Teen Fic

Late last year my library held an event where a panel of four teen fic authors tried to answer the question, posed from an entirely adult audience, "Why is teen fiction so popular with adults?".  The panel's basic consensus was that teen fic books to  tend to be shorter than adult, so they don't waste words, but get straight to the story, which is often told in a straightforward narrative, adding to accessibility.

I'm a big fan of teen fiction - sometimes re-readng old favorites, but more often new authors.

One of the attractions of teen fic for me is the sense that we're reading about someone at an important or decisive period of their life, as they leave childhood and move towards being an adult, and working out what sort of person they are going to be.  Possibilities abound in the way that they just can't for adult characters.

Finding Freia Lockhart by Aimee Said (one of the panel authors) and  by Steph Bowe are Australian novels with characters trying to fit in and find the place where they are comfortable.  Freia Lockhart is rejected by the in crowd but luckily finds a group of cool and creative people to be friends with. The handy availability of these friends seems a little convenient, but to an adult reader, remembering the loneliness of being a teen, its also quite satisfying.  The characters of Girl Saves Boy also struggle with loneliness and friendship, but also deal with dead siblings, dead grandparents, parents who reject them, parents who discover they are gay and start relationships with teachers and parents who re-partner and all live under the same roof. In fact, I can't think of a single character who doesn't face an enormous personal or emotional challenge.  If this is a little over the top, its so well written that I cried in places, and could easily suspend disbelief.

Satisfying storytelling and good writing also ease the suspension of disbelief that is necessary to enjoy Eva Ibbotson's The Dragonfly Pool.  Main character Tally is impossibly kind, thoughtful, selfless and generous, a little like some of Ibbotson's Anna in The Secret Countess and Tessa in Magic Flutes.  Tally is also inventive, getting a group of children with no experience or talent to an international folk dancing festival and saving a crown prince from a palace coup, Nazi thugs and terrible manipulative relatives.   Ibbotson wrote beautifully in an old fashioned style, with lovely touches of humour.  Her teen fic is top of my list for comfort re-reads.

Patrick Ness is a complete contrast, in terms of story and style. Monsters of Men is set somewhere in the future on another planet, where main characters Todd and Viola struggle to remain loyal to each other, and find peace as civil war is waged between colonial factions, and the indigenous people respond to the genocidal treatment.  Ness' fast moving style, leaping from one scene to another, is exciting and movie like, and the choices his characters face are complex . Monsters of Men was a satisfying conclusion to Ness' trilogy.

Favorite Picture Books

About five years ago, a huge event in my personal life led to changes in my work.  I had children, and as a consiquence, moved from working full time at the library's main branch, to working part time at a smaller, community oriented library branch.  At work, when all the tallented storytellers I work with are unavailable, I have the real pleasure of conducting storytimes for visiting preschoolers.  At home I read with my own children - though sometimes, when they become fixated on one particular book, and demand it ten times in a single hour, this pleasure can become a little monotonous

 These are some of my favorites, among the many picture books for children I've read in the last five years:

Julia Donaldson's Toddle Waddle  describes a toddler's walk throught the park, past the beach and to the end of the pier.  The rythmic, repetitive and onomatopaic language is engaging, and is great to read aloud ,and Nick Sharratt's illustrations are bold and attractive, perfect to catch and keep a toddler's attention.  This was THE book that convinced my youngest daughter that books were good for more than just chewing

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Rhythm and rhyme are important elements in Kathryn Apel's This is the Mud , another great book to read alloud to a very young group. A rather foolish, slightly mad looking cow gets stuck in the mud.  Attempting rescue, a stubbies clad farmer manages to bog his ute, and is joined by his strong jawed neighbour with his tractor and plow. The farmers daughter, her enthusisastic horse, a cool headed (female) farm worker and her bulldozer come to the rescue of all.  The book feels authentically (not jingoistically) Australian, the coloquial language completmented by Warren Crossett's illustrations of a recognisably Australian farm landscape and characters.

 What's in Baby's Morning? by Judy Hindley was the first book my eldest daughter refused to return to the library. It tells the simple story of a baby's morning activities: waking up and getting dressed, eating breakfast, playing in the garden, then listening to a story and taking a nap. The illustrations, by Jo Burroughes are  in soffly muted colours, and tiled, in a comic book style.  This allows for rich story telling, as plot elements , humour and rapidly changing emotions, difficult to convey with simple languge, are made clear to young readers.  The sequence that shows the baby realising a favorite toy is missing and breaking into "sobs and wails! roars and howls!" was one we returned to again and again.