Harley, Like a Person

Bauer, Cat. Harley, Like a Person. New York: Alfred A. Knopf: 2000.

Annotation: Ever think "those people CAN'T be my parents?" Harley certainly does - and with good reason.

Justification for nomination: Harley's freshman year in her suburban high school is a melodramatic time, brimming with classic adolescent firsts: her first dance, her first serious fight with a friend, her first encounter with drugs, her first boyfriend. Accompanying all these milestones, Harley's relationship with her family is growing ever more estranged. The future she imagines for herself bears no resemblance to her home life, and she's none too diplomatic in her attempts to communicate this (what teenager is?) to her parents. As she tries to make sense of who she is, where she's going, and how she's going to get there, the mystery surrounding her parentage (missing birth certificates, close-mouthed parents, whispering relatives, and odd attic discoveries) slowly takes center stage. Harley is an absolutely alive character - lovable yet terribly frustrating, sometimes downright unlikable and snotty. Her growth as she learns to accept the limitations of others (especially her family) is so finely tuned that I cannot help but nominate this, even if other aspects of the book are not so breathtaking. This is in spite of the frustration I felt when the truth of her lineage is brought to light. Not wanting to reveal a plot spoiler here, I'll just say this: it was too happy, or perfect. However, knowing my own bias against happy endings, I can't give my own opinion on the matter very much weight.

Genre: Coming-of-age.

Forever

Blume, Judy. Forever. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1975.

Annotation: A couple of high school seniors fall in love, have sex, and then...graduation changes everything.

Justification for rejection: Katherine Danziger narrates this relatively graphic and yet somehow squeaky-clean story of a young couple's first adult romance. Katherine and her boyfriend Michael are the children of middle class, East Coast suburban, white nuclear families. Neither spectacular nor average (like most of us, really), their lives are remarkably free of stress or problems in any form. While this detracts from the overall quality of the book, it does allows their sexual relationship to take center stage. Understanding this novel as a groundbreaking work of its type makes it quite exceptional; however, relative to all the other YA fiction that's been published in its wake, the story is too didactic to merit an award.

Genre: Realistic/"edgy"/coming-of-age.

American Born Chinese

Yang, Gene Luen. American Born Chinese. New York: First Second, 2006.

Annotation: Born in America to hardworking Chinese immigrant parents, Jin seeks acceptance amongst his mostly white peers by shunning his heritage.


Justification for nomination: This story packs a big punch into a small, accessible package. Readers follow Jin's growth from a lonely, oblivious child into an even more lonely and oblivious young teen. He's aware that his Chinese heritage is fodder for the classmates that he'd like to be friends with, and so he accepts the friendship of Wei-Chen, a fellow Chinese boy, half-heartedly. Interspersed with Jin's life are vignettes from the age-old Chinese legend, the Monkey King. As the monkey's selfishness and vanity lead him into disfavor with divinity and a trap that he cannot escape from without assistance from others, so do Jin's understandable yet still selfish choices lead him into an utterly friendless existence.

Graphic novels, due to their proximity to the Sunday comics, are a virtually unintimidating format for those kids that shy away from novels full of words and no pictures, or those who believe themselves poor readers. Yang's drawings are simple, the action flows effortlessly, and many of his simple images convey universal teenage experiences with nary a word. The reader witnesses Jin's first date and his betrayal of Wei-Chen's loyal friendship thoroughly via just a few drawings.

Mixing up ancient legends, classic coming-of-age lessons, the difficulties faced by ethnic minorities in American high schools into an easy-to-read and brief story speaks to the high literary skill evidenced in this book. Savvy and/or guided readers can use the Eastern spiritual guideposts from this story to discuss the similarities and differences between Chinese and traditional American Christian cultural and philosophical beliefs. There's plenty of other issues to argue and/or discuss, too - for example, when Jin betrays his friend and then is drawn as a white person, is that how he really appeared, or was the artist only drawing him the way he saw himself? The reader has the final say. Given all of these qualities, plus the still groundbreaking significance of the comic form as a vehicle for literary work, American Born Chinese is deserving of the attention it received.

Genre: Printz; graphic novel; coming-of-age;multicultural.

My Heartbeat

Freymann-Weyr, Garret. My Heartbeat. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.




Annotation: Ellen's first love happens to be her brother's best friend. Only, maybe the two boys were more than friends...


Justification for rejection: Ellen's narration of her first year of high school is a well-paced and highly thoughtful story. A smart, quiet girl whose academic development is closely watched by her determined, exacting father, her only friends are her older brother Link and his best friend James. Ellen has had a crush on James since the seventh grade and when James and Link's friendship falters under the weight of questioned sexual orientation, James and Ellen's romantic relationship takes off.

The world these teens inhabit is an elite and privileged one. Ellen's father gives her Jane Austen and Edith Wharton novels to read; they watch foreign films and visit art museums; they attend a private Manhattan high school; money is not in short supply. This book takes on both homosexuality and the intense pressure that gifted and groomed teens endure as they face decisions about the shape their future will take. Link is the more obviously gifted of the siblings (he's a math whiz) and must bear the substantial weight of his father's hopes and expectations of great success. The possibility that Link is gay looms as a large and mostly not-talked-about elephant in the family room; their father couches his objections to homosexuality in terms of Link's future opportunities. Ellen learns a lot about love and sex as she comes of age, but the bigger lesson is her realization that the world is riddled with "unwritten social laws" that everyone must decide for themselves how to contend with.

This book is full of keen observations and "a-ha", quotable sentences - perhaps to a fault. All of the characters are so well-spoken and terse as to be slightly unbelievable, lacking some of the rough qualities that flesh them out of the literary world and into a breathing, imperfect and curious human. While it's certainly an intelligent and memorable treatment of many adolescent issues, it falls short of exceptional.

Genre: Coming-of-age/Printz/realistic.

how i live now

Rosoff, Meg. how i live now. New York: Random House, 2004.







Annotation:

Angsty and anorexic Daisy, a 15-year-old NYC girl, is sent to live with her aunt and cousins in the English countryside. As her cynicism begins to succumb to the peace and love she finds amidst her quiet, accepting, "mystical being" cousins, war comes to England. She fights to survive and succeeds, but not without losing nearly everything she'd finally begun to risk caring for.

Justification for nomination:

Daisy's first-person retrospective of her harrowing journey through love and war is narrated in a powerful, original and bracingly honest teen voice. Rosoff strikes an odd balance between beautiful writing and the actual speaking style of modern American teens, mixing overlong sentences, odd capitalization, and spot-on teen attitude into a compelling first-hand tale.

The object of Daisy's first love - her cousin Edmond - will certainly put off some readers. Daisy's crossing of boundaries isn't confined to illicit love, either...the story begins with her flight over the Atlantic. Edmond picks her up in his mother's truck from the London airport - another metaphorical border push, for Edmond is 14 and definitely too young to drive. Daisy is brought out of urbanity into her cousins' simple rural existence, complete with barnyard animals, swimming holes, and fishing excursions. Their mother (Daisy's dead mother's sister) "always has Important Work To Do Related to the Peace Process" and thus is out of the country lecturing on the "Imminent Threat of War" when, in fact, War happens, beginning with terrorist-like attacks in London. Borders are sealed and the children are left to fend for themselves. Before the affects of war spread to their area, Daisy briefly experiences profound happiness (sexual and otherwise, another possible sticking point for some readers).

The bulk of Daisy's story, however, deals with the unraveling of her life and her innocence that occurs when her adult-free bubble bursts and the war drives she and her cousins from the farm, in separate groups (based on gender). Separated from Edmond and by default the sole guardian of her nine-year-old cousin, Daisy is subjected to a crash course in hard-knock life. Part survival story, part love story, Daisy's quest back to Edmond and the farm brings the frightening state of modern day international politics out of the setting and into her story very effectively. The ambiguous end to this short and deceptively easy read leaves much of the final outcome up to the reader.

Genre: Printz, Coming-of-age, "Edgy".