About Graphic Novels

Again, I've had another first in this class. I've never read graphic novels before, nor did I ever intend to. I thought they would all be about superheroes, and I'm not into superheroes in a literary/book kind of way. I was quite surprised at how much I actually liked them (probably more than I like verse novels).

American Born Chinese was so surprising! That twist where it all came together...I DID NOT see that coming. And then I was surprised that a graphic novel could actually surprise me. And then I was surprised that a graphic novel could be deep. Reading the critical reading (in comic form! That was cool) made these kinds of novel make much more sense, and I have a new sense of appreciation for them.

My choice graphic novel was fantastic, but if we have to blog about that, I'm going to save my comments either for class or the blog post.

So, anyway, I liked graphic novels. I never thought I would say that, but I did.

Peace, my friends.

About Verse Novels

I have this love/hate relationship with poems. My absolute favorite poem is "Annabel Lee" by Poe, followed by "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost. I love poems that are dark and deep and serious; silly and humorous poems just annoy me. Sometimes, if I'm feeling particularly inspired, I even write poems. But they're usually not that good.

Anyway, having read two verse poems, I also have a love/hate relationship with this genre. Like how I feel with poems, I need these types of novels to be serious (and any novel, really). Brown Girl Dreaming was serious enough and I think it worked in lyric form. With I Heart You, You Haunt Me, it didn't work AT ALL. It was choppy prose, as Sam said about the book she read; it would have *maybe* been better in novel form. I think verse form can be a lazy way for writers to write something quick and with less word count. A certain kind of writer could make verse work. Some who appreciates poetry and takes it seriously, which I don't think the author of I Heart You was. I wasn't blown away by either novel I read, but if I found the right one, I have a feeling I would probably cry, like good poems make me do sometimes.

In the critical reading, it said voice had a lot to do with making a verse novel. That's probably true. It has a huge impact with any literary form. With me and my picky poetry tastes, it would be more so for me than others.

Also in the reading, I liked the little diagram/picture showing the three aspects of verse novels: novel, poetry, and drama. I can see the three aspects clearly. It could also be easily screwed up, either by putting too much emphasis on one and not enough on the other.

Verse novels are always nice if you want a quick read, too.

Alyssa out.

Brown Girl Dreaming

So, I'm having a lot of firsts in this class.

This book was one of them.

I've heard about books in lyrical form but have never actually read one until now. It was a quick read with all the white space and short poems, and I was pleasantly surprised how well I grasped the content. Originally I thought I would never understand a thing since its all poems, and who understands poems anyway? But I could.

I find it amazing that all of these little poems are stories in themselves that connect to the larger story--an African American girl navigating childhood and trying to figure herself out. A typical theme. I nearly forgot it was a memoir. I didn't even know memoirs could be lyrical.

I don't necessarily think that this book in itself deserved to get the National Book Award; but then again, I'm not entirely sure how these awards go. I think this book would connect much more to African American girls rather than me--my family, as far as I know, never fought in the Civil War, and I don't come from descendents of slaves or have lived in the South. It's because of these things that I felt less of a connection. But I liked the style. I borderline love the style.

The House of the Scorpion

I would have to say that The House of the Scorpion was my second favorite book, after The Book Thief. I'm not one for super realistic coming-of-age stories, and if I do read them, there has to be some kind of spice--interesting and funny characters, major trauma, actually sounding like a teenagers, etc. My favorite novels are more than realistic coming-of-age novels. Usually there has to be something radically different from my real world in order for me to really, really like them, like a fantasy or science fiction element.

Obviously, The House of the Scorpion would fit that.

I think my favorite aspect of this book was Matt and the world around him trying to figure out how human he is and that age old question of, what does it mean to be human? It's a very interesting question, especially for this book since Matt is a clone--a sane clone--and every other clone is stripped of their intelligence. The most vivid scene for me was when Matt and Maria are led to the hospital and Matt is astonished (to put it lightly) to see a clone strapped to a table wailing in fear and pain. I could picture is so, so clearly.

Celia and Tam Lin were, in my opinion, the best characters. When Celia declared that she had basically been poisoning Matt with arsenic so El Patron couldn't harvest his organs so he could live another fifty years I honestly almost hoorayed aloud. El Patron totally deserved that.

And then Tam Lin. Tragic. By far my favorite.

The ending was gasp-worthy. I did NOT see that mass murder coming. I give props to Nancy Farmer for giving the detail about the ground shaking a 100 pages before knowing what it was about, because I completely forgot about it and had to smile at that cleverness.

Happy Thursday.

The Graveyard Book

I'm not entirely sure what this post is supposed to be about, so I hope I'm on the right track.

From the novels we've read so far, The Graveyard Book probably falls somewhere in the middle on my scale. I liked it, and even laughed sometimes, but I think it would have been better if the ending had been different.

At first I thought the idea of a living child being brought up by ghosts and other mythical creatures was crazy, but then I found it endearing. I felt really bad for Bod, aka Nobody--just the name sounds so alone (well, obviously). This poor kid has no idea what it's like to be alive or how to live. The only part of the ending I liked was this aspect. Bod leaving the cemetery after slowly losing the ability to see/hear the dead was sad. Here he's leaving everything he's known, and he has hardly an idea of what to expect. I don't know what Silas is thinking, just letting him go off on his own without any kind of guidance. I barely understand how things work right now.

My favorite moment, though, was probably the scenes when Bod was in school or dealing with the bullies. I want to call it his brave innocence.

As to why I wasn't a fan of the ending was how rushed it seemed. One second we're dealing with life and then Jack and his super secret ancient society is chasing down Bod and Scarlet. Um, what? All of sudden we're dealing with the Jack of All Trades, and I actually started laughing at the name. But then again it is for kids around 10 years old.

Before class on Thursday that I found about Neil Gaiman talking about writing this book. I like hearing the inspiration and the process of writing it, so I thought other people might like it, too.

The Book Thief

So, I want to talk about Death.

He was interesting, especially because Markus Zusak chose Death as the narrator. In the critical reading we read, the writer talked a little bit about authors choosing narrators and point of view for their novels and the stories within them. It's a very important decision, in my opinion, especially with young adult lit, since much of the readers are obviously young and need an interesting and compelling narrator to keep reading on.

Markus Zusak could have gone with Liesal as the sole narrator of The Book Thief. However, I don't think that it would have had as much impact without Death. Of course, Death is omniscient and we, as the readers, can see the thoughts and action of most characters within the novel, which gives it a certain depth that we probably wouldn't get any other way. We get to see those moments with Max and Papa and Rosa that Liesal doesn't get to see, and their characters would have been lost to us without that knowledge of those events surrounding them. The POV is kind of weird in this novel, since the narrator is omniscient but at the same time he references himself as I. It's like an omniscient first person. (Is that even a thing? Or is there a third person POV that allows for the I?)

Using Death is also very fitting in relation to the time period that the novel takes place in. Everyone knows that millions of people died during WWII and the Holocaust. Because death was so prevalent in those times it would only make sense to use Death. It's ironic, in a way, that Death should focus on a living girl who loses most of the people she loves.

The irony Death uses in the novel is hilariously sad. At one point he says, "It kills me sometimes, how people die." I had to put down the book for a moment and absorb the sentence.  But it was phrases like that one that made me love Death as a narrator so much.

Leonardo da Vinci once said, "Our lives are made by the death of others."

I feel like that's accurate, especially for Liesal.

A Northern Light

To be honest, A Northern Light was the first young adult historical fiction novel I read (I'm having a lot of firsts in this class, it seems), and I actually quite enjoyed it.

But the novel both disappointed me and exceeded my expectations.

In the back blurb, it says that it takes place in the backdrop of the famous murder of Grace Brown. I thought that it would be like a typical mystery novel (set in the early 1900s), i.e. that Mattie discovers the body and has these letters and the entire novels is about her going on a hunt to find the man who killed Grace. In the words of Sara V., I assumed Mattie would be like a Nancy Drew. But that's not what happened. At all. I liked that it didn't focus completely on the murder because then it would have been like an equation that could be easily solved and I would have ended up bored. Instead Jennifer Donnelly gave us super small snippets of what happened around Grace's death. The novel focuses on what happened with Mattie before going to the Glenwood and meeting Grace. We see Mattie stressing about her future and her father and food and her dreams and her struggles between doing what's right for her versus what her family needs. Usually that stuff would have seemed boring to me, but it wasn't. Donnelly also managed to interweave events around the murder to events that happened in Mattie life before in a way that connected them, which was interested.

Even though I liked having the background, I wish I had more about Grace's death and Grace herself. And it was a little confusing not having a linear timeline, but after a few chapters I managed to figure out the system.

I could relate a lot to Mattie and the balance between my own dreams versus what my family needs/wants. She seemed very real to me, like a real person. And she was a realistic girl from that time period. I could believe her actions. The only times I wanted to throw the book against the wall was any scene with Royal. I hate jerks. Their whole relationship reminded me of Belle and Gaston's relationship in Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Actually, Mattie is a lot like Belle.

Weaver was my favorite character. His relationship with his mother, I thought, was excellent. He was strong and funny and caring and wanted what was best for Mattie. He was smart enough to use language against the people he hates to make them think he is less than he is just so he can teach them a lesson.

The use of words in the novel was fantastic. Words are so, so powerful. We know that, but a lot of people don't. To Mattie, words are her hope. She got into college with them; she found herself in the words left behind by Grace Brown; she tests feminist boundaries with them.

Right now I am in an obsessive phase with quotes, so I'm going to end this long post with one. I think it fits Mattie well.

"The art of living lies in the fine line of letting go and holding on." ~ Henry Ellis