I’m still waiting to hear back on Finding Frances. I’m debating whether to follow up or not. I think part of me doesn’t want the possibility to be over, since I’m not submitting it anywhere else if this doesn’t pan out. Maybe I’ll follow up at the end of April if I haven’t heard by then. I probably shouldn’t seem uninterested. I don’t really know…
I mentioned earlier that I was taking a playwriting class this semester. I finished it up early and got good feedback from my instructor on the 10-minute play I finished and the shorter scene from a different play I haven’t written yet. She even said she hoped I’d write more drama over my little break (since I’m having to skip the fall semester). This has me sort of excited about possibilities and I checked with my playwright friend for how to submit plays for consideration for contests and production. I found one that my 10-minute would be perfect for (it deals with mental illness, which is the theme for the theater), so I’m planning make some revisions to it and submit it.
Other than that, I’m wrapping up the semester. I have four more papers to write and I feel very swamped at the moment (technically one of the papers is a revision of a rough draft, but still). I also have to finish up revisions to my creative work, though I really only have one scene left to revise so that’s not too bad. And I’ve only got about three weeks left before it’s all over. Then I’ll be halfway through the MFA, which is cool.
Oh, and there’s one more time-consuming thing coming up: I’m judging for two writing contests, one YA and one adult mainstream. Entries for both are due around the middle of May. Sigh. It’s rewarding but not easy.
This is a really interesting and unique book. It’s steeped in Mexican-America culture, but not really in a positive way—the main character, Julia, basically hates every aspect of it. To me this was interesting because one of the reasons she hates it is that she can’t navigate it well—she’s socially awkward, but not in the “standard” way (at least this was my take on it). No, she says and does the wrong thing for her culture, which might be okay in white American culture (though definitely not always).
This short book first came out eighteen years ago but it’s still relevant today. It’s (fairly obviously) about a girl who cuts herself.
Although I generally review only YA books here, I’m making an exception this week. Not because it’s St. Patrick’s Day and this book is by an Irish writer, but because Louise O’Neill is one of my favorite authors even though she hasn’t written that many books—I’ve read her other three, all of which are YA (and all of which I’ve reviewed here). Almost Love is about a woman in her mid-twenties and almost has the feel of New Adult, but not quite.
This book is a collection of short stories set in various points of US history ranging from 1838 to 1984. The stories are all about girls bucking the system in some way, but those ways vary widely over the book. The stories are all realistic except for a couple that have some magical realism elements. The stories also run the gamut on the diversity spectrum, including girls of several different religions, several protagonists of color (and different ethnicities, too), at least one lesbian, one character in a wheelchair, and another on the autism spectrum.
Darius the Great Is Not Okay is a unique book. Darius is an American kid whose mother is from Iran and whose father is Teutonic stock, and he is under treatment for depression. You don’t see a lot of YA featuring boys of color with depression, so I was curious to see how this one would play out. Also, most of the book is set in Iran, which is cool—I’ve only personally encountered one other YA book set there (not that I’ve looked extensively, but still).
I’ve read a couple other books by Deb Caletti and liked them both. One thing I noticed is that the two I read (Stay and The Nature of Jade) were different from each other. So I didn’t know what to expect when I picked up Essential Maps for the Lost. I heard Caletti speak about this book with E. Lockhart last year at a library event so I knew it had something to do with mental illness, like both of the others I read. But the interesting thing is that I found this book very different from the other two. It felt more more literary, for one (not that the other two weren’t but this one seemed more so)—maybe even a little ethereal. I read it for my MFA so I had to study it after my first read through. On my first read, I actually found myself a little confused because there were a lot of characters and we were really deep in both of the main characters’ heads. But as I read through it a second time, everything seemed obvious and clear, so perhaps I just wasn’t paying full attention the first time I read it. Who knows.
I am still studying short stories for the MFA, and this was one of the few YA collections I’ve been able to find. So I wasn’t expecting too much—but it turns out the book is pretty awesome. I really liked several of the stories. A few were a little on the bland side, but there was only one that I didn’t care for. None of this should come as a big surprise given the names of the authors in this collection. Though the book’s 9 years old so it predates some of their biggest stardom (John Green, Cassandra Clare, and Holly Black especially).
Juliet Takes a
This is a book that came to me from one of those YA book clubs I belong to as I’d never heard of it. But I’m actually surprised there isn’t a little more hype around it because it’s very good and it’s got a believable badass girl in it. I guess historical fiction isn’t where it’s at right now.
