The World Will End on October 23, 1962!!

Next week, I plan to conduct an informal poll among kids who come into my library to find out if they care about the cold war. I mean, it's history, so it doesn't necessarily matter if it's trendy or not. But to me, the cold war is like the scrunchie. There's no kitsch. No nostalgia. It's just outdated. Bolsheviks? Bomb shelters? Don't those words make you feel sort of ... embarassed?

I just read a book about the Cold War: Rex Zero and the End of the World, by Tim Wynne-Jones. I was hoping it would actually be about the apocalypse. Instead, it's about how when you're a kid, the world is scary because you only half-understand what you're hearing. Especially when some people are speaking in French and other people are beating you up because you say "garage" as though it rhymed with "carriage."

Rex Zero moves to a new neighborhood in Canada and makes friends with kids who believe that a circus panther is loose in the local park. They do lots of 1960s golden era stuff like ride their bikes and catch tadpoles in jars and buy rootbeer at the drug store, and sometimes, they worry about the A-Bomb and the H-Bomb. It's a solid book (summery mood, stuff happens, the title is totally superhero-esque), but I couldn't help comparing it to The Fire-Eaters, by David Almond.

The Fire-Eaters takes place during the same time period but is set in an old coal mining town in Ireland. And it's just soooooooooo much more disturbing. There's a black windswept coastline, a mysterious lingering illness, and a guy who sticks sharp metal things into his body. So in the end, when everyone gathers on the beach to have an end-of-the-world bonfire, you sort of wonder if something terrible is going to happen, even though, obviously, the world didn't actually end in the 60s.

But both of these books are part of a movement away from cozily reassuring historical fiction for kids. Though The Fire-Eaters is definitely eerier (say that out loud--it sounds weird), they both represent the kiddy paranoia that runs rampant on hot summer days when there's not enough to do and the news reports are bleak. And if the Horn Book award for Fiction is any indicator, carnival-esque historical kidlit is going to be the done thing. Marc Aronson said something similar in his January SLJ column. Make history scary! Give it teeth and claws! It's not just a reality check, it's a question of good taste. Without its urgency, recent history just sounds dated.

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.

Patches for kids who smoke David Pelzer

You know when you get a reader's advisory question from a kid who obviously knows what he wants and isn't afraid to tell you when a book is a "no," and you still have to pull about 15 books of the shelf to get him to articulate exactly what he wants?

Those are my favorite. I just had a kid come in and ask me if I had any books like the David Pelzer books. So I took him over to YA and laid 15 books on the table (OK, really it was only 11) and he picked out four and told me exactly what he liked about them.

Since kids come in all the time for that David Pelzer deliciousness, I thought it was worth mentioning which books were take-homes:

Going, K.L. Saint Iggy. "Because his mom is addicted to Meth."
Rapp, Adam. Under the Wolf, Under the Dog. "Because the kids live on the streets."
Mickaelsen, Ben. Touching Spirit Bear.* "Because it goes through the juvenile justice system process."
Shaw, Susan. The Boy in the Basement. "Because it sounds a lot like A Child Called It."

I should note that Breathing Underwater, by Alex Flinn, Rules of Survival, by Nancy Werlin, and You Don't Know Me, by David Klass, were checked out, so it's possible those would have tempted him.

I also really wanted to figure out a way to give him a Jake Coburn or Kevin Brooks book, because, well, I just love them, but unfortunately, neither of those authors has written specifically about child abuse or homelessness, which seem to be the fascinations.

*I feel a little guilty about this one, because the Native American lore in it is totally lore, as in 100% bonafide made-up nonsense. But the book is really popular, so I just tell kids that the Native American stuff is made-up by crazy white people.

Election Fever!

The Pheonix officially trashed my entire state this week. Not Rhode Island. My real state. I especially like this part:

[C]redit New Hampshire and Iowa for an almost pathological determination to take any steps necessary to maintain their privileged role. “This is their life,” says University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato. "They’ll hold their contests right after July 4 the year before the election if they have to — they don’t care, as long as they’re first."

The article suggests it would be more fair to let other states have a crack at being first. But my point is: nothing short of total revolution will make this country's political process more fair. Who are we kidding? So why call off the carnival?

Anyway, mulling over carnivals and revolutions reminded me that there are a surprising number of books about kids running for president. My favorites are probably Tashijan's Vote for Larry, and Gutman's The Kid Who Ran for President.

And then there's the whole YA obsession with presidential offspring. Personally, I think it's all about the body guards. The uncontested champion in that arena is Ellen Emerson White's trilogy, but there's also First Boy, by Gary Schmidt, and First Daughter: Extreme American Makeover, by Mitali Perkins.

OK, I'm starting to feel a display here. For books that are about the political process in the grass roots sense of the word, I like Amy Timberlake's That Lucy Moon Girl (there was a spiffy review of it on A Chair, A Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy) and my old fave, E.L. Konigburg's T-Back, T-shirt, Coat, and Suit.

And then when I throw in all the books about high school elections, not to mention the non-fiction books about actual elections, I think I could probably fill all my display areas. Yes! As long as I don't end up taking all the books home to see if they talk about the New Hampshire primary ...

Pesticide for the lily complex

I'm sick of Christmas, so it's time for a review in honor of Kwanzaa! Sweet Thang, by newcomer Allison Whittenberg, wins the prize for most infuriating brat of the year. Tracy John, Charmaine Upshaw's little cousin, is a "turtle-necked, corduroy-pants-wearing, angel-faced little creep," but he's so adorable that no one believes Charmaine when she says he's a devil child. Plus, his buttery skin reminds Charmaine how dark she is, and, as she puts it: "the joys of black were not distributed equally. The near-whites like Tracy John and Dinah hogged them all" (59).

The babysitting scenes between these two are as funny as anything in a TV sitcom. My personal favorite is the time Charmaine is driven to stab Tracy John with a pen.

The romantic subplot is admittedly predictable: Charmaine crushes on the "African Greek God" Demetrius, but he prefers the light-skinned Lena Horne-look-alike, so Charmaine finally realizes he's using her to do his homework and switches her affections to a less attractive but more socially conscious classmate. But do tween girls ever really get sick of that plot?

Besides, the focus of the story is Charmaine's change-of-heart toward her cousin, and that transformation is more complicated and 100% in character.

The book has lots of other perks, too: funky 1970s patterns, homey dinner table conversations, and Charmaine's cutting ovservations. Oh, and Kwanzaa! As Charmaine prepares to emcee the Kwanzaa festival at her church, she makes personal connections to the principles of the holiday. And it's only a leeeeeeeeetle bit preachy. And you can forgive an author for wanting girls to get the moral of the story, right? Not to oversimplify things, but there are already too many girls out there trying to attain bizarre standards of beauty.

Enough hating

I think the reason How Ya Like Me Now, by Brendan Halpin, sat on the floor of my bedroom for 2 months was because it had a video game console on the front. At least I think that's a game console. Is that what you call that? You can see the problem.

But I'm so glad I finally ran out of books with angry female warriors on the cover, because How Ya Like Me Now was exactly what I needed: a smart book about a white suburban boy getting transplanted to a city, where he attends a business-like charter school with his cousin and avoids phone calls from his oxycotin-addicted Mom.

What's awesome about this book is the way it complicates the urban/suburban dichotomy (hey, remember this?). For example, Eddie is from the suburbs, but he's the one with a drug addict in the family. Alex lives in the city, but his school has better test scores. Plus, there's dialogue like this:

"Yo, Alex, man, we figured your cousin would be white, but Left Eye is literally white! Can't see his face next to a wall!"
"Kid could be completely invisible in a snow storm!" Savona added.
"Homeboy makes Michael Jackson look black!" Kelvin added (30).

I like how Eddie copes with the culture of an urban school, where, as a white person, he's in the minority. Like, instead of trying to crack on people, he affects a super proper way of talking: "I will now discontinue my fronting. I sincerely hope to hit that... as you may or may not be aware, I am the mack" (139).

But this book isn't, like, about race. It's more about the two cousins trying to get girls, finish their marketing project, beat each other at Madden, and keep their parents out of their business--especially Eddie's mom who's getting out of rehab and threatening to "be a family again." Ack! Now here's a book I could hand to any kid without embarassment. Finally!

Preaching to the choir

OK, so I tried to read Alan Lawrence Sitomer's Hip-Hop High School, and I admit the slang is pretty fresh, but who's the guy writing for? Check out this passage:

It's like I speak two languages. In my head I talk a normal king of English, but when I chat with my friends or any of my peers I rap to them in this kind of ghetto slang ... Like, I never say 'with.' I say 'wit.' And I don't say 'that." I say 'dat.' And I sort of slur my 'what's up' too and turn it into 'wazzup' ... if you talk too proper, you might get jumped by a crew of four or five. That's because people will think you're trying to act white (5).

So if Sitomer's writing for urban teens, why is he explaining code-switching like it's rocket science? Did the publishers make him put it in there for the white kids? Is he trying to reassure kids that everyone's doing it? Or is it just another example of YA writers forgetting who they're writing for?

It's like when writers explain how there are categories at school: jocks, geeks, preps, etc. Do they think they're writing for feral children? Who doesn't know about the categories? And on top of that, who actually makes up cute names for the categories? Sorry, Tina Fey, but that's such an adult thing. The only people we made up cute names for were the guys we had crushes on.

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.

Journalism strikes again!

When I first saw this headline, I wondered how it was possible to ban a short story without banning a whole book. Turns out the story was just removed from the curriculum. The book was never banned from the library.

The most amusing part of this article is the comment about how it's better for students to learn about pornographic acts with animals in school than out of school. Why do people always make themselves so ridiculous in situations like this?

Turbosluts and class bitches

You know how Amazon lists the "key phrases" in each book it displays? Well, #3 on the list for Carol Plum-Ucci's The Body of Christopher Creed is "turboslut." Besides being a tasty piece of 90s slang, "Turboslut" tells us something about Plum-Ucci: she loves to endear us to the bad girls.

The Body of Christopher Creed has shown up on a number of summer reading lists in Providence, because educators think it's a quick-pick-with-issues. The plot revolves around a boy who is tortured by his classmates for 11 years until he suddenly disappears, leaving a mysterious e-mail that's either a suicide note or just a dig at his mom.

But forget Chris, because the truly interesting character is Ali, a.k.a. class slut. She's the cheerleader who can't keep her skirt down, and just being seen with her can get a boy in trouble with his girlfriend. But by the end of the novel, we're sympathizing with Ali, to the point where we want to tear out the hair (and earrings) of the girls who gossip about her.

In The She, which I liked even better, Plum-Ucci gets us to like Grey, a Queen Bee who drugs unsuspecting freshmen at parties and take cracks at the one-legged girl in class. Seriously.

That's Plum-Ucci's real claim to fame: she teaches readers that even turbosluts and bitches have backstories. Now I'm looking forward to checking out What Happened to Lani Garver. Who will Plum-Ucci trick me into liking next? The girl who sits on a toilet with asprin and vodka, calling her friends, threatening suicide? The girl who started the petition to kick me out of our lunch table? Or will I recognize myself this time?

Books that have been stolen in the last two months

Obviously, this list is not comprehensive, but I went looking for a couple books today--only to discover that (alas!) they had gone astray. Since we all know that "missing" status is one indicator of popularity, I figured this was worth sharing:

Suitcase, by Mildred Pitts Walter.
The Moves Make the Man, by Bruce Brooks.
The Skin I'm In, by Sharon Flake.
The Greatest: Muhammad Ali, by Walter Dean Myers.
Don't Let the Pigeons Drive the Bus, by Mo Willems.

I assume some of them were on summer reading lists--like The Greatest. But still.

And of course, the book Hold My Gold: the White Girls' Guide to the Hip-Hop World remains M.I.A., apparently never to be replaced. Sigh. Now how will I learn the correct translation of the following phrase?

1 "Yo, less twiss a la."
A. "Man, do I love Boca Burgers!"
B. "I'd like a little less foam in my Grande skim latte."
C. "Is that frozen yogurt fat-free?"
D. "Hey! Let's roll a marijuana cigarette!"

Telegrams from ALA Part IV: Freaks of Nature

And so much for posting images of the covers so you could judge them. I walked away with over 20 books/ARC/galleys and I have the bruises on my shoulder to prove it. I read two books on the train, and both were delicious.

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr is like reading the long lost cousin of a Holly Black novel. The mood feels borrowed--like you're filling in the blanks using what you've already imagined from reading other urban fantasy--and the characters aren't the minature masterpieces that Holly Black creates--honestly, that woman sketches characters the way those guys at Faneuil Hall write your name on a grain of rice. Tiny details. Stunning precision.

But Marr's novel is notable because it offers an alternative to the borderline-rape-wish romantic plots of many urban fantasy novels. It's that whole what's-the-difference-between-seduction-and-rape issue. We all know no means no, but does yes always mean yes? What if you've consumed fairy wine and danced to fairy music? What if you're bound by an ancient curse?

Marr's novel stars a Catholic High School girl chosen by a fairy king to be a fairy queen. But this girl, Aislinn, doesn't just pretend to resist his irresistable charms. She breaks out the salt, the holy water, and the pepper spray. And when that doesn't work, she engages in no-holds-barred negotiations for power.

I thought I was detecting a women's studies major undercurrent, and then I read this interview, in which Marr talks about issues of "volition." She's obviously 100% savvy about the messages we're sending young women when we make it seem attractive to be bound by ancient curses to dangerous, mercurial (and devestatingly sexy) men.

But she does it in the most non-preachy way possible: she creates an even more attractive, totally mortal, totally respectful male character to compete with said fairy king. Sure, it's just another woman's fantasy of a man, but at least it's a women's studies major's fantasy of a man.

My only remaining question: does the title intentionally reference that landmark of New England slang, the use of "wicked" as a qualifier? Or is it just a juxtaposition of two words describing fairies?
The second book was one I've been dying to get my hands on ever since I heard it existed. It's called Evolution, Me, & Other Freaks of Nature, by Robin Brande, and it's the best representation of psycho Christian teenagers since Saved.

Driving the plot is the youth group of a super-church (the kind with bowling allies and food courts). The teens in this group get their marching orders from a minister zealous to root out evil in the form of Biology teachers and possibly homosexual high school kids. But Mena, our main character, has recently been kicked out of the group (for some initially unknown sin), so she is suddenly on the other side of the looking glass. And she doesn't like what she sees.

Now that her old friends are calling her Judas and hip-checking her in the hallways, Mena makes friends with her adorably nerdy lab partner and his magnetic big sister, who is the editor of the school newspaper and who happens to be just as zealous as the minister, but with a radically different political agenda. So the question is, does Mena have to "choose sides" or can she find some middle ground? And should she tell the newspaper editor every damning thing she knows?

The narrative reveals how difficult it is for Christian teens to have normal high school social lives without a) lying to their parents or b) getting mocked by their peers. No wonder they band together. But of course, the book also demonstrates that real friendships often transcend social barriers. It's a relief to be around people who are like us, but we only evolve when we interact with people who are different.

I kind of wish this book mixed up the format a little. The plot is full of blog posts, letters, newspaper articles, and science reports, so why not change the design on certain pages and show us the "primary documents," so to speak? And OK, while I'm criticizing things, the pastor of the super church is definitely a caricature. But the symapthetic portrait of his daughter, Bethany, mostly makes up for that. I wish there could have been a scene between Mena and Bethany ...

Alright, I'm going to stop before I start writing fan fiction here. Maybe there will be a sequel ... about Mena and her lab partner dating across religious differences ... No, for real, I'm stopping.

Summer Reading: Damn the man, save Isaura

My lil sis recommended Pucker, by Melanie Gideon, and it wasn't until two days after I finished reading it that I realized what made the book so disturbing. I mean, besides this part (If your name is Emily's Mom, don't read this. Seriously. It describes someone's face being burned off.):

"The top layers of my skin hung from my face like a giant sheet of wax. Cook would later tell me that I had no idea my face was aflame. I was cupping my chin as if I had just vomited and was trying to get to the bathroom before it splattered all over the floor" (28-29).

OK, so obviously, this book is about a burn victim, but it's a little more complicated than that, because, specifically, this book is about a burn victim from a distopian world called Isaura whose mother drags him through a portal to America (hospitals! McDonalds! motorcycles!). There she supports the two of them by reading people's futures from the comfort of her creepy, invalid bedroom. Then on page 5 she tells her son, now 17-year-old Thomas, that he's going to have to go back to Isaura and get something she left behind. It's actually a body part, but I don't want to get into that here.

Thomas figures he can sneak back into Isaura because Isaurians have a creepy policy of targetting desperate, suicidal, disfigured, terminally ill people and making them an offer: Come do manual labor for Isuara and we'll cure your disability. But you have to stay in Isaura. And do whatever we tell you. Forever.

Thomas crosses the border with a pair of conjoined twins, a girl whose skin can't be exposed to sunlight, an obese man, and a woman in a wheel chair. But he gets sidetracked from the mission his mother has assigned him, because as soon as his face is healed, he's hot, and all the girls want to make out with him. Except, of course, the one girl he wants.

What's so disturbing about the book is that Isaura is your classic distopia--rigid, idyllic, static. People are neatly stratified, technology is firmly resisted, and books are strictly forbidden. Everyone's "happy." It's just the kind of society whose elaborate facade is supposed to be ripped off by a noble freedom fighter to reveal the dirty machinations going on behind the scenes. But at the end of the novel, the facade is still intact. Thomas thinks the government is up to something shady, but what he perceives as a political plot turns out to be a very personal betrayal.

I don't want to spoil anything here, but I really want other people to read this and tell me if it doesn't confirm the paranoid teenage conclusions that 1) you can't change the world and 2) everyone is watching you. Not to mention, 3) your parents really did do something to ruin your life when you were about 5 years old so you should just blame all your problems on them.

That isn't exactly a criticism. I appreciate the deep pessimism of this book. In fact, I was a little disappointed that the ending wasn't even darker, as well as a little more drawn out and painful. As it is, it's the kind of book that creeps up on you, makes you a little uncomfortable, and leaves you a little dissatisfied. If I thought the author did all that intentionally, I'd be even more impressed.

Summer Reading: Rampant paranoia and other newsflashes

I don't mean to start with a disclaimer and then continue with an excuse, but damn, it's hard to write an intelligent review of a dumb book. And The Tattooed Rats by Jerry B. Jenkins is dumb. I know, I know, it's by Jerry B. Jenkins. Obviously, it's not rocket science. Jenkins probably doesn't believe in rocket science -- or evolution or contraception or affirmative action. But surely there's more to the book than the author's political agenda, right?

The Tattooed Rats imagines a near future in which Christianity is outlawed because it causes dissension, prejudice, and violence. Christians hideout in old shopping centers and underground bunkers--or they disperse themselves in terrorist-like cells and meet in secret to worship. The tattooed rats in the title are a clique/faction/cell that get "tats" and infiltrate the mental health facilities of the World Peace Alliance, the big-brother organization in charge. (The Tattooed Rats is actually the first in the "Renegade Spirit" series, and I picked it up because the second book came out last month.)

Jenkins has some clever ideas but he never develops them into interesting scenes. In fact, the narrative reads like a hack screen play: all dialogue, no setting, no exposition. On top of that, Jenkins plays cheap tricks like dropping you in the middle of a conversation that sounds like two teens talking about dating, but really, they're chatting about their relationship with Jesus. The characters are as interchangeable as the chicks in bad slasher flicks. And the more you read, the more paranoid he sounds.

This novel is part of a tradition of Christian writing that focuses on spiritual warfare, personifying the forces of evil and often pitting them against everyday characters the readers are supposed to identify with. This tradition includes brilliant allegories like The Book of the Dun Cow and Madeliene L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time Trilogy, not to mention The Lord of the Rings. But all of those books had something that Jenkins' work lacks: a compelling, vital, and chilling villain.

Jenkins' villains are Stepford wives who cook soy casseroles; neurotic teachers who forbid their students to ask questions; popular teens who can be bribed with headbands and lip gloss; frigid government agents like that sadistic woman in The Crying Game; and (my personal favorite) dinosaur-like demons who zip into human costumes to do the devil's work. That's right, Jenkins is ripping off Frank E. Peretti, the Stephen King of Christian fiction. The worst part is, the demons don't even appear until about half-way through the book.

That's why Jenkins sounds paranoid rather than prescient: his concept of evil is ridiculously didactic and reductive. He's from a clan of Christians who attack biology textbooks and contraception rather than poverty and racism. One can see why Christians and people in general feel duty bound to battle the culture around them--if by "culture" you mean violence, imperialism, the objectification of women's bodies, etc. But Jenkins wants to influence culture rather than just resist it, and that's what makes him scary.

Except I'm not scared of Jerry B. Jenkins, and I resist the urge to be, because I don't want to end up as paranoid as he is--or as confused about what's really a threat to free speech and a just society.

Just today I was on the phone with another librarian, asking her to hold Till We Have Faces for a patron at my branch. And her response is, "Oh, it always makes me nervous when people want C.S. Lewis books." Which I thought was pretty paranoid on her part. So I guess there are would-be censors on both sides of every issue. To those people, I would like to say: Books are not the enemy. Not biology text books. Not Harry Potter books. Not C.S. Lewis books. Not even these damn Jenkins books.

Summer Reading List: Double Your Pleasure

So my brother doesn't know this yet, but in return for playing keys in his band, I was going to make him help me write a YA book about the punk/hardcore scene--one that didn't characterize punks as kitschy sidekicks or drug-addled dead-beat dads (see Beige by Cecil Castelluci or Born to Rock by Gordon Korman). But then Rachel Cohn and David Levithan beat me to it.

There are already enough books by author-voyeurs who have no real love for punk--who just use it as a hook, a backdrop, a jacket cover. But Cohn and Levithan aren't pimping youth culture. They're tangled in the back seat making out with it.

Basically, the plot of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist is this: two teenage music whores spend all night in the city trying to get to third base, get over their exes, and get a ride home. The prose is headlong-she-loves-me-she-loves-me-not-stream-of-consciousness. The chapters alternate between the perspectives of Nick and Norah, and the whole story takes place over the course of about 10 hours, max. You feel everything they feel: the taxi screeching to a halt, the blood rushing to their body parts.

And I really appreciate the Virginia Woolf-esque attention to detail, because it allows the authors to distinguish between the many styles of people living in the wake of the first few waves of punk. Which leads me to my next rant:

People who write about punk for YAs often focus on the commercial tailspin, which reminds me of the way some people identify hip-hop exclusively with its worst excesses. Before punk was a category like "easy listening" or "gospel," it was a phenomenon, a movement, a whole community of people to whom the phrase "mainstream success" was an oxymoron. But now, punk has an evil twin: the H&M version of itself (see Avril Lavigne). And the two are not always easily distinguishable. But focusing on the commodified part of punk culture is misleading in two ways:

1. It overlooks the diversity of expression that characterizes the phenomenon (i.e. it's not just music: it's art, dress, dance, technology, code of honor; and it's not just tight pants, patches, and mohawks: it's Loretta Lynn in a floral print dress and bouffant);


2. also, it validates the corporate-appropriated acts rather than the pioneers. (If you think Blink-182 is punk, please don't ever write a book about the punk scene.)

Cohn and Levithan's characters aren't purists. They're straight-edge; they drink Starbucks; they don't care what people wear; they notice every one's accessories; they claim that nothing's more punk than jazz (18), except maybe elevator music (29); they wear pleather; they love their exes; they make ironic comments about "product endorsements by Nike and IBM" (125); then they endorse iPods, Ben and Jerry's, Tiffany windows (69), CVS (71), Oreos (92), Jagermeister (132), Manolo Blahniks (151), and Pepsi (161).

But here's what I really love: they don't think punk is dead. They consider themselves responsible for keeping it alive. They were, like, seven years old when Green Day sang "Do you have the time to listen to me whine ...", but they aren't nostalgic for simpler, purer times. They're active in a current scene. Nick is the only straight musician in a queercore band with no drummer. I'm not sure that's technically possible, but it's absurdly, existentially true-to-life.

But here's what you, as a reader, care about: Nick and Norah are two parts witty to one part cheesy. When they try too hard, it only sounds more authentic ("She's hanging onto the guy ... like she's auditioning to be a pocket on his jacket" (22).). And the supporting characters reveal themselves as philosophical, canine, flirtatious, obtuse. My favorite is Toni, a cross-dressing burlesque theater bouncer in a priest's costume. In fact, I'm going to close with some relationship advice from this ulikely oracle: "There's no such thing as ready ... There's only willing" (62).

Summer Reading List: Boys will be

As I told my lil sister on the phone last night, it's been a bad week for men. The next elderly gentleman who comes into the library and calls me "honey," "sweetie," or "girl" is going to get it. Except not now, because I read a book that perfectly captures the y-chromosome cluelessness and kinda makes it seem endearing again.

Imagine that two years after the end of Because of Winn Dixie, Dunlap Dewberry declares his love for India Opal Buloni. That's the feeling I got from The Summer Sherman Loved Me, by Jane St. Anthony. It's not quite as gothic as Kate DiCamillo's work (if you haven't read her 2004 Newbury acceptance speech on darkness in children's lit, get your hands on a copy of the July-August 2004 Horn Book and flip to page 395.), but it has the same smoky southern charm, eccentric neighbors, and percocious first-person narrator.

But what I really love is the awkward way Sherman shows his ardor for Margaret: cruel practical jokes, filched roses, gluey kisses. But the clincher is when he names his pet baby squirrel "Little Margaret." When Margaret first witnesses the creature's circus tricks, she thinks:"The squirrel was cute, in the same creepy way that a dressed-up mouse in a book can be cute ... Was Sherman insulting me? I couldn't be sure. I didn't want to care" (69-70).

There's something about this scene that is exactly right. Boys seem puzzled about how to express their feelings, and for some reason the result of their brainstorming is often absurd and a little predatory. But we give them a break because it's such a cry for help. Or maybe because we want to be loved, even if we would like to give them a little coaching on how best to love us.

But don't tell the kids all this stuff. Just tell them about the rule-breaking midnight bike rides, near-death experiences, Jell-O snacks, and relay races. Tell them how Margaret's best friend, Grace, nick-names Sherman "the vermin," and how Margaret is forever offering her twin sisters to other parents. Tell them that reading this book is the only way they'll find out what an "eye ball cleaning party" is. (Guesses, anyone?)