I'm sort of afraid to read Catching Fire.

A big hooray for The Battle of the Books going to The Hunger Games. It was so close to being a no-brainer that I was afraid it might not happen. I was interested to see that Lois Lowry actually read all sixteen books, and that her favorite was Tender Morsels. But for a really good explanation of what's so great about The Hunger Games, read the response from Octavian Nothing author MT Anderson.

I'm still going to read the second Octavian Nothing. It's right here on my bed. Really. I even took the precaution of putting the SASS book I'm also reading out of reach so I'd read Octavian Nothing before I fell asleep. Sometimes I wonder--would I struggle so much with getting around to Octavian Nothing if I hadn't been told what a struggle it was? Or would I have given up long ago? I'll be honest; I don't like to work very hard for my reading material. The first Octavian Nothing wasn't much of a struggle once I got into it, and I was even looking forward to reading the second... until I picked it up from the library and saw that it's even more massive.

My one suggestion for the Battle of the Books organizers: compress things a little next year. I guess it's necessary to have a certain amount of time available for the authors to read the books and write their decisions, but... the first week was almost too exciting, the second week was great, and after that it sort of petered out; I don't think I'm the only one, judging by blog responses. I do think it was absolutely necessary that the 16 books be books many of us were familiar with already--it wouldn't be nearly as interesting if half of them were good unknowns.

But The Hunger Games won, for the same reasons I've recommended it to pretty much everyone I know, except for a couple who are really, really squeamish. And my friend Kathryn, an astute reader, voiced something I hadn't dared think about. Is Catching Fire really going to measure up? Could it possibly? And what will that do to my enjoyment of The Hunger Games? Many people have commented that The Hunger Games isn't the sort of thing I usually read (I'm not into violence or, in a way, fantasy--although there aren't any dragons, so it's not really a problem for me), and I'm afraid that Catching Fire could go right ahead and be Not My Thing. What I remember loving about The Hunger Games was the reality TV parallel and the general Girl Scoutiness of the whole thing. Will those be relevant to Catching Fire?

One of my very favorite books is sort of a fantasy novel, and although I love everything about it and you couldn't say I love it "in spite of" the fantasy, it comes pretty close. I love it so much that I was sure I would love the author's other books--but they turned out to have all of the fantasy and little of what I loved, and I wish I hadn't tried to read them.

Or it's kind of like how I loved the first season of Friday Night Lights, so I thought I would read the book. Then I discovered the book was actually about football. (I still haven't finished it.)

Catching Fire, just what sort of book ARE you?

Thank goodness...

Chris Crutcher chose The Hunger Games over The Lincolns. Even though I liked The Lincolns, and I liked the first Octavian Nothing volume (I'm in the middle of the relevant one), I would have a really hard time feeling interested in a Lincolns vs. Octavian battle. That would be like Anita Silvey's ultimate fantasy of what the Newbery committee meetings are like.

As for what I think will happen... for once things went my way, so I'm going to cheat and repost my own comment from the previous BOKB post:

I just don't know what Lois Lowry is going to think. She generally goes for simpler prose, herself (although I think we all know the prose in The Hunger Games isn't exactly perfection), but I can see how, having written a dystopian book, she might have strong feelings about them and find The Hunger Games lacking. Or she could say "The Hunger Games is twenty times more exciting than my book!" and leave it at that. Or she could say "Anastasia would read and enjoy Octavian Nothing, but she would tell Sonya, Daphne, Meredith, AND Steve Harvey to read The Hunger Games. Katherine would have already finished it, and Sam would be swiping it from under her pillow." (Obviously, it goes without saying that Myron would vote for Octavian Nothing.)

(dude, did I possibly just write the first-ever Anastasia Krupnik fanfic?)

What do you suppose Katniss and Abraham Lincoln would talk about? Don't you love wondering?

So many great summaries of what happened this week in Battle of the Kids' Books have been written that this is a bit redundant, but I guess here is where I get to express any irrational opinions I might have. (And really, I swear! I'm not taking this seriously.)

No surprise when Octavian Nothing beat out The Trouble Begins at 8, but Tim Wynne-Jones's judgment is definitely worth reading.

As I said in my last post, I was both disappointed and moderately surprised when Chains beat out Tender Morsels. Frankly, I don't think the two books are in the same class.

Another non-surprise when John Green preferred The Hunger Games to We Are the Ship. I'm one of the few, as far as I know, who was pleased when Frankie Landau-Banks lost to We Are the Ship in the first round, but The Hunger Games is... as I believe I've mentioned, awesome.

Nancy Werlin surprised me by choosing The Lincolns over Graceling... at first. I sort of thought she would be more interested in Graceling because she wrote Impossible (which is, quite possibly, my best-loved book of last year--it's the only one, and I should be hanging my head in shame, that I've bought a copy of); but then I remembered how Impossible, while it's indisputably fantasy, is told in a very straightforward of-this-earth manner. I can see why Werlin might prefer a book like The Lincolns (and as it happened, that very day I was in Springfield, Illinois; I can report that The Lincolns is carried at the Lincoln Museum gift shop in small quantities, but not at the Lincoln Historic Home gift shop). Her decision summary is a pleasure to read, especially because she included thoughts about how she might have voted if the previous contests had ended differently. I'm still not convinced that The Lincolns is a YA book at all, or a middle grade one, or anything; it transcends age range, and I don't remember anything about it that made it seem like a kid's book. In fact, the Lincoln Museum had it with the adult books. So I'm not sure how well it goes in this contest, and I'm curious about whether that had any effect on the ALA awards.

I'm going to say something pedantic: next week Octavian Nothing is going to be up against Chains. Both books are written by white authors and have enslaved African Americans for protagonists. Isn't there something odd and possibly subversive about this? I know, it wasn't a deliberate choice on anyone's part. And I know both books have been praised for their research and sensitivity. But--still. I have a vague feeling of discomfort. Anyone?

I only need one bracket this week; what I want to win is also what I think will win.

Match 1: Octavian Nothing vs. Chains. I think Octavian Nothing will win. The judge's statements have all sounded firm and been true to my mind, while the praise for Chains has been there, but hasn't been quite as strong, and I continue to feel sort of emperor's new clothesy about it.

Match 2: The Hunger Games vs. The Lincolns. This is a hard one to judge; I would have had an easier time if the second book were one of my best-loveds, I think. I no longer feel like I have any clue about who's going to exalt The Lincolns's virtues (of which there are many, of course). But remembering how I hardly slept one night because I was too busy reading The Hunger Games--and knowing how that story has been repeated by thousands across the country--I have to think the judge will choose The Hunger Games. I didn't lose any sleep over The Lincolns.

Ultimate Winner: I think The Hunger Games will blow Octavian Nothing out of the water.

Why you should read Tender Morsels, even though the subject matter freaks you out

I was disappointed when Tender Morsels was voted out of Battle of the Books in favor of Chains. Judge Coe Booth ultimately made her decision based on the fact that she connected with Isabel in Chains, and while she thought Tender Morsels was great, she found the characters impossible to connect with. I thought this was interesting, because I could have written the exact same thing, reversing the two titles. I thought Isabel was a little cold and distant; she never seemed altogether real to me. On the other hand, several of the characters in Tender Morsels were so alive to me that I felt like I was breathing along with them. I had hopes for Tender Morsels to go further in the battle--and I really thought it would--but now that it’s not, I thought I’d give it some attention. I know there are still people out there who haven’t gotten past the book’s description.

Everyone knows about Tender Morsels, right? Incest. Forced abortion. Gang rape. Bestiality. People say it all the time: “How can this be a YA novel?” “Why would you want to read about something so horrifying?” And worst of all, “I wish she hadn’t made it quite so violent.”

On a blog somewhere--I’m sorry to say I have no idea what blog it might have been--the author of Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan, wrote some things about her book that totally validated what I’d already been thinking. It’s great to have an author agree that you’re thinking about her book in the way she intended. But it also means that my thoughts aren’t altogether unusual or original. But this IS what I’ve come up with on my own, and any misinterpretation of the book (or Lanagan’s thoughts in that post) is, of course, my own.

Let’s talk first about how horrifying it is. Yes, in bald facts, we know what happens in the book is bad, very bad. But in the book, it isn’t stated baldly at all. This isn’t a graphic book; it isn’t any part of the phenomenon described as “torture porn”. The book doesn’t dwell on the incidents. Most fiction that deals with incest does it to shock or titillate; it isn’t usually wholly necessary to the story--and even when it is, it’s because if you took out the incest, there wouldn’t be much of a story left. And it seems to me that many well-known books that deal with rape do one of two things: either describe it too graphically, or are extremely circumspect, so the reader could be left unsure about the gravity of the situation. Tender Morsels does neither. What happens is clear, but none of it is graphic.

Tender Morsels seems to disturb many readers (actually, most of them are non-readers--either they abandoned the book after a short time because they were shocked, or they never read it at all, citing the descriptions) because of the category it’s in: quality YA fiction. I can’t help thinking it would be different if this were non-fiction (to my great distress, I’ve heard that the execrable A Child Called It is used in schools), or written for adults (are you really horrified at the idea of teenagers reading The Color Purple?) or low-quality horror (Flowers in the Attic, anyone?). I’ve no idea why there’s a different standard for what adult books are acceptable for teenagers to read, and what subject matter is appropriate in a young adult novel written for the same teenagers.

Neither of the authors who judged Tender Morsels in Battle of the Books fell into the trap of dwelling on the subject matter, though they both mentioned it. Booth says both Chains and Tender Morsels are survivor stories; Meg Rosoff commented that the fairy tale format made it possible to explore the unexplorable.

As to the pleading “Did she have to make it so horrifying?”, my answer is… yes. I’ve discussed above how in a way, it isn’t really that “horrifying”, because of the way that it’s told. But for the book to work, what happens to Liga has to be the worst thing one can imagine. And then something else terrible has to happen. Ultimately, I promise, this book is wise and uplifting. It doesn’t leave the reader thinking “the world is a terrible place”; it leaves you knowing that the world is a place where terrible things sometimes happen, but people thrive.

Does anyone need to hear this message more than teenagers?

(And just a note on the “bestiality”: I can’t help thinking people throw that in only to add fuel to the fire. This isn’t exactly new stuff. Just what did people think Beauty was planning on when she agreed to marry the Beast? OOOH. Bestiality. How terribly, terribly shocking.)

ETA: a better review than mine.

My Brackets Are In Tatters

Okay, considering that I had Nation winning in both the "What I Think Will Win" bracket and the "What I Want To Win" Bracket, though they took different paths to get there... Nation's loss to The Lincolns was shocking. To be honest, it's almost enough to suck the enthusiasm out of the contest for me. (But it's not!)

I'm trying to decide how mean-spirited it's OK to be here. I already had doubts about the idea of this author being a judge for this contest. I don't think her writing is the same caliber as that of the other judges, and issues have been raised about traveling pants and appropriation of another author's work.

So when she wrote the following, I was not impressed:
"My instinct was to base my choice on apparent effort, I guess, and The Lincolns represents a remarkable amount of it. The volume of research both in the text and pictures is admirable. And this is where one of Mr. Pratchett's great gifts caused the loss. His book feels effervescent, ebullient, exciting and . . . almost effortless."

What on earth? She based her decision, not just on effort--which seems odd in the first place--but on APPARENT effort? Is she a writer at all? Does she somehow think it takes less skill to write a book that seems effortless?

The Lincolns is good, though I thought it suffered from giving too much information--I say this about most books, but it was really too long and too much, in my opinion--but I just can't imagine choosing it as a winner in any kind of contest, serious or not, over Nation, which is wise, funny, entertaining, and very well-suited to its audience.

It was sort of a surprise when Graceling was chosen over The Underneath, but I had a difficult time judging that one--as I mentioned before, Graceling is really not my thing. I disagreed with the judge's comment that the violence and alcoholism of The Underneath belonged in a YA book, not a middle grade book; I could give her lots of examples in classic middle grade literature, and I really think this is a case where that stuff in this book bothers adults more than kids; but it's not a match I was really invested in.

Until today, things had gone pretty well my way. But now I must restructure my brackets.

What I think will win:
Round 2: Kingdom on the Waves, Tender Morsels, The Hunger Games, The Lincolns.
Round 3: Kingdom on the Waves, The Hunger Games
Ultimate winner: The Hunger Games

What I want to win:
Round 2: Kingdom on the Waves, Tender Morsels, The Hunger Games, The Lincolns
Round 3: Tender Morsels, The Hunger Games
Ultimate winner: yeah, that's another hard one, but I'm going to go with The Hunger Games. Tender Morsels has better writing, but The Hunger Games is tighter and more compelling.

Battle of the Kids' Books

School Library Journal's Battle of the Kids' Books is making me about crazy, and I get the feeling it's happening to other bloggers, too; the tone around the kidlitosphere is reaching frenetic. I have a bracket all made out, but every time I try to predict what's going to win, or what I want to win, I get jumbled. I've made markings on the bracket as to what I think will win, and separate markings for what I want to win, and I'm thinking about making a third set of markings for "what I think should win even though I don't really want it to". The matches are all difficult, and some are impossible.

Take, for instance, The Hunger Games vs. The Porcupine Year. It was my fervent wish that The Porcupine Year win the 2009 Newbery; it didn't even get an honor. On the other hand, any time I talk about The Hunger Games, I use the word "awesome" more times than is probably allowable by law. I had no doubt in my mind that The Hunger Games did not fit the Newbery criteria. But we aren't talking about the Newbery anymore. We can throw aside those constraints. So I don't know what to do. The Porcupine Year is a better book in so many ways, but... it isn't as awesome. What will win? What should win? What are the biases of the celebrity judge?

To my surprise, when I marked that match, I marked Porcupine to win and Hunger Games for my choice. I feel like I pushed my own sister off a cliff.

It's also humbling to find that I haven't read all the books, despite all the Newbery and Printz preparation I did last year. I read dozens upon dozens of books, but I still didn't read Ways to Live Forever, Washington at Valley Forge, Kingdom on the Waves, or Here Lies Arthur. (I haven't really read Graceling, but I read part of it and could see it Wasn't For Me, so when it didn't win any awards I put it aside; but I feel familiar with it enough to judge.)

Here are my picks at this point for what I think WILL win, except that I already know The Graveyard Book lost so even though I had that winning, I'm cheating and taking it out of the running.

Round 1: Kingdom on the Waves, Trouble Begins at Eight, Chains, Tender Morsels, Frankie Landau-Banks, The Porcupine Year, The Underneath, Nation.

Round 2: Kingdom on the Waves, Tender Morsels, Frankie Landau-Banks, Nation.

Round 3: Kingdom on the Waves, Nation.

Ultimate Winner: Nation.

What I WANT to win:

Round 1: Kingdom on the Waves, [Trouble Begins at 8], Washington at Valley Forge, Tender Morsels, We Are the Ship, The Hunger Games, The Underneath, Nation.

Round 2: Kingdom on the Waves, Tender Morsels, The Hunger Games, Nation.

Round 3: Tender Morsels, Nation.

Ultimate Winner: yeah, that's asking too much of me. Probably Nation. Yes, Nation. I think. Except I sort of want The Hunger Games to win it all. And I sort of think it will.

If you'd asked me what I thought would win and what I wanted to win, before I went through that process of considering match-by-match, I think I would have chosen The Hunger Games in both cases.

Abby has a great analysis of the first two contests.