We Were LiarsE. Lockhart
YA
I had the great pleasure of listening to a panel on which Emily Lockhart spoke at BEA. She is an adroit, strong, well-spoken writer. I was intrigued and decided to end my year of book reviews with one about her latest,
We Were Liars.
Lockhart has a style all her own, somewhat reminiscent of Hemingway - parsimonious, yet emotionally sated. Style alone - doing a lot with so few word - is reason enough to read
We Were Liars. Plus, there's that whole, it's a "damn fine story" aspect. Is one allowed to curse in book reviews? I wonder. Ah well. This is YA people. Cursing happens.
I very much like Penguin's recap of this book, so I am shamelessly stealing:
A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate,
political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.
Again, parsimonious, almost free verse.
Lockhart builds in a nice, other worldly experience into the book that the book blurb doesn't reference, and of the four friends, three are cousins, but otherwise, the synopsis captures style and story very well.
I've only met one reader so far who didn't pick up on the other worldly experience early in the story. I'm not sure you're not supposed to pick up on it. In fact, I think you're supposed to sense it but not be sure, paralleling the experience of the main character. There are parallels to M. Night Shyamalan's visual work.
My oldest has to read two novels for the summer for her Fall Sophomore class English. I've pressed this one on her. Think of all of those coming of age stories you had to read -
Lord of the Flies,
A Separate Peace,
Catcher in the Rye - that's where this book belongs, only written in today's vernacular and thus readily accessible to today's youth without becoming weighty. This could also make a great beach read since it happens in summer, at least partly on a beach.
For other great summer treasures,
Barrie Summy's website marks the spot for reads galore. Have a great summer!
My spiritual director called this morning. A lovely man who visits once a month and as I no longer take church services we spend the time talking about books and poetry.
After discussing Japanese poetry, we reached the subject of the Booker and the Nobel prize for literature. For many years I spent the week before the Booker Prize, at a college with others, trying to decide the winner.
Every night there are publishers and agents who go to sleep knowing that they held the manuscript of Harry Potter in their hands and turned it down.
I don't know for sure how many times it was rejected - every source quotes a different figure - but it seems safe to say quite a few.
So here are a few more famous rejections to give you heart if you've ever been on the receiving end of I'm-afraid-your-book-doesn't fit-into-our-list kind of letter.
CARRIE by Stephen King
King received 30 rejections for his story of a
tormented girl with telekinetic powers, and then he threw it away – his wife
found it and persuaded him to keep on trying.
GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell
Rejected by 38 publishers before it was printed. The
1939 film is the highest grossing
Hollywood film of all time (adjusted for inflation).
LORNA DOONE by Richard Blackmore
Turned down 18 times before being published in 1889.(Made up name by the way, just as Jonathan Swift invented Vanessa and Wendy in Peter Pan was the very first of her kind.)
DUNE by Frank Herbert
The epic science-fiction story was rejected by 23
publishers
LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding was rejected by 20 publishers.
The DR SEUSS books 15
publishers denied themselves the chance of becoming very rich.
And James Patterson's first efforts were rejected by nearly 50 publishers. He is believed to have sold more books than any
other author - that's an estimated 260 million copies worldwide.
Daylight Saving (not “Savings” I just learned) has arrived and you know what that means? It means babies have a terrible sense of telling time. Just awful. And that, in turn, means I’d better crank out a lickety-split Fusenews before I hear the telltale sound of little eyelids opening.
First up, The New York Times Best Illustrated Books of 2011 were announced. I like to keep a tally of what I managed to review in time vs. what got missed. The winners were:
- “Along a Long Road,” written and illustrated by Frank Viva (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
- “A Ball for Daisy,” written and illustrated by Chris Raschka (Schwartz & Wade)
- “Brother Sun, Sister Moon: Saint Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures,” written by Katherine Paterson, illustrated by Pamela Dalton (Chronicle Books)
- “Grandpa Green,” written and illustrated by Lane Smith (Roaring Brook Press)
- “Ice,” written and illustrated by Arthur Geisert (Enchanted Lion Books)
- “Me … Jane,” written and illustrated by Patrick McDonnell (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
- “Migrant,” written by Maxine Trottier, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault (Groundwood Books);
- “A Nation’s Hope: The Story of Boxing Legend Joe Louis,” written by Matt de la Peña, illustrated by Kadir Nelson (Dial)
- “A New Year’s Reunion,” written by Yu Li-Qiong, illustrated by Zhu Cheng-Liang (Candlewick Press)
Well, three out of ten ain’t . . uh . . . ain’t all that hot, come to think of it. Next year I shall vow to do better! I liked Travis at 100 Scopes Notes and his reaction too.
- Amazon has just put out their list of the Best of 2011 too. I’ve read eight out of ten and reviewed five of those. Much better.
- While I’m thinking of it, there was announcement of the Carnegie Medal and Kate Greenaway Medal nominees over in Jolly Old England. The Carnegie (their version of the Newbery) nominees include a couple Americans, a couple titles we’ve seen stateside, and a lot of surprises. I’ll be rooting for Tall Story by Candy Gourlay, The Cardturner by Louis Sachar, and The Crowfield Curse by Pat Walsh. On the Greenaway (their Caldecott) nominee side I’ll
Ruh-roh. I’ve been having too much fun earning a living to leave enough time for blogging. Time yet again for a super quickie point-by-point-without-the-details Fusenews! Hold onto your hats . . .
Who are the artists overlooked by the Caldecott? Elizabeth Bluemle has the scoop.
An East Harlem bookstore needs your help! Thanks to Heather Scott for the link.
- Everything in this Horn Book article Board-book-a-palooza by Cynthia K. Ritter I agree with. Everything.
- Speaking of HB, Roger’s blog has a new format. Love that bow-tied avatar of his. Who drew it, I wonder?
- Don Tate has a fun piece about his time at the Highlights first illustrators intensive Founders workshop. He happened to stay in the same cabin that I did when I visited last summer. I had no idea I’d stayed where Floyd Cooper had. Fabulous!
- Don’t get me wrong. I love Where’s Waldo but how dedicated am I? Not this dedicated. Yeesh! Thanks to Molly O’Neill for the link.
- Dunno. If I were to find a title for this story of the 1500 pound Mo Willems sculpture of a pachyderm I think I would have gone with “Elephant and Piggie Iron”. But that’s me.
- Who knew that random stills of that old Spider-Man cartoon could be this fun? Particularly when they involve librarians.
Kseniya Yarosh, I tip my hat to thee.
- That’s it. I’m making my own Funny Book prize. This time for American books. Because, quite frankly, they’re hard to write and I’m jealous of the Brits for getting to have their Roald Dahl Funny Prize.<
When I first became interested in children’s literature I decided that it would be a good idea to teach myself about all the old greats of the picture book world. A good idea, but self-teaching is inherently limited. As such, I’ve missed a lot of folks. For example, until now “Saul Bass” meant nothing to me. Yet after reading the Ward Jenkins post on the Rizzoli reprint of Henri’s Walk to Paris, that is one book I would love to get my sticky digits on. Just gorgeous stuff.
I’ve noticed a couple of folks around the country working to make literary loving hip in the mind of the average consumer with varying degrees of success. One project that has interested me, though, is this Litpunch idea the Twin Cities are engaged in. Basically you get a card, you attend fun free literary events, and if you get your card punched twelve times you get a $15 gift card to a bookstore. I do wish the libraries were involved in some manner but it’s a great notion. Imagine if they did the same thing with children’s literature! I await that happening someday.
- This is impressive! Want a fabulous list of in-print books set on every continent of the world? And would you like such a list to also include activities and recipes and the like? Then I think it’s time to take a trip to Read Around the World. It’ll do your old heart good. Promise.
- Speaking of recipes, you know that fabulous book Press Here by Herve Tullet? Well, would you fancy trying a mess of Press Here cookies? Children’s Books for Grown-Ups has got the goods. It’s part of a regular “Bookish Bites” series. I’m seriously looking forward to how Natasha will tackle that upcoming Moomin birthday cake. There but for the grace of parental challenges go I . . .
- Once in a while at Hark, A Vagrant, Ms. Kate Beaton will reinterpret various Edward Gorey covers. Here’s one she may have missed. It appeared recently on the 50 Watt blog and features a Gorey spider. Have you ever seen a Gorey spider? Did you know that you were missing out? That your life contained a gigantic Gorey-spider shaped void?
Well now you know.
You’ve been bounced around from foster home to foster home, and it’s becoming clear that no one cares where you end up next. You’ve fallen between the cracks. So imagine your luck when you discover that you’ve been accepted to an exclusive private boarding school where you might have a chance to make something of yourself. Only…once you get to the school, you find out that there’s no leaving it. There are no grown-ups…only classes taught by fellow students who have received the lessons from mysterious adults on the outside. The students have formed their hierarchies so that you’re in or you’re out, and you’re constantly watching your back. Nothing is quite what it seems. What do you do? Fall in line? Try to escape? Only…those who try to escape aren’t heard from again…
And this is the hang-on-to-the-seat-of-your-pants, twist-around-every-corner story that Robison Wells has written with
VARIANT. As Heather mentioned in her
guest post yesterday, we – publishers, librarians, bloggers – read a lot of books and we’ve become rather jaded. But this one…this one is special. You won’t see these twists coming. In its
starred review,
Publishers Weekly says that “t
here are plenty of ’didn’t see that coming’ moments and no shortage of action or violence. With its clever premise, quick pace, and easy-to-champion characters, Well’s story is a fast, gripping read with a cliffhanger that will leave readers wanting more.”
We recently put the get-to-know-him-now-because-he’s-about-to-skyrocket-to-the-stratosphere author of VARIANT, Robison Wells, in the hot seat – well, since it’s summer, we actually put him in a hammock – and begged him to answer The Most Important Questions He’d Ever Answer. Here’s what he had to say:
What time is your alarm clock set for?
I know this sounds terrible, but when I’m writing I wake up at 4:00am. I still have a fulltime job, and I find that I write much better before work than after. It took a while to get used to the early schedule, but now I like it quite a bit. Everything is quiet and calm, and I don’t have a million stressors running through my head. I can really focus.
Favorite book from childhood?
I guess that would depend on the era of childhood we’re talking about, but overall I’d probably say THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH. I think I connected a lot with Milo, who was a little cynical and always bored. I was a smart kid and I was in advanced classes in elementary school, but I didn’t really like learning, or even reading. So, when the book starts with the main character saying “I can’t see the point in learning to solve useless problems, or subtracting turnips from turnips, or knowing where Ethiopia is or how to spell February”, I was immediately drawn in. And then the book was filled with clever wordplay that you would only get if you actua
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By: Keith Mansfield,
on 8/14/2011
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After finally downloading some of my pictures, here’s a belated post about summer fun. If you’ve never been to the Glastonbury Festival you might be labouring under the misapprehension that it’s a music event. In fact, you could have a great time in the fields of Worthy Farm if you don’t do to see a band at all. A city of two hundred thousand people, three miles across, descends on the Somerset countryside and it is a city of wonders. I think the first time I went was 1992. I remember catching sight of the place and thinking I had stumbled upon Tina Turner’s Bartertown, from the Mad Max movies. There was just so much going on and here are a few pictures away from the music side:
Much of this year’s art was on a gigantic scale, set in some sort of post apocalyptic dystopian future. Here in an area of the site known simply as Block9 is “The London Underground”, a 50ft tower block complete with a crashed Tube train near the top.
Opposite “The London Underground” is another extract from an urban cityscape, the magnificent “NYC Downlow”. Dare you cross the road to enter what for the Glastonbury campers might still appear to be luxury accommodation. Yes the bathroom’s exposed to the elements but, hey, at least there’s a bath.
Shangri-La was a nearby area of the site that had “been contaminated”. It was a Blade Runner-style world with a mixture of hope and desperation. You entered underneath a neon banner proclaiming “We are all sky” which is something that’s always had a special resonance for me in my more poetic writing.
There was a rumour (that I started) that Bono’s plane had been shot down on leaving the festival, ending up as another club in one of the outlying fields. Or maybe this is an allusion to Lord of the Flies, that if the mud becomes too deep we’ll all revert to savages. Whichever, I think the styling’s extraordinary.
Here’s your chance to begin again in the off-world colonies. Now we’ve seen the final space shuttle flight it might be the only way to go there.
By: Laura,
on 8/4/2011
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Our popular feature is back! Blank-Meets-Blank was actually started first by Betsy Bird at Fuse #8 – she ranks the best “Blank-Meets-Blank” when she attends publishers’ librarian previews. This is an awesome way to booktalk to kids and teens in your library or classroom!
Today, we’re sharing the best Blank-Meets-Blanks for our upcoming Fall 2011 titles:
“Richard Scarry meets Where’s Waldo?”
EVERYTHING GOES: ON LAND by Brian Biggs
On-sale 9.13.11
“Kate DiCamillo meets Neil Gaiman”
LIESL & PO by Lauren Oliver
On-sale 10.4.11
“Ramona meets The Penderwicks”
MO WREN, LOST AND FOUND by Tricia Springstubb
On-sale 8.23.11
“Lord of the Flies meets Michael Grant’s GONE”
VARIANT by Robison Wells
On-sale 10.4.11
One of the highlights of my Senior English course is teaching Lord of the Flies. It's often taught a younger ages in other schools, but I use it as a "send off" for seniors. Reading Lord of the Flies is the last thing we do in class.
Why I consider Lord of the Flies a "Great Book":
The degeneration of a band of British school boys stranded on a deserted island during wartime is a frightening mirror for all human endeavors. Selfishness, greed, egoism, violence--all the ugly depths of the human psyche are laid open when the stress of survival pushes the kids too far.
The book plays with the dichotomy of civilization and savagery. As a nice parallel, the boys hunt pigs--swine are known to turn feral rather quickly when left to their own devices.
And then there's that Nobel Prize...
Favorite Line (*spoiler alert*):
"And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of a man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy."
Sheer brilliance.
I, for one, am looking forward to Stephen King's introduction in the new edition celebrating the 100th anniversary of Golding's birth.
Some people do find children difficult, don’t they?
And just as there are those who find children hard to relate to in real life, there are those who find them hard to relate to in fiction, and who therefore assume that any book with a child protagonist must ipso facto have been written with a readership of children in mind. This attitude generally goes hand-in-hand with the sort of assumptions about the merits of children’s fiction that makes those of us who write it rather cross.
Thankfully, there are also authors on the other side of the Great Fictional Divide who understand that childhood (in which, for the purposes of this piece, I include teenagehood as well) isn’t just a period of waiting to turn into a real person. So, as my contribution to the Awfully Big Second Anniversary Celebrations, here - in no particular order - are five of my favourite depictions of children and childhood in novels written for proper grown-ups:
1. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
When I was a small child, I was told by my classmates that the house at the school gates was The Witch’s House. I remember going fearfully but excitedly up to it, one day after school, with one of my friends; and seeing, just as we reached it, an old woman’s face at the window.
We screamed and ran. We were afraid; but it was a safe fear - a fear of something we had created in our minds and fixed to someone else’s home. I don’t know why children do this - perhaps in order to practice dealing with genuinely scary things when we’re older - but in the Radley house, Harper Lee captures this sort of childhood totem perfectly; and in Scout, Jem and Dill, she creates three very real children, who play and negotiate and slowly learn about justice and injustice and the complexities of the adult world entirely convincingly.
To Kill a Mockingbird is fifty this year, and hasn’t aged a bit.
2. About a Boy, by Nick Hornby
We all knew a Marcus at school, didn’t we? Except, of course, for those of us who were Marcuses - bright in some ways and yet so naive in others; misfits who desperately needed to be taken under someone else’s wing.
It’s Hornby’s masterstroke, of course, that the wing in this case belongs to someone who bridges the gap between the child and adult states - a grown-up who’s never actually had to grow up.
About a Boy is a wonderful comedy of embarrassment, with a lot of unsentimental warmth and down-to-earth wisdom about families and growing up; and with two very real boys of vastly different ages at
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That is tough for sure. But I do agree with Lord of the Flies. i fell in love with that book when I read it as a kid, and it's always remained a fave.
Selected it because all of human life, development is there, P.K.
Oh, such a difficult choice to make. Your selection makes perfect sense.
Ah, it is difficult when one must choose between books! I've read Lord of the Flies, but not the other yet.<br /><br />Have a wonderful week! :)
Wonder what you would have chosen, Susan :0)
Thanks for being here, Karen, hope your week is a happy one.
Wow. I guess I'd need to know what books have won in the past first.
It would be hard to decide, but I think Lord of the Flies is a fabulous choice!
That is a hard choice to make, but I like your pick.
I think you made a great choice. I awarded you the sunshine award on my blog.
I just Google the past Nobel and Booker winners, Alex, and buy them in translation. In that way I get to read some amazing books :0)
Thanks, Cherie, always think the reversion to tribal behaviour in these 'modern' children is fascinating.
Oh, thank you so much, Murees, shall be over!
It was difficult, Christine, an impossible thing to do, really. So many to choose from.
The choices are too difficult. Maybe I'd throw the names in a hat and choose that way. LOL. Not very scientific, I know.
When you are faced with my spiritual director, you suddenly have the ability to make up your mind - and amazingly quickly, Joylene. :0)
I honestly don't think I could ever make this choice! I do think you selected an excellent one however!
Lord of the Flies is an amazing choice!<br /><br />www.modernworld4.blogspot.com
Thank you Meradeth, it is impossible,but he wanted an answer :0)
With my director demanding an answer, I tend to make up my mind very quickly, Gina :0)
Only one? I suppose I'd have to choose Tolkien. But it's so hard to pick only one!
Very hard indeed, Deniz, but you'd understand - if you met my Spiritual Director - how it was easy to make up my mind rather quickly. :0)
I like your choice, but it would be hard for me to narrow things down to one choice. I have so many favorites.
It was difficult, Medeia!