog post.

Except, if you noticed the title, this blog post is just part one. I sat down at the beginning of the night thinking I'd recap the event and the book in one post. Then as things got interesting I thought one post to recap followed by my own Twilight thoughts. Then I went and bought his freaking book so now you get this recap post, a review of Spotlight followed finally by my own Twilight thoughts. My first blog series! I'm so excited.

So let's dive in, shall we?

First of all: once again, I was one of the youngest people in the room. Right before the event started a few girls who looked like they were probably still in college slipped in, but the vast majority of the audience looked like they were grandparents of Twilight fans. I find it really weird that I go to these events on children's and YA literature and where I suspect I should be the oldest and instead find myself feeling like a whippersnapper intruding on the grown ups' space.

John Granger has previously made a name for himself as the Hogwarts Professor - he was one of the first writing academically to defend the Harry Potter novels, and his approach to both HP and Twilight were very similar. He started out sure that he was going to hate both series, but quickly found himself fascinated by them and wanting to examine them more deeply.

He's also intrigued by the backlash these super popular books receive. Sales figures for both the Harry Potter and Twilight series are astronomical (he said the estimate is that by the time the second Deathly Hallows movie is released roughly one billion Harry Potter books will have been sold), yet many people claim they're trash and hardly worth reading and anyone who does read them is childish (a defensible stance if you're actually a child but not if you're a professional adult). So when Granger comes across a book as phenomenally successful as these ones have been, he has three questions he asks: Why is it so popular? Why do some people hate it? What is the author's takeaway message?

The answer to the first one is fairly simple: these books do what we want a book to do, ie tell a good story. Both Harry Potter and Twilight tell some very fundamental stories - neither JK Rowling or Stephenie Meyer reinvented the wheel here. If we use the traditional methods of literary criticism, Twilight falls apart in seconds flat - the kindest thing you can say about Meyer's prose is it is pedestrian, with a vocabulary no higher than high school (almost exactly my original thoughts). But with over 70 million books sold, there really has to be more going on here then all of us losing our minds and finding pedestrian writing to actually be amazing.

So Granger uses iconological criticism, which dates back to medieval reading techniques, using four "senses" to break down a book: 1. Surface (what's the plot?) 2. Moral (who are the good guys, who are the bad? Still the surface, but with a little more texture) 3. Allegorical (going beneath the surface, seeing what else the text represents) 4. Anagogical (mythic elements). When a story can hit all four of these elements, then you come away with a story that speaks to part of the human experience and will draw a wide audience.

I don't want to give point by point details explaining everything about these four points, so I'll simply bullet point some highlights:

• Narrative voice is one of the first choices and author makes - and if you don't like that choice you won't like the book. This is clearly a problem for a lot of people regarding Bella - to a lot of us she comes across as a terrible character so we simply don't want to be inside her head for a whole book, let alone four huge books.
  
• The core moral resonates with us because it is explicitly the greater moral narrative of 21st century post-modernity (Confession: when this part of the lecture started, I zoned out and tweeted a shoutout to my college post-modernism professor who I couldn't freaking stand). That moral? The 21st century meta-narrative (those in power are good and right) is absolutely wrong and it's those that are discriminated against that are the true heroes (in this case, the Cullen-clan of vampires are misunderstood and persecuted by the vampire Powers That Be for their non-human-eating ways)
  
• The principal allegory of the series is God's love for man and man's longing for an eternal relationship with him. Also? It's a blatant retelling of the Adam and Eve story from Genesis.
  
• The anagogical level totally lost me. I think you'll have to wait for me to actually finish reading the book before I can fully explain this part. Spent a lot of time talking about some of the tenets of the LDS religion at this point and we were running short on time so my notes are a muddled mess.
  

Essentially, Granger's argument boils down to we can't understand Twilight without understanding Mormonism. I haven't studied Mormonism or finished reading Spotlight, so I can't speak on this as an expert, but he provided some credible examples. For instance, large parts of the Cullen-family story and Bella's story can be read as a whitewashed version of Mormon history. Meadows are frequently represented because when Meyer had her famous dream of Edward and Bella in a meadow, several books had just been published about the Mountain Meadows massacre where Mormons slaughtered over a hundred people emigrating to California. In Twilight, the Cullens are representative of the Mormon faith, and they are far from violent. In reality, the Mormon faith is an extremely evangelical one - yet when human-eating vampires visit Forks, Carlisle makes no attempt to win them over to his peaceful ways.

And, here's the part that blew my mind last night and piqued everyone's interest on Twitter and Facebook: Granger makes what is, at least on the surface, a credible argument for at least a small feminist plot point in the Twilight series.

In one of the novels, we learn Rosalie Hale's backstory: she lived in 1915 in Rochester, NY. She was attacked (presumably raped) by a man named Royce King II and left for dead. When Carlisle Cullen comes across her, he turns her into a vampire, at which time she goes on a roaring rampage of revenge against King and his buddies who attacked her.

Which just sounds like a dark and depressing back story, right? Until you know some Mormon history, for an Emma Hale was the wife of Joseph Smith Jr, the founder of the Mormon church. Meyer has spoken often of how carefully she chooses her names; there's no way a devout Mormon would have chosen a name like "Hale" without thinking of the association with Emma Hale. Additionally, when we disect the name of Royce King, "Royce" means King, King of course means King, and II is akin to being a "Jr." Joseph Smith Jr was crowned king of the world twice. And if you have a feminist bone in your body, you might understand why Emma Hale may have disliked the twice-crowned king of the world - when Smith received the revelation regarding polygamy, it allegedly included God scolding Emma Hale for talking bad about polygamy behind her husband's back. So the story of Rosalie Cullens' rape, death and revenge is actually a feminist wish-fulfillment fantasy where the wife of Joseph Smith Jr. seeks revenge for him speaking ill of her when looking for a way to get more wives.

Yeah, it blew my mind, too. I'm not saying Twilight is a feminist novel by any stretch of the imagination, and I don't think Granger wanted to imply that either, but it's a hell of an interesting way to look at a novel that is often considered actively anti-feminist.

Ultimately? I'm so glad that I stumbled across that press release and decided to go last night. John Granger was a fun speaker who definitely has a way of reading Twilight that is totally opposite from how I read it. He has a number of speaking engagements lined up over the next couple of months, discussing both Harry Potter and Twilight; if he's going to be near you I highly recommend going out to listen. Perhaps your mind will be blown as well. Also exciting for me: he's reading The Hunger Games! He claims they're lacking a little on the anagogical layer, which is why they aren't the runaway bestseller that HP & Twilight are. Hmph.

I'm hoping to finish reading Spotlight over the weekend, so part 2 of this series can go up next week!

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Book thoughts: As if we didn't have enough privileges to deal with...

Saw a link this morning through @PWKidsBookshelf to a Salon article: Why is Braille Dying?.

Apparently only 10% of blind kids today learn Braille. Apparently even the governor of New York doesn't read Braille. Instead, blind people are relying upon audio books, text-to-speech translators, or good old fashioned personal assistants to convey the printed word to the visually impaired. The Salon bloggers (the byline is for Stephen Towey and Helen Cota), however, seem to think this is a great travesty, because their minds wander while listening to audio books and there are studies that show we process audio information differently than printed information. There is no mention however that this difference in processing is inferior, or if these studies have been conducted using people who don't have the option of reading visually.

Ultimately, the entire blog post comes off as the biggest piece of ableist blogging I've seen in a long time.

What do I mean by ableist? This article totaly privileges the neurotypical and physically typical reading experience. Now, if it were a pair of blind bloggers bemoaning the lack of Braille literacy that would be one thing, as the NYT article that inspired the Salon bloggers includes, but judging from the Salon bloggers' home blog, they wear glasses but aren't legally blind. This is akin to people with normal hearing insisting cochlear implants are necessary for deaf children, or a white person explaining to everyone upset by Bloomsbury that the publishers didn't actually do something racist, or a man mansplaining feminism to us poor little women.

I'm sure the authors meant well - after all, all of us who care about books and reading are invested in improving literacy and wanting as many people as possible to share our passion for the written word. But to claim that our way of reading is superior to other forms of information attainment is able-ist and patronizing.

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Review: The Comet's Curse by Dom Testa

Found via: Jen Robinson's Book Page

I've read several reviews on this one...and of course the one review that I want to link to now is the one I never saved! Argh. How frustrating.

Also frustrating: How myself and that one unfindable reviewer seem to be the only ones not enamored with The Comet's Curse.

In the not-too-distant future, the comet Bhaktul passes near enough to Earth that its tail passes through our atmosphere. However, instead of being just another fascinating astronomical event, it turns out that Bhaktul was carrying microscopic particles in its tail that are fatal to humans over the age of 18.

As adults around the world start to die in droves, Dr. Zimmerman is one of the few who realizes that instead of wasting time trying to develop a cure before all the adults die, his energy should be focused on saving at least a sliver of the human race. And so the Galahad project is born - choosing 251 teenagers to be sent on a 5 year space flight to begin colonizing another planet.

The teenagers are the best and the brightest 15 and 16 year olds from around the world, and the best of the best make up the Council that will govern the ship and the crew. Guiding the Council and helping to maintain the ship is Roc, the ship's smart-alec computer system.

But on Earth, not everyone is happy with Dr. Zimmerman's plans. Whether they disagree with his methods of choosing a crew, or his focus on space, they write letters and protest and use everything within their means to foil the launch. Nothing seems to succeed - that is, until a few days after the Galahad has launched, and there are mysterious sightings and incidents of vandalism throughout the ship. Just when the Galahad crew thought they were safe, it seems a new problem has followed them on board.

I've mentioned before that I really like stories where all of the adults are gone. I'm sure a psychologist would have a field day with that, but there you have it. However, The Comet's Curse left way too many questions and leaps in logic for me to really remain interested. It seemed like all of the adults were just giving up on Earth as soon as the Bhaktul virus/plague/epidemic began - negating the fact that all of these children and teenagers still had several years to live before the virus would even start affecting them. This isn't like other stories where when you turn 18 you immediately sicken and die - Dr. Zimmerman lasts more than two years before even starts to fall ill. Plus I really doubt imminent death is the factor that's going to convince teenagers to stop having babies.

Also never explained: why 251 teenagers? That seems like a really small number for repopulating a civilization. In Battlestar Galactica they were concerned about repopulating and they had more than 100 times more people than the Galahad carried!

This is supposed to be the beginning of a six part series, but I really don't see how the drama is going to hold up for six books. This book is told half through flashbacks from the development of the Galahad project - but those flashbacks cover the entire development, so there's nothing else to add there. After the crew dispatches the danger presented in this particular book, it seems like there are only so many more options for drama and they would get old well before book 6.

On a positive note? This isn't a future where America saves the world. The crew is definitely multi-cultural, and the Chinese-born second in command is even featured on the cover. Unfortunately many of the characters felt thin, and the romances that Testa is setting up have all the heft of a soap opera (really: one guy observes the girl he likes hugging another guy in a moment of triumph and immediately decides that she really must like that guy. Never mind no one knew this guy was in close enough proximity to hug as well, or the fact that they were celebrating not being dead - if I'd just averted a disaster, I'd be hugging whoever was closest too, whether I liked them, or liked them, or not).

If you're a fan of the "all adults are gone/dying" genre, you might want to give this one a try, if just to satisfy your own curiosity. It's a short read so it wouldn't require too much of an investment. If you're not already a fan of the genre, however, there are plenty of other titles you should seek out first!

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Recs: LGBT Lit

One of my favorite YA subjects to read is LGBT literature. As I wrote in my first GLBT Reading Challenge mini-challenge, it was a book about a bisexual girl that changed my life. So I continue to seek out these books to continue to affirm my own identity on the spectrum of sexuality, and I highlight them in my blog as part of my commitment to lgbt visibility.

My primary motivation here is to highlight the books that are about more than being gay. LGBT stories can easily fall into the "problem novel" equation - the entire book is about someone coming to terms with their sexuality and coming out to those around her or him. Many of these are gripping and moving stories - but I'm all about diversity. I want to see more stories where a character's non-heterosexual-orientation is just one more aspect of their character. Heterosexual characters have all sorts of adventures in literature - why do gay kids only get to mope about how no one will accept them?

Because I want this list to be as useful for as many people as possible, I am also going to include some classic and great coming out stories, as well as stories featuring great LGBT characters in the supporting cast. This list only includes titles I've already read - but I am always accepting suggestions! Leave a comment or e-mail me at angela.craft AT gmail DOT com with your recommendations. I might not be able to post full blog reviews for every title, but it will at least get added on here.

All links lead to my previous reviews here on the blog.

Classic LGBT Lit:
These are the stories that started it all for LGBT YA.

Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence ed. by Marion Dane Bauer. The first LGBT book I read, this is a collection of short stories written by some of the top YA writers in the mid-90s, including Bruce Coville, M.E. Kerr, Nancy Garden, Francesca Lia Block and Gregory Maguire. Great variety of stories.

Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden. First published in 1982 and never out of print sense, the story of Liza and Annie who fall in love in New York City. Also features a pair of lesbian teachers who are stigmatized for their homosexuality. Considered to be the first YA LGBT book with a happy ending, it's still far more melodramatic than a lot of contemporary books, but a must-read for anyone interested in the subject.

Deliver Us from Evie by M.E. Kerr. Evie's orientation isn't the focus of this novel, told from the POV of her younger brother, but does provide some great insights into small town and family dynamics.





Coming Out Stories:
Contemporary stories of coming out and fitting in

Geography Club by Brent Hartinger. Russell is sure he's the only gay boy in his high school, but when he discovers his crush is actually gay as well, the two, along with Russell's best friend Min and her girlfriend, form the 'Geography Club' as a front for getting together to share their experiences.

Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez. Nelson is out to the world and in love with his best friend, Kyle. Kyle looks and acts straight, but since he hangs out with Nelson he's pegged for gay. Jason is an athlete trying to sort out his feelings, and the object of Kyle's affections. Their stories continue in Rainbow High and Rainbow Road.



More Than Their Orientation:
Most LGBT stories focus on the coming out process; here's what to read when you want to see gay kids doing something more than angsting

Another Kind of Cowboy by Susan Juby. Alex comes to terms with his sexuality while taking lessons in dressage horse riding, along with Cleo, a spoiled girl with no interest horses.

Rage: A Love Story by Julie Anne Peters. A chilling look at teen dating violence in a lesbian relationship.





Romance:
Queer romances - everyone has a soft spot sometimes, right?

Vast Fields of Ordinary by Nick Burd. During Dade's last summer at home, he ends his relationship with the super-closeted Pablo, and starts seeing Alex, the local pot dealer.

Ash by Malinda Lo. Cinderella retold, this time with Cinderella falling for the King's Huntress rather than a prince.





Empress of the World by Sara Ryan. Nic attends a summer camp for gifted students and falls in love with the beautiful and enigmatic Battle. Its Nic's first crush on a girl, but she angsts more about whether Battle will like her back than anything else.

Rules for Hearts by Sara Ryan. The sequel to Empress, this is Battle's story the summer before she goes to college when she spends time with an eccentric theatre troupe, sorting our her feelings for her fellow actors as well as her brother.



LGBT Supporting Cast:
Once upon a time, LGBT characters were relegated to being part of a quirky sidekick - these books have fully developed LGBT supporting characters

Going Bovine by Libba Bray. This Printz-award winning book includes Gonzo, a hypochondriac Mexican-American dwarf who hooks up with a guy during an epic quest. Blink and you'll miss it, but that also conveys the normalcy of Gonzo's relationship (well, as much as anything is normal in this novel!)

King of the Screwups by K.L. Going. Liam's uncle Pete gets most of the character development here, but Pete has two gay friends and a boyfriend, who teaches at Liam's school. All four men provide support for Liam when the going gets tough, and while there's some stereotyping, the characters own their stereotypes and fully intend to live their lives to the fullest.

Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher. Logan falls in love with new girl Sage - only it turns out Sage was born a boy. Told from Logan's POV as he sorts out his feelings about Sage, trasgenderedness, and his own sexuality, both Logan and Sage are fully realized, complex characters.

LGBT Family:
When the LGBT person in your life is a family member

My Heartbeat by Garret Freymann-Weyr. Ellen adores her older brother Link and has had a crush on his best friend, James, for years. When Ellen joins her brother in high school, another girl mentions that Link and James make a cute couple - rocking Ellen's world.

Say the Word by Jeannine Garsee. When Shawna was a little girl, her mother left the family to live with her lesbian lover in New York City. After her mother dies, Shawna is forced to interact with her mother's lover and their children. Features one of the worst fathers in YA lit, but watching Shawna grow up is wonderful.




King of the Screwups by K.L. Going. After ticking off his father one time too many, Liam is sent to live with "Aunt" Pete, his cross-dressing, glam-rocking, trailer-park-living uncle.

Last Exit to Normal by Michael Harmon. After Ben has flouted the rules and the law one too many times, his dad and his partner, Edward, pack up to move the three of them back to Edward's childhood home in rural Montana. Ben's dad and Edward are fully formed characters, and Ben's relationship with them is about a lot more than their sexuality.



LGBT People of Color:
LGBT lit is dominated by white voices - these are stories by and about people of color

Down to the Bone by Mayra Lazara Doyle. Laura is Cuban-American and lesbian, which gets her into endless trouble in her conservative community.
My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kluger. Augie, one of the three narrators, is Asian-American and fabulously gay.

Ash by Malinda Lo. Lo was born in China and has said in interviews that she intended the cast of Ash to be Asian-inspired, though I'm not the only blogger who missed those descriptions in the text.

LGBT Stories of Disability:
LGBT characters who also have a mental or physical disability

I haven't read any yet...nor do I even know of any. Any recommendations?

Bisexual and Transgender Stories:
The forgotten letters in the acronym

Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher. The new girl, Sage, has a secret she has to keep from everyone: she was born a boy, and is in the process of transitioning to become a woman. Occasionally didactic on issues of Trans 101, still a wonderfully well done book.

Goth Girl Rising by Barry Lyga. Kyra isn't gay - she doesn't even think she's bisexual - but she has been known to kiss and fool around with one of her girl friends. Not a huge part of the story, but it's inclusion isn't tawdry or titillating.


Empress of the World by Sara Ryan. Nic has had crushes on boys before, which makes her attraction to Battle somewhat puzzling, but she is relaxed enough to want to find out where these new feelings take her.

Gender Variance:
For when a character isn't LGBT, but expresses him- or herself in a way that relates to the LGBT spectrum

Debbie Harry Sings in French by Meagan Brothers. Johnny is fascinated by Debbie Harry - so much so that he occasionally dresses like her. He's pretty sure he's heterosexual, but thanks to his gender expression faces homophobic bullying.

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Review: Brooklyn Nine by Alan Gratz

Found via: Bill at Literate Lives

I came across Literate Lives via the Comment Challenge while bloggers Bill and Karen were running a series of Newbery predictions. I know next to nothing about the Newbery award, since most of my reading is now focused on Printz-level books, but I really wish Brooklyn Nine had been at least an honor, 'cause this was an awesome book.

Brooklyn Nine is a series of nine short stories following a family through nine generations of baseball. While mostly set in Brooklyn, there are two stories that step outside of New York - one into Virginia during the Civil War, and another back to my home state of Michigan during WWII with a female baseball player. How could I not love a book that combines baseball, women's baseball in WWII, AND my two home states?

What I found most fascinating was the mix of baseball history and American history that was woven into many of the stories. For example, I had no idea that pre-Civil War, it was accepted that you could get someone out by catching the ball after it bounced. It takes a few generations for the game to evolve into the one we recognize today. Additionally, major and minor historical events are integrated - stories take place during the Civil War and WWII, and in 1981, boys playing little league are teasing each other for seeing Empire Strikes Back and Indiana Jones a dozen times each, and debating who Yoda meant when he said one other person also had the force (no one guesses its Leia!). In between, characters face racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, and regular run of the mill bullies.

My favorite stories were Frankie Schneider in 1926, a numbers genius who has given up on the idea of going to college because she's a girl and is a fan of the dismal Brooklyn Robins, Kat Flint in 1945, the newest member of the Grand Rapids (Michigan!) Chicks, and Michael Flint in 1981, who's in the process of pitching a perfect game.

Michael's story is actually one of the most beautifully written stories I've read, possibly ever. Gratz does an amazing job amping up the tension as we follow Michael through his first ever perfect game. Gratz says in the notes that he based Michael's ninth inning on the ninth inning of Sandy Koufax's 1965 perfect game as called by Vin Scully. You can read the transcript of the inning here, or listen to it in your browser here. I definitely think Gratz nailed it.

In the first story, Gratz has also written one of my favorite descriptions of New York City - and coincidentally, Felix Schneider is hanging around the neighborhood I work in when he says:

Felix found it easy to lose himself in Broadway's foot traffic, to be swept up by the rush and hurry of Manhattan, to hear the clatter of iron horseshoes on cobblestones and the catcalls and insults of the city's famously rude cabbies like a lullaby. On Broadway Felix was not a poor German Jew from Bremen walking the streets of a strange metropolis. Here, he was a New Yorker.

This isn't just a book for baseball fans - while baseball is the theme of these stories, for most of the stories the sport is window dressing. This is a collection to be read by fans of historical fiction, short stories, and just all around beautiful writing as well. Another book that is going on my early "Best of 2010" list.

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