The Art of Secrets vs. the Heartlight Saga

The clear cut winner for this round is The Art of Secrets.  While most of our group would consider themselves a fan of fantasy and science fiction, it was generally felt that the Heartlight Saga was dated and very exposition heavy.  One member of our group felt that she needed to "push [herself], yelling and screaming, through the Heartlight Saga." The Heartlight Saga lacked artistry and felt generic when compared with The Art of Secrets.

Without a doubt, The Art of Secrets is by far the better read.  It was simply more interesting in it's presentation of different perspectives, with different voices telling the same story, and of course, the final twist.  While the characters were more interesting than the mystery itself, there was a lot of meat to the story.  It was nice to have a story centered around a Muslim family; and, of course, issues of racism arose.  While the vocabulary and general structure is accessible for the average junior high student, the themes of friendship, family, race, poverty, romantic relationships, charity, and deception give a lot of depth and create potential for sophisticated class discussion.

Posted by Amanda B. on behalf of Shelley K., Shelley P., Christine W., and Travis D.

Feisty Girls in the Woods vs. The Mad Monk

 

Brad:  Well, I think I can see where this match-up is going to go, but we’ll chat about it anyway.  Let’s start off with Lumberjanes, because, well, it seems to have invoked the ire of more than a few Smackdown participants.  Thoughts?

Jenny:  Ah, Lumberjanes . . .  I was disappointed.  I thought the concept of the book was interesting: a summer camp where girls battle the strange and supernatural, but it went nowhere.  I didn’t like any of the characters, and every time a character said “What the junk?,” I cringed.  I got to the end and was shocked.  That’s it?!?!

Brad:  But...we only read Part I of a two-part story (get Lumberjanes Vol.II for the rest!!)?!?!  How is that the fault of poor Lumberjanes Vol. I?  I liked it a whole lot more than I expected to.  Look--it’s no Nimona (which, sidebar, Dear Arlene and Dia, should be in next year’s Smackdown):  it lacks the clever allegory and whip-smart social commentary of that Noelle Stevenson work.  But...this is just...FUN.  Like The Goonies. I’m not sure I laughed out loud a lot, but I smiled and snickered the entire time.  And I can’t deride a text that would send kids scurrying to their computers to look up “anagrams” and the “fibonacci sequence.”

Jenny:  I didn’t find it fun; I found it annoying.  As I was reading it, I wondered if kids would find it fun and/or funny.  To me, there was a lot of jumping around from one adventure to the next with really no time to get to know the characters. In all fairness, I should probably read the next book in the series, but I just didn’t care about the girls.

Kelly:  What the junk….was that book all about?  I was excited to start Lumberjanes and was hooked at the first paragraph when it it described how “curiosity and courage are especially important to the Lumberjanes,” but it was nothing but disappointment after that.  I felt the story was scattered,  no development of the characters, and not sure where courage was shown.

Brad:  Huh.  I thought the characters and character development were pretty clear; these are archetypal characters, for sure, and remain fairly static, but, by the end of this four-issue compilation, I had a pretty good feel for all of ‘em.  Look--I’m not saying I loved it or anything, but I thought this was good, clean fun.  All around.

  

Kelly:  I just never connected with any of the characters.  I just felt it was noisy….how do you like that?

Brad:  Fair enough!  And I can totally see it.  I guess I just sort of embraced the boisterousness of it all.  Again, like The Goonies.  Loud, doesn’t make much sense, but winsomely funny, and, at times, kind of fun.

Graham:  I actually had a ton of fun with Lumberjanes. I felt this book is appealing to a lot of young readers, including me. I understood the characters were somewhat flat and, yes, noisy Kelly. And it was pleasing to me, right from the start. I was prepared for fun and whimsy. I also felt the book played on a fun story with the art adding to the experience.

Brad:  The art was ridiculously fantastic--tons of classroom potential in teaching the sequential image.

Jenny:  I think that it’s funny that the men liked Lumberjanes more than us WOMEN.

Graham: Perhaps it was the comic layout that was somewhat reminiscent to my cartoon-watching days. But I was prepared to enjoy the book from the getgo. I am also pretty good with disobedient children and adventure.

Brad:  Should we move on to The Family Romanov?

Jenny:  In contrast to Lumberjanes, I really liked The Family Romanov.  I thought it was informative and interesting at the same time and a much better way to learn about Russia than using a boring textbook.

Kelly :  I agree with you Jenny.  I loved how I was learning about the Romanov family and about the unrest in Russia.  It was easy to read and I felt connected to the characters.  I actually didn’t want to put it down.

Graham: As I had mentioned in the previous round, I also enjoy history captured in a meaningful and personal experience. The book adds a depth of understanding to Imperialist Russia and the contrast to the haves and have nots.

Brad:  This is going to shock you all, but I, too, really liked The Family Romanov, despite some pretty big flaws, in my opinion.  See, HERE’S what an immaculately-researched non-fiction text can be:  engaging, heartfelt, and moving, without ever sacrificing the “truth” of the real story or real people.  I love how quotations are excerpted from real texts in order to flesh out the story, rather than “fictionalizing” moments in real-life events.  Look--it’s a great story.  Stranger than fiction.

Jenny:  I loved seeing the personal side of the Tsar and Tsarist - flaws, fears, and all.  More “mortal” than perhaps anyone thought.  I also found the chapters about Rasputin fascinating.

 

Brad:  Me too.  He really was a cat that really was gone. What I didn’t love?  I got a little tired of all those juxtapositional interstitial chapters where the opulence of the royal family was contrasted with the impoverished drudgery of the Russian commonfolk. Necessary, I suppose, but SO SO MUCH.  I got it.  Really.  The first ten times.

Jenny:  I agree--I thought that the other perspectives were great at first but then became tired of them.  But, even so, I actually got a little emotional  - I know--hard to believe - when the family was being brought to their execution...  

Kelly : ...and how fast the execution happened!  (Editor's Note:  Spoiler alert!?!?!  Necessary?   Unnecessary?  Whatever. END Editor's Note)  I can’t imagine the fear when they realized what was going to happen.  Interesting--I actually enjoyed the constant contrast of peasant/common folk and the privileged lives of the Romanovs.  I felt that it kept you thinking about what was really happening in Russia.  It kept you from only focusing on what was specifically happening with the Romanovs. 

Brad:  So...which moves on?  Everyone?

Jenny:  Gotta love those Russians!

Kelly:  Hands down, no question, the Russians.  It will be the only time I cheer for the Russians...Don Cherry would not be impressed.

Graham: I have to go with my good friend Rasputin.

Brad:  Me too.  Those zany, zany Russians.

Kelly:  I love it that we all agree!!

No. You're Crazy!

 

As I think about all of the books I’ve reviewed in the past few years as part of the Smackdown, it seems like one of my recurring pet peeves is the tendency for YA authors to create too many plot points within their narratives. Is this reflective of a larger societal perception (seemingly backed by science http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/may/31/why-teenagers-cant-concentrate-brains) that teens may not be able to stay focused on one thing for an extended period of time, or simply writers going for broke with as many engaging concepts as they can fit into a novel? I don’t know, but I find it frustrating when a character or situation that deserves depth and nuance, instead gets bogged down shifting from one crisis to the next.

beauty of the broken is a novel that falls prey to this particular problem, but the author actually navigates it all quite deftly until the end. This is probably a direct result of crafting a compelling protagonist who, while not immune to moments of outright teen angst, is thoughtful, introspective and brave. Mara is dealing with two significant challenges and the most dominant and immediate one is that her father is an unrelenting brute who, during the course of the novel, violently assaults both her beloved brother, Iggy, and her mother. I was going to write that Mara is also struggling with her sexuality, but that is not accurate: Mara is completely at peace with her sexuality, but she is struggling with the frightening ramifications of being a lesbian in a community that contains both the aforementioned violent sociopath -who has a particular hate-on for anyone different from him - and a local preacher who not only holds sway over much of the community, but also seems to frequently focus on “abominations” which would include Mara. I found Mara’s burgeoning love story with the town new girl, Xylia, very honest and compelling, and it was heartening to find some genuine joy and passion in a book that dwells on an awful lot of ugliness. It created a counter-weight to the horrid reality of Mara’s home life with a man who poses a persistent emotional and physical danger (though he never assaults Mara physically) to his family. I’ll also give due credit to Tawni Waters in being able to create a character capable of such brutish extremes, while still managing to portray some slight nuance to his inner life, and even more significantly, being able to show how pervasive the desire for a family norm can become, even if it is a horrifying norm. There is a moment midway through the book where we see Mara’s desire to just be her Daddy’s little girl which is both beautiful and terrible. There are moments where this novel has the potential to become something transcendent. Unfortunately, those moments get lost in an ending sparked by a (spoiler alert) not entirely unexpected, but nonetheless horrifying, sexual assault that sends the novel speeding towards a completely jumbled ending.

So, how does that stack up against Crazy. Well, I’ll admit to not being crazy about the verse novel form, although I know there are many devotees. I would like to read an argument as to how the verse form enhanced this novel. I tried reading parts out-loud and I just couldn’t reconcile this decision with the novel’s larger aims, and as Dia mentioned in her review, this is not verse in any meaningful sense. I’ll put that aside for the moment, however. I think this is an ambitious and perhaps even important book, if for no other reason that it focuses on something - a parent’s mental illness - that a large number of our students experience, but likely have little opportunity to discuss until their situation reaches a crisis point. In the novel, Laura’s mother’s mental health struggles are the frame for the larger narrative of her life, which involves a complex family dynamic, the navigation of a typically challenging high school social scene, her uneasy relationship with art and, the role of faith in her family and larger community. So, again, lots going on, but to her credit Phillips weaves these threads together quite seamlessly, although again, for a verse novel the voices are sometimes shockingly nondescript. I was also somewhat dissatisfied with the way the author navigates the 60s landscape. I was born in the seventies, but the sixties have always loomed large in my imagination and pop culture experiences and that means that I have a lot to build on in imagining this setting and some its nuances. I can’t imagine that this would be the case for many of our students and I don’t think the author provides enough atmospheric detail to really bring the time to life, much less help a young adult understand some of the subtle social critiques the author is intending. I realize from the afterward that the author is drawing on her own personal experiences, and I get the whole write-what-you-know thing, but if your target audience are kids born in this century, setting your novel in an only partially realized 60s era seems a bit thoughtless, if not lazy.     

Wait, that’s kind of harsh. I am picking Crazy, right? Right. (Sigh) And so it goes. Two well-intentioned, sometimes thought-provoking novels, with some substantial flaws. I’ll stand with Crazy for a slightly tighter narrative and a sometimes moving portrait of the complex emotional and physical toll mental illness can exact from a family. Also, the title, while boring, does not hold the potential of physically repelling readers like beauty of the broken.

Pointe vs. The Nest

Laura and I are voting to send The Nest through to the next round. It was suspenseful and creepy. It was fun to figure out what the main character was just imagining in his mind, and what was actually happening in reality. We both agree it could fit nicely into a grade 7 lit circle. 

It seems we were given Pointe to read as a punishment for not voting through When I Was the Greatest. While this book wasn't as terrible as I was imagining, it tried to do a little too much all at once. I think the story of the kidnapping/trial should've taken more of a central role, rather than focusing so much on the other side issues with Theo's friends, drugs, eating disorder, dating a guy that's seeing someone else, etc. Even the dancing part didn't seem to fit very well. I often wondered how her parents didn't pick up on ANYTHING she was doing, like throwing away most of her food every day when they were sitting right there in the kitchen with her. I can't see any of my students reading this book all the way through, and I wouldn't recommend it to any of them. We'll try and end the punishment here and hopefully vote it out! We look forward to finding out what the rest of our contingent thought about these books. 

The Tyrant’s Daughter and Gabi, a Girl in Pieces were great books to pair together. Both involved strong female characters with well thought out plots, but only one book had the more fleshed out and believable character that we felt should move on to the next round - Gabi, a Girl in Pieces. 

The Tyrant's Daughter was a good book that dealt with some serious issues.  We do not know what it would be like to have to leave your home country and start fresh, learning how to navigate a new culture and the difficulty doing so was portrayed in the book.  As one of our group members pointed out, not having a specific country identified was a bit distracting though. Unfortunately, we just could not connect with the main character as well as we would have liked.  She was written to be distant but she came across as too distant and you didn't truly believe the outcome in the end.  

On the other hand, Gabi was such a believable character, she felt like someone we could have grown up with. The book was written over her senior year of high school and there was a lot going on but it never felt forced to move the plot. We had a bit of a debate with our pitch hitter for Sunita about the criteria for selecting books to move one. Is the criteria books for junior high or well written literature regardless of the level? Since I haven’t heard a straight answer on that point we went with the book with the stronger, believable character and book that we would recommend to someone in high school.

Suanne, Katrina and Judy (aka Sunita)

Gabi: A Girl in Pieces > The Tyrant's Daughter

I agree with my group on this one. I actually enjoyed Gabi a fair amount. I'm sometimes put off by YA novels that have ALL the teenager problems (and Gabi and her crew collectively have ALL the problems), but Quintero did a fine job of either keeping them subtle or spreading them around to multiple characters in a way that felt believable. I liked all the references to poets and poetry, and wondered as I was reading it if students would be inclined to follow up on those allusions. I also liked the additional insights into Mexican-American culture and found, as was pointed out last round, that there was usually enough context to figure out the Spanish phrases.

I really wasn't a fan of the Tyrant's Daughter. I understand Carleson's decision not to make the family from any particular country, but I found that as a result the characters just seemed like an inauthentic pastiche of Middle Eastern cultures. The plot, while reasonably engaging, seemed far-fetched and Laila's relationships with everyone around her seemed hollow (despite the Kirkus Review's assertion that she was "complex and layered.") I thought Gabi was a much more relatable character with much more relatable issues (I suspect more teens have experienced body image issues, then have dealt with the legacy of a dictator-father).

I vote for Gabi.

In other Smackdown News: John Green recently named M.T. Anderson's Symphony for the City of the Dead one of the top books he read this year. I think I'm regretting eliminating it in favour of that awful graphic novel (let's hope that one dies this round!)

Gabi, A Girl In Pieces versus The Tyrant's Daughter

This pairing was a difficult decision in that both books were good, but neither of the two were incredible.

Our pick for this round is Gabi, A Girl In Pieces by Isabel Quintero.  We know the rest of our group still needs to blog and vote so we will see if everyone else in the group felt the same as we did.

We prefered Gabi because the story is slightly more relatable from a teen's perspective as it was easier to connect with the characters. The characters almost seemed like real people. Gabi's drawings and poems added interest to the story as well. Overall, it was simply a better book.

The Tyrant's Daughter was also a good book. It had an interesting plot, unique perspective, and dynamic characters, however it was a little bit hard to believe.

Respectively submitted by: Maureen and teen readers (Cara and Layne)