Cover Talk: Why Do They Do That?

I know for a fact that I am not the only one who is left wailing after the marketing people at whatever publishing house decide to change the cover from one book to another for whatever inexplicable reason. They never actually do give a reason, do they? I think we should ask them, hold them accountable. Let’s look at some of the covers and the way the new book or the new edition has been changed.

From

To

From

  to  

From

  to 

From

  to 

From

  to 

From

  to 

In most of these cases, the trend seems to go from something fresh and new to something totally generic and unnoticeable. The one that confounds me the most, I confess, is the change from the beautiful goth cover of Spirit and Dust to whatever that ugly cover is supposed to be. I have never been as opposed to a cover change before. In fact, I was going to buy the book but the cover has convinced me not to. I don’t know if that’s what marketing people were aiming for but they successfully convinced me not to spend my money on that book no matter what the content. It is especially unfair on the author because I know that not all of them have the same liberty over the covers on their books as others do.

Across the Universe‘s cover change I can understand as I do the Perkins books – they all want to attract older audiences who may be turned off by the original covers but that works both ways. New readers to Perkins book, especially the targeted audience, that is, the kids, may be turned off by these covers. I think the least they could do was go the Harry Potter way – have adult editions and children editions and let the covers identify which is which.

The cover change to Moira Young’s dystopian series is also saddening. The original cover is far more representative of the landscape found inside the novel than the new cover which honestly could fit more than a dozen Urban fantasy novels without any problems. The same deal with Andrea Cremer’s werewolf series which took what were some of the most beautifully created covers in the history of YA novels and turned them into generic vomit-worthy covers that could grace any UF novel easily. I’m also annoyed by the change in Brennan’s paranormal series. The silhouette was beautiful, innovative and fresh. And now? Something generic.

It is as though publishers are scared to go with something new which surprises me because all of these books (apart from Spirit and Dust which has yet to be released) did exceptionally well and there is no reason to not attribute some of the success to their cover appeals. When a good thing is working, let it. I can’t presume to say that I understand fully the workings of the publicity and marketing departments of the various publishing houses but as a reader, I am terribly disappointed by some of the decisions made by them. And I know I am not the only one who has vocalized her disappointment. Considering this, I wonder why the producers don’t listen and continue to not listen to the people who actually matter, that is, the consumers. Thoughts?

Phrases/Words To Be Avoided When Writing Synopses

Do you have words/phrases that completely turn you off when you read a synopsis. A synopsis is supposed to reel the reader in, make them curious, make them pick up the book and read it. Not make them back away from the table/computer/whatever with a look of abject horror on their faces. I have several phrases but to start it off, I’ll go with:

“Star-crossed lovers…”

Even on good days, I am allergic to overly romantic novels but this phrase? This one screams mush puppies wagging their tails mushily and expecting you to coo and pet them as though they have performed great tricks. No. This phrase not just promises but practically guarantees pathos and melodrama. It also makes me think of this:

Bella meeting the Cullens.

For Jo, the phrase is:

“Inexplicably drawn to each other…”

This tells me that the two should not be drawn together because he is either a vampire who moonlights as a stalker between hunting for vegetarian blood, a killer angel whose stalking has received awards from the people who give awards for such, werewolves who just as soon will take a meaty bite out of the protagonist as kiss her, the protagonist’s best friend’s boyfriend who really should not be thinking about biting or stalking or some variant of. Which means I will spend a lot of the book rolling my eyes and to save my eyes, I will need to, you know, move on to the next book.

And Raeem’s cryptonite is:

“Mysterious, dangerous, (new*) guy…”

*my addition.

Okay, this trope is so old. So very very old. It takes the easy way out by introducing a new guy because it makes the protagonist seem very observant because if that guy has always been at school with her, why hasn’t she noticed him before now? And it saves the author from building a preexisting crush and just newness is new! And fun! And stuff like that.

Some words that will make me run away from books include:

“Tender.” “Moist.”

I’m totally sure there are many others but as I am functioning without much sleep, this is all you get. So, do you have any phrases that turn you off and make you run?

 

GR-Amazon and Are Books Literary Art or are they Commercial Products

There have been several things weighing on my mind in the past week. I have been mulling some things for a longer while and some other things were just reinforced by some things that happened in the last week. Okay, I apologize. Unnecessarily cryptic sentence.

Let me restart this discussion.

Earlier this week (or late last week) Wendy Darling and I were discussing the awkwardness that ensues when you read a book by an author you may be acquainted with or are connected to via some social media network and you don’t like the book all that much and do not give it an optimum rating. Since we all know the drama that accompanies authors (and some fans of the authors) who cannot comprehend the fact that reading is subjective and some people will just not like what other people do and with valid reason, whether you can accept that or not. But that’s an entirely different discussion post and one I have talked about more than once.

This conversation led me to think about whether books are dominantly art or whether they are consumable products, manufactured and sold en masse. Or are they both? And does it matter? Or are some books art and others products designed to feed the hungry masses. And how does one differentiate between the two?

If I were to be the snarky kind and a lit snob, I would say obviously, books that are of the literary genre, that put more focus on the language and character development are far superior to those that are churned out to profit from whichever trend is hot that the moment. And this would not be entirely incorrect. As an aspiring writer, I have considered and thought about this for a long time. Do I write something that will appeal to many people or do I write something that I want to write, and if people happen to like it, that would be an unsought benefit? Being something of a rebel child, I chose the latter but I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future, I wrote something for the express purpose of selling it and not to satisfy some kind principal I uphold where art is concerned. Hey, a girl needs to eat.

Of course, in an age where packaged books are becoming popular, the commercial nature of books is at the forefront. The consumers are there, fresh and ripe for the packing and for the large part, they are willing to try anything since they are teenagers and adolescents are all about new experiences. And it is no lie that the first goal of publishers is to make money, no matter what they say about spreading literacy. Anything else is a secondary goal. But how does their drive to make money affect the kind of books that are available for reader consumption? Are there good books, books that are thoughtful, well written, developed and built that are being passed over for books that can be counted on to appeal to people because of their similar (if not identical) nature to known bestsellers? Are we missing out on books that could be potentially brilliant simply because publishers do not want to take a chance on the unknown when they can regurgitate slightly varied versions of the same formula? What are we missing out on?

I had this conversation with a friend over at GR about Cassandra Clare coming out with yet another Shadow Hunters series. I wondered why she would keep on writing about the same thing, essentially the same characters and the same world and mythos. Surely she must have entirely new stories in her head that she could apply her considerable talents to. Surely she must be getting bored about writing what is, I will say it, the same story over and over again. Then it struck me again. The commercial nature of books. I am not speaking for anyone or judging anyone (money’s important, I get that) but when you already have a gold mine on your hands, you won’t leave it go and start digging in another place and hope to strike gold again, right? The Shadow Hunter series are popular, have proved that they appeal to kids and adults alike so why not squeeze out what you can from it? Where is the art in this?

When the news broke about Amazon purchasing Goodreads earlier this week, I was strangely distressed. I love Goodreads. It works for me. It exposes me to books I would not otherwise know about. And not just books from the YA genre but books from whatever genre I want. Or some books that defy genre-zation. Books that are almost multimodal. My reaction surprised me. Amazon is like that amoeba that started growing and never stopped. It just keeps on absorbing everything it can in its bid for world domination where bookselling is concerned. Or so it seems in my opinion. And okay, I do purchase from Amazon. Mostly because I am a Grad student and my monetary funds are so limited as to be invisible. But when I do start earning money, I am going to start going to independent bookstores because I know they are important. I just wonder how Amazon is going to change Goodreads and whether I will still want to be on there after the changes take effect. Will I still be able to post my critical reviews or will there be a push to end those expressions because they do not help the consumer buy their products. How much of literary art will become literary product. To be consumed and spat out.

And whose to say that these easily sellable, poorly written (which is debatable) products do not have an art about themselves? I don’t know. I don’t have many answers but I have a lot of questions.

On the Importance of Reading Outside Your Comfort Zone

I used to be from the school of thought that as long as people are reading, it doesn’t matter what they are reading. I know, I was naive. Perhaps there are people whose thoughts aren’t influenced and shaped by the things their brains consume but they are far and few in between. It isn’t as though a person will be conscious of reacting in a way that has become normalized to them – and yes, I am talking about the rape culture that is so predominant in our society as Steubenville has proved. It is the element of critical awareness, critical thinking that is so lacking in people that concerns me. I was included in that number until I was taught to take a step back, think carefully about what is being asked of me, how I’m being asked to think – whether I am being pressured to agree with a popular opinion despite my dissenting opinion. I often find myself disagreeing with things that may mark me as being different or as someone who refuses to ride with the crowd. I’m not going to lie, sometimes it’s uncomfortable, sometimes I wish I could just curb myself and follow the herd but I’ve never been one to conform. Ever.

Children nowadays are being taught to be critical of all the advertisements that are incessantly thrown at them. I think that’s important. I think that if we become compliant and complacent, we will become subsumed by this consumer culture. Honestly, these are not just paranoid ramblings. Neo-liberalism is very real, social reproduction is happening constantly and a person shouldn’t have to go to grad school to become aware of these things – things that shape the world, the society we are living in.

According to Louise Rosenblatt, there are two types of reading:

Aesthetic reading: Is what you do for fun. You know, Eon and Eona fun. Or, well, those are my favourites, I’m sure you have yours. And then there is,

Efferent reading: Is the reading done in order to glean some knowledge. Like reading nonfiction or a textbook. It can be fun if you are into it but it generally is more exhausting than aesthetic reading which is done simply for the pleasure of the story.

However, Rosenblatt also states that you can read the same book aesthetically or in an efferent manner. It doesn’t necessarily have to be nonfiction either.

And this brings us to the importance of reading outside whatever is your comfort zone. Or, as I usually term it, your genre. My genre, flimsily, is Children’s Literature and whatever may fall under it, be it picture books, middle grade novels or YA novels. I will read them. However, that is not the only genre I read. I read literary fiction, classics, world lit, urban fantasy. I will read everything except Westerns and romance novels. But even within your genre, there are certain books that are “radical,” that push the boundaries of traditional narrative that you can read simply so you can see that there is a different way to think, feel and react to the same situations.

Rather than just reading the familiar, the rote and almost formulaic story whether the heroine has two suitors, must save the world, not eat lunch and all that fascinating stuff – heck even if you do, be aware of what you are reading. Deconstruct these books, take apart the narratives, look at the subtext. If you find yourself accepting and agreeing to any particular plot point, ask yourself why. If the protagonist calls other girls sluts for having sex, wearing clothes that show skin, ask yourself why that’s okay, whether you agree that the girl got what’s coming to her because she’s a skank or do you think the protagonist is chauvinistic and yes, girls can be chauvinists.

Most important of all though is that reading outside your comfort zone will make you think. It will make you wonder. It will open your eyes to different perspectives you weren’t aware of. You may not necessarily like the books you read, they may make you uncomfortable and that’s okay. Because they are different. They ask more of you than just mere acceptance. Some books I have read this year that made me think are:

On Bibliophilia and Book Blogging

So by the time this goes up, I should be at the Vancouver Children’s Literature Roundtable breakfast event which features Oliver Jeffers not on the breakfast menu but as a speaker. And because I am in a somewhat reflective mood, it seems perfect for me to take a look back on what book blogging has been like in the last three years I have been doing it.

I read a lot and I read fast but somehow, this year, I feel like lingering over my books. Savouring them. So I have been doing that and not reading as much as I did in the same period in the last year. So where do the daily reviews come from? Well, I read 460 books last year and I reviewed the bulk of them. So I have 40 reviews already written and this helps me when I am scheduling my posts. I only clarify this because I read someone’s post scoffing about how it is impossible for someone to read enough to post a book review daily. I read all the books I review. I don’t skim them and I don’t just read the synopsis and get the details from someone else’s review and refashion them into my own thoughts. That would be plagiarism. So while I may not post a book review five days a week in the future, I can certainly afford to do so now.

Blogging has interesting effects on my bibliophilia. I love books. But I’m not going to lie, sometimes I want ARCs because everyone else is getting them and receiving them seems to be an induction in some sort of big girls’ club of rad book bloggers. I have never been a follower. I prefer to be in my own corner, reading my own book but you mention ARCs and I sort of go silly. I guess it’s a good thing NetGalley and Edelweiss are around because their denials keep me grounded. Hee. I mean, ARCs are nice, there’s no denying it. But honestly, if it’s not a book you want to read but one you have to read because you receive it? Not so cool. My time is becoming increasingly limited – so much s0 that I do not want to spend time reading what I won’t like and what I will end up writing a negative review for. So I’m trying to be smart and more controlled. I don’t promise anything (even to myself) but I am going to try.

I also have to periodically remind myself that I did not start book blogging to become a popular book blogger. Sometimes it’s easy to get carried away by things that do not matter. It doesn’t matter how many people view my blog every day or month or even year. It doesn’t matter how many comments I receive on the posts or even if I receive comments. What matters is that I reach even a single other book lover out there whose passion for books matches my own. If I can recommend a book to even one person, whether they comment on the blog or not, then I am happy. Honestly.

So in this new year, I am going to read fewer book. But I am going to savour them more. I am going to read good books and some bad ones. And I am going to travel into worlds that do not exist on this plane and go places without setting a foot into an aeroplane. I hope that you, too, read beautiful books this year.

 

 

Reading: A Critical Perspective

I have discussed reading on Bibliophilic Monologues time and again. I have talked about reading from a personal perspective and from the perspective of a writer. And today I introduce another perspective into this mix, that of an academic, a critic so to speak. I am taking this class on critical theory, that is, ways to approach children’s literature from a critical perspective and though I have taken a lot of literature courses, this may be the first time I’m taking one which deals exclusively with theory. So I figured that if I was so unaware of the existence of these nuggets of information, there are certainly other people out there in the world who are too and who may be just as interested in these things as I am. Anyway, convoluted sentence aside, what I’m going to talk about in the next few paragraphs are reader-response theories!

So you can either run for the hills or buckle in and lean forward with a fascinated look on your face. Just saying’.

When an academic says what is your “reading” of this particular text, she means something very different than what you would think. A “reading” is how one perceives and decodes the text. If you have ever taken a college level English literature class, you will (probably) be aware of the term “New Critics.” These are people who remove the author and reader from the table and concentrate exclusively on the text. Everything comes from the text. All discernible meaning and substance are gleaned from the book almost as though the book is completely independent from its creator. The reader-response theorists, on the other hand, are more concerned with the reader portion of the reading experience. The author does not have as much import in this branch of theory as the reader does. Even the text comes in a necessary second.

Stanley Fish, one of the more prominent theorists, describes reading as a lived experience. In Jane P. Tompkins’s words, Fish’s theory says that “[l]iterature is not regarded as a fixed object of attention but as a sequence of events that unfold within the reader’s mind.”  I can certainly relate to that but the thing is, if you take this approach, the “meaning” of a text becomes problematized. Fish, again in Tompkins’s words, asserts that “meaning is not something one extracts from a poem, like a nut from its shell, but an experience one has in the course of reading.” Fascinating stuff. This means therefore that there is no one meaning of a text but as many as there are readers because no one experience is going to be identical.

Another theorist whose name escapes me at the moment theorized that when reading a book, a reader assumes an identity that is separate and distinct from their true identity. Walker Gibson is the theorist. Anyway, he says that there is a “mock reader” created while reading whose identity is constructed by the author who manipulates this textual reader to adopt the qualities necessary for the actual reader to enjoy the novel being read. It is when the actual reader rejects this mock reader identity that “bad books” are born. If the actual reader cannot agree with the morals and actions necessary in the mock reader, then they will fail to appreciate the novel as it was meant to. As Gibson states it, “a bad book is a book in whose mock reader we discover a person we refuse to become.”  Kind of similar to this is George Poulet’s assertion that the reader must figuratively die in order for the book to live. In other words, a cessation of the individual self and a complete surrender to the narrative is the only way for a book to be completely alive.

According to William Iser, the reader is a co-creator of the text being read. That is, the text can only go so far to create meaning, everything else needs to be filled in by the reader. In other words, the author outlines the edges while the readers fill in these drawings with colour. Rather apt, I believe. Louisa Rosenblatt was one of the first reader-response theorists and she was the creator of the Transaction theory. Her work is a bit more complicated than I would like to get in in this medium but Rosenblatt believed that reading is a life experience and the “Poem” as she states it is the next text created when a reader reads (and responds to) a literary text. That is, a “Poem” is an event in the reader’s life.  How a reader approaches literary work will determine what the reader takes away from it.

The truth is, there are many of these theories and if you are interested in them, you should totally look them up because they make sense! And they show that a great of work has been done about reading. It also reiterates that we as readers are not passive beings to whom literary work is pushed and that we do not simply absorb what is put our way. We have an active role in reading and creating meaning, we have more power as readers than we might have thought. I found this to be extremely fascinating. I hope you enjoyed this bibliophilic monologue. Until next time…

2013: Reading Resolutions and Other Things

Now that we have ascertained that the world is not going to end (or did not end), we can bring the rather laborious process of planning for the future. Of course, I try not to because I am the kind of person who lives entirely in the present. Honestly, that’s probably going to come and bite me in the butt some day but that’s the way I roll. Not intentionally, I just take one day at a time. I do make vague long term plans and this year, in September actually, I will start the proposal for my thesis which is going to be a lot of fun and a lot of reading. I may not have mentioned it before but my cohort, my fellow MACL-ers and I are in the process of organizing a Maurice Sendak Symposium which promises to be a lot of fun but at the same time, a lot of work. I am also currently writing a novel. At a verrrrry slow speed but these things can’t be rushed. I also need to find a job like pronto.

See, a  morass of resolutions, plans etc. But here are the things I do know: I am going to attend ALA Midwinter Conference in Seattle at the end of January. I even got a tiny grant for it. Woot. I hope it is fun. If you’re going to be there, please do let me know so we can be like “Hellooo!!!” and you know, stuff like that. I am going to read at least 150 books in 2013. This is far less than the 459 I have managed to read this year but I am going to be reading a lot of academic literature so I’m not sure how much time I will have to read other stuff. Also, I want to read some classics, some adult fiction this year. I don’t yet know how this will affect my blogging but I guess we’ll be finding out, eh?

Where blogging is concerned, you may find that I do not blog every day as I used to. I am going to try to but I’m not going to sweat it if I can’t. This, after all, is what I’m doing for fun and if I pressure myself about it, it will seem like work and will no longer be fun. I have a lot of neat ideas for blog posts and I hope I have the time to realize them into actual posts.

Series I look forward to Finishing

The Rising – Kelley Armstrong
I wasn’t too pleased with the second book but I do know how everything ties up. I hope the last one in the trilogy is awesome.

Cold Steel – Kate Elliott
I’ve been waiting for this one for over a year. It’s going to be awesome.

Boundless – Cynthia Hand
I hope this novel plays out as Hand hinted it would. And while I like Tucker and all, it would be nice if for once the focus was on something other than true love and all that jazz.

Emerald Green – Kerstin Gier
From all accounts, the third one in this trilogy is the best one of all. I simply cannot wait to get my hands on a copy.

Sequels I Can’t Wait For

Dark Triumph – Robin LaFevers
Seriously, crazy protagonist plus beastly love interest. Bring it on.

The Madness Underneath – Maureen Johnson
This sounds extremely fantastic. I loved the first one and liked where it ended so I can’t wait for thisone.

Asunder – Jodi Meadows
I had some problems with the first one but I’m still very interested in this one.

Quicksilver – R. J. Anderson
This one had a whole different level of mindeffery involved. I liked it.

Fragments – Dan Wells
I liked how this ended. And I’m so curious about the other species.

Prodigy – Marie Lu
Not gonna lie, the male protagonist won me over.

Fractured – Terri Terry
This one is distinctly British in tone and plotting. I loved the first one.

A Darkness Strange and Deadly – Susan Dennard
The ending of the first one was epic! What happens next?

The Runaway King – Jennifer Nielson
This seemed more like YA than MG, honestly. But I like the action and adventure in the first one so I’m curious about the second one.

The Pirate’s Wish – Cassandra Rose Clarke
I just want to know if they will finally kiss, damnit.

The Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle – Christopher Healey
This first one was epic. Fairytales, reimagined, ahhhh. So awesome.

These are just a few of the many I’m anticipating. Are you anticipating any of these titles?

On Cultural Appropriation in YA Novels

There is nothing that riles me up so much as blatant appropriation of culture in literature and other media. For those of you who are not aware or informed about cultural appropriation, let me define it for you:

Cultural appropriation (as Wiki words it) is a generally negative term used to describe the “adoption” of one culture’s method of dress, customs etc by a person (or persons) belonging to another culture. This appropriation is usually for slighter purposes and do not consider the gravity or intent of the traditions and culture being appropriated. Not much research about the culture is done, no explorations into the history or significance of the dress, customs etc. Just a superficial copy-pasting in order to make things prettier or give the work an added oomph with an insertion of something exotic.

One example of cultural appropriation is the use of First Nation/Indian jewelry by people who are utterly unaware of the significance of these pieces of jewelry. News flash: wearing those feathers in your hair does not make you look cool. It makes you look like a douche who cannot be bothered to do research on the significance of the traditions and customs.

For the sake of context however, I want to talk about blatant appropriation of culture in YA novels. Where privileged white people think it is right to give their voices to people who belong to cultures that they have never experienced and lived lives they know nothing about. Before I go further into this, let me just say that even though it is not automatically wrong to write from the viewpoint of a character whose culture you may not have experienced but have researched pretty thoroughly about, there is still a question of credibility. Personally, I tend to be really dubious about books and authors that don’t match (for example a white American writing about a girl in rural India, um, no). But it doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. With a lot of research, sensitivity and thought, you can write something that is both culturally sensitive and does not appropriate culture so much as observe it. Circle of Cranes by Annette LeBox is an example of such a book. As a writer, you also have to consider the purpose of your novel, the message you want to send and the reason you have chosen the culture and setting you did. If it is for flimsy reasons like novelty, because no one else has done it before, then you are going to piss off a lot of people. I’m talking about Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff though that one’s certainly not alone in its cultural appropriation.

So why is it offensive? I’m sure there are many reasons other people can give you but personally, I can give you an example:

Someone called David Lismore states in his biography that:

Daniel Lismore is not looking for attention for attention’s sake. His other worldy appearance, as if he stepped out of an Opera, is for a cause and is born out of his dreams. Daniel’s mission is to bring attention to prejudice and artifice, and in particular, to the plight of transvestites, for which he is willing to be beaten up. For him, they are a quietly marginalized group, who need to be heard and included for who they are in society. I love how Daniel’s style and humility has been inspired by his time spent with The Maasai tribe, who he jokes are the “ultimate” drag queens. He also examines the oppression of Muslim women first hand by wearing a burkha for 48 hours, both sanctifying its sartorial grandness and revealing its social emprisonment. Daniel will inspire ring envy, but there isn’t a pretentious bone in is body, he would give them all away for a more just world.

So, this man, whoever he is, thinks he can understand a Muslim woman (her motiviations, ambitions, life) by wearing a bhurka for 48 hours? Does he even know why women wear the bhurka, does he understand or know how the bhurka came into being? That it originated in the desert where there were sandstorms and this was the easiest way to protect oneself from the flying sand? And just…what the actual hell?

Being a Muslim woman, such things make me angry. To know what being a Muslim woman feels like, you have to be a Muslim woman and if that is impossible, ask a Muslim woman. You don’t know what it means to be oppressed, you cannot fathom the meaning of oppression when you will take off the bhurka after 48 hours and waltz back to your unoppressed life. Ugh.

Being a part of the culture that is being appropriated and, in the case of YA novels, inaccurately portrayed to readers makes a person angry. Offended. You are not doing us any favours by appropriating culture, we do not feel honored, we do not feel lucky; if it’s a good day, we feel amused and on bad days, we are simply pissed off.

As readers, you have the obligation to be aware of what you’re reading. To look and research, if the author has not done their job, for inaccuracies that go beyond the flimsy excuses of “it’s a fantasy world so I can do whatever I want.” When you are in a position of privilege, the worst thing you can do is assume. What irks me beyond anything else is when people read a book that portrays a certain culture inaccurately and they, assuming that the book is faithful to the culture its portraying, accept the customs etc portrayed in the book as the norm.

Some very interesting blogs you may want to check out if you are interested in the topic of cultural appropriation:
thisisnotafrica. thisisnotnative, thisisnotIndia, thisisnotKorea, thisisnotJapan, youarenotdesi

A Whole Post on Reading!

I did not want to post a book review on a Saturday because well, I just didn’t. So I wracked my pretty mind (humor me!) for a topic and then I thought, why not pontificate on reading?! More particularly, on my reading. The way I read and subsequently blog. It’s not that I am not a social person, I am. I like talking to people who have the same hobbies as I do (or obsessions if you are talking about reading) and I like the people whose blogs I read and who I follow on Twitter. I just tend not to say much and be in my own little corner of the world. Which is why I hardly ever do readalongs. Because I read too fast and I finish too early and well, I’m making excuses so ignore me.

Wait, don’t.

We are talking about reading here. There will be pictures!

I prefer physical books. I do have a Kindle and it’s marvelously convenient but I find that it kind of sucks the soul out of reading. But those are debates you have already heard or had so I will not go into them any further. I had a meeting with my thesis supervisor the other day and she asked me about my reading. How it started, whether it was encouraged and what urged me to apply for the program I’m currently doing. It’s kind of an interesting story so I shall share!

In Fiji, they used to (they may still, I’m not really sure) give book prizes at the end of the year in a school wide ceremony to students who came first, second and third in the end of the year exams. So that was all the encouragement I needed to work hard. Anyway in Grade 1, I don’t know whose brilliant idea it was but the one winning the first prize got Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift! And not even the kiddie version! I was flummoxed and more than a little disappointed. Because I couldn’t read it. I didn’t know most of the words and it seemed boring (there were no pictures). This led to some wailing and bitter tears and avowals to come last in the next years exams (I was a kid of extremes, okay?) before my mom got me Great Expectations, the kiddie version! Which had pictures and fitted in the palm of my hand. It had a blue cover and I have no idea where it went.

But I was incensed that there existed a book I couldn’t read. So I started to learn new words and read as much as I could and a monster was born.

One of my uncles was also a teacher (my mom was a teacher too at the primary school I attended) (Fiji’s a small country, okay) and I was in Grade 4 the year he was in charge of buying the book prizes for the prize giving ceremony. He came to my house in the evening and put down a box of books in front of me and said you have the whole night to read this because it needed to be handed in the next morning. And oh my goodness, I spent three quarters of the night reading! With a torch because my mom wouldn’t let me stay up late. I fell asleep in class the next day but it was so worth it.

We had one library in Lautoka City which is where I am from. One measly public library and they only allowed patrons to take out two books at a time. I had a kiddie card and wasn’t allowed to take out anything that was interesting as by the time I reached sixth grade, I had outgrown the baby books. I wanted to read something else. Something that would challenge my intellect more. Or gave more illicit pleasure, anyway. So one day I went to the library and asked the librarian if I could get an adult’s card. She filled out the form easily enough but told me I needed a parent’s signature. This was a problem. I lived some distance from the city on a sugarcane farm and while it wasn’t too far, it also wasn’t a journey we made too frequently. Besides, I wanted to take out books now! So I went outside on the pretext of getting my Dad’s signature and after checking that no one was around, I signed the form. Yes, I’m ashamed to admit that I forged my dad’s signature in order to get books out of the library. Well, not too ashamed. I did get better books.

In high school, we had a pretty miserable collection in the school library. The young librarian (whose brother was a classmate of mine) hated me for some reason and wouldn’t let me read the books I wanted to. This is still in Fiji, by the way. So we would sneak off from the bus station after school on Fridays to the thrift store that carried used books bought from Australia. They were sold for 25c each and we would save money we got for recess everyday and then splurge on the books. It was amazing and it was dangerous as it meant detention if we got caught leaving the bus stop in anything other than a bus to go home. But I was a prefect (hur) and I used my power in ways it wasn’t meant to be used. *cheese*

The books that shaped my formative years were mostly:

Enid Blyton was a favourite author and Dolly Fiction was this Australian series that presented standalone books about Australian teenagers navigating the wild course of adolescence. Living in Fiji, I was highly fascinated by the lifestyles (and romances) of these girls who did not look like me and whose lives were so different from mine.

I also read a lot of romances, both contemporary and historical, simply because they were the kinds of books most readily available and most abundant. When we moved to Canada in 2001 and I saw my first library and found out that I could take out 50 books at one (!!!) time, it was heaven.

Okay, I think I have bored you enough for today. If you have managed to get this point in this highly fascinating recollection of my reading experiences, I salute you. Funnily enough, I intended this post to be a semi- rant about the trends in YA literature that make me want to tear first my hair out and then the hair out of whoever is closest to me at the moment. Tomorrow I am going to post a review on The Hobbit, the movie, because I’m just cool like that. Thank you for reading.

Bibliophilic Monologues: On Picture Books

This is going to be one of those long horrid blog posts that no one wants to read but is present because the author feels this overwhelming need to pontificate. Sort of. No honestly, I think we can do with some variety in the posts and I haven’t done a Bibliophilic Monologues post in such a long while so really, you, my darling Reader, cannot complain about this post. Not too much anyway.

But before I begin talking (writing?) in earnest, let me post a picture so those of you who need some visual interruptions get your due after (not even) a paragraph of text.

Not that the picture (which I credit to the internet because I don’t have a source, if you do, please tell me) has anything to do with the topic in question (about which I’m still thinking) but it is nice to have pictures break walls of text. Ah ha! Which brings me to my topic (I told you I was thinking):

Picture books!!!

So before I started my Grad program, I would not have glanced too keenly at picture books. I thought they were for babies (and they are) and I didn’t think that they had the intellectual complexity that I needed in books I read for recreational pleasure.

I was wrong.

I was very very VERY wrong.

Okay sure, the way in which some picture books are physically manifested, at a superficial glance they may seem childish and thus appropriate for the targeted audiences. However, the construction of picture books, from the writing to the structuring, is an incredibly sophisticated process. Because your readers are still in their development phase, what they read and interpret from their reading may be vastly different from what you intended as an author. An example I can give is one given to me by a lovely illustrator of books whose name I can’t quite remember but she told us an anecdote about an instance where she was reading a story with a child and on one page, the illustration depicted a baby kangaroo from a distance while the next page showed a closeup. The child looked at  both illustrations with interest and then exclaimed, “She grew up some quickly!” The child did not perceive depth of field and distance in pictures. How interesting is that?

Usually publishers do not let the author of a picture book illustrate their own books (if they  know how) and according to my professor, you don’t get to interact as much with the illustrator as you would like being the author because you might try to badger the illustrator. I rather think that writing for children may be a bit more challenging than writing for adults because when you write for children, you have to be aware of how what you are writing is going to be perceived and this awareness adds another level of challenge to your craft.

So I took this class called Contemporary Children’s Literature and in the academic world, contemporary means the last thirty years (don’t ask). Also the term contemporary does not mean what I thought it did. We, in the book blogging world, use contemporary to denote books that deal with contemporary social issues, while in academia, contemporary is simply used to denote the time and “realistic fiction” is the term given to books set in the modern period that have themes of social issues etc.  Anyway, in that class we studied 30 years worth of picture books from North America, Australia, Asia and Britain. Obviously we weren’t able to go into detail about each and every book but we saw enough to be amazed by picture books.

They are beautiful and layered so that a mother reading to her child will interpret the book in very different (perhaps with more depth) ways than the child might. For example, Maurice Sendak (who is something of a celebrity like Brad Pitt in my circles) wrote a picture book called In The Night Kitchen. This has been challenged and banned many many times. Biggest reason given? The naked kid and that it is too sexual. Hmm. Maybe that’s the wrong example but my point is, the duality to picture books is fascinating. And that’s why reading them as adults is such a joy.

You’ve already seem my post on Shaun Tan who is absolutely amazing. His works are crossovers and I do recommend that you check them out. Other picture book creators that I reallly like include:

David Wiesner

He is a Caldecott winner and his art is out of this world. His books usually (from what I’ve read of them) are not focused on the text but on the illustrations which open up surreal worlds that will blow your minds. The metafictional elements to his Three Little Pigs are so awesome. Anyway, look at some pictures!

Read Flotsam, I insist!

John Scieszka and Lane Smith

This duo also won Caldecotts for their work. They are mostly famous for their fractured fairy tales which are hilarious. Scieszka writers and Smith illustrates. Their story are full of metafictional awesomeness and funny, they are funny and anyone can do with some chuckles, right?

Jon Klassen

I first got intrigued by his books after reading a review on one by Eden and then I finally read two of his books (I Want My Hat Back and This Is Not My Hat) this term (one of them was actually read to us in class which was an amazing experience). Klassen is hugely popular and with good reason. The two books mentioned are brilliant in their execution, their simplicity and their complexity! Deadpan humour always wins. Plus he’s cute. Haha.

And this concludes my post on picture books and I hope I evoked your interest in them because they really are awesome and they have so much to offer adults as well as babies. The crossovers are becoming increasingly frequent and, let’s be honest here, there’s nothing so awesome as reading a picture book and feeling like you are five again.