by SB Sarah • Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 06:59 AM
Bitchery reader “Smelly Feet” writes:
I found it in my highschool library in the early 2000s and I think it was published in the early to mid nineties. I remember a lot about the storyline but no names, though I’m reasonably certain the word Red is in the title. It’s a modern day young adult novel about a young teenage girl who lives in a farmhouse but whose family aren’t farmers. She has many brothers and sisters and they all look rather alike so she gets annoyed that people keep asking which sibling she is.
She meets a slightly older teenage boy who’s moved to town to live with a relative and is working in the general store. He gives her a bag of cookies, saying it’s a special. She thinks he likes her older sister but he’s obviously desperately trying to get her attention, usually by borrowing without permission things he thinks would impress her.
The main plot is that she finds a very old paved trail out the back of her family’s property that might have been an old road and she decides to clear it. It goes very far and she eventually starts camping out when it gets too far to go back each night. She finds a field with a horse that once belonged to a friend of hers who moved away, and later while camping she’s confronted by a bear? Or a wolf? I think she doesn’t check in so the boy comes looking for her, getting himself horribly lost. And I forget why but for some reason she springs the horse from it’s field.
Eventually she finishes the trail and she agrees to date the boy if he stops being so crazy.
That’s a lot of detail- I’d be surprised if someone didn’t come up with this one. But how come this girl didn’t have sixteen bodrillion mosquito bites sleeping out on a partially cleared road by herself?
by SB Sarah • Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 11:31 PM
Star Opal sent me a thought provoking article on age banding - you know, the 11+ or 14-and-over age markers on books. Seems Philip Pullman wrote a piece in the Guardian about his experience with his publisher wishing to “age band” his books for 11+. He said no, and they refrained from marking the books. He acknowledges that “it soon became clear that other writers hadn’t had that sort of understanding, and had been told that it was going to happen, like it or not.”
Pullman is set against age banding (why is it that this phrase makes me think of the rings on trees?) because he sees it not as a guide, but as an exclusion:
[W]hen the book itself says 9+, or 11+, that figure has quite a different status. It looks as if the author is assenting to it; it looks as if I’m saying: “I wrote this for 11-year-olds. Everyone else can keep out.”
And I did not. When I sit down to write a book, I know several things about it: I know roughly how long it will be, I know some of the events in the story, I know a little about some of the characters, I know - without knowing quite how I’ll get to it - what tone of voice I want the narrative to be cast in.
But there are several things I don’t know, and one of those is who will read it. You simply can’t decide who your readership will be.
Barb Ferrer told me once about finding her book It’s Not About the Accent shelved within the children’s books at her local store, and demanding that the manager look it up because it was unmistakably mis-shelved. Her problem? The book is, in part, about rape. When the manager looked up the book, it was indeed a YA book, not a children’s book, and it was reshelved immediately.
But her book doesn’t necessarily have an age range on it, and I don’t know that it, or any book, should. The folks doing the shelving had a clear indication where it ought to be - the YA shelves, not over with the children’s books - but should the books themselves be marked to directly state what age range their readers should be? Pullman acknowledges that there certainly ought to be some guidance for children looking for suitable books, but that that guidance ought not come from a stamp on the book cover. He’s started an organization with a pretty clear statement of principle:
* Each child is unique, and so is each book. Accurate judgments about age suitability are impossible, and approximate ones are worse than useless.
* Children easily feel stigmatized, and many will put aside books they might love because of the fear of being called babyish. Other children will feel dismayed that books of their ‘correct’ age-group are too challenging, and will be put off reading even more firmly than before.
* Age-banding seeks to help adults choose books for children, and we’re all in favour of that; but it does so by giving them the wrong information. It’s also likely to encourage over-prescriptive or anxious adults to limit a child’s reading in ways that are unnecessary and even damaging.
* Everything about a book is already rich with clues about the sort of reader it hopes to find – jacket design, typography, cover copy, prose style, illustrations. These are genuine connections with potential readers, because they appeal to individual preference. An age-guidance figure is a false one, because it implies that all children of that age are the same.
* Children are now taught to look closely at book covers for all the information they convey. The hope that they will not notice the age-guidance figure, or think it unimportant, is unfounded.
* Writers take great care not to limit their readership unnecessarily. To tell a story as well and inclusively as possible, and then find someone at the door turning readers away, is contrary to everything we value about books, and reading, and literature itself.
The reasons are as much a statement of parenting as they are about marketing - that the individual needs and interests of reading children should be of more account than the age stamped on the cover. Which leads me to wonder, would I have picked up romance novels if they’d been marked “18+?” “NC-17?” I was reading Sweet Valley High in middle school, I think, and I thought those were books meant for high school kids (not so much now that I look back). I was a late reader, but once I did figure it out, I moved quickly through anything I read, and moved up in reading level as fast as I could. Joe at Forbidden Planet agrees:
Well before I hit my early teens I had gone through everything that interested me in the children’s part of the library and wanted into the adult section. The librarians, once my parents gave their assent, were quite supportive because they could see I was understanding and enjoying the books I was picking out (my first exposure to writers like Bradbury and Moorcock) and I’ve been devouring any book or comic on any subject that I think looks interesting ever since. It could have been very different - if I’d been knocked back from moving on to more mature books when I knew I was ready for them I could have been put off reading.
What’s your take on that one? Should publishers try to mark books by age range? Or does that, as Pullman states, advocate limiting and excluding the readership of a book far beyond the intention of the author who wrote it?
by SB Sarah • Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 01:56 AM
Thanks to Jennifer Echols for the link: from the April issue of Print magazine, which is devoted to graphic design, an article about the changing and updated covers for YA books in the US. Sweet Valley High is featured, as is Judy Blume, Paula Danziger, and Nancy Drew.
The glitz and gleam of the Gossip Girls is mentioned, along with the updated SVH’s, but what caught my eye was the varying styles of art used for YA books now. When I was younger, I have this memory of most, if not all, being illustrated covers. Either way, with the covers for books like Melissa Marr’s and Stephanie Meyer’s series renovating my definition of “whoa damn awesome,” it’s cool to see a graphic design mag examining the YA genre’s art.
by SB Sarah • Thursday, August 07, 2008 at 10:50 AM
Sherry Jones emailed me the prologue of her book The Jewel of Medina to share with you all. I’ve read it, and I sent it to shewhohashope to gain her perspective, as she and I are of different faiths and cultures, and have differing views of the prologue and the book that it introduces. Obviously, sweeping judgments based on the prologue are as frail as sweeping judgments based on not having read the book at all, but hey, what is our site without some randomly sweeping judgments, right?
If you’d like to download the prologue and read it for yourself, a PDF is available here (please right click and download, thanks). All contents of the prologue are copyright Sherry Jones.
My reactions are from the perspective of a reader, and someone who is, due to this controversy, very curious about Islam, Aisha, Mohammed, and this book itself. Shewhohashope, a 22 year-old student of Anthropology living in London, England, is a Sunni Muslim and rabid Heyer fan.
My reaction: would this prologue make me continue reading? Yup. It’s half dishy and half history (which therein lies a problem, yo) and almost reads as a hybrid of YA, historical fiction, and historical romance. Aisha, in the prologue, is 14, and is returning to her caravan after they traveled without her. She arrives in camp with a man named Safwan ibn Al-Muattal, and upon her return is accused of adultery with Safwan. Muhammad later receives a vision or revelation that Aisha was not unfaithful to him, and her accusers were punished.
My initial impressions were that the tone was melodramatic, and that the heroine seemed very, very young, more like a modern 14 year old than what I would presume at 14 year old would be like at that time. Nowadays, a 14 year old is in middle school, and, if it’s a 14 year old girl, likely given to impulsive behavior and, in some instances, a hormonal overdrive that causes them to act like pubescent minions of evil. 14 year old girls can be MEAN like DAMN.
The biggest contention from those who would read this and be upset would be the depiction of Aisha as possibly having been tempted, and certainly having taken deliberate steps to sneak behind Mohammed’s back. Aisha is very, very human and young-acting, since she’s 14 and driven by some impulse in the prologue. A 14 year old then might have more presence of mind to resist impulse than a 14 year old today. I would figure a 14 year old at that time, who was married to a leader, who genuinely cared for him, who had been married for awhile, and who had, in context, a much shorter lifespan than we have now, would be in some ways more mature and less impulsive. But then, this is a supposition that could easily be flawed on my part, or addressed by the rest of the narrative.
However, the prologue sets up the narrative tension very quickly: what is Aisha feeling guilty about? She mentions that she and Safwan crafted a story on the ride to the caravan so that their stories would match, but she also mentions that she remained faithful to Mohammed. She has something about which she is ashamed, and there is a deliberate reason she allowed the caravan to leave her behind, but that tension and guilt betray her to those who accuse her of much, much worse, so she’s defending herself while she feels guilty and ashamed.
As I wrote to shewhohashope, the conflict about this book is as much about faith as it is understanding what someone of another culture and another faith holds sacred and what is, frankly, a “big deal.” It is, I’ve learned, a big deal to humanize and portray as tempted and flawed one of the four matriarchs within Islam. It’s a very big deal to hint at adultery for Aisha. And it’s a huge honking big hopping deal to portray as human the prophet Mohammed.
So that’s why it’s offensive to the part of alarming and upsetting people. I completely understand that. I still want to read the rest of the book.
However, in my mind that does not give any one person the right to make such a big stink that a publisher decides for the rest of us that reading the book is too dangerous for all involved. I’m disappointed that I won’t get the opportunity to read the entire book and decide for myself, and I’m disappointed that more people won’t have the opportunity to read something that’s become salacious and notorious, because if other readers are like me, they’d be curious about Mohammed, his wives, and their role in shaping the future of Islam and do more research (like I did - hello, internet! mwah!) to learn more.
When I asked shewhohashope if she’d be willing to read the prologue and share her reaction, she agreed. She writes:
Just from the prologue, the part I could see becoming contentious is that Jones’ Aisha ran away with another man with the intent to commit adultery, when this is specifically denied in the Qur’an. And the depiction of several of the sahaba in their treatment of Aisha, although that has basis within Islamic historical records (and within the Qur’an).
I don’t know. Considering that this is a fictionalised account of the Prophet’s (saws) [wife’s] life, offence-wise anything else is icing on the cake, so it’s not as important.
But I wouldn’t want to give the impression that there aren’t differences of opinion between Muslims as well, there is definitely a difference between how Aisha is perceived within the Muslim community. She is revered by Sunni Muslims and following the political incidents that caused the split between Sunni and Shia, Aisha is regarded as a much less reliable source within the Shiah tradition of Islamic scholarship.
I am no Islamic scholar (please add this disclaimer to everything I’ve said) but I assume that they would be better than the average woman (say me) and I can’t quite countenance the thought of committing adultery.
It’s mentioned in the Quran right after ‘don’t kill your children’, and right before ‘life is sacred’.
Kill not your children for fear of want: We shall provide sustenance for them as well as for you. Verily the killing of them is a great sin.
Nor come nigh to adultery: for it is a shameful (deed) and an evil, opening the road (to other evils)
Nor take life - which Allah has made sacred - except for just cause. And if anyone is slain wrongfully, we have given his heir authority (to demand qisas or to forgive): but let him not exceed bounds in the matter of taking life; for he is helped (by the Law).
[17:33]
It’s not so much the humanising of the Prophet either. There are plenty of biographies and hadith about the Prophet’s (saws) daily life. It’s the fictionalisation aspect that is worrying, not so much because of this particular book, this is something that has built up from when the hadith themselves were an oral tradition. Consider the danger of having historical fiction someone wrote about Mohamed (saws) floating about when our main sources for what the Prophet’s (saws) life was like are based on what people said about him. And for Sunni’s at least this makes up the second highest religious authority we have.
I’d have to read more to be able to anything substantial about it as a literary work, but it’s more controversial than I though it’d be already. [Aisha] seems younger than I think she’d be for her age, but that’s not an important issue within context. And it’s not even how she was tempted towards adultery as much as it’s that fact that that goes directly against something that is in the Qu’ran. Not to mention that Aisha in Islamic tradition (or sunni tradition) is one of the four perfect women who are held up as what all Muslim women should aim to be as wel as one of the Mothers of the Faith (along with Khadijah, Mary, and Asiya (ra)). Plus, it strikes me personally as a misrepresentation of who she was. Adultery in general is just a huge deal (even more so then, and even more so for a public figure, and even more so for her) it doesn’t strike me as plausible that she’d have a moment of weakness in this manner unless she was having a crisis of faith as well as whatever personal issues she’s supposed to be dealing with, because it is such a huge, huge thing to slip up on.
There are a slew of ways to evaluate the prologue: does it tease you to read more? Does the writing style please your readerly brain? Do the contents shock you? Does the characterization offend you deeply? Does the fiction make the idea of Mohammed and his life more or less accessible to you as a reader? Did you like it? And what about Brett Farve going to the Jets? No, sorry, that’s a different discussion.
I’m curious what you think of the prologue, so please share your thoughts. Thank you to Sherry Jones for sharing her work, and to shewhohashope for sharing her opinion and her time.
by SB Sarah • Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 02:37 AM
Our Grade:
Title: Stealing Heaven
Author: Elizabeth Scott
Publication Info: Harper Teen May 2008, ISBN: 0061122807
Genre: Young Adult
I read this book in a marathon of reading in 1 day. Considering how many things I do in a day, that’s saying a lot. The informal grading rubric that I use sometimes involves whether I have to take the book out of my work bag and read it at home, when I’m not on the bus or waiting for the subway, whether I stop doing things to read more, whether I bring the book in the car with me to read at red lights. The number of places I bring a book outside of the seat on the bus or the seat on the train doesn’t necessarily lift the book’s grade, but knowing that I’m happily reading something truly compelling means that I question what it is and what the book is doing so well that hooks me and hooks me bad.
I totally got honked at at TWO green lights (impatient Jersey drivers) today because I wanted to finish this book. I toted it in the car, I read it at my desk, I followed this book around all day because I could not stop wanting to know what happened next. Scott sustains a lot of the emotional and external tension through the book in such a way that it had little ups and little downs, but was always escalating, to the point that I thought I was going to have to read while peeking through my fingers. I knew what was going to happen, sort of, but I hoped it didn’t, even though I knew it probably would, etc.
Dani is a thief. Her mom is a thief. Dani has never had another life except as backup, research assistant, con artist, and thief. Their preferred target is silver, and their modus is to hop from town to town, targeting the biggest houses and the shortest route possible to the silver. They fence it, go shopping, live well, then move on to the next town.
But when Dani’s mom chooses the beach town of Heaven, Dani finds herself longing for things she hasn’t allowed herself to articulate before: she wants to stay. Have real friends. Who use her real name. And who aren’t potential targets for her mom’s next theft. That’s a tall order, because autonomy is one subject in which Dani’s mom hasn’t really given her a great deal of instruction. One of the most descriptive passages of Dani’s narration explains:
For silver I learned to read,write, work numbers. For silver I learned the name of every plantation from Virginia to Florida.... The story of my life can be told in silver: in chocolate mills, serving spoons, and services for twelve. The story of my life has nothing to do with me. The story of my life is things. Things that aren’t mine, that won’t ever be mine.
That one line makes me think of Prufrock.
There’s a good number of romances that glamorize thieves, but if you’ve ever had the violated feeling of being robbed yourself, knowing someone was in your home, helping themselves to your things and invading without your knowledge or permission and stealing what’s precious to you, it’s not too glamorous. And while Dani’s mother has a very concrete and distant way of looking at her potential victims, and at humanity at large, Dani finds herself at an intersection between her growing desire for something different and more in her life, her growing shame and consciousness of what it is that she’s doing, and her growing sense of panic that she’s not suited for or even good enough for anything, or anyone, else. That intersection creates a challenge for the author, and Scott admirably balances Dani’s past crime and her present moral crisis so that the reader can root for her and want her to want to change for her own good, even while acknowledging that Dani is really, really good at what she does.
Dani is the center of the novel, and since it’s YA, the first person narrative is mostly about Dani’s learning to choose her own path and figuring out who she is and wants to be in the period of a few weeks just before she sets her feet in motion down that path. There is a romance, but the person she finds herself falling for, Greg, is as much a catalyst as he is a foil, though he’s a marvelously sweet and considerate guy.
Scott has some great comic skills, particularly in the dialogue. Dani struggles to remember to keep herself, well, to herself and answers Greg with questions nearly every time they speak. After a few meetings between them, their dialogue was so snappy and sharp I wanted him to find her and talk to her, no matter what it meant for the plot. Plot progress? Acquisition of autonomy and self-reliance? Pah! Want sexy dialogue!
One interesting element I just realized: the reader never learns her mother’s name, and all the way to the end of the story her mother never lets go of her life and her dream of shopping for target houses, shopping for opportunities to steal other people’s stuff, then shopping with the money she’s fenced. That points to my biggest frustration with the story, though it is realistic: Dani’s mother doesn’t ever truly recognize the depth of her selfishness and neglect – which is, as I said, totally in line with the behavior pattern of a selfish person. While there are small moments where Dani’s mother does demonstrate that she might be thinking of Dani and her future, most of the time Dani lives her life according to her mother’s wishes because without her mother, no one would want her. The degree to which she doubted her mother’s love made those small moments seem small and brittle in comparison to the true, though brief, overtures of friendship Dani navigates in her first weeks in Heaven. No one, but no one, has ever stood up for her, or made her feel valued for who she was, not what she could steal.
Ultimately, Dani pays the bigger price for her mother’s choices in their lives, and has a good bit of harm to confront when she finally decides that she can be in control of her life instead of her mother. Oddly, her mother is half of the reason Dani ends up in the driver’s seat literally and figuratively, but her mother never fully appreciates what makes Dani happy. She mostly insists on reminding Dani that whatever it is that Dani might do, it won’t make her mother happy.
But because Dani’s decision to own herself and her future comes so close to the end, and the change is pushed by such draining circumstances, I’m left not entirely confident in Dani’s self-ownership. I’m hopeful, and I want her to ride off into the sunset with Greg but I’m not sure that she will. And I wished any one of the people who hurt and neglected Dani had experienced at least one moment of ownership of their own responsibility.
While the ending is hopeful, it’s not a bonafide happily ever after; after being on the outside for so long, Dani’s focus is simple: home and belonging, with belongings that are her own, in her own home. The price that Dani has to pay for that home of belongings is a high one, and it’s a powerful story. Acquiring those things when it means rupturing everything she’s known until then is akin to stealing – stealing her future from her mother, the one who taught her to steal.
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