A moral apotheosis

So, I found myself on the radio with Brigham Young University professor Sarah Coyne yesterday, talking about ratings, profanity, and YA. Interesting experience.

Do I still think the media coverage of this is a kind of trolling? Yes, I do.

Am I slightly more concerned that there might actually be a reckoning on this and that Maureen Johnson may have to play Frank Zappa on Capitol Hill sometime? Slightly. (Do take 9 minutes to listen to Zappa in Congress, by the way)

Now, for something that makes me happier. This remains my favorite comment on profanity in books:

"True, not a single obscene term is to be found in the whole work; indeed, the robust philistine who is conditioned by modern conventions into accepting without qualms a lavish array of four-letter words in a banal novel, will be quite shocked by their absence here. If, however, for the paradoxical prude’s comfort, an editor attempted to dilute or omit scenes that a certain type of mind might call "aphrodisiac" [Or "gratuitous," if you're Professor Coyne. -AK] (see in that respect the monumental decision rendered Dec. 6, 1933 by Hon. John M. Woolsey in regard another, considerably more outspoken book), one would have to forego the publication of "Lolita" altogether, since those very scenes that one might ineptly accuse of a sensuous existence of their own, are the most strictly functional ones in the development of a tragic tale tending unswervingly to nothing less than a moral apotheosis."

-“Professor James Ray Jr.”

We need more scholars like “James Ray Jr.”. 

Ellen Levine

I met Ellen Levine in person once after spending a good deal of time on the phone with her. We had a drink at a hotel before BEA in 2010. We talked a bit about her manuscript—which would become In Trouble—and, I suspect, about politics and bookmaking. During that conversation, and in the dozens of phone and email exchanges that followed, I got to know Ellen as the witty and wise  force of nature I imagine many others knew her to be.  And even when she told me she had cancer, she seemed so indomitable  that it was difficult to imagine I wouldn’t have the chance to repeat that meeting (to say nothing of editing more of her books). But that’s not how life works.

Ellen passed away on Saturday after a nearly two-year battle with lung cancer. She is survived by her wife, Anne, her partner of more than 40 years. Please keep Ellen’s family in your thoughts.

PS: One of the best epitaphs I've ever read was the one Yeats wrote for Swift. I can't help but think it applies to the Ellen I knew:

SWIFT has sailed into his rest; 

Savage indignation there

Cannot lacerate his breast.

Imitate him if you dare,

World-besotted traveller; he

Served human liberty. 

Follow the money

As summer dawns on YAastan, we await the awakening of the trolls from their long winter’s naps. Last year, Meghan Cox Gordon was the once-sleepy troll whose blood was most roused by the early June sun. Cox Gordon , to her credit, is a book person, and though she trolled us all with her preposterous and hysterical (in the bad sense) piece on the relative darkness of YA, I don’t actually believe this was her intent.

The trolls have risen earlier this summer, and one scribbler called Jason Koebler has rolled out of bed to whip the citizens of YAastan into a frothy frenzy with a piece on the US News & World Report web site. Given Mr. Koebler’s prodigious output, I do worry that he hasn’t had time to stop and admire his trollish handiwork (viz: “#ratingYA”).

Look, all joking aside, there’s nothing to this. I’m actually being unkind to Cox Gordon’s idiotic piece by comparing it to this one. We’ve officially spent a million more minutes reacting to this than the author spent writing and researching it. For the love of Robert Cormier, look at what this guy wrote before he wrote the YA piece!

Follow the money. Who has an economic interest in rating YA? Who wants to pay to make that happen? Who wants to alienate all the adult readers of the genre?

If there were Congressional hearings about this issue, I still wouldn’t be all that worried. But this is nothing.

On the other hand, follow the money:

Can you see the money?

Those links must be really important is they’re underlined twice, right?

They thought the piece was so important that they decided to hide it under this very important “survey”…

If you don’t think there’s money to be made in publishing inflammatory articles that hit close to home in heavily social networked communities of interest, then you don’t understand the Internet.

I suggest we answer the headline (and always beware of articles whose headlines are questions) to this piece with a simple “no” and get back to making books.

Ida played her wonder horn

If you haven’t already, you have nothing better to do today than to read this (frustratingly, you may have to manually click to page 80).

 

April isn’t always cruel

Old Possum himself.

I’ve peeked (and in a couple cases, done much more than peeked) at several of the pieces I’ve gotten in response to my April call for manuscripts. I can say they are much, much more than a heap of broken images. A few more days remain to submit yours.

Once you’ve sent your manuscript, I can only humbly beg “shanti, shanti, shanti.” It will take me a while to get through them all.

Submissions Call: YA novels (Mad Libs Edition)

This ends when April ends. Please do not deviate in any way from the email outlined below.


To: carolrhodasubmissions@lernerbooks.com


Subject line: YA Novel for April


Body of email:

Dear Andrew:

Please find attached my YA novel, [Title]. It’s [Word count] words long, and if pressed, I’d say the subgenre is [Any YA subgenre except high fantasy]. Based on what I know about Carolrhoda Lab and the books you’ve published, I think [Title] would be a good fit because [Brief explanation of why in not more than three sentences and of course fewer is fine.]


I’m sending this to you on a non-exclusive basis, and I will let you know if I get another offer or accept agent representation.


I look forward to hearing from you sometime before the end of 2012,


[Your Name]
[Word file of complete manuscript attached.]

Guest Post: Ashley Hope Pérez

Ashley Hope Pérez, author of What Can't Wait and The Knife and the Butterfly, agreed to wrap up her recent blog tour with a guest post here on the Carolrhoda blog. Here, she tells us what she wants readers to know about the similarities and differences between her two novels.


Thanks to the amazing folks at Lerner, my latest novel The Knife and the Butterfly looks gorgeous next to my debut novel, What Can't Wait. You can tell just by looking that these books belong together. Kind of the way any siblings, no matter how different, belong to the same family. But—as you can also tell from the covers and book blurbs—The Knife and the Butterfly is not (NOT!) a sequel to What Can't Wait. In fact, it's so different that sometimes I feel like I need to prepare readers.


When I'm writing, this kind of thing is not a problem. It's not even something I think about. Each project presents me with its particular terms and demands, and I accept them. I don't know any other way to write.

But things get more complicated when it’s time to introduce the new novel to the world. I feel a little like a mom at that first back-to school conference with a teacher who has taught one of my kids before. “He's really different,” I want to say, “but there are still lots of reasons—maybe even more—to care about him and take time to get to know him.”

Hang on, aren’t both What Can't Wait and The Knife and the Butterfly set in Houston? (Yes.) Don't they feature Hispanic protagonists? (Yes.) Aren't they both contemporary realistic fiction? (Mostly yes.) Isn't there even a character from What Can't Wait who shows up in The Knife and the Butterfly? (Yes! And you get bonus points if you can find that character!)

Now let's look at a few of the differences in the characters' worlds. Marisa, the protagonist of What Can't Wait, is trying to figure out how she can go away to college without blowing all her family/friend relationships. Azael, the protag of The Knife and the Butterfly, dropped out of school after seventh grade and drifts from friends' couches to abandoned apartments in the area of town where he grew up. Marisa's mother sometimes undermines her efforts to put education first, and her father is overbearing and often ungrateful. Azael's parents are missing completely; his mother died when he was a kid, and his father was deported back to El Salvador before Azael was out of middle school, leaving him and his brother essentially orphaned. Their gang and neighbors are the closest things they have to family. Marisa feels invisible sometimes in spite of the teachers, friends, and boyfriend who care about her. Azael has completely fallen through the cracks of just about every system that should have looked out for him. When the novel opens, he is a dropout, a gang member, and a kid on the fringe of everything most of us take for granted.

The best way I can think of to explain the different worlds represented in What Can't Wait and The Knife and the Butterfly is this: What Can't Wait reflects the tough world of some of the students I was lucky enough to teach. The Knife and the Butterfly is about the kids I never got to teach. It is my exploration of one world that swallowed up students and sucked them out of school long before their peers walked into a senior English class.

Readers who pull both books off the shelf will discover at least two different dimensions of teen experience. They will think about how education and family make a way to a better future for one character (Marisa in What Can't Wait), and they will feel the weight of lost promise—and the narrow margins in which change is possible—for another character (Azael in The Knife and the Butterfly).

In fact, that’s how I want to picture my readers—not staring at my books on a shelf, but holding one in each hand.


And lucky for you, readers, Ashley's first book, What Can't Wait, will be available in paperback in just a few short months!

Did you miss any of the interviews or guest posts in the blog tour for The Knife and the Butterfly? Find all the links in one place here. And be sure to check out Ashley's blog, follow her on Twitter, or find her on Facebook.