It’s been quite a while since I’ve read anything YA, but have pondered doing so for two reasons: (1) YA is hot, and (2) Many of my writer friends are hot for YA. In an attempt to remain culturally current (and solve the mystery of why this stuff is so popular with adults), I decided to give it a whirl.
After deciding on Louis Sachar’s Newbery Award winning “Holes,” I learned the book was actually Middle Grade. So not only is there YA, there are genre divisions within YA (or is YA just a division within Children’s?). Anyway, Holes seemed like a good place to start.
I won’t go into detail about the story, as there’s lots of reviews out there, but it’s about an unlikely protag, Stanley Yelnats who is arrested for stealing shoes and shipped off to a boys camp named Camp Green Lake in the Texas wilderness. Stanley is a rather pathetic kid who’s kind of fat, getting picked on at school by a smaller kid, and is convinced his family is cursed. Stanley has “loser” written all over him. The boys at Camp Green Lake are forced to dig holes across the dry lake, but the evil camp staff are after more than just “building character” in these troubled boys. Holes is about Stanley’s growth as a person under these awful conditions and the discovery of friendship and a larger purpose to his life.
Some thoughts.
The first and most obvious thing you get out of a Middle Grade book is that it’s easy to read. Very few complex sentences, clipped dialogue, and little fat. If you’re attempting to engage 9 and 12 year olds, I suppose you can’t afford big works, cumbersome sentences, and overly-complex themes. (Is this true of all YA — it’s just easier reading? If so, it could be one reason why adults like to read it.) Not long ago, I asked the question How Hard Should We Make Our Readers Work?, opting for less “literary milk.” Nevertheless, I must admit, it was refreshing for me to experience an “easy read.” Holes was easy to pick up. Plus.
Another surprise to me was the book’s depth: The story is simple, but not simplistic. There is depth to the characters and mystery as to why these boys are digging and what they are digging for. Stanley has quite a past. Through a series of flashbacks, we not only learn about his family life, but its intersection with Camp Green Lake and the wicked Warden. All that to say, the story has layers. And the resolution involves generations of overlapping stories. Perhaps this surprised me because I mistakenly assumed that Middle Graders could not suffer such complex unfolding. Lesson learned.
Another enjoyable aspect for me were the amount of quirky details. I laughed out loud often. Whether it was that “Stanley Yelnats” was spelled the same frontwards and backwards, that Stanley’s great-Grandfather had stolen a pig from a one-legged Gypsy and been cursed, that Stanley’s family repeatedly blamed their misfortune on that “no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealin’-great-great-grandfather,” or that Stanley’s apartment always smelled like burning rubber because his father was trying to find a way to recycle tennis shoes — there is a lot of oddball, humorous little quirks to the story. And I like quirks.
There was one thing that bothered me about the book: the amount of violence. At least from a MG standpoint, I was surprised. For instance, the Warden puts snake poison in her nail polish and scratches the face of one of her men. At one point, one of the boys thwacks one of the guards with a shovel. Also, a lynch mob kills a black man for kissing a white girl. And there’s other stuff. The way they treat the boys is rather abusive, rationing water to the point of dehydration. And leaving them in the desert to blister their hands digging holes supplied with minimal rations. I dunno. It kind of made me wonder how Camp Green Lake had managed to survive this long without some parent or human rights group shutting the place down.
Finally, I wonder that Stanley Yelnats isn’t one of the great strengths of this story. He is an “outsider.” He relates to other outsiders, both in the story and in its readers. I’ve heard it suggested that this is one of the consistent YA themes (and strengths) — “outsiders.” Which makes me wonder if the enduring strength of this story isn’t its appeal to that awkward, but vast, group.
All that to say: I enjoyed Holes and my YA Challenge. So, what’s next? Any suggestions?
I’m surprised this is MG, too. What’s the Percy Jackson series aimed at? It has some violence along those lines, too.
Next on your list…have you read Hunger Games? I’d love to get your take on that. And have you read A Series of Unfortunate Events? I think you’d enjoy the humor in that (I know just reading the author bios at the end had me rolling with each new book!).
I did enjoy Holes, but had much of the same reactions you had. I treated it more as a YA than a MG book w/my kiddos.
I’ve long felt the division between Midgrades and YA is more one of marketing than actual textual content and _Holes_ bears that argument out, I think. Winners of the Newberry medal generally like to claim Midgrades status now; but frankly, Midgrades as a category didn’t really exist until about 1995 at the earliest and didn’t really pick up stride until Tweens became a targeted market segment around 2000.
OH, and I must add Scott O’Dell…The Island of the Blue Dolphins and Sing Down the Moon. Those are great–historical fiction, but not boring. I’m going to have to quit thinking about all the great MG/YA books out there, b/c there are quite a few…
I think the things you noted are indeed typical of YA fiction. Easier to read (a far cry from Don Quixote), depth in the story, quirky details, violence, and outsiders. I’m working on a YA novel and so I’ve been reading a lot of YA over the past months, and particularly I’ve noticed violence and outsiders are current trends. The main characters are also usually struggling with some really intense emotions.
As far as suggestions, there is of course The Hunger Games, which is a hot series right now, and justifiably. Patrick Ness also wrote a sci-fi trilogy called Chaos Walking that was like nothing I had ever read. The first book blew my mind.
My favorite reads so far are three books by Kenneth Oppel: Airborn, Skybreaker, and Starclimber. It’s not a trilogy, but rather three books with the same characters. Kenneth is an absolute master of his craft. Everything about those books is brilliant, in particular the dialogue and the way the characters play off of each other. I’m sure everyone will tell you something different, but in my opinion, if you read any other YA books, read those.
If you want some more suggestions, here’s a list of the YA books I’ve read. http://amwriting.tumblr.com/book100
“violence and outsiders are current trends.” Interesting. And I hadn’t heard of the Patrick Ness series. Thanks, Jesse. Great list also!
PATRICK NESS!!!!! Yes, you hve heard of him, Mr. Mike. That’s the book I’m always going on and on about: THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO.
GO TODD GO! 😉
I second/third The Hunger Games, and also would toss in The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman, and F. Paul Wilson’s Jack series.
Yes, The Graveyard Book. Awesome.
Please promise me that if you read the Hunger Games trilogy and don’t stop before Mockingjay you’ll lay in a good supply of Prozac, wine and things to throw without breakage before attempting that third book. It’s bizarre how completely tonally different and disrespective of preceding material that book is. _Mockingjay_ stands next to A Conan Doyle’s “The Final Problem” as a pristine example of a writer destroying his beloved character out of a learned contempt.
@Katherine — So what happened? Not storywise, but with the author. Was she forced into a premature resolution? Or is she just… bleak?
My honest opinion? As I said below, I really think it’s that she developed an acute contempt for reader demands. I can’t really blame her. But between _Catching Fire_ and _Mockingjay_ there were at least 18 months of readers arguing in online communities about Team Gayle and Team Peeta a la Twilight and making all these assumptions about what would happen in the third book. I can only imagine that Collins spent too much time reading these breathless “ZOMG! KATNISS better choose Peeta!!!eleventy!!!” and decided that she would just show all those fangirls how bitter war is and how bleak the world can be. Reading the trilogy is like watching Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Full Metal Jacket. It’s just an utter tonal shift with a disregard for previous character development. My jaw was on the floor.
Interesting. So… do you blame her? Or, no?
Yes but not only did she show us war was bleak, she also had the main character sleep through the climax. I posted several blog post about it and got it out of my system so I don’t need to fill Mike’s comment section complaining, but not only do I agree with what you said, I don’t think you went half far enough. The heroine was all but absent in a book that made very little sense but read like a video game on steroids.
I do think she forced a resolution by killing off more than half her MCs. And then she let Gale sort of vanish at the end of Mockingjay–that book should’ve been better. But Catching Fire was good.
Katherine, I think you may totally be on to something. I can see her getting ticked about the Team Gale, Team Peeta thing. Ugh, yes.
The bleakness thing didn’t bother me, but as Sally said, having the MC sleep through the climax about drove me mad. Why would she do that??? Laziness? Or some kind of statement??
Oh, and I know I’ve all but hit you over the head with this recommendation, Mike, my dear fellow horror fan, but again….The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey. One of the most beautifully written (and gruesome) books I’ve ever read.
And Incarceron by Catherine Fisher.
INCARCERON, very yes. Also its sequel SAPPHIQUE (it’s one of those rare duologies). I adore those books; so much to think about.
But my heartiest and most emphatic recommendation would be Megan Whalen Turner’s books — THE THIEF, THE QUEEN OF ATTOLIA, THE KING OF ATTOLIA and A CONSPIRACY OF KINGS. It starts off deceptively simple with a leisurely pace and a relatively straightforward-seeming plot in the first book, but things are not always as they seem, and KING OF ATTOLIA in particular is hands-down one of the most brilliant books I have ever read, of any kind, anywhere. There are some wonderful thoughts on faith in the series as well, which resonated very strongly with me.
I’ll second the recommendation for Megan Whalen Turner’s Attolia books.
I would have cut her a lot of slack on all of it. Except for one thing.
!!!!!MAJOR HUNGER GAMES SPOILER!!!!!!!!
Decent break
For spoiler warning
—–
She killed the little sister whose name I’m blanking on. Pru? Prell? Whatever. Her. The girl that Katniss loved with her whole heart, who was the impetus for the ENTIRE unfolding chain of events. And Collins just killed her in one of the most throwaway wastes of story I have EVER read. Ever. In more than 5000 books I think that was the single most useless character death I’ve come across. It was just do contemptuous of the story, the audience, the world.
I am SO with you on that one, Katherine. Prim. Yes, she killed Prim, and there is just no justifiable cause. I’m all for killing characters, and I’ve done it myself. I don’t know if it was a reflection of her worldview (nearly hopeless world?) or just trying to tie up all loose ends in a semi-convenient manner.
That said, I’m looking forward to the movies, at least the first and second. (I’m assuming they’re making them in series form?)
And…if you must kill characters, at least let us grieve the loss. I don’t mind a good sob story as long as I’m allowed to sob. But with Mockingjay I was just numb. Katniss didn’t grieve because she was either too busy or sleeping in the hospital during all the deaths, so I never got a chance to grieve, either.
I’ve summed up the trilogy this way: Sh** happens and then you die.
I do love the worlds she dreams up, though. My kids and I love the Gregor the Overlander books she wrote before Hunger Games. We’d snatch up the hardbacks as soon as each one was published. The ending on that series was a little less than stellar, too, but much more satisfactory than Mockingjay. Give them a shot. They are MG books and very good.
I think Katniss was, aside from volunteering to be tribute in the first book, pretty passive throughout. She was constantly forced into action throughout the book, and, honestly, not a particularly likable protagonist much of the time… even given that she was in a horrible situation, she wasn’t particularly likable. Sort of like if Susan had been the main character in the Narnia books….
I so much agree with this. But in the first two books she was at least forced into reacting. In the third book she was almost completely absent and when she was present she was not just not likable, she was unlikable, I thought.
It was probably post-traumatic stress syndrome. 🙂
ha ha. Well I know I was sure shell-shocked.
I recommend any of Heinlein’s juveniles (but I imagine you’ve already read some or all of those) and anything by Alexander Key. He is the author of Escape to Witch Mountain, but I recommend a more obscure title, Flight to the Lonesome Place:
http://www.amazon.com/Flight-Lonesome-Place-Alexander-Key/dp/0664324908/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329169182&sr=8-1
Key was amazing, ahead of his time.
OK, so I must admit. I’m surprised. I have been curious about your reaction to this book ever since I saw you had taken up the challenge to read it. I also grabbed the book. Unlike you, though, I didn’t finish it. I couldn’t get past the first few chapters….
It wasn’t the violence, though. It was the voice. The simplistic tone. I kept thinking that if the voice were actually indicative of Stanley’s mental state *at the age of 14*, he would not have been arrested–he’d have been given an IQ test. I *do* get that this book is a Middle Grade. Actually, I’d classify it as juvenile. And to be honest, a juvenile book has no business having a 14 yr old protagonist. And if the violence hits the level you say (and many other Amazon reviewers say), maybe it *should* have been written as a true YA book, with a YA vocabulary and voice. Maybe if Suzanne Collins had written it (yes, Mike, read the Hunger Games!!!) it would have been a book I could enjoy. The darkness and violence would have made sense–and the voice wouldn’t have made me want to gouge out my eye with an ice pick.
Hm, not very subtle with that last statement, was I? 😛
I felt the same about Holes. Taught once in back when I taught junior high and vowed never again…
Good Lord. I need some caffeine, stat.
Taught it once back when I taught junior high and vowed never again…
Kat — step away from the ice pick!
I was wondering what you thought of the book. Maybe this will help you see where I’m coming from. The last YA book I read was… A Wrinkle in Time, maybe 20 years ago! I think I was expecting “simple.” But being that you read YA a lot, I’m very interested in your take and if reading this lit involves so many “gear changes.”
I just re-read “A Wrinkle in Time” recently. Loved that book, and the series. SO identified with Meg Wallace…
*sets down ice pick*….
Mike, “A Wrinkle in Time” is one of my favorite books of all time. And a perfect example of how a book can be complex and have an actual vocabulary, and still be aimed at young readers.
What bugged me the most about Holes (what I read of it) was how simple the prose was. I’m someone who spoke to my kids like they were little adults from day one. I didn’t tell them things were “no”–I told them things were “sharp” or “dangerous”–and I spoke to them in big, complete sentences as babies. Reading Holes, though, made me feel like I was being talked down to. And if the child reading this needs to be spoken to this way, they are probably *not* ready for the themes of this book.
True YA does hit on dark topics. Some very dark. Many have violence, and that doesn’t bother me. Kids know the world is a violent place. Most witness it all the time. I know I did as a teen, and I don’t think times have gotten “better.” A lot of YA is really deep–psychologically, socially, even politically. (Not Twilight of course :P.) Most of it, though, isn’t written like children’s books, with *such* simple words. I honestly don’t understand the people who are saying YA is “simpler.” It’s not to me. I’ve read adult books that were “simpler” and “easier to read” than many of the YA books I’ve read.
And it’s not just $100 vocabulary words I’m talking about. It’s the way words are arranged. Pluck out some sentences from books like The Hunger Games, or The Giver, or any number of YA books out there, and you will find poetic movement. Depth and intelligence aren’t always proven with “big” words, but neither do small words have to be used simply.
Boy. I’m chatty today, aren’t I?
This is precisely why I’m very leery of teaching much modern YA to my freshman. For some reason, a lot of them simply lack ‘texture’. Don’t know how to put it any better than that. Would be happy for students to read them independently, but when it comes down to brass tacks and critical analysis, there’s just not a whole lot there to work with.
The Moves Make the Man, by Bruce Brooks, is another favorite. Very edgy, deals with racism and prejudice.
I disagree, Kevin: I think you’re reading the wrong books. Pick up one of M.T. Anderson’s OCTAVIAN NOTHING books, or his FEED (which has a fair bit of strong language, but the most dead-on teen boy narrator and the most devastating indictment of our media-saturated culture I’ve ever read — frankly, I don’t know why schools are studying BRAVE NEW WORLD any more now that this book exists).
I’ve already mentioned Megan Whalen Turner above as an outstanding example of depth and intelligence in writing for children (and amazingly enough, her books are still being promoted as MG despite all the characters now being adults, many being married, and the series rife with political, social and spiritual complexities). Francesco X. Stork has a beautiful and thought-provoking contemporary YA novel called MARCELO IN THE REAL WORLD which you should definitely read before dismissing YA as lacking texture and fodder for critical analysis. Nancy Farmer’s MG novel HOUSE OF THE SCORPION is likewise full of challenging and often unsettling thoughts about where science and the future may take us. John Green’s contemporary novel THE FAULT IN OUR STARS is currently being hailed by many as a crossover book for adults, and getting rave reviews from sources that normally snub YA novels.
My brother teaches high school, and asked me to recommend some books to his gifted students for study and analysis. I gave him M.T. Anderson’s FEED, E. Lockhart’s THE DISREPUTABLE HISTORY OF FRANKIE LANDAU-BANKS, Laurie Halse Anderson’s SPEAK (already studied in many high schools) and CATALYST (which I think even better), Catherine Fisher’s INCARCERON, and several others. The school ended up making good use of all of them, and the kids appreciated being able to read books which not only challenged them to think and analyze the story, but which they could relate to as modern teens.
Oh, and this year my own YA novel ULTRAVIOLET was selected for study, after one of the teachers read an advance copy and declared it to be (in his opinion) not only “full of good stuff” for English teachers to analyse with their class, but a welcome relief from John Wyndham’s THE CHRYSALIDS, which that school had been studying for years. (I happened to like THE CHRYSALIDS, so I took that as an especially high compliment!)
Thanks! I have heard good things about Feed, but I do take exception to one statement:
“frankly, I don’t know why schools are studying BRAVE NEW WORLD any more now that this book exists”
I’m all for presenting a balanced curriculum – I try to give my students a fair balance between classics and modern works – but I think it’s important for students to see how the classics have influenced modern works. For example, I recently had my honors class read “Anthem”, by Any Rand, and they were amazed – kids who’ve all read The Giver, F451, and The Hunger Games – that something like this came first. To disregard foundational works just because something new has come along is highly irresponsible, IMHO.
But thanks for the suggestions!
And yet BRAVE NEW WORLD was also influenced by things that had gone before. How far do we go back? Is older always better?
I’m certainly not suggesting we discard the classics. I do think we should be open, however, to the possibility that some modern books are superior to the classics we’ve been studying for a donkey’s age, and do a better job of embodying the important themes and ideas we want students to consider.
I’m certainly open to it, but what I see all too often in my profession is a whole-sale ditching of the classics, simply for the sake of something new. We certainly can’t be overly and unduly loyal to the classics, but I don’t think it’s wise to ditch the classics just because something’s new, but I don’t think that’s exactly what you’re saying, by any means.
So glad to hear about ULTRAVIOLET being used in a school. It’s one of my favorite books from last year. I really loved Alison.
The layers in the book, I think that’s what makes it what it is today. A modern classic.
“The last YA book I read was… A Wrinkle in Time, maybe 20 years ago! ”
You haven’t read Harry Potter? There is a reason it has done so well – easy to read with a mix of humour, quirky characters, simple but not simplistic plot, and a fair dose of violence (this especially appeals to small boys, IMO).
As a teen I liked books like John Christopher’s The Tripods, and my daughter (11) is following in my footsteps – she has already read all the HP’s, every Louis Sachar book the library has, and is now working her way through the Tomorrow When the War Began series by John Marsden. I’m not ready to let her onto The Hunger Games just yet…
I just saw this on another blog – loved the Tripods. First discovered the comic strip in Boy’s Life magazine, then the PBS series.
The thing about _Holes_ that makes it special is that it’s one of the few well-done examples of Magical Realism in fiction for younger readers. Stanley Yelnats’ verbiage is simplistic because it’s modeled on Fairy Tale structure. Kat, had you made it farther into the book (and I don’t at all blame you for stopping as I encourage all adults to stop reading a book they don’t like) you would see how the voice is overtaken by the rhythm of the story and the nature of things as they progress.
I can see your point, Katherine–and I fully admit I didn’t read the whole thing, and maybe just a few pages more would have changed my mind. But I’ve read quite a few fairy tales–including several YA ones–and Holes didn’t feel at all fairy tale-ish to me. Maybe I’d have picked up on that as well farther along. Maybe I just don’t “get” the book.
On the other hand…*glances at ice pick*…
That’s true, especially when you got into the backstory of the curse, and that little rhyme that different people knew the different verses to. I thought the ending was utterly satisfying, when the character who was the final piece of the puzzle knew the final verse of the rhyme.
The writing style was simplistic, but the story was not. I’ve read a lot of books that use that simplistic style that write about really gut-wrenching things, so Holes was a breath of fresh air. But then I read juvie and YA pretty much exclusively, so I’m used to it.
Oh, and The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak. How could I forget that one? Beautiful novel.
Oh, and The Giver, by Lois Lowry. I’ll stop hogging this thread, now…
Yes, The Giver! Another “awesome.” (I apparently have no issues with hogging today. 😉
I remember really enjoying Lois Lowry, but don’t think I’ve read The Giver
I’d love to see you tackle Howl’s Moving Castle. It’s another juvie fiction fantasy that seems simple, and then … isn’t.
I liked Holes. The movie is excellent. It was a lot better than Walk Two Moons, and didn’t have the nasty sting in its tail that I was expecting.
I love Holes! I read it years ago, and the story has stuck with me. I think there are children’s books (divided into picture books, middle grade, etc.), then YA, then adult. If really want a taste of why YA is so hot now, read the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. I don’t read much YA, but I picked up The Hunger Games to find out what all the fuss was about and was totally blown away by it. My next foray into YA territory is going to be the Chemical Garden Trilogy, starting with Wither by Lauren DeStefano.
There are a lot of YA novels, and they’ve evolved over time as the expectations of readers and the markets’ expectiations of audience have expanded. If you are truly interested in a sort of survey course to explore the nature of YA and how it relates to modern tastes in fiction I’d recommend several books.
1. All of A Kind Family or Mama’s Bank Account
These books set in the turn-of-the-century US are a sort of beginning for what we now consider YA fiction, as they focused on the themes and writing styles that have become a hallmark of the category. You can see the beginnings of the trend here, with issues like family, growth from child to adult, the immigrant experience, Jewish life in a cozy and episodic setting.
2. Starring Sally J. Friedman As Herself
This is Judy Blume’s natural successor to those earlier books, and while it does touch on the Holocaust it isn’t as issue driven as the category would tend to be later on.
3. Iggie’s House or Blubber by Judy Blume
These are the beginnings of the Contemporary Issues in YA. There are other books I’ve loved by other authors that are long out of print. The Scholastic book club spent much of the 60s and 70s publishing these in pulp form to be marketed to students and classrooms. I was lucky enough to stumble upon my mother’s stash in the mid 70s and to read period-accurate stories about integration, industrialisation, expansionism and the Vietnam War.
4. The Pistachio Prescription by Paula Danziger
Any of the Danziger books are good windows into the 70s variety of YA that dealt with changing family structures via divorce and women’s rights.
5. My Darling, My Hamburger by Paul Zindel
Zindel dealt better with YA romanticism than any other author and injected a bit of magical realism, but not much. It wasn’t until Sacher and _Holes_ that we’d see that predominantly in YA fiction.
6. The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot
And then….this happened. We had decades of hard hitting issues, confronting life from a young point of view. Along comes Meg Cabot (another Hoosier girl and I do love her in spite of this) with her retro anti-feminist tale. In fairness to Cabot she did try to drag feminism into the fairy tale but the sad fact is that most readers were ZOMG!PRINCESS!!! and ignored the other statements. We had a good 5-8 years of this sort of thing, with values-based YA taking a back seat to wish-fulfillment escapism.
7. Harry Potter
You have to include this even though it rightly belongs in a category all to itself because it’s the thing that made YA safe for adults again, and it’s also the reason that so much of fantasy literature has been marketed as YA. So many subsequent books that could have survived very well in mainstream fantasy are being packaged and presented to the YA market thanks to HP.
8. The Hunger Games
This is the final curiosity ,unless you want to go back and read Meg Cabot’s All American Girl trilogy so you can see how she teaches young girls to masturbate properly. Yay. ::rolls eyes:: The first book is an excellent example of how the direct language of YA can propel a suspenseful story. The second book is a good example of how a writer tries to appease the audience that loved her first book. The third book is an excellent example of how a writer gets sick of appeasing her audience and spends an entire book telling them to GET OFF MY LAWN.
And there is my very long syllabus. Don’t you wish my husband didn’t have to work late today?! 🙂
Oh – the last YA I read was The Silent, a Christian YA by Rebecca Kenney. It’s not going to appeal to lovers of Twilight, but the quality of the plot and the writing is better than many ‘adult’ books. The review is on my blog – along with reviews for a couple of other books that are not classified as YA, but were, to me, very YA in feel. Although based on the above discussion, I now think they are just simplistic Christian fiction with young heroines rather than true YA which is a bit more gritty.
Oh, and I should’ve suggested the Uglies trilogy by Scott Westerfield. Although I was kind of tuning out by the last one (I think that was book four), its sci-fi, futuristic world-building is UNBEATABLE. I’d say that someday, its ideas will ring as true as Fahrenheit 451’s did now…
My suggestions:
MG boy books? Anything by Eoin Colfer. So witty and such a smart man. AIRMAN is my favorite.
YA boy books? THE HOBBIT can’t be beat. More recent? Scott Westerfeld is very good.
Is the Hobbit really considered YA?
It was published as a children’s book before there was a YA/MG split, I believe. It won awards as a children’s book when it was first published. And it is sold now as a YA book–ages 12 and up.
I just through reading The Hobbit to my kids. Took a LONG time. It’s very complex for them. My kids are 8, 10, 10, and 12, and the 8 yr old I didn’t even include in the reading because I feel it’s WAY over him. At some point I’ll definitely revisit it with him, but even the other kids found a lot of The Hobbit to be confusing. Regardless, they want me to read them The Lord of the Rings and are interested in seeing the movies (which I don’t know about, have to view them myself again) and are waiting for The Hobbit movie to come out.
What do others think about The Hobbit for kids? What age would you feel is appropriate for them to properly appreciate it?
I read THE HOBBIT to my 6 and 9 year old sons, and they both loved it and begged me to go on to LotR. We’re almost finished FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING now, and the only thing I’ve skipped along the way were a couple of long expository digressions that weren’t relevant to the plot (most notably Tom Bombadil’s), and pretty much all the songs. (Nice enough to read for yourself. Not so fun to read aloud, seventy-two stanzas later.) Other than that, though, they’ve stuck with me through it all — the lovingly detailed descriptions of weather and landscape, the history infodumps, everything that I’d been afraid might put them off. My 6 year old gets pretty wiggly after about 15 minutes and sometimes asks me questions about things I’d assumed were obvious, but my 9 year old keeps asking me to read the next chapter.
I don’t think THE HOBBIT is a problem for any kid who is genuinely interested in it, even if they do get a little confused along the way. But if epic fantasy is not their personal thing (it isn’t with my 11-year-old son any more, though I did read him THE HOBBIT when he was 7 and he enjoyed it at the time) I could see it being an issue.
I love Eoin Colfer! He’s so clever. I second that recommendation!
Oh, and Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus books are sold as MG books, but I think that’s just because the age of the protagonist. I think they should be classified as YA books. But they are great, either way. Very sophisticated books–superb writing, great story, very entertaining, character-driven, seamless plots, witty author–these books have it all.
I was turned off by the Bartimaeus books because of the demons eating people, Nathanial stays an immense jerk the whole trilogy, and the ending of the trilogy. I was left going, “I slogged through these books expecting a laugh riot, not … this.”
I was expecting something akin to Artemis Fowl.
Interesting. I loved Nathaniel. I thought he was abused and innocent when he was young and he grew arrogant but he learned that magicians were arrogant and he didn’t like that and he was self-sacrificing at the end. I thought he was conflicted and he redeemed himself in the end.
Definitely nothing like Artemis Fowl. Those books were fun. The Bartimaeus books are not fun books, but I thought they were deep and rich.
But this is nothing new. I often hate books lots of other people like (I never cared for the Book Theif, ugh) and love books others don’t care for.
Popular series and personal preferences aside, I think a MG author whose style you would enjoy, Mike, is ND Wilson. His prose is anything but lite… managing editor of Credenda/Agenda magazine and a Fellow of Literature at New Saint Andrews College.
Leepike Ridge is a stand-alone “mix of Robinson Crusoe, King Solomon’s Mines, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Odyssey.” 100 Cupboards is the first of a multi-world fantasy trilogy, and it’s the series I think you would most enjoy. Then there’s Dragon’s Tooth, the first of a 5 part series.
In his own words:
I love history–and not just the official in-every-textbook stuff (though I enjoy that too). I love the classics of adventure–especially classics magical or piratical or exploratory. I love Latin and maps and running till I’m exhausted and hot days and my grandfather’s old leather flight jacket (which he lost). I have explored tombs in Jerusalem and back alleys in London. I have been lost in the tunnels of Brussels (with a van full of children), and I have been robbed in Rome (it was easy, anyone can do it). But my adventures are nothing compared to the adventures of men like Lewis and Clark and Magellan and Brendan the Navigator, and I can’t help but be stunned by what they were able to accomplish without our technological crutches and gifts (and internal combustion engines).
I love books that give me a thirst to step outside and blink in the sun (or blink in the rain), books that make me put on my boots or my shoes or my sandals, that make me want to climb, to dive, to dig, to have staring contests with anthills, to hold crabs or touch sharks or search out even fatter books.
Escapism in fiction can be a beautiful thing. But that’s not the only thing I hope to create. If kids around the world pass through The Dragon’s Tooth and become friends with Cyrus and Antigone Smith and form clubs and sit in circles to role-play with dice and wish they had more interesting lives, then I will have failed. But if they dream of learning to sail, to swim, to fly, if they dream of running faster than they’ve ever run and studying Latin (or Greek or Persian or Creole), if they walk outside and realize that their world is more wonderful, more surprising, more dangerous, and more exciting than anything I could ever create, if they discover that they themselves could become more interesting than any character I could ever shape, then I will have succeeded.
Oh, yes, how could I have forgotten. Love, love, love ND Wilson.
Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet (and Brian sequels) are MG and not dumbed down. Paulsen’s The Crossing deals with a number of issues including death, racism, survival. Quick reads, novellas, really, but well done.
I remember reading Paulsen’s books in middle school..! Wow!
HOLES is a great book. I’ve used in my classroom with seventh and eight grade students.
I absorbed The Lord of the Rings as a teen, though that today wouldn’t fall under YA too easily due to the reading level. When I was reading it to my two teen boys, at one point my youngest (about 11 or 12 at the time) said, “He just took a whole paragraph to say, ‘They got off their horses.'” lol.
I almost think I can handle those types of heavy detail books better when I was a teen than I can now. Go figure.
THIS, Rick, I think is a very good point. I could also handle books like the Hobbit better when I was younger. I think we are getting more impatient as a society, and as readers. I have tried re-reading some books that I loved when I was a teen (Piers Anthony and Robert Heinlein come to mind), only to find myself thinking, “blah, blah, blah…,” because the books are just so. dang. wordy.
But I’m now reading a YA book called Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and relishing in some of the longer descriptions. Yes, the author becomes almost redundant at times, and there are a handful of places where my inner editor screams “cut!”–but overall, the languidness of some the passages makes them better. You can slow down and really savor the language and description. And the author doesn’t scrimp on vocabulary, either.
One of my favorite books when I was a kid was THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND by Jules Verne. I tried to read it to my children a few years back and couldn’t do it. They thought it was OK and I probably would still love it if I were reading it to myself, but reading it aloud really brought out the fact that there is such long and laborious description and it takes forever to get into the actual story. I was amazed, because I remembered the book as being such a fast-paced, fascinating, wild ride. 🙂 I am affected by our sound-bited, 140 charactered, flashing-imaged world more than I like to admit.
I haven’t read all the comments here about Holes, but when I read this book, my impression was that it was fine as a middle grade book, although it walks the line between MG and YA. The reason why I’ve settled on it as a MG book is because of the way it’s written (it’s more simplistic language) and the fact that usually, when you write for a particular age group, you almost always make the protagonist be an age on the upper edge of the age group you’re writing for. Yes, some of the themes of the book are a little more intense than I’ve usually seen for MG. I think they can handle it though.
As for the story itself, I was amazed at the quality of the writing. All these seemingly strange and quirky pieces that didn’t seem to fit together suddenly mesh like gears in a machine by the end. It takes great writing skill to pull that off, and Louis Sachar definitely has that skill. I felt I was in capable hands with him as a storyteller. Say what you want about the story itself and whether you LIKED it or not, but you have to admit that the story WORKS.
And personally, I LOVED the quirky nature of this story. It’s different. You won’t find anything else quite like it.
As for what’s next, one of the series that I particularly enjoyed recently is the Skinjacker trilogy by Neal Shusterman. The 3 books in the series are Everlost, Everwild, and Everfound. All three take place in a sort of mid-world between life and death, where people who somehow don’t make it to the light end up living this sort of ghost-like existence. Apparently, only children up to teenaged years can wind up here, and they remain there until they’ve fulfilled whatever destiny has in store for them. It’s quite a vastly different take on the whole ghost concept, and I’d highly recommend it. Also, it’s incredibly quirky too. 😀
I’m not exactly sure why adults crave YA books, however I just read Halflings by Heather Burch and it was very fast reading for me and got to the point quite early(well, she does have a sequel due out this September 2012), so perhaps the next point will be explored then?
I notice that the shorter books are often made into series, unlike Twilight which has books about 500+ long and sequels to boot.
I am used to the Harlequin adult books which are usually around 180-350 pages long and are quite good. Books over 300 pages I enjoyed are:
-The Host by Stephenie Meyer
-It by Stephen King
-Waterfall(YA)-Lisa Tawn Bergren
Wow. I don’t check the comments for a day and everyone spoils The Hunger Games trilogy. Not cool.
Everyone? There were only two comments with spoilers that I saw. One was clearly marked. The other was in response to the comment that was marked. If you haven’t read the books by now….
Books like this must be discussed. This is a big trilogy that is a major player in the market. It’s not like you haven’t had a chance to read them yet and we’re all ruining the ride for you.
Sorry, I was the unmarked spoiler. I assumed that if people read the remark above mine, clearly labeled SPOILER ALERT, they’d know I was responding to that. Hope you still read the books, Kristen, they’re worth it, if only to discuss whether you like how she ended the trilogy or not.
I’ve read the books, but Mike hasn’t, correct? Why would anyone post spoilers for him before he reads them? You’re not “ruining the ride” for me, but for him. And there are multiple comments in that thread with spoilers, not just the obviously marked one. In fairness, though, I’ll take back “everyone” and replace it with “three people leaving multiple comments.”
My spoilers were marked. They always are. I don’t know if Mike intends to read them or not. I marked the spoilers so that if he does intend to read them and doesn’t like to be spoiled–some people do–then he would be able to skip what I wrote.
Regardless, following Netiquette 101, if the book or film is more than a year old, folks proceed at their own risk onto the web. I still post spoiler alerts because I think that’s good netiquette. But otherwise no one on the web would be able to discuss anything. Can you imagine? “A giant squid comes and ruins everything, including the story.” “AWWW No fair! I haven’t read _Watchmen_ yet!!” or “Rhett leaves her when Melanie dies and she’s free to be with Ashley, but that’s just when she realises she’s loved Rhett all along.” “How dare you spoil Gone With The Wind! I was going to read that this summer on the beach!”
Um. I think my comment is spoiler free. Unless you count (SPOILER) that Katniss volunteers to go into the games. But if you’ve seen the trailer or, for that matter, read the description of the book I think that’s pretty clear.
But hey, I’m sorry we upset you. That wasn’t anyone’s intention. And since Mike didn’t comment on anything anyone said there, I’m not sure he read it anyway. But it’s nice that you were concerned for him. <— I know it's hard to read tone on the internet… that's meant to be sincere, not snarky.
Well, for the sake of clarity, here, I would say that when someone asks for book recs in a genre they admit they *haven’t read*, that it would be a spoiler-free zone. I passed Netiquette 101. I think that was covered in 102.
We didn’t even mention the part where the aliens show up and release dinosaurs t
Matt, love your humor!!!
Mike, how about a Christian YA? Or middle grade. I’d suggest Andrew Peterson’s The Wingfeather Saga. The first book On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness has some laugh-out-loud moments. It plays to MG boy humor. The next book North! Or Be Eaten is more serious and darker, but the story is stronger. The third, The Monster in the Hollows is also a strong story but some think it even darker than book 2 (I didn’t think so). There’s one more in the series, yet to be published. Anyway, that would be a good comparison with the YA or MG you’re reading that is published by the general market.
BTW, I’m glad R. J. Anderson’s books got on the recommended list, though I understand you wouldn’t probably be inclined to read her faery books. I thought Wayfarer, which has a boy protagonist, was outstanding. And from what I’ve heard Ultraviolet (not a faery story) would be right up your ally, Mike.
Becky
Our grandsons (twelve and ten) absolutely love Robert Liparulo’s Dreamhouse Kings series.
Yeah, I was surprised by how many of my friends had read Harry Potter. I’ve seen the movie, Holes, but I haven’t read the book.
My ten year old said to tell you that you should read “Anything by Rick Riordan” and also the Paolini dragon books (Eragon and whatnot) which are the best books ever. She also loves Swiss Family Robinson and White Fang and has read them both about ten times. So she thinks those should be on your list, too.