July 2nd, 2009
Everyone Loves Lists! Or YALSA is Trying To Pull Some Shenanigans
Category posted in commentary, lists are awesome

Internet! Did you know that YALSA came up with a list called ULTIMATE TEEN BOOKSHELF which contains 50 books, five magazines and five audiobooks? Yes? TOO BAD, no new information for you. No? Well, let me share the news with you, and then proceed to embarrass myself thoroughly by showing how out of the loop I am. “Renay,” you say, “are you about to do one of those posts where you post a list and then get fancy with your formatting?” to which the answer is an excited, overjoyed HELLS YEAH. That isn’t related to the content of the novels, but more the content of the magazines. What’s so exciting? SHONEN JUMP is on that list! Why yes, I am going to manga dork out on you, please excuse me for a moment!

[Insert some major dorking out right here. Capslock and squeeing required, glitter optional.]

I’ve really got to start reviewing One Piece again.

Now it is time for me to look at the list of books and add some formatting, because that is my shtick: having unnecessary but bold opinions about everything I’ve read!

  • Acceleration by Graham McNamee
  • Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce
  • All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot
  • American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
  • Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix
  • Beauty by Robin McKinley
  • Black and White by Paul Volponi
  • Blizzard! The Storm that Changed America by Jim Murphy
  • Bone series by Jeff Smith
  • The Book Thief by Mark Zusak
  • Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
  • The Chosen by Chaim Potok
  • The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition by Anne Frank
  • Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
  • Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
  • Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going
  • Feed by M.T. Anderson
  • Fruits Basket series by Natsuki Takaya
  • The First Part Last by Angela Johnson
  • The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
  • The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
  • The Guinness Book of World Records
  • Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
  • The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
  • The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
  • I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan
  • I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
  • If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson
  • The Killer’s Cousin by Nancy Werlin
  • Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen
  • Looking for Alaska by John Green
  • Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff
  • My Heartbeat by Garret Freymann-Weyr
  • A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly
  • The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
  • Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
  • The Pigman by Paul Zindel
  • The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot
  • Rules of the Road by Joan Bauer
  • Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta
  • Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie by David Lubar
  • Son of the Mob by Gordon Korman
  • Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
  • Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher
  • Stuck in Neutral by Terry Trueman
  • Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
  • Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
  • The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
  • Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block

I am looking at this list, going, “Well, hell, I fail at YA lit!” I have never touched Westerfeld, I’ve read plenty of Crutcher except that one which everyone cites as the best. This list is very disingenuous, because “series” denotes more than one book, and all the Harry Potter books are listed on here in one fell swoop. YALSA, YOU HAVE CHEATED. I am calling it! You’ll list those as a series, but His Dark Materials gets shunned with only the first title? Hello! All three books are integral to one another. The first is not a standalone; it is a question mark. You are supposed to love books! How did you miss this?

I see what you did there, YALSA, and I’m judging you.

I also still find it skeevy that library organizations are still promoting Orson Scott Card specifically to teens when he’s a big fan of hate speech at those icky, evil gays. This is a contentious issue: does it matter if the author is a gigantic douchenozzle if the books are worth reading? For adults, probably not. How well will it work out for teens who will inevitably fall in love with his work? Probably as well as it did for me and my genderqueer self after loving Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead and then going online to read my first ever Card screed against the awful, nature shunning sodomites who do things like same-sex make outs and sex in positions not sanctioned by a holy body somewhere. IN OTHER WORDS: heartbroken.

Oh well. The random nature of this list confuses me! I won’t lie! I’ll take it because I love a good list, but the editing and the…The Guinness Book of World Records? REALLY? YALSA, you can do better! I believe in you.

leave a comment?

8 comments

Catherine said:

I am looking at that list and wondering who/what these authors/books are, as I haven’t heard of a majority of them.

And I agree with you about His Dark Materials – list the whole series, it’s important that they are together to make sense. That’s why I am surprised that they only list Alanna: The First Adventure, rather than the whole Song of the Lioness quartet.

And word about Card. That’s why I won’t read him, and why others do the same for him and other authors. Why, just today I was reading a list of authors who had made negative statements etc. about race, gender and/or sexuality.

posted on July 2nd, 2009
Travis said:

The thing about shunning authors you disagree with is- if you look close enough at any writer, you can probably find VERY serious points you disagree with just about any of them on. Where does one draw the line on cutting people off? Do they have to agree with you on everything for you to be willing to partake of their stories? You might as well relegate your reading time to your own diary, then, since you’re probably the only person on which you will agree with everything.

Card is a bad case example, since he’s pretty extreme, but it seems ignorant to put too much stock in the private beliefs of writers, especially when those beliefs do not shine through in their work. If anything, ENDER’S GAME and SPEAKER preach the exact opposite of Card’s beliefs. Why shun those stories, then? Read them and celebrate the irony.

posted on July 2nd, 2009
Mary Ann said:

Seriously I love your rants. Its kind of like what I say while muttering under my breath that makes my dogs get up and leave the room. What I found interesting about this list was the process. I’m I could pretty much expect most of what is on it, although there are a few surprises. I’m not on YALSA-BK anymore but I wonder how much discussion took place around these suggestions before they were “vetted” by 2 people. I’ve been on a YALSA committee and sat in on BBYA deliberations and in those cases there was a lot of conversations and some disagreement, and even occasionally hurt feelings. Seems to me a list like that deserves that type of conversation. In other words – shenanigans.

posted on July 2nd, 2009
Renay said:

@Travis I am not going to pretend that I don’t hold writers, who work with words for a living, to a higher standard about basic human decency. Card knows the power words have, he’s an adult, and his books are being promoted to teens and you know, I have a problem with that and I’m not going to apologize for it. To answer your question, I draw the line at HATE SPEECH. That’s where my line is, where I stop financially supporting authors, even if I don’t stop reading their books. I don’t give a rat’s ass where anyone else draws their line and don’t seek to force my choice on anyone else, but I do have a problem when people come in and distort my opinion so they can look clever (the “you might as well only read your work!” line, yeah, haven’t heard THAT before) and then attempt to make it about how I’m being ignorant instead of it being about Card’s disgusting hate speech and whether we should be actively promoting it to teens, even if (and this is a big if) the books don’t contain questionable content influenced by Card’s personal views.

I didn’t say anything about SHUNNING him, and the pro-Card folks like to miss that whenever I bring him up. I said, maybe we shouldn’t be promoting these books, written by a proud and out homobigot to teens, many of which who might be genderqueer and confused (like me!). I don’t want to “celebrate the irony”, thanks. As a gay teen, I went online to find more of books by the awesome dude that totally got me after my library helped me find him, and instead I found things that made me want to PROJECTILE VOMIT because he HATED me. I would appreciate it you not narrowing my experiences down and calling them ignorant just because you didn’t experience what I did. It is not IGNORANT to hold authors accountable for their HATE SPEECH and I said nothing about not reading his work: you assumed it and you were wrong.

posted on July 2nd, 2009
Renay said:

@Mary Ann I don’t think I’m a member of that list anymore, either. Actually, I don’t follow too many ML at all, because the butthurt is so strong and the Cult of Nice is in full effect. I’m really not trying to pick on the list too much, but if you’re going to list 50 books, list 50 books. Don’t cheat and toss in a series if when you list other books in a series you’re going to disrespect it by only listing the first. Really!

posted on July 2nd, 2009
Renay said:

@Catherine I still have my copies of Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead, even though Speaker contains really, really lazy editing, I still love it. I rec them to people I know all the time with the caveats, and some people care and some people don’t, and the majority say, “That’s terrible, well, I’m glad I can read them without giving him money!” I won’t buy any of his newer books, that’s for sure.

I hope these books will be hear in 100 years, and used as a lesson of how an author can TOTALLY GET IT but only when he’s pretending not to be a bigot, which is the saddest part of the whole thing.

posted on July 2nd, 2009
Vasilly said:

I love this post, Renay! What I want to know is since I’m always writing down the books you love, what would be on your top 50 list if you made one?

posted on July 2nd, 2009
Renay said:

@Vasilly A list like that for me would change constantly, but I could try!

posted on July 3rd, 2009