What's Straighter Than a Pirate?

Today I offer two examples of the kind of prose I wish I could write:

(1)First, from Freak Show, by James St. James:

Although my sexuality is largely theoretical at this point, I hope that I don't actually LOOK gay--you know, all pursed and twittery with big, bulgy, "gay" eyes. It's a new school after all. I need to test the waters first before I break out the tiaras and leg warmers. I've given this a lot of thought, as you can imagine.

OKAY, HERE IT IS. MY OUTFIT:
Don't worry.
It's totally masculine.
Swarthy, even.
Nobody will suspect a thing.
I'm going with the whole retro-newwave/Vivienne Westwood/pirate look. Fab, right? What's straighter than a pirate? ... I want the look to say: I'm not gay; I just flew in from Williamsburg. Where I had sex with girls! Many of them! The kind with boobs! So please don't punch me!

Yep, this is basically the story of a teenage drag queen taking a Florida school by storm. Billy Bloom weaves (embroiders?) a tale that's just too too to be true. But it's very detailed: from the composition of the spitballs hurled at him to the structural elements of the make-up he applies. The narrative is a little bit e.e.cummings, a little bit Perez Hilton, a dreamy meditation on the universe followed by Action! Action! Action! And I don't know if I've ever read a book that better captured the ostentatious moodiness of adolescence.

And the cover has an uncanny attraction for 9-year-old girls. I had to remove it from the clutches of more than one pre-pubescent.*

(2)Second, the Fine Lines feature at Jezebel. It revists 1980s teen novels like The Grounding of Group Six. This week the spotlight's on Jacob Have I Loved. But instead of being timely, I refer you to the analysis of Little House in the Big Woods (subtitled "I play with a pig bladder like it's a balloon!"):

Did you know that a black doctor saves the lives of the entire Ingalls family in Little House on the Prairie?

Es verdad. (There is also a not-particularly-sublimated gay sex scene in The Great Gatsby, but no one asked me about that.) I state this not because these are the most salient points at hand-or even points, really-but because I cannot figure out any other way to enter into a discussion of THE MOST IMPORTANT WORK OF OUR TIME.

It's like gushing over books, only with sophistication and maturity.

*I gave them Lily B. on the Brink of Cool as an alternatve. I haven't read it yet, but it's also pink.

Is it just me

Or is there something very romance novel about this cover?

What's the Native American equivalent of blacksploitation, anyway?

All I know is I have too many books about young white women being taken captive by American Indians. When girls check these out, I always try to talk them into checking out Saturnalia, too. Unfortunately, Saturnalia doesn't have as provocative a cover.

The girl's secret guide to saving sparkly mermaids vol 1: the complicated case of the ghostly pirates, or How to be popular with superheroes

I'm weeding children's chapter books, and I have discovered two ways publishers can guarantee a book will never circulate: 1) give it an abstract cover. 2) fail to include a description of what happens in the book. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

Why make these mistakes unless they're trying to sabotage a writer? It's not rocket science. On the other hand, here's a list of 10 things you can put on the cover of a book (regardless of its content) that will make it move.

1. Sparkles. Or shiny swirls.
2. Animals with sad eyes.
3. Any reference to Superheroes or special powers.
4. Graffiti font.
5. Any combination of the following words: girl, popular, secret, complicated, life, game, rules, notebook.
6. The words "How to" followed by something ridiculous, like train dragons or eat worms.
7. The mottled pattern of a composition notebook.
8. Fairies or mermaids (strangely, unicorns have fallen out of favor).
9. Large reptiles.
10. The words haunting, ghost, scare, or triple-dare.

Foster care remains popular, but terminal illness and paralysis are still circ-killers. Another cardinal rule: the more books in the series, the better it circulates. Familiarity doesn't actually breed contempt. It breeds readers.

Stay tuned for my list of suggested titles for young adult books, beginning with Chicken Soup for the Teenage Child Called It.

Judging

I'm always interested in how kids decide whether or not they're going to like a book. Obviously, cover art is criteria #1. Last night I was reading Saint Iggy while a bunch of kids at church were playing Around the World, having dance competitions, and waiting to sucker me into driving them home. And they stole the book from me when I was two pages from the end, still wondering if K.L. Going was going to be bold enough to go tragic, and they started reading it aloud to each other.

But even after reading a couple paragraphs, they still insisted they wouldn't read the book because it was fantasy. I explained to them that it was not fantasy, no one had special powers, and the colorful wings Iggy's wearing on the front of the novel are metaphorical. Still. They were having none of it.

And it reminded me of something a middle school librarian told me when I visited her library: books are status symbols. They're like accessories. And maybe that's why the kids wouldn't read Saint Iggy: because it looked like a fantasy, and therefore, even if it wasn't a fantasy novel, it would make them look like a fantasy reader.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into this? Anyway, I won't tell you how it ended, but I do highly recommend Saint Iggy. It's a bleak little Christmas story that would be a beautiful film shot on a handheld digital camera. Imagine a city in winter: cops, churches, high rises, abandonded-buildings-cum-crack-houses.

Iggy's on this quixotic quest to make an important contribution to society in time to save himself from being kicked out of school. But he gets entangled in the schemes of the local meth dealer, an idealistic law school drop-out, and a lovely, lonely rich woman who longs for her son like Iggy longs for his mother. (Don't worry: no Mrs. Robinson action.)

And since I'm on a meth-addicted mom kick, my next read is Harry Sue, which is just as good as she said it was.

Meg Murray gets a make-over, but not in a bad teen movie way

That reminds me: I saw Square Fish's new covers for the Time Quintet at ALA. I always pictured Megan as a pre-Paris Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, not a folk art angel. But I do like the old-fashioned Russian fairy tale quality of the new designs. Allegorical. Like iconography.