Ladies! Give me your ears!

March is here, as of midnight tonight, and being responsible women, we need to plan for the future. What do you want to read for February? Please list your suggestions by Saturday morning and I will set up a poll.

Let's close the door on the House of Stairs

Ooh, that was bad. Please vote!

Whatcha think about House of Stairs?
	Fab! I'd distribute it among my friends and neighbors.
	Quite good! I'd recommend it.
	Not too shabby. I'd recommend it so some people.
	Eh.
	I'd tell people it sucked.
	I'm mad at Sarah for suggesting it and making me waste my time reading it.
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Weetzie Bat is Knighted

I just read on the NYT (although maybe Sarah already knows this because she's on the cutting edge of Library News) that our own Francesca Lia Block is being awarded the Margaret A. Edwards Award for a lifetime's achievement in Y.A. literature. She joins such greats as M.E. Kerr, Paul Zindel, Madeline L'Engle, and CHRIS CRUTCHER TAKE THAT YOU CRUSTY OLD PARENTS.

The New York Times article has a wonderful photograph of her encrusted in frills and jewelly bits.

Must... be... cruel... to... William Sleator.... Hungry....

This book cracked me up. I kept seeing scenes from it playing out in my mind's eye with really bad special effects and cardboard props, like an episode of Red Dwarf, or an early sci-fi flick. Especially the part where the eeeeevil doctor reveals the government plot while standing in front of a bank of television screens displaying.... nothing.... but stairs.... Ooh! We could make a Hedgehog Rumpus movie of it. I'll play Peter, I'm good at going into trances.

Hee. What can I say, I thought it was silly. It read very much like a historical relic to me, from a time when people were still kind of obsessed with Skinner and behaviorism and operant conditioning and the idea that We have no souls! We have no real free will! Thoughts and beliefs don't really guide our actions, but we're all products of conditioning whether we know it or not! And we can all be trained to do pretty much anything, if someone really wanted to make us!

I mean, I guess I believe that some of that is true, and I'm pretty sure there's been some interesting government research into mind control and conditioning, but the book felt wildly dated because of its hyperbole. They FORGOT how to distinguish between red and green because they didn't NEED to in order to get food? That's ridiculous. What, did the whole world start to look black and white to them? To be honest I don't think Sleator tried hard enough with the idea. It sort of seems like he felt like the premise of the book was terrifying enough, and so he didn't have to do very much to flesh it out.

I wanted MUCH more about the stairs, and what it felt like to be trapped in an place that was like an Escher painting, and how awful it must have been to constantly feel like you're on the verge of falling, both because of the twisty stairs themselves and because surely looking at nothing but twisty stairs would give you terrible dizziness and vertigo. It sounds absolutely horrifying to me, and after a few pages the stairs just became sort of normal.

And then I wanted more about the conditioning, too, because that's what it's all about (you put your right knee in, you take your right knee out....) and it just seemed to happen too quickly and easily, without very much understanding of what it was like for any of the characters. I just think if Sleator wanted this to be a psychological thriller, it could have been a lot more thrilling.

I did really like the last line, though. (Because it was funny.)

Of COURSE this is interesting to JoCD

(Non-Simmons Hedgehogs, your favorite new JoBiv is generally well-known for her OCD tendencies, so that's supposed to be funny. JoCD. Ha. I didn't make it up.)

So I was thinking about control in this book and all its complications. There are the control issues within the book - how the kids manipulate each other and fight for the leadership position and how the machine controls them. And then I had this Puppetmaster vision of Sleator as he formed and choreographed the characters in the book. I wonder if he experienced a momentary dizziness while writing the book, thinking of that little complication.

Dunno if it's worthy of discussion but thought I'd share.

Chris under fire - what's going on with these people?

Another book from the same author is under fire in another Michigan school (A story out of Crutcher's book Athletic Shorts was challenged earlier. Now, Whale Talk is being challenged.) A reverend is leading the protest.

"I've chosen not to have this in my home," Ken Himebaugh, a concerned parent, told 24 Hour News 8.

As a reverend and a parent, he says he can't believe the staff chose a book with words we're not allowed to say on TV…words kids would get in trouble for using at school.

"We all have an obligation to uphold the moral standards that we want to instill. So I'm looking at this from a moral standpoint," he said.

But Mr Crutcher will get to respond firsthand (I'd LOVE to see this):

Parents and students will find out what the author thinks of the controversy. As part of the program, Chris Crutcher will visit Grand Ledge next month. He will meet with his readers during two assemblies and will answer questions from adults at a community forum.

Finally, because bad weather delayed the start of school, he believes:

But, Reverend Himebaugh says a higher power stopped these kids from reading "Whale Talk" on Monday, and he'll take his case to the school board Monday night so it stays that way.

God strike us dead for reading a book that portrays high school like it really is. Because HS kids have virginal mouths.

Mr. Crutcher's website is full of info about the challenges, including a letter responding the the Reverend Himebaugh. Here is the letter he wrote in response to the Athletic Shorts criticism.

This pisses me off to no end; Crutcher is one of the best YA authors out there.

Oooo.

I get to be the first poster. In general, this book was a good read, a few things I thought about:

-in the beginning (before I was introduced to Blossom, Abigail and Oliver) I kept trying to identify with either Peter or Lola and I couldn't really decide (did you guys do this too?) who I fit with better. Once the other three were part of the story, I kind of stopped since they all had such extreme personalities. I also thought that Peter was 8 or 9 until they told me they were 16.

-It was interesting how I knew nothing of the background. There was no mention of the world the teenagers were from until Blossom starts talking about houses (I couldn't figure out if she was kidding or not...that part kind of threw me) and meat. (btw, I hated Blossom as a character...but I think I was supposed to)

-the 'food' that the machine spits out, I kept seeing in my mind as some kind of SPAM product.

-whats with all these point-of-view changes? Are most Child Lit books like this? This style of writing always messes me up, I don't like the change, its distracting.

4th Grader's Mommy wants Lowry's Anastasia books banned

Author Defends Content of Books. COME ON! The Anastasia books? That lady has too much time on her hands.

The books focus on the life of a pre-adolescent heroine, Anastasia Krupnik, who is age 10-13 in the books. Some of her trials include: dealing with an impending baby brother; proving she and her father can run their household when her mother is gone; and first relationships with boys.

Hardee objected to scenes that make reference to stuffing bras, snapping bras and other talk that she deemed "vulgar."

One Week - Progress?

Discussion opens its doors next Tuesday. Are you ready? (read that in a massive monster-truck-show voice)

If not, that's okay; it is a quick read. I made myself stop at PART TWO because it was going so fast. I like it! My cover is way cool, showing what appears to be the Attack of the Invisible Killer Bees on a crowd of YAs.

Speaking of killer creatures attacking, Bruce's scream is in the film Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Just an FYI.

How y'all doing?