Bust - August/September 2008 issue

Okay, so Bust isn't exactly a teen magazine. BUT! If I were in charge of a teen section in a library, I would get a subscription. Bust is the magazine "for women with something to get off their chest." Unlike many "alternative" magazines, Bust has a very high production value, with great design, glossy, colourful pages, and great writing. Plus - interesting articles! Shock shock! Throughout this issue were examples of young women who are living fantastic lives (and not just acting or modelling, although there are a couple of those). Annette Obrestad, for example, is the youngest ever World Series of Poker bracelet winner (now 19, she won when she was 18), who started taking on major players in online tournaments (and winning) when she was just 15. The magazine also profiles Hello Kitty and a custom sneaker designer from Brooklyn, and tells readers how to find plus-sized vintage clothing - all within the first 36 pages.

While Bust may be directed at a slightly older audience, I think it is a great magazine for teens. It shows that you can enjoy fashion and celebrities while also embracing all of the different facets that make us individuals. Yay for women who follow their passions. Yay for women.

p.s. The Bust website is also really great.

10/10.
Ages 14+.

Cosmo Girl - October 2008 issue

Sigh. I admit that, once upon a time, I loved Cosmopolitan Magazine. The affair lasted maybe a year or two, before I realized that it was an abusive relationship. I enjoyed the pleasure Cosmo gave me, but as soon as our time was over, I felt empty inside.

Reading over this issue of Cosmo Girl, I got that same empty feeling, but this time without any of the pleasure. Sure, it's flashy and pretty. But it's also depressing and sensationalistic and annoying. Almost all of the articles came from a negative, warning perspective (the dangers of marijuana, how to deal with parents who behave badly, "I got scammed on Craigslist," and on and on and on).

Things I liked: There were a couple of nice fashion spreads.

Things I didn't like: Ugh. Pretty much everything else.

As a teen librarian, I would stock Cosmo Girl. But I would also make sure to stock alternatives. And a great programming idea would be to get a group of girls together to go through some of the magazines and examine what they are saying and how - with their use of imagery and choices of articles.

5/10.
Ages 13+.

The Magic Circle

By Donna Jo Napoli.

Published in 1993 by Dutton Children's Books, New York.

The Magic Circle is a hypnotic retelling of Hansel and Gretel from the witch's perspective. The ugly old woman is a talented mid-wife who finds her calling as a sorceress, saving people from demons that have taken over their bodies and made them ill. A moment of temptation leaves her at the mercy of the demons, who turn her from sorceress (one who uses the demons) to witch (who is used by the demons for evil). The old woman refuses to do their bidding, and she manages to stave off her unnatural urges for nine years, until Hansel and Gretel find her home in the woods.

The Magic Circle is beautifully written. It casts a spell as the story moves towards its inevitable conclusion, and even though I knew what would happen, I sat rapt as I discovered a brand new why. A great fairy tale.

8/10.
All ages.

Out of the Dust

Music

Something interesting: the divide between young adult and adult is much fuzzier when it comes to things that aren't books. TV shows like Veronica Mars, Gossip Girl, Friday Night Lights: people of all ages watch and enjoy these shows. Movies cross generational boundaries to an even greater degree, and music probably reaches the most diverse audience of all.

Going into the music section in the Spring Garden Library's YA section, it was a relief to see that I wouldn't have to listen to a Hillary Duff record as a part of the assignment requirements. Instead, most of the albums that I came across were the type of thing I would listen to normally. So, here are two recent albums that I love, and teens will (at least some of them) love too.

Adele - 19 (2008)
The winner of this year's Grammy Award for Best New Artist, Adele is astoundingly talented. She's a part of the recent wave of contemporary UK singers who have been very obviously influenced by old soul and jazz recordings (along with Amy Winehouse and Duffy). This record is a great rainy Sunday album. I would probably be drinking tea, but hot chocolate would make a nice accompaniment as well. She has a gorgeous voice, dusky and textured. Here's a sample:

8/10.
All ages.


Across the Universe Soundtrack (2007)

The Beatles have somehow crossed all kinds of generational boundaries. They have been my all-time favourite band since I was about four (I remember singing "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah" over and over again). I was born more than a decade after the band broke up. I currently live and work surrounded by 18 year old girls - towards the beginning of our year together, I found a group of them splayed out across the hallway, listening to the Beatles and eating apples. I sat down with them and we sat there for over an hour singing along.

In 2007 Julie Taymor directed the visually stunning Across the Universe, a musical made up entirely of Beatles songs, sung by the cast. The soundtrack is super fantastic. Here is a song that makes me cry:

8/10.
All ages.

A poem

A poem from Laurie Halse Anderson, author of speak, made out of pieces of the letters she gets.

Slam

By Nick Hornby.

Published by in 2007 by Puffin, London.

Nick Hornby does an amazing job of creating likable characters that resonate with readers. He is especially adept at presenting the heart and soul of the modern man. His novel High Fidelity is a comedic masterpiece of heartbreak and rock music, one that I loved as a teenager and still love now. I found Slam slightly more difficult to get into. High Fidelity is about a man in his 30s (and I read it when I was probably about 18), Slam is about a young boy-man who is 15 (and I am now 27)- so it's not the fact that my age is different from the protagonist that is keeping me away from the story. Instead I think that Slam is more about the story than it is about the character, and character is the thing that really pulls me in and makes me love a novel. In this case I just, sort of, read it. It was fine, parts of it were interesting, parts of it were funny - but I didn't love it.

Slam is about 15 year old Sam. Sam's mum had him when she was 16, and will soon become a 33 year old Grandmother (although no one is pregnant at the start of the novel, but this development is far from surprising when it unfolds). Sam's father is on the scene, but at a distance, and Sam's true male role model is Tony Hawk (pro skateboarder - sorry, skater). Sam has read Tony Hawk's autobiography multiple times, and when Sam talks to his poster of Hawk he hears passages from the book that fit (or sometimes don't) his situation. The novel is a fairly straightforward account of how Sam goes from a 15 year old kid to a dad, although there is a strange phenomenon occurring wherein Sam is rushed forward in time for a few days, and then wakes up to find himself back in the present. This happens twice, and while it is odd, these passages make for the most compelling sections of the story, with Sam puzzling out how to fit into his new reality.

Overall the book makes for an interesting portrait of teen dads, and explores a side of an issue that is usually only seen from the perspective of the mother (there are lots of tales of young mothers and teenage pregnancy, but I have come across very few - if any - about young fathers).

7/10.
Ages 12-16.

Cures for Heartbreak

By Margo Rabb.

Published in 2007 by Delacorte Books for Young Readers, New York.

Reading the first pages of Margo Rabb's novel, Cures for Heartbreak, I had the thought: I didn't know death could be so funny. Mia is in the ninth grade, and her mother has just died. She is left with her older sister and father to navigate the terrain of heartbreak. Mia is sharp and witty, and her keen observations make even the process of planning a funeral somewhat amusing. I came across this book via an essay by Rabb, titled "I'm Y.A. and I'm O.K." in which she details the realization (via her agent) that her novel was, in fact, Young Adult fiction. After reading it, I'm slightly surprised that there was any question. While I, as an adult, enjoyed it, it definitely fits well with a teen audience. Teen books are no longer simplistic, clichéd explorations of prom night (although those are out there); instead, they are quite often literary. Intelligent. Unique. Funny. All words that perfectly describe Cures for Heartbreak.

8/10.
14+.

American Born Chinese

By Gene Luen Yang.

Published in 2006 by First Second, New York.

The Printz award winners I have read have consistently been outstanding, and American Born Chinese is no exception. This graphic novel weaves together three seemingly disparate storylines (a young Chinese-American boy moves to a new school, a white teenager is visited by his crushingly dorky Chinese cousin, and a Monkey King struggles with his form). The stories come together in the end to form a complex, fantastical story, at the heart of which lies the truth that everyone must embrace their true self in order to find happiness. It's at times uncomfortable (which I think is the point) but also funny, true, and touching. A quick read, but one with remarkable depth.

7.5/10.
Ages 11+.

The Wackness

Ahh 1994. I remember you well. I would go home after school to watch Rapcity on Much Music (yes, this is true). I was devastated by the death of Kurt Cobain (even though before it happened I didn't even know who he was). My favourite actress was Drew Barrymore (I still wish we were best friends). I wore ridiculous baggy jeans with giant plaid shirts and white face powder with revlon's Blackberry lipstick. I was 12.

It's the summer of 1994 and Luke Shapiro is is either the most popular of the unpopular kids or the most unpopular of the popular, but that doesn’t matter anymore because high school is over. Alone in sweltering New York City, during the no-man's-land between graduation and starting college, Luke is "mad depressed, yo." He spends the summer dealing pot to, among other people, his psychiatrist, Dr. Jeffrey Squires (Ben Kingsley - oh sorry, Sir Ben Kingsley), who imparts this wisdom: "Don't trust anyone who doesn't smoke pot and listen to Bob Dylan." Boundaries are shifting, and Luke finds himself in love with a girl who barely spoke to him in school. But the relationship between Luke and Dr. Squires, who is himself going through a bit of a breakdown, is the real heart of the story. The Wackness is about the things men do to become the men they need to be (you can replace the word men with people, but it's really nice to have a soulful, beautiful film about men and their relationships).

The Wackness is a beautiful portrait of a young man who exists in the same state as many others, disconnected from the world and from other people, and the process by which he makes a connection and starts really living his life. It's a masterpiece of time and place and mood, centred and steady and it spins with a perfect velocity through the pure and genuine moments it holds up for study and admiration. Plus it has a dope soundtrack.

This movie doesn't shy away from drugs, sex, or "bad" language, but it's message is so positive, and it is so honest and engaging that I think many teens would both enjoy and benefit from seeing this film.

10/10.
Ages 16+.

Crush

By Carrie Mac.

Published in 2006 by Orca Book Publishers, Victoria.

I've been sort of dreading the Hi/Lo category. I've always been a reader, and I assumed that the books for reluctant readers would be too simple, not very well written, or boring. I was surprised when I started reading Crush, which was actually quite engaging. Hope is the child of hippies, raised in a commune, who is spending the summer in Brooklyn with her older sister. 17 year old Hope has been having sex since she was 15 (virginity doesn't last long in a commune, she says), but is surprised to find herself attracted to a girl, Nat. The novel is dedicated to deciding what to do with those feelings, and what they mean for her sexual identity.

Crush is only 106 pages long, so the story unfolds quickly, with little extraneous detail. From the first page, each moment in the story is designed to build towards the final climax. It was definitely not boring, nor was it overly simplistic, and it was actually fairly well written. It's not great literature, but it is a nice story that deals with queer issues simply and honestly.

7/10.
Ages 12-16.

Library Websites for Teens

Internet Public Library Teenspace

What I like:

• The IPL Teenspace has a great selection of resources, is nicely laid out, and is fairly well designed. The choices of colour (the website is primarily white with turquoise and amber accents) are good, and create a space that is gender neutral and doesn't seem to be trying too hard to appeal to a young audience (no hot pink or slime green here).

• The website has good interactive content, including a poetry wiki where teens can post their own work, homework help, and then a dazzling array of links to a wide variety of information sources on the shelves and on the web. Links are divided into Clubs and Organizations, Health and Sexuality, Money and Work, Technology, Reading and Writing, School and Homework Help, and Sports, Entertainment and Arts.

What I don't like:

• While the layout and design are straightforward and usable, the site could do with a bit more flash - it's a great resource, but a tiny bit boring to look at.

7/10.


San Francisco Public Library Teens

What I like:

• The use of photographs from real events to illustrate the website.

• That the teen health and wellness link is central on the page and stands out (although the link is inaccessible to non-patrons.
  

• A prominent link to the library's teen blog.
  

• A prominent link to library events.
  

• The main page is well laid out and doesn't contribute to the information overload that can happen so easily when web designers and contributors get caught up in trying to put everything they can at the front end of a website.
  

What I don't like:

• The San Francisco Public Library Teens page is slightly garish. I, for one, think that readability is key to good web design, and the grape kool-aid purple background with white and blue text is hard for my (non-teen) brain to navigate.

7/10.

Speak

By Laurie Halse Anderson.

Published in 2006 by Puffin books, New York. Originally published in 1999.

I cried. I rarely cry when reading, but every so often a book is able to touch the emotional as much as the intellectual, and I am opened a bit. That happened today. Speak is about rape. But more than that, it is about what happens after trauma, when a person keeps it inside, and feels like they are breaking into pieces, are made up of different people - none of whom is the self they know. It is about being silent. It is about breaking silence.

Melinda is the narc who called the cops at a big high school party over the summer, and she starts ninth grade as an outcast because of it. What no one knows is that she dialed 911 because she had just been raped. She hasn't told anyone. She goes to school every day where IT (her rapist) is a senior. Her parents and teachers don't understand why her grades have plummeted. Melinda stays quiet, while she rages inside. Melinda is beautifully rendered and real; she is intelligent, insightful, pained. She is painful. She is glorious.

It surprised me to look at the back cover and see that this book is categorized for ages 10 and up. That said, I am glad. I think Speak will be a very healing book for many people, from children to adults. It is an important book. It is astoundingly well written (Anderson's world is so well wrought that I could feel myself in high school again). I loved it.

10/10.
Ages 10+.

Coraline

Released in 2009. Directed by Harry Selick. Produced by Laika, distributed by Focus Features.

This is what they mean by crossover appeal (well, among the many, many definitions, apparently). I saw Coraline in 3D with a group of friends, all of us in our 20s and 30s. Elsewhere in the dark theatre we could hear small kids making occasional comments. I'm pretty sure we all loved it.

Coraline is a young girl (I'm not sure how old she is supposed to be, but I would put her at 11 or 12) who has just moved with her busy, distant parents to a small Oregon town. When the constant rain keeps her inside, she discovers a small door that leads to an alternate reality, one in which her parents are charming and entirely devoted to her amusement. At first this other world is delightful, and provides for Coraline all of the things she feels she is missing at home (foremost being attention). Upon closer inspection the new reality is much darker than she is prepared for, and her wits are tested as she struggles to make her way back to her real parents.

Coraline is visually so new, appealing, and spellbinding, that I think even skeptical teenagers will be able to look past the fact that it is animated (and could thus potentially be relegated to the world of "kid stuff"). Young teens will definitely be drawn to the film's style and themes (Coraline's battles with her mother(s) are something I think most adolescent girls will relate to), and older teens will appreciate the film's mastery of form and its pedigree (originally born as a Neil Gaiman novella, then a graphic novel).

Seeing Coraline in 3D is something I highly recommend - it sort of felt like I was in the audience of a 1895 showing of the Lumiere Brothers's Arrival of A Train - the experience was so new and real. Even on DVD, however, I have no doubt that this film will wow audiences of all ages.

9/10.
Ages 10+ (rated PG).

How I Live Now

By Meg Rosoff.

Published in 2004 by Wendy Lamb Books, New York.

There was a moment, towards the end of reading How I Live Now, that I had the thought that it was among the best books I had ever read. Only it wasn't so much a thought as it was a sort of floating feeling, because I couldn't bear to remove myself from the narrative enough to have something so separate as a thought. Reading this book is like reading a dream.

Daisy, a 15 year old New Yorker, is sent to live with her Aunt and cousins in the English countryside. With the country on the brink of war her Aunt leaves to help with peace talks in Oslo, and the children are left behind to a seemingly idyllic existence of no school and no rules. This can't last. I moved slowly with Daisy from love and light and summer and freedom into war and loss and grief and survival. Daisy's voice is so clear and true that I felt the weird sense of normalcy that is maintained in the heart of chaos - despite the horrors Daisy faces, she keeps living. In her words, "We couldn't go on. We went on" (155). The style of the novel is abstracted, grammatical conventions have been left behind, but the resulting sense of flow is hypnotic. "Magical and utterly faultless," proclaims Mark Haddon (author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - a book similar in its stylistic explorations) from the novel's cover. I concur.

10/10.

Ages 12-1000.

Sloppy Firsts & Second Helpings

By Megan McCafferty.

Published in 2001 and 2003 (respectively) by Three Rivers Press, New York.

Megan McCafferty's wit is the kind of razor sharp that makes me shudder at the fact that I am calling it razor sharp. It deserves some non-cliched description, and I feel entirely inadequate in trying to come up with one. Let's just say her writing is incredibly smart and incredibly funny.

The Jessica Darling series follows (quel surprise) a character named Jessica Darling. Sloppy Firsts opens as she celebrates her "bitter sixteen." Her best friend has just moved across the country, and she feels completely alone. To make up for the fact that her sole confidante has disappeared, she records her life's ups and downs in a journal. The novel charts her year, which includes an imposter who has arrived to write a tell-all about life in a New Jersey public high school and a strange attraction to her school's burnout druggie.

Second Helpings opens a year after Sloppy Firsts ends. Jessica has started a new journal, this time for a summer arts program where she is studying creative writing. Her relationship with the burnout druggie (Marcus Flutie, who is actually a very smart guy who has put abused substances behind him) is over, and everything in her life is up in the air. She is in the midst of deciding who she is, instead of just going along with who she has been (and who her parents want her to be).

I don't actually have that much in common with Jessica. I am not 16 (or 17, or 18), I was never the smartest girl in school, and I'm definitely not an insomniac track star from New Jersey. Still, Jessica is so insightful, so wry and yet awkward, that I feel a strong connection with her, one that I'm sure many other readers (from all over, of all ages) also feel. Megan McCafferty has created a character whose thoughts are so easy to slip into they feel like my own. I laugh out loud. Often.

The Jessica Darling series doesn't end here. Two other titles have been published, and a final, fifth book (Perfect Fifths - which finds Jessica in her mid-twenties) is due to be released April 14th. I love that young (and older) women have a character like Jessica, who is so perfectly (imperfectly) herself, to guide them (us) into (and through) adulthood.

10/10.
Ages 13+.

Ender's Game

By Orson Scott Card.

Published in 1985 by Tom Doherty Associates, New York.

Winner of the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award.

Ender is six years old when the novel opens, but it is immediately clear that he is not an average six year old. Neither are any of the children surrounding him. The Earth is at war with an alien species, and military forces are testing young children, trying to find the next great military leader. The children are trained and tested through a series of games. As one of the characters says to Ender, "I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children aren't in armies, they aren't commanders, they don't rule over forty other kids, it's more than anybody can take and not get a little crazy" (118). This story is very well told, and moves at an incredible pace. I was swept up in a future reality that seems entirely plausible, and hated to put the book down. This book will appeal to readers of all ages, and while it comes across at first glance as being very boy-centric, the book deals with relationships and emotions in a way that will also resonate with girls. I loved it.

9/10.

Ages 12-100.