The rgz Street Team is a group of teens who bring YA reviews to our blog, led by Postergirl Miss Erin. Find out more.
Today, Priya reviews two fantastic reads. Up first, one of last month's featured books, Scarlett Fever by Maureen Johnson:
"As Scarlett Martin's rigorous sophomore year begins in New York City, her life takes a turn for the extraordinary. Her eccentric boss' demands are getting weirder and weirder, her brother suddenly becomes a notorious and hated TV villain... and that's just the beginning.
"Scarlett Fever is the sequel to the hilarious novel Suite Scarlett, and it is every bit as witty and exciting as its predecessor, if not more..."
Read the rest of this review on Priya's blog.
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A Conspiracy of Kings is the fourth book in
The Queen's Thief series, and in my opinion, it's the best one. This book focuses on Sophos (one of the minor characters in the previous books) and his dangerous adventures and epic rise to power as the king of Sounis.
"There were three main things that made me enjoy
A Conspiracy of Kings: the characters, the writing, and the plot. I really liked Sophos' character in this book - he was easier to sympathize with than some of the other characters. I felt that he was more accessible to readers and more people would be able to connect with him and understand his actions.
"The writing was wonderful as usual - suspenseful and fast-paced. The plot was also fabulous, with several twists and turns. Megan Whalen Turner has this amazing ability to completely fool the reader and take them on this journey only to reveal some secret or something..."
It’s a week after Comic-Con and I’m still working through my notes! Two more panels and another booklist to post, and then it’s likely to get quiet around here for a spell.
I scrawled a crazy amount of notes at the Once Upon a Time panel—six authors of epic fantasy discussing their craft—but the odds of my being able to translate the scrawl to English are slimmish, so never fear. This was a fascinating panel. (Hence the 12 pages of notes.) Have I mentioned I love hearing other writers talk about their work? Yeah.
The panelists, in order of seating: Brandon Sanderson, Brent Weeks, Lynn Flewelling, Megan Whalen Turner, Christopher Paolini, Patrick Rothfuss. The moderator: Maryelizabeth Hart of the awesome Mysterious Galaxy bookstore. She was great. They were all great.
Hart’s first question was about the everyman character vs. the larger-than-life superheroic character. In epic fantasy, with these sweeping adventures and grand-scale worldbuilding, does the main character also need to be larger than life?
SANDERSON: talked about Bilbo and Frodo, everymen, little guys, ordinary, small. “If Tolkien did it, it must be okay.” (Gave context of Tolkien as originator of high fantasy.) Made interesting point about Sam having superheroic loyalty—i.e. Sam is not a typical everyman. But came back to “at core of every everyman there is something exceptional.”
WEEKS: If we can follow them [everyman characters] through that journey, we are great too. We know there is something great within us, potential; as the everyman becomes great, we become great with him.
FLEWELLING: likes to see the process (of becoming great), doesn’t like to see heroes from the start. Wants backstory. If protag is superstrong, etc, can be boring.
WHALEN TURNER: Likes themes of “extraordinary performances of ordinary people.” Talked in terms of flavors—her favorite flavor is a book about an extraordinary person, but it requires careful handling to maintain dramatic tension. Spoke about the Mary Sue character, two different definitions of that; one is “squicky,” where the character represents the author; but in another sense a Mary Sue character is an everyman who can represent the reader. She likes that, thinks it makes for satisfying story.
PAOLINI: Basically it comes down to: “Batman is better than Superman.” (Gets huge laugh.) Talked about the difference between the extraordinary SETTING and the extraordinary CHARACTER. You can put an extraordinary character in an ordinary setting (like Superman in Kansas corn field) or vice versa, ordinary guy in extraordinary setting (Frodo in Mordor). Over time, the ordinary character becomes larger-than-life—best example, he says, is Arthur Dent in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “a larger-than-life doofus” with flaws and weaknesses.
ROTHFUSS: 1) Paolini beat him to the Batman thing. 2) He’s a contrarian so has to reflexively disagree with what everyone else said. (Big laugh.) For him, a really big story (and epic fantasy is always a really big story) needs an everyman for people to relate to. He also spoke about the Mary Sue—my notes say “Your main char is one”—was he talking to Paolini? I think so, think it got a laugh, Paolini nodding in agreement. Rothfuss likes characters like Cyrano, Odysseus—unusually cool and clever.
PAOLINI: discussed “hereditary vs earned skills” (again Superman—hereditary—and Batman—earned/learned). “Escalating powers” can make problems for a writer—if the guy can simply “snuff the sun,” no story left. He too likes CLEVERNESS in a character.
SANDERSON: talked about origin of epic fantasy, founded by Tolkien, before that there were heroic tales (Conan, Tarzan, the guy starts off as hero). Tolk
I must say, I was more than impressed by the sheer wealth of great children’s poets weighing in on yesterday’s post about the conspicuous lack of an ALSC poetry award. Today, we shall switch gears and instead start off the day with a fine little . . .
- New Blog Alert: I’ve decided that I want to work at the Eric Carle Museum. This is a long-term plan. I’m not in a particular rush. If 50 years down the line they have an opening in their little library (I like their little library quite a lot) I’ll apply then. Until that time I’ll just read their brand new blog instead. The blog in question is called Shop Talk and has all sorts of goodies in it. Visits from illustrators like Lisbeth Zwerger (she’s so young!). Communist interpretations of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Even a first sentence quiz that stumped me (is Madame Louise Bodot from Crictor?). They tell me that they’ll be doing an endpaper quiz soon too. Better add it to the old blogroll.
- New Italian Blog Alert: I don’t get to write that nearly as often as I’d like to. In a perfect universe we Americans would be able to hear not just about the cool new children’s books from our own American blogs, but the cool new worldwide children’s books via blogs from other countries. I know of a couple Aussie children’s literary bloggers. At least one Brit. A Canadian or two. But where are the Welsh, the French, the Chinese, or the Indian children’s literary bloggers? At least we’ve got a rep from Italy, eh? The Tea Box recently came to my attention, and thanks to the wonders of translation you can read it in only mildly maligned English. There are interviews and looks at new books. And check out this image from this post on the picture book La Governante by Edouard Osmont.
Gorgeous! I could spend all day exploring through the site’s blogroll too. Bella bella!
Speaking of musicals, there is a Caddie Woodlawn musical that is not QUITE as cool as the Phantom Tollbooth infographic, but pretty cool nevertheless….
Thank you, dearie!
I’m so surprised that the stupid Giving Tree didn’t make the tattoo list!
Oh my. That wallpaper.
Being both a color fan and an Oliver Jeffers fan, I would TOTALLY use that wallpaper.