With such a broad range in subject matter found in YAL, it is compelling to see something that strays away from the standard novel. American Born Chinese does this well and with purpose. The story line isn’t extensive, and reads quickly from beginning to end, but as a story with no images it wouldn’t have near the impact. An example of this is the emergence of Chin-Kee, where we can see that no description without an image would substitute the stereotypical lens he is projected through. Along with this, the running text along the bottom of this portion treats the content like a sitcom, injecting ready-made laughs into a situation whether or not the situation is actually funny. Other than the story being somewhat image dependant, the story line and make up of the plot makes more sense in a visual sense.

With the story presented in the form of a graphic novel, the seemingly disjointed story line becomes cohesive because of the visual language developed throughout. The complicated nature of the story lines being split up, interwoven and then merging together at the end is successfully done as a graphic novel or comic because as a written novel with no imagery the story would seem much more confusing. Along with the story line, the nature of a serious subject being rendered in cartoon form has it’s own purpose. This story focuses on serious subject matter, and it would be hard for someone outside of that reality to understand the seriousness of the story. The inviting format of a graphic novel along with the colorful imagery disguises the story in a way that lest the seriousness seep in after a first glance. Along with this, the story becomes fun to read.

Finally the imagery lends itself well to the story. Without the images of Jin changing his hair, and changing into a white boy, the impact wouldn’t be the same. Without the images of Chin-Kee, the impact wouldn’t be the same, without the ‘stereotypical’ Chinese aesthetic, the impact wouldn’t be the same. Between the imagery and the format, the message of the story is achieved, and the friendly disguise of such serious subject matter leaves a lasting impression that wouldn’t be achieved through a traditional novel.

By Leemur

Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, tells a coming-of-age story about a Spokane Indian boy named Arnold. The duality of Arnold’s identity is revealed by his dual name: Arnold/Junior. Referred to by his Indian half as ‘Junior’ and by his white half as ‘Arnold,’ we see a split in his identity, and a tug of war ensues between Junior’s culture, and Arnold’s future.

Although Junior was never accepted on the rez, it was his home, and that home rejected him when he moved on. After Arnold started at a new school, he still found his poverty and culture inescapable, but managed to assimilate into his new surroundings; in doing this, Arnold left a part of himself (Junior) behind. As Arnold relishes in his freedom from being off the rez, and takes pride and joy in his newfound popularity at a white school, Junior remembers his family and his best friend that he isn’t as close to after changing schools. There is a great rift in Arnold/Junior’s life, and the distance becomes harder to bridge as his story progresses. At first, Arnold feels shameful for his Indian side, needing to pretend not to be poor, and eventually having to borrow money from another student to impress his girlfriend Penelope. Because of this shame, Junior hides inside, and lets his background be filtered out to form a more desirable picture. Part-time Indian describes Arnold/Junior’s identity, and his existence.

When Junior left the rez, he left his tribe. Arnold left his tribe. In doing so, Arnold was able to move past the horrors of the rez briefly, and was able to flourish somewhere that wasn’t shrouded with mutual depression. Arnold doesn’t realize until later on, that he is part of that tribe, and part of many others. After Arnold win’s the rematch basketball game against Wellpinit, he cheers feeling like David conquering Goliath. Shortly after, Junior realizes that he, and his team, were Goliath, and they were stomping on David. This is when Junior recognizes that he is now playing the part of Indian part-time, and playing white part-time, but belongs to neither group. After the tragic death of his grandmother, and sister, Junior realizes that he is a member of the tribe, and many others: “the tribe of basketball players, and to the tribe of bookworms. And to the tribe of cartoonists. And to the tribe of chronic masturbators. And to the tribe of teenage boys. And to the tribe of small-town kids…” and he realizes that he belongs (217). Through Arnold’s journey, he starts as an outcast, becomes a deserter, becomes even more of an outcast, becomes unknown, becomes accepted, becomes triumphant, becomes shameful, and eventually becomes a member of his tribe.

Junior struggles as he reaches for his dream, becoming Arnold, becoming Junior, becoming an Indian and becoming a person. Through leaving the rez he learns about the horrors of the world off the rez, and the sadness and enclosed nature back home. He grows into existence through sadness and hardship and loss, and becomes part of the group that once rejected him. Junior lives as an Indian on the rez, and Arnold lives as an Indian off the rez. Through all the chaos, Arnold/Junior finds himself, and accepts his identity as a part-time Indian.

By Leemur

In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, Arnold aka Junior, a Native American teenager living on a Reservation, decides to leave behind the life he knows in hopes of finding opportunity elsewhere. This opportunity comes in the form of attending a different high school, as suggested by a teacher at his old school. Junior’s new school, “Reardan,” resides in another town, 20 miles away and consists predominantly of middle-class Caucasians. Being poor and Indian instantly makes Junior the minority and a target for bigotry.

As expected, Junior experiences racism from the students at Reardan. He is first called “chief,” “squaw,” and other such racial slurs for the first few days at Reardan. The teasing is something he can take since he was used to it at his old school on the Rez. Junior snaps one day, when a basketball jock named Roger exclaims, “Indians are living proof that n*****s fuck buffalo.” In turn, he punches Roger in the face and Roger doesn’t do anything in retaliation. Because of this, Junior discovers a major difference between the two schools, which is that one solves problems through words and the other solves them through fighting. This allows Junior to relax a little bit, since he knows he has experienced the worst.

The day afterwards, Junior is respected by people in his school, including the jock that he punched. According to his grandmother, through intimidating them he gained his respect. After that, Junior becomes friends with the jock, eventually gets on the varsity squad of the basketball team, and dates an attractive white girl. His attendance at the school becomes completely beneficial to him and a completely opposite experience from the school on the Rez.

This is where the “Part-Time Indian” phrase works appropriately in the title of the novel. While Junior does in fact become a social butterfly at Rearden, he still lives on the Reservation. Everyday he must travel 20 miles (often times on foot) to the school, and he does all he can to hide the fact that he comes from a lower-income family. At heart, Junior will always be Indian. I think that the phrase “Part-Time Indian” does refer to Junior’s ancestry, but also plays to the fact that Junior is making something for himself, instead of wasting his time on the Reservation. All the kids on the Reservation chastise him for abandoning the tribe (before the series of family deaths come into view), but he works hard and makes sacrifices for himself instead of drinking and wasting his life away. I believe the phrase can be interpreted in a variety of ways, but it definitely refers to Junior’s double-life that he lives.

By Robert McNall

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, is a graphic novel telling of three stories involving either Chinese Folklore or the differences between being foreign (Asian, in particular) in a dominantly-Caucasian setting. Eventually the three stories end up intertwining into a fantasy, young-adult narrative. The common theme that the three stories share, and the one that ends up being the message behind the entire graphic novel, is to not deny where your roots are. In all three stories , a character tries to break all ties to a a certain affiliation. Eventually, the character must come to terms and accept where they stand in order to overcome a given obstacle.

The graphic novel format fits the writing suitably. For one, the complexity of the stories and blending together of them would be confusing without using pictures as guides. Another thing that is good about the format, is that pacing can be directly controlled. Rather than reading something like “there was a pause,” it can be indicated by the frames. Ultimately, using pictures means using less text.

The pictures in the novel add another dimension to the narrative. Like I stated before, it requires less descriptive text, which leads to a more personal portrayal of what its author intended. A pitfall for this though, is that some people enjoy the element of being able to form what a character looks like based on their imagination. One instance where having pictures really helps though, is when the character Chin-Kee is introduced. While there are several characters that are of similar Chinese descent, the Chin-Kee stereotyped persona is represented perfectly through pictures. I don’t think it would have done it justice through text.

If the novel was written in a traditional format, I don’t think it’s story would have held up very well. It would have felt jumbled and unorganized. This is due to the blending of the stories as I mentioned before. Another reason is that scenes that involved comedy would just be different if they were text. For example, the scene where Jin is on a date at the movies. His armpits smell and he is hesitant to make the make during the movie. He rubs powdered soap on his armpits which then creates bubbles on his date’s arm. If this were text, it would really seem like irrelevant information. It’s just better with pictures. One obvious thing is that expressions from characters would lose their dimension in written format.

By Robert McNall

In Cures for Heartbreak, by Margo Rabb, a family tries to cope with the loss of their wife and mother. The novel is told through the lens of Mia, the younger sister of the family. The passing of her mother comes swiftly and at the most surprising and inconvenient time – when Mia is coming into womanhood. Her family’s life completely changes, as her father sells his business and becomes a couch hermit, and her sister becomes brash and judgmental. I guess these are just the individual ways that Mia’s family copes with the loss.

Mia’s way of coping is different. Her methods of dealing with grief are to finding methods of distracting herself from her mother. Seeing her father suffering doesn’t help her situation, so she spends as much time as possible away from him. While Mia’s personality and zest for life changes into a more pessimistic outlook, she still attempts to relax a little bit and have some fun through the novel. In the first chapter, Mia says “’You know, in Kenya they have huge parties after someones dies,’ I said. ‘One big fucking party’” (18). This quote comes after she is invited to a concert with a boy whom all the girls in her school are attracted to. This is after the funeral service for her mother.

At the concert though, things turn out differently than she had hoped, and beer is spilled on a nice outfit that she was wearing. Her night is ruined and she misses her mother’s love and guidance as she exclaims, “I just want someone to tell me what to do” (23).

Every time Mia attempts to have fun, she is pulled back to flashbacks and a longing for her mother. Since her father isn’t playing a large part in influencing her decisions, she feels lost, and this longing for her completes the vicious circle. She misses her mother, tries to cope, ends up screwing something up, and the cycle repeats itself. Every time this happens, she remembers her mother and a particular scene and message is reminisced. The point is made in the middle of the story, when Mia talks about her first period during a dance performance. She felt confusion as to what was going on, and her mother provided support and love in that time. The novel points out that Mia no longer has this pillar of support in her life, and that she must find ways to cope with her loss and live her life on her own. I haven’t read the entire novel, and while I think it’s unfortunate that Mia must live life without the support of her mother, I think that readers in similar situations might find guidance by reading the novel.

By Robert McNall

The Underdog

Through out the book The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins uses many devices in order to create a book that has appeal to every type of person. Katniss Everdeen is a strong independent character that has both male attributes and female attributes, which allow to male or female readers to relate to her. Collins uses the plot device of Katniss having to provide for her own family in order for their survival to happen. Right away the reader has to deal with a main character that unless she can continue to hunt, will die in the book. This creates a character that is strong enough to take care of her family, however she is also human in the fact that she is dealing with real world problems such as hunger, her family being destitute, and then the impending doom of the Hunger Games. Every odd is stacked against our main character Katniss, which makes her into the under dog. Collins offsets that with the physical ability and personality of Katniss.

Katniss’s personality is one where she is very realistic and down to earth about her problems. She knows that unless she is able to survive the games her family wouldn’t make it, she also knows that the likely hood that of her surviving is very slim. “I can’t win. Prim must know that in her heart. The competition will be far beyond my abilities” (Collins, 36). This creates the opening in which readers relate to the character, because everyone has had a time when they feel like the odds are stacked against them. Although perhaps not as extreme as if they fail they will die. Collins also created Katniss into a character that has a strong personality when it comes to what she believes in. You see this when she shoots the apple out of the pig’s mouth when the Gammakers are analysis their skills. This causes her to have an edge over the rest of the competition, however this also allows us to see her angry and human side. We felt the frustration when the Gammakers weren’t paying attention to her, and we felt the sadness when she felt that by doing that ruined her chances.

The last trick that I want to point out that Collins uses, is the flashback technique. Collins has Katniss flashback to parts of her life, the major parts that shaped her into the person she is today. By doing this Collins allows for us to see the inner workings of Katniss’s brain and why she does what she does. Katniss feels a debt towards Peeta because he helped out her starving family in the past. Katniss has flashbacks of her sister and Gale. These flashbacks allow the reader to relate to her on a personal level because Prim becomes our sister that we are trying to fight to get back to. Katniss’s dad becomes our dad that died in a mining accident. This device really helps to make Katniss into a real human, which means that our main character isn’t perfect. Since perfection is lacking it ties us into her endeavors and we root for her until the very end. Collins creates a character that we the reader relates to on so many different levels that we can’t help but want to root for her to win, even when the odds are stacked against her.

By Kathleen Pape

Margo: Hi

So this is my class… hello’s (introductions)

Class: Welcome to our class, we are the young adult literature class and they’ve read three of your stories and we have a few questions… Is How To Survive A Funeral true to your life?

Margo: I’d say it’s about 50% true, when I started writing fiction I guess the material I was drawn to was the material about my mother’s death. She died when I was in my teens, very suddenly. So all the emotional content of the book, the grief is very close to what I felt. The exact circumstances of the story are not true, so I’d say it’s about 50-50. The problem is that when you write autobiography everyone thinks it’s 100% true, so friends of my sister read the book and said “oh, I feel like I know you so much better.” So that’s the only problem with writing autobiography. I think for me the emotional contents of the characters usually tends to be pretty autobiographical, just because I’d say there’s a little bit of me in most of the characters that I write.

Class: I wanted to know something specify about the novel, the part where you wrote about Mia’s mom and Rolf – I wanted to know if that part was true to your life or if it was something you made up.

Margo: well actually, I’d say about 50% of that is true too. The germ of that story started when we went on a family vacation when I was a kid. And we met through family friends a girl who had my mother’s name. My mother was named Renée, and the girl was named Renée and her father was my mother’s first boy friend. So that part was true and I don’t know anything else about it, so the rest was made up. But it was true that we went and met a girl that my mother’s first boyfriend had named her after. So that was where that story sprang from.

Class: There’s humor in the stories we’ve read. Do you use humor is all of your writing or is it just specific to those stories?

Margo: I guess, as a reader I like it when things are funny – especially if you’re writing about a tragedy. And I think a lot of tragedies from when you’re growing up can be funny, and it’s so horrible that the only way to cope with it is actually laughing. And as a reader I always appreciate it when the author makes me laugh, so as a writer that’s always my goal, to try and make the story have some humor to it, it makes the whole thing more enjoyable to read.

Class: I was wondering if you were worried at all about Mia’s character portraying sort-of the Jewish-American-Princess stereotype. And if you were trying to do that when you were writing, or if it just kind of happened?

Margo: No I wasn’t trying to [laughs] I hope she’s not too much.

Class: Is your writing to help others grieve, or is it part of your grieving process at all? And who was your intended audience?

Margo: The thing about being a writer. I hate to think of anyone else actually reading it when I’m writing, because I think I could never be totally honest. So when I’m writing I actually don’t think about the reader at all, because then I would never write well. I think to write- one really can’t be self-conscious. And if you start feeling self-conscious you writing just won’t be honest or will start to ring false. So I don’t ever really think about the reader intentionally. But I do after it’s done, then I do hope that it will help someone that’s going through grief. For me, when my mom died, and then later my dad died as well, the first thing I did was go to the library and just look at books and read book after book. And the one that I found as helpful were not the self-help ones, which I find incredibly cheesy and annoying. There are books about mourning and I never found them helpful, but fiction novels or short stories actually were really helpful to me. So to sort of live an experience through someone else’s shoes, I found that really powerful. I’m really glad if my writing’s helped anyone. And I have received letters from people that have lost someone, and that’s meant a lot to me.

Class: I was wondering if you set out to inform the reader on a generational legacy of depression due to the Holocaust. And/or if it evolved organically along with your stories.

Margo: That’s an interesting question. I guess, its something that I find really interesting, and that part of the story is true too. My mother was born in Germany and we did lose a lot of our family in the holocaust and so, when she died there was a real hole. In that I have no relatives on that side of the family because they all were killed, so I am fascinated by the fact that the legacy really goes on. In a way that people don’t think about it. I feel like so much of the holocaust has become this movie, you know the Steven Spielberg movie type history, and that’s how people see it. They don’t really understand how it can affect people generations later. And that you just don’t have that side of your family so, that is something I’m really interested in as a writer- just how that history affects the current generation.

Class: Do you know anything more about Kenyan funerals?

Margo: Kenyan Funerals? [laughs] actually one of my friends from college was from Kenya, and she’s the one who told me they have a party a year after the person dies. So that’s where that came from. Yeah, I’ve never been to one, but that’s what I know about it.

Class: What is the most important lesson you learned from your parent’s death?

Margo: Oh geeze. Um. That’s a big one, gosh. You know what I hate to think of stuff like that as lessons. Just because I feel like so much of our culture is always… you know whenever something bad happens, I think maybe it’s a response. People always think ‘what’s the lesson in this bad thing, what’s the… you know what have you learned from it,’ and I don’t like to think of it as a lesson so much. It’s just, um something… that you learn from. I guess the biggest thing is that when you’ve lost someone it kind of changes the way you do everything. You sort of… you don’t take things for granted anymore. You don’t take the people that you love for granted in quite the same way. Only sometimes, sometimes you still take them for granted, but I do think it’s less so. Especially now that I have children of my own. Because I think my parents…um, I’m their age so I think I appreciate every moment in a way that I would not otherwise. I think when you lose someone that quickly, and you know, before you’re used to it… I think it makes you lose your sense that ‘everything will always be okay.’ And often I remember being, I mean you don’t think about it very often, but once you’re confronted with it, then it’s hard not to think about it. And you realize… and I put in the book, I mean its one page that you read, but it’s the book when she said, ‘when you’re close to death (and im just paraphrasing it but) you realize how easy it is to slip through. How easy it is to die,’ and once you do realize that I think you stop taking things for granted quite as much.

Class: Your work deals a lot with touchy subjects, and I’m wondering has your work ever been censored, have you ever had to go through censorship battles. And what do you think about literature being censored? Especially Y.A. literature?

Margo: It’s a tough call because within a cult called the writers community, there’s actually quite an ongoing conversation about it, for young adult writers. Because some people are very conscious not to put bad words in it, and you know I have the word ‘fuck’ on page two. But you know a lot of people don’t like that. A lot of, especially librarians or gatekeepers, and there’s teachers and parents, who are a huge market for buying the books. And you know if they don’t buy the books they can hurt the sales of an author and it can affect the amount you’re paying off of that, so some authors will be very careful not to include any bad language or not including sex scenes or anything. On the other end of the spectrum, a writing friend of mine David Levithan, I think you’re reading The Hunger Games and he’s the editor of that. And he’s also a writer himself, he wrote Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist and a whole bunch of other books, you know if you ask him if he ever censors himself while writing, his answer is ‘fuck no!’ [laughs] you know he doesn’t think about… especially as a writer I believe the work is most important. You have to not worry too much about censorship. Beyond that there are definitely librarians and teachers that are not happy with that language or sexual scenes, but I feel like it’s their choice then – not to read it. But it is something that a lot of authors are thinking about, especially in this climate when you know the sales are difficult. It’s difficult to be a writer right now.

Class: How did you react when you found out your book was categorized under Young Adult and do you think this influenced your future writing?

Margo: I was simply surprised, because my agent thought it was an adult book. She actually sent it around as adult, and we had an offer from Random House Publishing’s editor in chief who thought it would do better as Y.A. which is actually happening to a lot of books now. There’s a book that I love by Peter Cameron, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, and the same exact thing happened to him. So it’s happening to a lot of novels just because the young adult market is very strong and they’re selling a lot more books through young adults. So it’s happening to a lot of books these days.

Class: Could you talk a little bit about straddling those two different genres because you have published in both literary fiction and young adult, do you feel like you’re treated differently sometimes? Or do you find differences in leadership and authors, and the experience of being published?

Margo: Yeah it is tricky actually. At the McDowell Colony in New Hampshire I was talking to a writer, poet who writes for the New Yorker. And I was telling her my book was being published and she said ‘Oh that’s great, who’s publishing it?’ and I said ‘Random House is publishing it as Young Adult,’ and she said ‘Ugh, such a shame.’ [laughs] It’s this attitude among adult writers that can be very anti Y.A, very condescending. I wrote a piece for the New York Times about the whole experience of having a book that I thought was Adult getting published as Young Adult. And they interviewed Sherman Alexie who’s another author and he said ‘it was the most comments he’d ever received in his life, was for writing a young adult book’ and he couldn’t believe it just how people would say when he won the national book award for Young Adult Book, ‘Oh that’s too bad that you didn’t win adult.’ [laughs] so people can be very condescending about it. But the strange thing is, now that I’m part of the young adult writers there’s a lot of anti-adult literary sentiment. So you can’t win and I realize that I do both, so when I go to a lot of young adult writers they’re like ‘this adult writer sucks,’ so I just have to keep my mouth shut and go back and forth. But it’s interesting how it’s becoming that way and it’s very divided. The authors don’t mean to mingle as much and there’s very separate friendship. Even in Austin Texas, there’s a book festival here, there’s a separate party for the children’s and young adult book authors one night and then a joint party for all the authors for the festival. And some of the authors like Tom Perrotta, who wrote Election and Little Children, he started hanging out with our young adult book club and I thought that was really funny that he sort of joined over to the other side. So it’s a very strange cultural phenomenon.

Class: And you don’t think the quality of writing is different among the two groups right?

Margo: I think in both parties there’s a spectrum, there’s a lot of dumb, bad Y.A. books, but then there’s also very dumb bad Adult novels. I think there’s a spectrum because there’s really amazing, amazing young adult books and amazing adult novels too. I do think that the standards can be good for a great young adult novel… sometimes they’ll overlook beautiful writing, very lyrical beautiful sentences are not as important. Where as in an adult novel if the writing itself is not wonderful it’ll be looked down on immediately. In adult novels they forgive a lot of the books thought, for the slowness. Where as in Y.A. they wont forgive a slower story as much. But one thing if you think about Y.A. too, within the Y.A. genera everyone’s on the shelf right next to each other: Y.A. Mystery, or Y.A. Thriller, or Y.A. Romance and they’ll all be next to each other in one section. Whereas in adult they’ll keep separate genres so, that’s interesting too… that they’re two different genres.

Class: And what about your readers? How are they different?

Margo: There are actually still a lot of adults reading Y.A. so I still get a lot of reader mail from adults. But I do feel like there’s something really powerful about hearing from teenagers that read your book, because I know for me that the books I read at that age were so important and I remember more clearly and more passionately than I remember stuff I read a year ago. So I think that can be really powerful. And also just getting people hooked on reading is pretty amazing as a writer. Makes me feel really good. I mean having kids read and teens read, and I’d like to do picture books too someday and I think that it’s just so amazing to create books for children and teens.

Class: something that struck me was the fan mail you talked to me about, how is your fan mail different?

Margo: the mail I got from adults is just not as emotional, young adults can be so much more passionate. One of the letters that someone wrote to me after this book was published…a girl wrote to me who was fifteen and her mother had been diagnosed with cancer on Christmas Eve she had six tumors in her brain and her father had also had cancer, and she was facing the prospect of losing both of her parents. And it was just a really moving letter, and she said she was in a bookstore and her friend picked my book off the shelf and gave it to her. And she told me that it meant a lot to her to read it. And we’re still in touch, we still e-mail each other a lot, and that was years ago. She’s in college now and so it’s really powerful to be in touch with readers like that. And I don’t know that many adult writer friends who have that same relationship with their readers.

Teacher: one of the first assignments I gave my class was to go to a bookstore and check out the young adult book section, and write their impressions of it. And I’m sure you’ve seen them too, and I wanted you to talk a little bit about it… it’s really exploding, I feel like I see articles all the time about the state of Y.A. fiction, and how to get boys to read and about Twilight and The Hunger Games phenomenon, could you talk a little bit about the trends happening in the Young Adult fiction or the future of Y.A. Literature?

Margo: I think historically we’re in an interesting place, for Y.A. because it is exploding. I talked to a librarian and he said we’re in the renaissance of the Y.A. Literature. You know there’s an amazing amount of books, and amazing quality of books being published that haven’t been published before. It used to be that in this genre there were some amazing books… I’m thinking Robert Cormier I Am the Cheese and The Chocolate War, these are really powerful books. And there’s Judy Blume, of course there’s a few books that stand out, but now there’s so much being published, and so much really high quality stuff. So that’s changed a lot. Honestly I think a lot of it is marketing, publishers have suddenly realized that it’s a really profitable huge market. And so a lot of writers who’ve done their MFA in English are made fun of or a lot of Y.A literary writers are looked down upon. And now it’s different, I just taught a writing workshop here in Austin and the students have sneakily been though adult MFA programs and written Y.A novels and published them as Y.A writers. So I think there’s specifically a Y.A. MFA programs that have formed, so it’s all changed a lot. Bigger issue is to see if it keeps up that way. Also a lot of books, I’ve heard from many publishers that To Kill A Mocking Bird and Catcher In The Rye, which were published as adult books, would be without a doubt published as Y.A. today. So there are a lot of books that could go either way. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is a great novel and that way actually published simultaneous in Adult and Y.A editions in the U.K. and Australia. And here it was published as Y.A., only because the editor who’s actually my publishing- won the auction. So they have a bunch of different publishers bid on it and adult publishing wanted to publish it, but Beverly- the vice president of Random House children, won the auction and had enough money to buy it, so that’s why the book is Y.A. and in that case if the adult publishers have enough money to buy it, it would’ve been adult, so it’s totally marketing.

Teacher: we’re following up the question on censorship, within Y.A. I brought in the article from publisher’s weekly blog, two writers were talking about how they had submitted a manuscript, it was a young adult post-apocalyptic novel.. and the story was that the agent asked if the gay character could be removed. Or if the gay-ness of the character could…

Margo: Oh, okay. I think I heard that story.

Class: And so they were talking about the pressures of young adult writers too in a way, to mainstream characters. You know, white-wash their identities their personalities, so that they wouldn’t have this difference. Which in a way we’ve been reading all this young adult literature that actually celebrates it. So I was wondering if you had any thoughts about that. Is that more so in Y.A or is that a concern in general fiction, where if you have a character that is gay and a minority, and so they just felt like- who could relate to this character? There’s this idea of relate-ability, which I think is pretty powerful in Young Adult Fiction. This idea of relating to the character. So.. any thoughts on that?

Margo: Yeah, I honestly think a lot depends on the editor. It is a very subjective business, and it’s hard to get… I mean you have to have an editor who believes in the manuscript and has a lot of power, so that if they like it they push it past the marketing and negotiate the profit and loss. Cheat on the stuff, so I imagine that the agent would go to the market meeting and say the right thing. All of it is all the crazy marketing stuff that drives it. That’s why I have to say I really like a lot of the small pressing studios, because they don’t have a lot of the same concerns. You know a lot of the major publishers are owned by Timer Warner and gigantic corporations. So publishing has become corporate. Whereas it used to be that a lot of the publishers were small boutique houses where they had a lot of autonomy. And now they’re owned by giant corporations, and in some ways it’s not too different from Hollywood studios, you can’t really picture them making a movie about a gay disabled character either. So I think in the same way, independent moviemakers have risen up and take more risks, I think the same thing is happening in publishing. Some editors are visionaries and some are not, and they will not think that way, and it’s just such a subjective business. But things do fall through the cracks and sometimes they don’t really know what’s going to be a big hit or not.

Class: So one of the young adult assignments for the class was to create a Y.A. book collection. So we were hoping you would help us out and we’ve nominated some books as we read as kids and so we would like to ask you what you read as a kid and would like to nominate for our collection.. what Y.A. authors inspired you when you were growing up?

Margo: Of course! Some of my favorites.. I loved Judy Blume’s Tiger Eyes, which was also about a teen who loses her father. And its one of my favorites, I love that book. I love Diary of Anne Frank, which was published as adult actually. But that’s one of my all time favorites, that book meant so much to me. And more recently, I mentioned Peter Cameron’s Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You is one of my favorite Y.A. novels that have been published recently. It’s such a beautiful, beautiful book. It has an interesting back-story too, he submitted the book to his publisher and he’s written a lot of stories for the New Yorker in the eighty’s in Teen Voice, and it was not a common thing. And they said ‘now days that’s not adult anymore,’ and he was like ‘what are you talking about I published my stuff in the New Yorker,’ and they said not anymore. And so that book was Y.A and it sold better than all of his adult books. So it’s very strange, it’s hard to figure out the marketing thing. I really love that novel, so I nominate that. I love Sherman Alexie’s An Absolutely True Diary of A Part-Time Indian, Moraine House Anderson’s Seek is a beautiful book, and there’s this book by Rebecca Stead which won the Newberry, it’s called When You Reach Me, even for younger kids, but for teens it’s a really beautiful book. It’s written as sort of homage to Wrinkle in Time. What did you guys put in the list?

Class: so some of those are already on our list, but… The Weetzie Bat series, His Dark Materials, we have a lot of different fantasy, sci-fi… and then we also have: The Kite Runner, Cirque du Freak, The Basketball Diaries, Blankets, Chocolate War, A Horse And His Boy, Ringer, Across the Universe, The Giver, The Adventures Of The Blue Avenger, Ender’s Game, White Oleander. That’s what we have so far, we also have some graphic novels in there, that we will give to this high school which does not have a library.

Margo: That’s so great!

Class: Well, thank you very much Margo, for talking to us!

Margo: Aw, Thank You!

Poverty is dealt with in the very first chapter of the book “the absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian” when it is apparent they don’t have enough money to keep the dog alive. There is a haunting last sentence in the first chapter where the boy recounts that it costs maybe hundreds or thousands of dollars to help save the dog and only two cents for bullets.

My dog recently died. I spent the money from selling my car in 1 day on 3 different medications and an X-ray for the doctor to tell me what he thought was a stomach bug was actually internal bleeding and she still died a minute before I rushed into the Vet’s.

I wasn’t angry (I was, extremely, later.) I was just incomphrehesivly sad. I got my dog when I was ten from a cardboard box behind the line of port-a-potties during our small towns “old home days” which is basically a country fair. She was malnourished, dehydrated and only a week old. the box was marked “ take’ em or I’ll dround’em ” and there were three other in there as well. my friend and i took two and i ran to get my mom, on the way, I gave one of them to a couple who commented on how tiny they were. I begged and pleaded with my mom when I got to her and held out the limp puppy to her with tears in my eyes.

I wasn’t allowed to keep her, but my mother couldn’t tear me away. I was allowed to take it home, but it slept in the basement. That night, she whined, and my mom woke up the next morning to find me asleep in the basement( the creepiest place in my house!) with a sleeping puppy clutched to my chest.

My friend named her Wookader. Be cause she Kept saying “awwwwwww wook at hur!” and squishing her face. The name stuck, but She was known as Wookie. Wookie slept with me in my bed every night.

My mother and father were in the middle of a divorce, and times were tough athome. My dad was unemployed, my mom worked part time, and all of the money we had in savings was going to lawyer bills, because my dad thought he could control my mom with money but overestimated her grasp of finances. Wookie was a friend and grief counselor to me and my brothers, a silent companion who knew and would curl up beside me when the arguments boomed through the walls of my bedroom like artillery. She made sure I was never alone.

But she died alone. She had a seizure alone in a metal cage at the veterinary clinic. I had slept down stairs with her the three nights previous as she laid, unable to move upstairs, hyperventilating on the floor. I had worked all summer and sold my car to get some more money for college but, as they say in the Funeral business, “Something came up.”

I don’t regret for a second spending that money on her. I would do it again in a second. I know what it feels like to be poor. I know what it feels like to have a dog as a best friend. And When i read that first chapter i knew EXACTLY how he felt.

By Colleen  McMahon

The seven stages of mourning are: shock/denial, pain/guilt, anger/bargaining, depression/ loneliness, the upward turn, reconstruction/working through and finally acceptance and hope. the main character, Mia, goes through each of them accompanied by her faithful cynicism, sarcasm and wit, which both keeps her from healing and is the only light in this truly dark story.

The beginning story was about Mia, her sister Alex, and her father making arrangements at the funeral home. her shopping for the funeral, the funeral and the night after the funeral when she went on a date with the hot guy at school. this stage dealt with the first three stages, Mia was in shock, and often would ….

You know what? Can I not do a response ?

This story is probably one of the most true and touching stories I have read in forever! My Step father owns a funeral home, I deal with people mourning allot, and I have recently lost a very close family member. I KNOW the way Mia feels. its not stages, not really, its more fluctuating. Like a tide slowly rising; you know you’ll get there, but you inch your way up and recede so many times its pretty much invisible to the naked eye, and especially you. this book is not a how to deal book, this book does not teach lessons, it’s power lies in being exactly what you want when you are mourning. a silent companion who truly knows what your going through. This book does not judge, it does not try to prove itself, it just is. After reading this, I cried. I cried like a little girl. It was cleansing and I felt a little better after. The under lying theme in this book is strength, Mia has it, the reader has it, you don’t have to say your strong in a mirror or read the word printed in this book, it is just there, not being told, but being shown, and that is what makes this truly great litterateur.

By  Colleen McMahon

The story American born Chinese deals with culture and acceptance, adult themes that children are forced to deal with. In a beautiful incorporation of Chinese and American art and heritage, the author chose to use a medium that would not only translate well with both cultures, but also speak directly to the target audience in no uncertain terms.

The pictures are very much a conscious decision on Gene Yang’s part. The book focuses creating a self-image of yourself, loving who you are. These can be felt as visual differences for young Chinese immigrants and their families. Also, the graphic novel format is a very personal one, and can touch any heart no matter the reading ability of the viewer.

The subjects of rejecting your culture or tying to assimilate into a different one, are extremely dark, but when approached in a light colored format, and intricately weaved with humor, the overall uplifting story of this tale can been accepted.

By Colleen McMahon