Young Adult Fiction

I recently read three young adult novels: Wicked Lovely, Elijah of Buxton, and I am the Cheese. I wasn't going to add them to my list of books read since none is particularly challenging. However, they are all full-length novels, and the shortest among them -- Cheese -- was also the best and most "literary". They aren't books I would normally pick up and read, but since they were also on the list of summer reading books for school, I figured I should be familiar with them. Elijah (written by Christopher Paul Curtis) was like the Canadian version of a poor man's Huckleberry Finn, though the second half was much better than the first, unlike the Twain novel, which got worse as it went along. The book is written in dialect, but it's not as intense a dialect as Huck Finn. The story isn't nearly as interesting, either. It's a coming-of-age story of a free-born black boy (about eleven years old) who lives in Buxton, Canada, in the mid-nineteenth century (antebellum). It's a good story for students to have read before tackling Huck Finn because it lends itself to many comparisons, but I wouldn't assign it to them as it's rather slow-moving. The ending is a bit dissatisfying as well.

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr was better, but still only middling. Now this is going to sound sexist, but I'll comment anyway. It seems that the woman who wrote the book doesn't understand what women really like in guys, nor does she have any understanding of guys in general. The main male love interest is the type of guy who girls think they would like but in reality would quickly lose interest in: popular and self-assured but not arrogant, he really listens to her and supports her, he's strong but understanding, selfless, he likes to cook and keeps a clean house, he's independent but not afraid to commit to her, he doesn't push her romantically and is happy to go at her pace, he's jealous but not overly so, he wants to be friends and more-than-friends with her, he's self-sacrificing, and he isn't at all bothered when she doesn't want to sleep with him. In short, he's a metrosexual artificially-constructed pseudo-rebel and totally unbelievable, although I could certainly picture pubescent girls swooning over him. The author just can't write males. In fact, the main male rival for the protagonist's affections is almost immediately won over by Keenan's charm. The ending of the novel was stupid and the author refused to make any choices. None of the characters suffered significant and permanent loss, nor did they seem to change significantly. I would not have been surprised to find out that the book was actually written by a thirteen-year-old girl. The book did have some interesting scenes, but overall it was so slow-moving that I suspect the author dragged things out from a lack of ideas. I can see the appeal to young (female) readers, but I don't think many young males would like it.

I am the Cheese by Robert Cormier was excellent. Typical Cormier, which is to say unflinching, compelling, interesting story, dramatically tense. It's a difficult book to read, since the reader is forced to put a lot of pieces together, though Cormier gives a lot of help at the end of the book. The description is cliche at times and minimal. It moves forward steadily (the whole book is only 214 pages) and was certainly the best-paced novel of the three. Talk about making tough choices. Cormier's loyalty is to the story, not the characters (unlike Marr), and his ending supports that philosophy. I enjoyed The Chocolate War, though the ending was tough to swallow, and this novel did not disappoint either. This would have been a good novel to teach in school, since it was challenging and had many opportunities for discussion and making predictions. The novel unfolded like an origami, eventually bringing the reader full-circle.

All-in-all, I'm glad I read these. As an English teacher, it's important to connect with adolescent fiction, and it's satisfying to be able to chug three novels in a week, as opposed to my ten-day excursion on the Pequod, or the 100 hours of solitude I was forced to spend with Marquez's masterpiece.