Nanowrimo is COMING!

And I don't know what to do!

I know that the motto is "no plot, no problem," but I've never been so close to November and had so little idea of what to do for my nanonovel. Last year I did a (terrible, dramatic) Zombie Apocalypse novel. The year before was the Farion novel I've been editing ever since. And since I'm smack in the middle of editing/rewriting, I'm afraid that tearing myself away from that world for a month will seriously hinder my progress. What to do?

I have two possible solutions:
1. Write another Farion novel//prequel/sequel
2. Write a "real life" novel based on either my trip to Japan or my two years as a substitute teacher

Neither of those is very appealing to me right now though. My focus has been on getting my current novel polished for so long that I really haven't done any brainstorming in the past few months.  I don't have any sort of plan of attack for any of the above ideas.


But there's still 5 days, 8 hours before I have to decide, right?

YA Book Review: Little Blog on the Prairie

Little Blog on the Prairie by Cathleen Davitt Bell

I was immediately drawn to this cover--I love Little House on the Prairie and I love blogging--why wouldn't I like this book? The inside cover told me that it's about a 13 year old girl whose parents decide to take the family to Wyoming for a 2-month "vacation" during which they will live as as if it the year 1890. Which means no no technology, no baths, no fast food--you know the drill. Sounds like a recipe for awesome.

Unfortunately, I had a few problems getting through it. First, the main character Gen fell into the all-too-typical YA trope of being an ultimate complainer. She hated her parents, her situation, her clothes, her lack of technology. The complaining eased up after the halfway point, which was a relief, but I almost didn't make it that far into the story, I was getting so tired of it. Second, the plot also wavered between being entirely too predictable and entirely too believable.  Of course Gen will fall for the only cute boy in the camp. Of course she'll make friends with the goth girl and enemies with the pretty blonde one. But no way would her text-messages posted to a blog become totally famous in only four weeks. My final qualm was about the farm experience itself. The campers all had to live as if it was the year 1890, but I felt like the program set the campers up for failure and misery. A family in the 1890's would already know how to churn butter, chop wood efficiently, raise and butcher chickens, and weatherproof their house. Of course Gen's mother didn't know how to bake bread from scratch or do laundry by hand. She didn't grow up watching her own mother do that like a woman in 1890 would have. I can only imagine that the author took it to such an extreme in order to exacerbate the characters' misery and for comedic reasons. It worked, but it also bothered me that no one in the story mentioned that inconsistency.


A few things that the author did really well, however, were the characters, the historical information, and the lesson. Under her complainer attitude, Gen wasn't a bad kid and her uncertainty about her situation and her deep-down love for her family was heartfelt. Her parents were actual characters instead of just silly or exaggerated bad guys, and even the other campers ended up being more than just what Gen figured them to be on the surface. I also really enjoyed the historical information about life in 1890. I'm a huge Little House fan, and I long to someday visit a farm like that. (But not for 2 months, thanks!)  The lesson was obvious from the start, of course, but well played. Gen had to learn to appreciate her family and her life, understand that people are more complicated than you might think when you meet them, and to sacrifice her own needs for her family and others.

Overall, this was an average read. Gen's complaints almost ruin the book, and the plot is predictable at times and unrealistic at others, however the lessons are good for the middle grade, and the humor and history will most likely keep kids interested. As an adult I was slightly disappointing in the story, but I would expect someone much younger to be able to overlook the book's faults fairly easily.

Banned Books Week

I went to the library today and saw their display about Banned Books Week!

Here are the ten most frequently challenged (attempted to be banned) books of 2010:

And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Crank, by Ellen Hopkins
The Hunger Games (series), by Suzanne Collins
Lush, by Natasha Friend
What My Mother Doesn't Know, by Sonya Sones
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich
Revolutionary Voices edited by Amy Sonnie
Twilight (series), by Stephenie Meyer

Of those, I've read three:

Crank -  drugs, offensive language, racism, sexually explicit
This book was written in a very poetic format, with short chapters that were easy to get through. It was challenged for having sexual content, drugs, racism, and explicit language. Which it does, there's no denying that. The main character is addicted to crystal meth, after all. However, it also teaches about the consequences of those actions. While probably not appropriate for elementary or even middle school kids, I think that it could help a teen struggling with drugs or drug temptations to see how screwed up their life might get if they continue on that path. The material is sometimes shocking and really sad, but the author in no way glorifies the main character's poor choices. 


Twilight - sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, violence, unsuited to age group
Twilight hatred is so common that it's almost a fad, but honestly I don't hate it. I roll my eyes at the incredibly popularity it has attained, the awful editing and the main character's passivity, but I don't hate it. Twilight fulfills an important role for teenaged girls: wish fulfillment. The main character has her own car, run of the town, and two hot supernatural boys fighting over her. Um, yes please. Millions of people are willing to overlook the faults in order to step into that amazing fantasy.

As for the challenges...I get the feeling that most of these challengers didn't really read the series. The relationships are not graphic at all--in fact, the main characters do not do anything more than kiss until the fourth book, in which they are married, and it's still not graphic at all. Religion is never really mentioned in the story--any religious undertones are purely subtext...which I didn't see when I read it, and the violence is laughably tame. The age group accusation is also unfounded. It's aimed at middle and high school aged girls. I think it's totally appropriate for anyone 11 and up.
 
Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - offensive language, racism, religious viewpoint, sex education, sexually explicit, violence, unsuited to age group
I actually didn't enjoy this book very much because it was so...depressing. It follows a high school aged Native American boy who transfers to a school off of his reservation because it's a better school. The kids at his new school hate him because he's Indian, and his friends from the reservation hate him because he's a traitor now. He's living in poverty, is surrounded by people with horrible home lives, and then a bunch of people in his life die.

But as depressing as it is, it also incredibly relevant. For a white kid who grew up in the suburbs, well beyond the civil rights riots of the 1960's, this book shows how racism, segregation, and poverty are still very much topics we should be talking about today. As for the challenges...I already stated that the racism is a central factor in making it a good relevant read for today's kids. I don't think that the language or violence is beyond the 7th grade + group that it was marketed to, and I don't even remember the sexual scenes...

Okay I looked it up and the "sexual content" is referring to the two 14 year old male characters discussing masturbation. Parents who think that their 13 year old boys aren't already talking about that subject are sadly disillusioned. Girls get their periods, boys start masturbating. That's puberty! Sex ed classes start in 4th grade in public schools in my area...how is this an inappropriate subject for seventh graders?

 ----
Overall, I think that supporting the freedom of publication and reading is very important, and that parents should have to opt-out of books that they deem inappropriate and monitor what their kids are reading, rather than taking books off of the shelves. That's part of being a parent. Just like reading materials that you're not allowed to is part of being a teenager. I learned more about sex from stealing my mom's "steamy" romance novels than any sex ed class, after all.

Yay banned books!