Tag: readers

YA Heroines and High School Mentors

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Even though I was a big reader as a teen, I also watched a lot of TV. This list of 9 Female Characters We Wish We’d Been More Like In High School is a pretty excellent reflection of my television heroes. (Veronica Mars, I still want to be you.) In YA, we have an abundance of female characters who are role models in dealing with everything from cliques to evil governments to man-eating wild horses. So, in no particular order:

Lyra Silvertongue from the His Dark Materials series
Why she’s cool: She’s one of the few people in the universe who can read an alethiometer. She hangs out with armored polar bears. She saved all the souls in the universe. She’s clever and rebellious. She has a daemon.
Why it would be good to be her in high school: She’d totally be the girl getting you to skip class so you could go have an awesome adventure and take down the establishment.

Frankie Landau-Banks from The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Why she’s cool: She can outwit her private school’s oldest secret society, plan awesome pranks, and stand up to the patriarchy.
Why it would be good to be her in high school: A lot of teens might be insecure, but Frankie’s not afraid to let anything hold her back. I wish I had that kind of confidence and motivation in high school.

Alanna of Pirate’s Swoop and Olau from The Song of the Lioness series
Why she’s cool: Alanna is a redheaded, magic-doing lady knight, who snuck into knight school by pretending to be her twin brother. Girl has guts and then some.
Why it would be good to be her in high school: Alanna would totally be that girl who was captain of the soccer team, dated the hottest guys, and was awesome to hang out with.

Weetzie Bat from Dangerous Angels
Why she’s cool: Weetzie is a cross between a punk rocker and a fairy princess, living in a kind of magical version of LA with amazing, kind of magical friends and fighting against/learning to accept the darkness.
Why it would be good to be her in high school: Weetzie might not fit in, but she would be that girl who always wears something awesome and knows where the good bands are playing.

Puck Connolly from The Scorpio Races
Why she’s cool: In order to save her family home, Puck enters a man-eating horse race–with her regular horse.
Why it would be good to be her in high school: Puck is the ultimate underdog. But when she’s faced with some major challenges, she tackles them with a tenacity and a ferocity I wish I had when I was facing big math tests or family drama.

Veronica FitzOsborne from A Brief History of Montmaray
Why she’s cool: Veronica is poised, beautiful, the heir to the throne, and (above all) scholarly.
Why it would be good to be her in high school: Veronica would be that girl who makes everything look effortless (straight As! captain of the debate team!), and you wish you could hate her but you can’t because she’s so damn awesome. (I was way more like narrator Sophie in high school.)

Tris from Divergent
Why she’s cool: A lot of YA dystopian characters wish they didn’t have to run from zombies/take down an evil government/survive a creepy life-or-death game. But Tris gets an adrenaline rush from the action and wants to help people–a trait I really like.
Why it would be good to be her in high school: Tris doesn’t always look before she leaps. In high school, I always looked before I leapt. (Heck, I still do.) I could have used a little more of Tris’s daring.

Georgia Nicholson from Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging
Why she’s cool: She deals with normal life stuff (crushes, parents, cats) but also has a wicked sense of humor
Why it would be good to be her in high school: If you can’t change your normal life drama, you might as well be funny about it.

Ginny Weasley from the Harry Potter series
Why she’s cool: I know, I know, everyone always talks about Hermione. But I really like Ginny. Sure, she had a rough first year, but after that she comes into her own–rocking the Quidditch team, doing well in school, and fighting in Dumbledore’s Army. Heck, she manages to get Slughorn’s attention, and usually that’s reserved for major wizard legacies.
Why it would be good to be her in high school: Ginny seems like she’d be the girl everyone admired–smart, talented, but low-key about it. She does what she wants and doesn’t take crap from people.

Which YA ladies would you want/have wanted to be in high school?

Links Galore

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Got a case of the Mondays? These links will help you power through:

Friday Fifteen

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Happy Friday, everyone! What better way to end the week than with some fifteen-word book reviews:

1. Friends by Helme Heine
I used to love this book, especially the rooster’s rainbow tail.

2. Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
Just as cute and fun as everyone said. Can I study abroad in Paris?

3. Barefoot Contessa, How Easy Is That? by Ina Garten
The ones I’ve tried turned out well. Apparently Ina likes her Bolognese spicy—woohoo!

4. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The most depressing Steinbeck book. And he wrote about dead puppies.

5. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Not my favorite, but I like how Fanny holds it together amidst so much crazy.

Another YA-Inspired Movie to Love: Tiger Eyes

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Judy Blume was the queen of YA before YA was even a thing. So it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that this trailer for Tiger Eyes looks awesome. Blume co-wrote the script with her son, who’s also directing, so it seems like the project is in good hands.

Tiger Eyes – Trailer from Tashmoo Productions on Vimeo.

Apparently the movie opens nationally in early June, but so far I can’t find more info on specific release locations. Very much hoping that it’ll be playing in New England!

(via Jezebel)

Links Galore

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Today in linkage:

Endure and Prevail

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Last week my dad mentioned William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. I’d read it before, but it feels particularly meaningful now. My favorite part:

“I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.

I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

Bold/italics are mine. Writers, we’ve got a job to do. Let’s help humanity prevail.

Make sure to click through to see the whole speech; you can even listen to Faulkner read it!

(image: Wikipedia)

Friday Fifteen

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So. It’s been the Week of Suck to end all Weeks of Suck. And here in Boston we’re currently still waiting for an end to an intense manhunt that’s been going on nearly 24 hours. But the Boston community is holding strong, so this week’s Friday Fifteen is dedicated to Boston-area writers.

1. Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Great writing, but I’m more of an indoor girl.

2. Choosing a Jewish Life: A Handbook for People Converting to Judaism and for Their Family and Friends by Anita Diamant
Warm and inclusive look at conversion. Read for novel research; very interesting on its own.

3. The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin
How to win friends and influence people with tasty veg.

4. The Devils Arithmatic by Jane Yolen
Pretty sure I read this, but totally forgot the “time travel” and am questioning myself.

5. Drown by Junot Diaz
Read in a contemporary novel class; one of the few I really remember.

Thanks to everyone for the support and love this week! Bostonians and non-Bostonians alike, we are going to get through this.

Trying to Understand the Universe Through a Puzzle Piece: L’Engle on Understanding Tragedy

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It’s been a tough week. I feel like I keep turning on the news to see more bad news (like the devastating fertilizer plant explosion in Texas this morning). When it seems like there’s no end to tragedy in the world, I’m reminded of Madeleine L’Engle’s The Moon by Night–specifically by Vicky’s conversation with Uncle Douglas after seeing a play about Anne Frank. Vicky can’t imagine how a loving God could have let the Holocaust happen. Uncle Douglas says he thinks of the universe (and all its tragedies and injustices) like a jigsaw puzzle:

“You know those puzzles with hundreds of tiny pieces? You take one of those pieces all by itself and it doesn’t make sense, does it?…we find it hard to realize that there is a completed puzzle….We find it almost impossible to think about infinity, much less comprehend it. But life only makes sense if you see it in infinite terms. If the one piece of the puzzle that is this life were all, then everything would be horrible and unfair…But there are all the other pieces, too, the pieces that make up the whole picture.”

I love that reminder that when we think about tragedy, we’re thinking about the universe in a very limited way. There is a lot of unfairness and destruction–but that’s a small part of what makes up the whole. It’s not the whole picture on its own. That doesn’t mean to say we can’t feel sad about terrible events, but I do like reminding myself that the world isn’t just terrible events. Even when it feels like that’s all I hear about.

(image: yann.co.nz)

Links Galore

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A few links for today: