More Brooklyn-based Speculative Fiction From Cybil

Time for another Cybils YA Speculative Fiction finalist. I'm afraid it will be time to start the next Cybils season before I finish writing about this one.

Today, lads and lasses, I am going to tell you about Labyrinth Lost (Brooklyn Brujas) by Zoraida Cordova. Labyrinth Lost, like The Door at the Crossroads, is set in Brooklyn, at least in the beginning. (Brooklyn must be teeming with magical stuff.) It had an urban fantasy possibility, with a family of witches (brujas) existing in a contemporary urban world. That changes, though, when main character Alex, who hates this magic business, tries to shed hers. Instead, she sends her family into a fantasy world that she has to enter in order to save them. She's accompanied by a neighborhood boy she doesn't know very well, but one who knows what's going on with her and her family. And they're eventually unexpectedly joined by one of Alex's friends. So do we now have one of your classic trios on a journey? Well, yes and no.

A Latin family and the beginnings of a lesbian romance with a cliffhanger ending. 

Some Serious Magical Realism

When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore is another Cybils YA Speculative Fiction finalist. It's an example of intense magical realism. According to my understanding of this sub-genre of fantasy, fantastical elements are brought into a real world setting and everyone simply accepts them. So no one is amazed when the main character in Moon makes her first appearance spilling out of a water tower, or that she has roses growing out of her wrist.

What I liked best about this book were a couple of nonmagical elements. One involves Sam, the romantic interest for main character Miel. I can't think of a single thing to say about him without risking a spoiler. So I will say nothing. I will write, instead, about the Bonner sisters. Four beautiful siblings who prey romantically on young men. That's creepy. Yeah, I liked them, too.

When the Moon Was Ours is elegantly written with lush language that's carried through the whole work. In addition to being a Cybils finalist, it was on the long list for the 2016 National Book Award. It's also a 2017 Honor Book for the ALA's Stonewall Book Award.

Cybils Finalists For 2016

The 2016 Cybils finalists were announced yesterday, New Year's Day. I was happy to see that A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro, which I liked, made the short list for YA Fiction.

However, my big interest this year is YA Speculative Fiction, for which I am a second round judge. I'll be reading the following books before Valentine's Day.

YA Speculative Fiction Finalists

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman
Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Cordova
Still Life with Tornado by A.S. King
The Door at the Crossroads by Zetta Elliott
The Keeper of the Mist by Rachel Neumeier
This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab
When the Moon was Ours: A Novel by Anna-Maria McLemore

I'll get back to you about these books after February 14.

A Universal Child Story

Last week I wrote about one of the reasons I like the Cybils Award. Here's another--While the judges are reading the nominees, there's a chance they'll blog about them. Since absolutely anyone can nominate a book, the selection of titles considered is much broader than for those awards for which publishers submit what they consider their best shots, their award level work. With the Cybils there's a chance that books that might not be getting much attention will get some, whether they win or not or even whether they make the short list or not. This is good for books, for writers, and particularly for readers.

That's why I nominated The Waffler by Gail Donovan. The book has been well reviewed, and I hope it becomes well known, too.

It's not unusual to see children's books about death, divorce, poverty, illness, and other Big Topics. Big though they may be, they are not universal child topics because not every child experiences death as a child, experiences divorce, poverty, illness, natural disaster, etc. The number one universal child experience, in my humble opinion, is the pressure/need to conform. By that I don't mean conform to a child clique or a team or a group of bullies. I mean conform to adult society, adult social norms. The universal question we must all deal with as children is How the Hell much of myself am I going to have to give up in order to get along in this freaking world?

And that is what The Waffler is about.

Monty isn't a model fourth grader. He was, after all, involved in a graffiti incident, and he's not in one of those combined advanced classes like his twin sister. The big issue that the adult world comes down on him about, though, is that he can't make a decision to save his life. What kind of pet to buy, what to name it, what to write about for a class assignment, where to sit at lunchtime. You name it, and he'll probably change his mind about it. This makes him unacceptable both to the loving, frustrated grown-ups at his two homes (he has two sets of parents) and the much harsher grown-ups at his school. No one accepts him the way he is and, interestingly, no one helps him with decision making skills. He's just told to start making them.

Figure it out, kid. Become like us.

Fortunately, this isn't a learn-the-error-of-your-ways-child story. Of course not. I wouldn't be writing about it, if it were. Monty wins his family over, for a while at least, with a decision not to make a decision. It's pretty clear that his teacher isn't as taken with this move but decides discretion is the better part of valor and waits to fight another day. The book both does and doesn't have a tidy ending, something I appreciated.

I also appreciated the fact that it's a book for the lower end of the middle grade spectrum. You see a lot of middle grade books with twelve-year-old characters. You want an older character in order to create someone who has a lot of acquired knowledge or be mature enough to save the world in a fantasy. You use twelve year olds when you're trying to make the unbelievable more believable. (I've done it, too.) Monty is a believable younger child in a believable situation. He's not wildly funny. He doesn't have an over-the-top voice. He's a regular child many child readers at the lower end of middle grade or the higher end of chapter books could know.

Time for a little FTC transparency chatter here: I received my copy of The Waffler from the author, who I met at a NESCBWI conference maybe twelve or thirteen years ago. 

Cybils, A Carnival, And Ted Talks

The 2012 Cybils finalists were announced on New Year's Day. I've been reading off the nomination lists for a couple of months now. When I finish up, I'll post a list of all the  Cybils nominees I've blogged about.

Also, the December, 2012 Carnival of Children's Literature is up at Playing by the Book. Yes, I participated.

While visiting Playing by the Book, note the children's lit themed TED Talks highlighted there since December 21. I had never heard of these things, but it turns out that TED Talks are podcasts of talks and performances at TED Conferences. Still unclear? I was, too. TED stands for technology, entertainment, design, and the TED conferences showcase "ideas that matter in any discipline."

So there's something I didn't know fifteen minutes ago.

My Middle Grade Cybils Books

Well, unfortunately I planned to organize my Cybil posts by age. I say unfortunately because it looks to me as if I only happened to read two nominees that fall into the middle grade category.

The Death-Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean.

The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood.

There's Nothing Wrong With Being Thrilling

I am definitely a Suzanne Collins fan. I liked all but the last of her Underland books. And I found the actual game portion of her The Hunger Games exciting, an excellent thriller.

However, this book has been discussed on listservs all year. It's being talked about as having award potential. I just don't see it.

In The Hunger Games a ruling elite suppresses twelve districts it defeated in war by selecting two teenagers from each one (in a scene very reminiscent of The Lottery) and forcing them to fight to the death in a televised reality show. Seeing their kids murdering each other on television is supposed to show these folks that they have no hope. At the same time, the ruling class in the capitol city finds the games wildly entertaining.

I find this premise very...random. There just doesn't seem to be any compelling reason for anyone to have hit upon this particular device for breaking the will of an opponent.

I think I have trouble accepting the premise because I don't find the world of the book very well defined. The story takes place in North America sometime so far in the future and after so horrendous a war that the United States no longer exists or even seems to be remembered. People no longer use recognizable names. In fact, some names sound very Roman, as if the culture has been thrown into the past.

And yet they still have reality television?

A lot of things in this book just didn't work for me. The government of this society can create entire little worlds for the games to take place in and then turn them into theme parks for the wealthy instead of reusing them for the next games. It can control the weather, for crying out loud. It needs the Hunger Games to control a downtrodden population? I don't think so. The games appear to have been going on for seventy-four years. That's at least three generations. In that time the society hasn't changed in any way? How big are these districts that need to be controlled? What's going on in the rest of the world? What's with the girl who is introduced but never dealt with?

I'm guessing we'll see her in book two of what I've heard is going to be a trilogy.
In spite of all my reservations about the world building in this book, I am more than willing to admit that once the games in The Hunger Games begin, readers are in for a thrill ride. That's plenty of reason to read it.

The Hunger Games has been nominated for a Cybil in the Fantasy and Science Fiction YA category.

Is It Magical Realism? Is It A Graphic Novel?

I have been a bad Cybilista, not keeping up with graphic novel posts the way I'd planned to. So today I am doing penance by discussing The Savage by David Almond, which has been nominated for a Cybil in the YA Graphic Novel category.

The Savage is the story of a boy whose age I'm not sure about, though he seems a little on the young side for a YA to me. Soon after his father dies, he starts writing a story about a savage kid who appears to come to life so that he can deal with a bully who has been tormenting his creator.

Does he really come to life? Did his author commit the acts in the night instead of the savage?

While this story seems a little familiar to me, it is very well done. Child readers may very well find this storyline very intriguing. What's more, the book is relatively short. The draw of the story combined with the unintimidating length of the text could make this book a real draw, particularly for less enthusiastic readers.

I first became acquainted with David Almond's work when I read Skellig while doing a little magical realism study. Just as The Savage involves a child who has experienced the trauma of a parent's death, Skellig involved a child who was experiencing the trauma of a sick younger sibling and a move to a new home.

One day after doing my magical realism reading, I was supposedly doing a bookstore appearance but really just hanging out with the bookseller because she had very few customers and didn't make a single sale the two hours I was there. The bookseller had a background in some kind of therapy. She said that when books involved "magical elements" with a character who had experienced some kind of trauma, said books were not considered examples of magical realism. The magical elements had to exist with no possibilty of them being explained as an emotional response to a traumatic event.

I don't know if she was right, but it was an interesting point.

Anyway, getting back specifically to the book at hand, The Savage is heavily illustrated by Dave McKean, who also illustrated The Graveyard Book. While there are more illustrations than I'd expect to see in a regular novel here and some of the pages could be described as being broken into panels, I really don't see this as a graphic novel. There's way too much text and the illustrations illustrate. I don't think they carry any of the story.

Fuse #8 did a lengthy review of this book earlier this month, complete with many links to other reviews and miscellaneous information.