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because I was flipping through the new Entertainment Weekly at lunch today and saw that

Mandy Moore and Ryan Adams are engaged.

Mandy Moore and Ryan Adams.

Mandy Moore and Ryan Adams.

Oookay. I had no idea they were even a couple…

I feel like I need to make this post book or library related, so I’m going to just throw this open for comments.* What is your favorite book (fiction or non-fiction, YA or adult) about music or musicians? Or, you know, you could leave a comment about the Mandy Moore-Ryan Adams engagement.

* WordPress just added comment threading, so leave some comments, people! I want to play around with this feature, and it would be really lame if I had to reply to my own comments.

I was going to wait until the weekend, but Betsy just came out with her ALA Youth Media Award predictions at A Fuse #8, so I’m moving this up. Although I agree with Carlie that I don’t think The Hunger Games will get an honor.

I’m not very good at predicting which books will win awards, but I also think past Printz Award committees have had a tendency to select books no one was expecting to win (either for the top award or an honor), picks that have seemingly come out of nowhere.

I mean, 2001? Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging getting an honor? Don’t get me wrong, I think the book is fabbity-fab and an absolute riot, but how many people would’ve predicted it would receive a Printz Honor? 2003—Postcards from No Man’s Land over The House of the Scorpion? Okay, so I wasn’t actually a YA librarian back then, and maybe these two examples weren’t shocking to anyone at the time. But then, 2007—American Born Chinese over both The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation; v. 1: The Pox Party AND The Book Thief? I thought, and it seemed to me that most other people thought, one of the latter two was going to win. And, again, last year? Leaving aside personal reactions to the individual works (I’ve already admitted I was not a fan of The White Darkness), how many people saw that set of books coming? How many people had even heard of One Whole and Perfect Day? Was I not the only person shocked that The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was not recognized by the committee at all?

So with this in mind, here a couple of books that don’t seem to be getting much buzz in the various mock awards and discussions I’ve read, but which I can see receiving the Printz or a Printz Honor. There are a bunch of titles that pop up on most, if not all, of the lists I’ve seen (Octavian II, Frankie, Paper Towns, etc. See this list for a sampling), and I’m going to ignore them for the purposes of this post. I’m also going to limit my picks to books on the final BBYA nominations list, just so I don’t go crazy wracking my brain, and to books that I’ve read.

My I’m-not-saying-these-are-going-to-win-(after-all-I-didn’t-even-get-one-right-last-year)-but-I-wouldn’t-be-surprised-if-the-committee-selected-one-of-these-as-the-award-winner-or-as-an-honor-book picks in alphabetical order:

I Know It’s Over by C. K. Kelly Martin
Because I’m not the only one who thinks it’s great. It received several starred reviews and is a Cybils finalist. The characterizations are vivid and, more than any other book I read last year, real. I might want to be friends with Audrey (from Audrey, Wait!), I might consider Jonah Griggs (Jellicoe Road) and Dane Rafferty (Thaw) the most compelling characters, but Nick felt the most real.

On the other hand: it’s not a finalist for the Morris Award, which makes me think a Printz nod is unlikely.

Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
Yes, it’s a Cybils finalist. Yes, I love this book. Yes, it is now officially my favorite book of 2008 and, at this moment, my favorite YA book ever. But I can still be objective about it. Right?

Because… Okay, have you read this book yet? It is brilliant. It’s complicated, confusing, does not spell things out for the reader, and is ultimately more rewarding because of this. Yet even as you’re wondering what is going on, you’re still drawn into the story, still want to keep reading instead of putting the book down. In terms of its literary quality, I think it stands out in every way: voice, character building and character development, plot, structure, writing.

On the other hand: my favorite book of 2007? The book I loved more than any other from an emotional standpoint and admired more than any other for its literary merit, because of the character development, the narrative voice sounding like that an 18-year-old and dialogue that was realistic and conversational, and the structure, with the flashbacks, not flickers? With a couple of lines that just broke my heart? That had me telling people, “Oh my god, this book was so good! It. Blew. Me. Away.”? That was a Cybils finalist (and eventual winner—not that I’m making any predictions about what this year’s judges will pick)? That received a couple more starred reviews than Jellicoe Road? Boy Toy. Shut out completely!

On the other…hand? foot?: Marchetta is Australian (hi, Judith Clarke, Sonya Hartnett, Margo Lanagan, and Markus Zusak!). And as much as I love and admire Boy Toy, my reaction to Jellicoe Road is like Boy Toy x 10. Except as much as I gush about it, it’s a lot harder to describe to people than Boy Toy.

Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
I’ve only seen it on one mock Printz list, but it is a finalist in the Cybils graphic novel category. To quote the Cybils panel: “Atmospheric and intimate at the same time, this debut graphic novel about an angsty teen avoids the usual cliches through sheer sympathy and grace and the beautiful art lends it an unusual delicacy.” I wouldn’t count it out since a graphic novel has already won the award.

On the other hand: I think it’s been getting more love from graphic novel types than YA lit folks.

There’s also Would You by Marthe Jocelyn (nothing more than my gut on this one), Ghost Medicine by Andrew Smith (which I’m including largely because of the combination of starred reviews + I really struggled to get through it), and Me, The Missing, and the Dead by Jenny Valentine (because it’s on the Morris shortlist and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal).

What about you? What are your under the radar picks for all YA fiction published last year, not just the BBYA nominees? Any non-fiction titles?

since, um, last Thursday. Which may not sound like much, but it’s the first time I can remember struggling to get into every single book I picked up (and we’re talking, like, ten different books here—YA fiction, adult fiction, adult non-fiction, and graphic novels) for more than a day or two, and I haven’t been able to finish a book even though I really want something to read (as opposed to going 4+ days without finishing a book because I didn’t have the time to read). I can’t blame the Cybils for this, since I actually read seven books the first week of this year. Or maybe it’s a delayed reaction, since there were so many books I wanted to read but couldn’t get to because of my Cybils reading, and not knowing where to start now that I can read them.

Or maybe I should blame this on Rachel Caine, because while I did manage to finish two books after I read Lord of Misrule, it was a struggle to get through both. And then after those two, nothing. I was totally looking forward to Lord of Misrule, and Caine did not let me down. It was just as intense and exciting as the previous Morganville books and, seriously, that preview of Carpe Corpus? 100% worked. I mean, I’d be excited about it even without the preview, but having read it, I’m even more impatient. So, maybe it really is Rachel Caine’s fault for writing such a fast-paced book, compelling book that I’ve been bored and impatient with everything else I’ve picked up since then.

Until I get out of this slump, I think I’ll just entertain myself by blogging about random things like this: I picked up Daniel Ehrenhaft’s Dirty Laundry the other day (post-Lord of Misrule, so I didn’t get past p. 15).

Oops, that’s not the cover.

Nope, not this one.

Wait, it’s not this one, either.

Oh, here it is!

In the past six days,

1. a teen girl asked me for fiction books about teen pregnancy;
2. I read C.K. Kelly Martin’s I Know It’s Over (review forthcoming; basically, it’s excellent and you should read it); and
3. it was announced that Sarah Palin’s seventeen-year-old daughter is pregnant.*

When I was helping the girl who wanted teen pregnancy fiction, I had a really hard time trying to think of recent books that focus on the girl, not the guy. It’s great that we’re seeing books about teen fathers, but it seems like there are more of these books now (like The First Part Last, Slam, Mahalia, Hanging on to Max, even The Nature of Jade) than there are about the teen who is actually pregnant. And in a way, it kind of bothers me that I could more easily think of the books about guys, because in real life, how many teen mothers will end up raising their child on their own?

Anyway, it’s booklist creation time. Contemporary realistic fiction about teen pregnancy or teen parents published in the last, oh, ten years narrated by/focusing on a girl who got pregnant or the guy who got her pregnant. Besides the books listed above and Linda Oatman High’s upcoming Planet Pregnancy, I’ve found:

• Baby Girl by Lenora Adams
• Angel’s Choice by Lauren Baratz-Logsted
• Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn
• Butterflies in May by Karen Hart
• Dancing Naked by Shelley Hrdlitschka
• My Life as a Rhombus by Varian Johnson
• One Night by Margaret Wild

What else is there?

* See the Freakonomics blog for some interesting stats about teen pregnancy (via)

of reading two novels back to back, one about the princess of Montagne and the other a princess whose cousin is the king of Montaine?

And really, I think that’s what’s going to stick out to me the most about Princess Ben and Aurelia. Both books are enjoyable enough and good enough to finish, and while I will recommend them to teens who like this kind of book, they didn’t really do much for me.

I have to give Catherine Gilbert Murdock credit, though, for writing Princess Ben. It’s a huge departure from her previous two books, Diary Queen and The Off Season, and I have nothing but admiration for an author who is able to switch gears like that. In some ways, it’s a very successful change—the prose just sparkles, for example—but in other ways, not so much. The characterizations in Princess Ben never reach the level they do in Dairy Queen or The Off Season, and I say this as someone who didn’t get what the big fuss was until the second half of The Off Season (and I’m a huge football fan!), nor do the plot and worldbuilding stand out in any way. And as for the romance, because of course there’s a romance involved, I thought it mediocre at best.

Ben, short Benevolence, is the coddled only child of the prince (younger brother of the married but childless king) of Montagne. When the king and Ben’s mother are killed, and her father presumed dead, Ben becomes the heir to the throne. Nothing in her life has prepared her for this. At her mother’s insistence, the family did not live in the castle. Ben has had no training in any of the skills a future queen needs. Plus, she’s overweight, a problem Queen Sophia is determined to fix by drastically reducing the amount of food Ben is given. Ben’s problems appear to be solved when she discovers that she can move about through secret passages in the walls of the castle and figures out how to muddle through, or even better, get out of, her lessons without actually learning anything.

The problem with this is that the greatest emotion I felt during most of the book was sympathy for Sophia. Ben was selfish and self-centered, perhaps predictably so as a result of her upbringing, but by the time she came to her senses and realized that, hey, as future monarch of this country, she needs to know how to rule it, it was too late for me. At that point, I wasn’t reading because I cared about Ben; I was reading to find out what happened to the country.

Despite my antipathy towards Ben, the fact that I found the book somewhat enjoyable is a credit to Murdock’s writing. I’ve said before that I don’t mind unlikable characters, that I don’t need to like a character to like a book, and I still think that’s true. I realize that Ben’s growing up and maturing is the point of the story, but I never found Ben compelling enough to read the book just because of her (perhaps because the POV, of an older Ben looking back at these years of her life, implied that everything worked out so some of the tension was lost?), and as I said before, I didn’t find the other things that were going on particularly interesting, either. In some ways, I actually think this book is better suited for upper elementary readers than it is for teens. I don’t know about others, but I would have handled Ben’s selfishness better when I was younger, maybe fourth or fifth grade, than I would have as a teen. By that point, I would have been all, “What about your responsibility to your people?” like I am now. Not to mention that I probably would have found the romance more romantic.

Another thing I think I think, to quote Peter King, is that superficial is becoming my favorite go-to criticism, and it’s one of my two big problems with Aurelia. There’s a distance to the narration of Aurelia, which too often felt like mere observation, that kept me from becoming involved with the story. Anne Osterlund uses an omniscient third person narrative that describes the emotions of the characters more than it actually gets inside their heads. It’s not that I think the book would have been improved by a first person narration, because I really don’t, but that the characters aren’t fully realized as is. They’re like, I don’t know, actors or placeholders, there to fill a role and not truly Aurelia or Robert or Melony.

Still, I enjoyed Aurelia more than Princess Ben, largely because of the responsibility Aurelia felt for her citizens. She’s the princess of Tyralt, heir to the throne because her father, the king, has no living sons. Unbeknownst to her, she has been the target of several failed assassination attempts, so Robert, son of the country’s former royal spy, has returned to the capital to discover who wants Aurelia dead. Aurelia cares about Tyralt’s citizens, occasionally at some risk to herself, unlike her father, and most citizens feel she’d be a better ruler. Which is why the ending bothers me so much (big problem #2 [highlight to read]: you care about your citizens so much that after learning who wants you dead and realizing no one will be punished, you decide to travel?! WTF?). This is definitely a book I would have liked more with a different ending.

For some actual reviews of Princess Ben, head on over to: Abby (the) Librarian, The Compulsive Reader, Educating Alice, Em’s Bookshelf, Kids Lit, Kiss the Book, Read a Great Teen Book!, and Teen Book Review. And some Aurelia reviews: Dear Author, Kel’s Thoughts.

Not.

I just finished Reading Matters: What the Research Reveals About Reading, Libraries, and Community yesterday (much, much stronger in the adult and children chapters than the YA chapter, in my opinion), but the cover still bothers me.

For a book that’s about pleasure reading, particularly fiction reading, why is the book on the center of the table called Linear Algebra? (You can just make out the title in this image.) Are there no stock photos of people actually reading fiction? Or some book not called Linear Algebra?

In other news, I was reading ESPN The Magazine while eating today. Last place I would have expected to see the cover of Kate Brian’s Sweet 16, but there it was in Outtakes (is that really what it’s called? You’d think I’d know this). Good one! It doesn’t appear online, but if you turn to the second to the last page of the magazine, it’s there.

That’s what I kept on thinking as I read this article about James Patterson’s YA books in the New York Times.

There are a lot of choice quotes, like:

According to market research conducted by Codex Group on behalf of Little, Brown, more than 60 percent of the readers of the “Maximum Ride” series are older than 35.

Also,

Little, Brown has also asked booksellers to shelve hardcover editions of the new “Maximum Ride” title and “Daniel X” in the adult section. Six months after hardcover publication, it will release a paperback version for the young-adult sections of the bookstores, and six months after that a mass-market paperback edition for the adult shelves.

Another NYT article, about product placement in a new tween series, has been making waves. TadMack sums up the issue beautifully, so go read that.

And one more link to the Times. According to a new study, teenage boys’ motivation in relationships is not primarily about sex or physical attractiveness. Which, I must say, is really making me think about how guys and romantic relationships are depicted in YA books.