What are you reading mark II

[Brenna]

I've been reading a lot of old classics that I'd never gotten around to reading before. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, War of the Words, The Island of Dr. Moreau.  It's been very interesting. Especially seeing the differences between what was perceived as being a strong protagonist now, compared to what a strong protagonist seems to be in more modern books. (More later about this, maybe, but I've got to ride my bike to the bus station now so I can get to work!)

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I haven't read Jekyll and Hyde, but the other two are very interesting books. I got free ice cream at age 7 for having read War of the Worlds. My teacher was impressed. I should have shown her the Hobbit, since I'd already read that.

[stacer]

There are a number of the classics that I have copies of but haven't gotten back to reading. But I had to read Treasure Island and Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson last year. I really liked those--Kidnapped more than Treasure Island. Probably because it was set in Scotland in places I'd been.  

[Chimera]

Stacer,

Since you just finished your MA in children's lit, what are some recommendations? Especially anything that came out within the last few years.

[stacer]

I'm afraid, off the top of my head, I won't be able to come up with too much. All my books are still being moved here and won't be here till next year. I can look up my booklists when I get home this weekend (I'm going straight to Oceanside tonight).

Off the top of my head:

Water Babies is a necessary evil. It's annoying, yet a good example of early Victorian fantasy.

Anything by George MacDonald. Most recommended are the books I did that paper on in March, the princess books (The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, The Light Princess--that last one is HILARIOUS, especially if you get the one illustrated by Maurice Sendak).

Let's see... I read a lot of YA this semester, most of which was too edgy to really make me recommend them wholeheartedly. Of course I'd recommend Katherine Paterson's Jacob Have I Loved.

Sorry, Dragonlance: The New Adventures really has overtaken my brain today. I'll try to come back with better recommendations. But if you've never read George MacDonald, you really need to. He's one of the earliest true fantasists (as long as you don't think EUOL's right about fantasy starting in 1978, which is absolutely not true), and had quite a bit of influence on Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

[Chimera]

I am familiar with George MacDonald. I read the thread that you guys had going about it...somewhere...but it had died awhile ago and I didn't want to unnecessarily revive it. I read the Princess and the Goblin when I was little, but I can't remember much--except that I liked it. I should pick it up again, and read the sequel (I didn't know there was one when I was a kid). I have read The Light Princess--very funny. I haven't seen the one illustrated by Maurice Sendak, though.

Never read Water Babies. If it is a necessary evil, than I suppose I should read it. Another old classic I should read is Through the Looking Glass and Alice in Wonderland. I did read Peter Pan a couple of months ago for my film/lit class, to compare the text with the Disney cartoon and the recent live-action film (which was totally awesome, by the way--everyone MUST see it!). J. M. Barrie is a funny narrator when he intrudes upon the story. I was glad to learn a little more about him and read Peter Pan before Findind Neverland came out.

[stacer]

Oh, goodness, if you haven't read Alice, then start there. It's considered by most of my profs as *the* touchstone fantasy (of early fantasy). Besides, then you'll know the Jabberwocky...

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
 Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
 And the mome raths outgrabe.

[stacer]

Oh, and Victorians are notorious for narrator/author intrusion. I enjoy it when it's not too preachy.

Speaking of which, that reminds me of what you were saying somewhere about being didactic. "Didactic" actually means "to teach" and a lot of children's books teach something. I don't have a problem with that; what I have a problem with is when it's preachy and has nothing to do with the story. If it's not a story for the story's sake, then it's propaganda or a tract. Read Victorian lit for that, too, especially things like Jessica's Prayer and Jessica's Mother (both of which are available online, I think, but I don't have immediate access to the URLs).

EDIT: Sorry about the multiple posts. I think I'll go resurrect the recommend me a book thread.

We read Francesca Lia Block, Toni Morrison (The Bluest Eye), hmm... just found my YA syllabus online. Here's the list of touchstones:

Seventeenth Summer, Maureen Daly (Dodd, Mead, 1942)
Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger  (Little, 1945)
Lord of the Flies, William Golding (Putnam, 1954)
Brown Girl Brownstones,  Paule Marshall (Harcourt, 1959)
A Separate Peace, John Knowles  (Macmillan, 1960)
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee  (Harper, 1961)
The Contender, Robert Lipsyte  (Harper, 1967)
The Outsiders, S. E. Hinton  (Viking, 1967)
The Pigman, Paul Zindel  (Harper, 1968)
I'll Get There, It Better be Worth the Trip, John Donovan  (Harper, 1969)
The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison (Holt, 1970)
The Planet of Junior Brown, Virginia Hamilton  (Dell, 1971)
The Friends, Rosa Guy  (Bantam, 1973)
Slake’s Limbo, Felice Holman.(Scribner, 1974)
Forever, Judy Blume (Bradbury, 1975)
The Language of Goldfish, Zibby Oneal  (Viking, 1980)
Jacob Have I Loved, Katherine Paterson  (Crowell, 1980)
Annie on My Mind, Nancy Garden  (Farrar, 1982)
Remembering the Good Times, Richard Peck (Delacorte, 1985)
The Chocolate War, Robert Cormier  (Delacorte, 1974)

[stacer]

Also, there's a thread somewhere in this forum (books) that has a subject that's something like, "Stacer, recommend me a book" in which I posted about 10 posts' worth of fantasy/SF recommendations.

Here's the regular class reading list (we read the touchstones in preparation for class before the first day, and the following list is the regular coursework). Sorry about lack of italics/formatting--I just copied/pasted, then deleted dates. If you want it in a word attachment, I can email it to you.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
(any edition, 1916), chapters 1 and 2

"All of a Tremble to See His Danger," Aidan Chambers in
The Arbuthnot Lectures 1980-1989 (ALA, 1990)

Reviews of Cool: The Signs and Meanings of Adolescence and Teenagers: An American History.  Reviews by Marcel Danesi and Grace Palladino in  The Lion and the Unicorn 22:2 (1998) 250-254.

Twentieth-Century Teen Culture by the Decades, Lucy Rollin (Greenwood, 1999)

Terms of the Michael Printz Award, www.ala.org/yalsa
           
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon (Doubleday, 2003)

Hush, Jacqueline Woodson ((Putnam, 2002)

Weetzie Bat, Francesca Lia Block (Harper, 1989)

“Imprints of the Mind:  The Depiction of Consciousness in Children’s Fiction," Maria Nikolajeva.  Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 26.4 (2002), 173-87.

The Chocolate War, Robert Cormier  (Pantheon, 1974)

"The Absence of Moral Agency in Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War," Anita Tarr. Children's Literature. 30 (2002) 99-124.

"No Safe Place to Run to:  An Interview with Robert Cormier," Mitzi Myers.  Lion and Unicorn, 24.3  (September 2000), 445-464.

The Breadwinner, Deborah Ellis (Groundwood, 2001)
           
Butler, Judith.  "Subversive Bodily Acts," in Gender Trouble, 128-141.
           
In class: excerpt from Osama (Afghan film)

The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, Carolyn Mackler (Candlewick, 2003)

The First Part Last, Angela Johnson (Simon & Schuster, 2003)

Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida, Victor Martinez (Harper, 1996)

American Eyes: New Asian American Short Stories for Young Adults, Lori M. Carlson, ed. (Fawcett, 1995)      

A Sudden Silence, Eve Bunting (Harcourt, 1988) I do NOT recommend this book. This was a prof. candidate who chose this. It is NOT a good example of what's typical of good YA. I leave it on the list as a contrast.

Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, Chris Crutcher (Greenwillow, 1993)
           
Brown, Joanne.  "Interrogating the 'Real' in Young Adult Realism,"      The New Advocate 12.3 (fall 1999), 345-57.
           
David, Terri.  "A Healing Vision," English Journal. 85.3 (March 1996), 36-42.

The Center of Everything, Laura Moriarty  (Hyperion, 2003)

Seek, Paul Fleischman  (Marcato/Cricket, 2001)

A Step from Heaven, An Na  (Front Street, 2001)

"Housekeeping" film

The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini  (Riverhead, 2003)

Tangerine, Edward Bloor (Harcourt, 1997)

Any essay from Aronson's Exploding the Myths and/or Beyond the Pale      

Rats Saw God, Rob Thomas (Simon and Schuster, 1996) This is the same guy who writes/developed Veronica Mars

Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson (Farrar, 1999)

Spinning through the Universe, Helen Frost (Farrar, 2004)

Episode of Veronica Mars

[stacer]

"The Irony of Narration in the Young Adult Novel," Michael Cadden.  Children's Literature Association Quarterly 25 (2000).  146-54.

"The Value of Singularity in First- and Restricted Third-Person Engaging Narration," Andrea Schwenke Wyile.  Children's Literature 31 (2003), 116-141

Chanda's Secrets, Allan Stratton (Annick Press, 2004)

Cuba 15, Nancy Osa (Random, 2003)

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, Z. Z. Packer (Riverhead, 2003)

True Confessions of a Heartless Girl, Martha Brooks (Kroupa/Farrar, 2003)

Touchstone Panel #1 We discussed the touchstones on the other list in light of the contemporary reading we'd been doing

America.  E. R. Frank (Atheneum, 2002)

Fat Kid Rules the World, K. L. Going (Putnam, 2003)

Wonder When You'll Miss Me, Amanda Davis (Morrow/Harper, 2003)

Touchstone Panel #2

Every Time a Rainbow Dies, Rita Williams-Garcia (Harper, 2002)

Silent to the Bone, E. L.Konigsburg (Atheneum, 2000)

True Believer, Virginia Euwer Wolff  (Holt, 2000)

Touchstone Panel #3

Hard Love, Ellen Wittlinger (Simon, 1999)

Heart’s Delight,  Per Nilsson, translated by Tara Chace (Front Street, 2003)

My Heartbeat, Garret Freymann-Weyr, (Houghton, 2002)

Touchstone Panel #4

The Gospel According to Larry, Janet Tashjian (Holt, 2001)

Shooter, Walter Dean Myers (Harper, 2004)

Vernon God Little, D. B. Pierre (Canongate, 2002)
           
Touchstone Panel #5

The Facts Speak for Themselves, Brock Cole (Front Street, 1997)

Sleeping Dogs, Sonya Harnett (Viking, 1995)

Smack, Melvin Burgess (Holt, 1998)

"Sympathy with the Devil," Melvin Burgess.  Children's Literature in Education 35.4 (December 2004), 289-301.

"The Real Adolescent:  Performance and Negativity in Melvin Burgess's Junk" Steven Thomson, Lion and the Unicorn 23.1 (1999), 22-29.

Fallen Angels, Walter Dean Myers  (Scholastic, 1987)

Postcards from No Man’s Land, Aidan Chambers (Dutton, 2002)

"Losses and Gains in Translation: Some Remarks on the Translation of Humor in the Books of Aidan Chambers," Emer O'Sullivan. Children's Literature 26 (1998), 185-205.
                       
Kindergarten, Peter Rushforth  (Knopf, 1980) Which I couldn't find, but it was so well-liked by my classmates that I have to go on a search for it

Persepolis 2: Story of a Return, Marjane Satrapi (Knopf, 2004)

"Honesty and Hope:  Presenting Human Rights to Teenagers through Fiction," Children's Literature in Education 25.1 (March 1994), 41-54.

[Master Gopher]

 Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon (Doubleday, 2003)

<butts in randomly>
I loved that book, more than anything else I'd read all that year, I think.
Except perhaps some old favourites..

Robert Cormier - I can take a little, bu the can become... just a bit too much.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Cormier's books are evil.

[stacer]

Cormier's books are evil.

I completely agree. He creates worlds in which there is no redemption and no agency. There are only varying shades of evil. He says that he's trying to point out that you have to work together to overcome evil in the world, but all his so-called "heroes" always lose because they're also inherently part of the evil, the system, the problem, whatever you want to call it. I can't remember exactly what I want to say about them besides that--there was more--except they're always creepy.

The problem is, he also revolutionized the idea of YA fiction, and there are many who revere him, so he can't be dismissed out of hand. One of the articles in that list does a really good job of analyzing Cormier in that light, rather than using straight simpering adoration the way so many scholars do.

[JP Dogberry]

Cormier's books are awesome.

[Firemeboy]

I'm currently reading P. G. Wodehouse; My Man Jeeves.