#middle-grade novels

[vavandeveresfan]

Why did no one TELL me that “Turning Red” is fucking brilliant?!

Yes, yes, I’m late to this film.  I don’t have streaming so I couldn’t watch it on Disney+, and I no longer go to theaters because too often I pay $10 and hate the movie.  I wait for things to come out on DVD, if they ever do.  So I only just borrowed this from my library.

Holy fuck, do I love this movie.

I love middle-grade fiction (10-13 year olds).  I’ve been really, really disappointed with MG novels the last few years.  The writing has been shit.  Authors know how to write “killer” first chapters, because that’s what writing teachers tell them they have to do, but they’re not good at middles and godawful at endings.  It’s as if they’re following a Kid Lit 101 template for “How To Write A Middle-Grade Novel.”  So I can read through a literal stack of MGS and each one has the exact same plot, with the same use of coincidence to give the MC a Happy Ending With a Lesson.

First, Turning Red surprised me by its time period and location: Toronto, 2002.  Which was nice, because therefore the middle-school characters weren’t walking around with smartphones and earbuds.

Second, which should be first: The screenwriters depicted 13-year-old girls like real goddamn 13-year-old girls.  Not teenagers in smaller bodies.  The writers understood fannishness and depicted it accurately.  And, most important, they didn’t mock it.

Nearly all goddamn entertainment media (with the exception of Miraculous Ladybug) shows kids creating fanart and fan content with a slight condescending sneer.  “Oh, it’s really so cringe, but the kids like it.”  TR depicts just how important fandom is to Mei and her friends, that it’s not a crutch or “coping mechanism.”  It’s a stabilizing, life-affirming, integral part of growing up, of learning about yourself and your relationship with a difficult, unstable period of your life (that even, helLO, adults enjoy).

And the writing is just so fucking good.  The way the characters react to Mei’s transformation, to a giant fucking panda running around Toronto, is handled so well, so consistently.  Do they call the police or the FBI or some secret government Cryptozoology Unit?  No.  The people are shocked and surprised, but they accept it.  That they do means the audience does, so there isn’t a belabored “Well, let’s explain this bizarre phenomenon so you’ll accept our world-building” exposition bullshit.

The plot moves forward with logical progression.  The girls want to go to the concert.  This means they need to raise money.  They turn Mei’s transformation into a benefit.  Because the kids act like kids would.  They fucking LOVE Mei as a giant panda.  These are kids who are into manga, anime, fanfics, fanart, and plushies.  Real kids would see a giant, talking panda and run TO it, not from it.  Of course they’d pay to take selfies with it, and buy merch.  TR doesn’t laugh at the kids who wear panda ears and tails.  It understands and celebrates them.

Of course the movie is too short to round out all the characters.  But given its limited time each of Mei’s friends has a distinct personality.  The screenwriters don’t explain why four such different girls have bonded so deeply.  Watching their joy and camaraderie is more than enough for the audience to understand.  They fill niches in each other, making them whole.

I love how Abby yells in Korean and they don’t have subtitles.

I also love that the girls’ crushes aren’t stereotypically handsome.  The 17 year old cashier at the convenience store, the kid at his locker who Mei gapes at, they’re just regular-looking boys to the audience, but they’re special to the girls, and that’s refreshing.

I’m Hapa, but I didn’t grow up around other Asians.  I’m not familiar with the pressure Mei gets from her mother, which some accused of being stereotypical of the “Tiger Mom.”  But other Asian girls have said it’s fucking accurate.  And god knows the pressure isn’t limited to Asian families.  It’s a truism that the more specific your story the more universal it is.  Most kids can identify with adults pushing them to goals they may or may not want.  That we the audience experience a culture with which we may not be familiar is icing on the cake.

I LOVE that for once we see a religion that isn’t Christianity, and it’s treated with respect and sincerity, not as something exotic or weird.

The metaphor of Mei’s transformation isn’t heavy-handed, partly because of its humor.  I absolutely adore how they treat a girl’s first menstruation with the alarm which many parents feel, but also as completely normal.

I love that they don’t get into detail about exactly how Ming hurt her own mother.  But we can guess it by Wu’s eyebrow scar, and how she touches it when she mentions how dangerous being a panda can be.

The concert’s opening is a fantastic build-up.  Mei has fled the ritual that would deny her her “red panda” and instead goes to the concert, a ritual in itself, the pacing, the sound, the reveal.  This is Mei and her friends’ initiation into, as they say, being “women.”  Even Tyler undergoes the ritual of admitting to others his own blossoming adolescence, and finds common ground with the girls.  In 2002 it was still risky for a boy to openly show his crush for another boy.

Here Mei, her friends, Tyler, and all the other kids at the concert join in an open-air Communion.  Notice there are no adults in sight.  In fact, the liturgy is interrupted when an adult, Ming in panda form, bursts in.  But the transformation -- Mei and her friends into “womanhood” -- continues and is an integral part of the Red moon ritual.  This is some amazing metaphorical shit, and it’s done so smoothly, so unconsciously, so damn well, on a gut level.

The screenwriters set up that any singing will work for the ceremony -- Mr. Gao, the shaman, says he loves Tony Bennett -- as long as it’s from the heart.  So having 4 Town and their concert audience singing help the ritual absolutely works.

The only thing I don’t like about TR is the closing speech by Mei.  It’s preachy and unnecessary.  But, that’s American animation, and fiction, for kids.  They’re expected to Teach A Lesson.  I just wish the writers and director had left it off.

Last but not least, Mei’s father.  What can I say?  A quiet figure, who any other movie would have turned into a weak nagged-to-death husband.  Instead, he’s talented in his own right -- a great cook; we see it when he’s introduced, so we immediately know he’s an artist with food; it reminded me of Ratatouille.  He speaks for Mei, and though his wife dominates their scenes together, it’s his kind, caring, common sense personality that helps Mei along.  Her transformation, from girl to woman, isn’t his area of expertise.  He knows it.  But he’s there as her support.

If I had to pick just one Disney-Pixar film to show middle-grade kids, Turning Red would be it.  I want to show it to every middle-grade writer I know and tell them to fucking learn from it.

[newlevant]

Preview of Sam Long’s story, drawn by the amazing Cynthia Yuan Cheng! (@cynthiaycheng, cynthiaycheng.com)

Becoming Who We Are Kickstarter ends Dec 14! Preorder now to help us fund the book!

bit.ly/becomingkickstarter

[magical-book-lush]

The Vanishing Of Aveline Jones • Book Review

Hello everyone. How is life going? I am reading and watching a lot of K-Dramas and Friends as I am trying to journal for October already. HALLOWEEN IS COMING EARLY FOR ME!!! I can’t wait to get to Halloween month already. Halloween is almost here when I am writing the rest of this introduction. I know I am a bit late to this review but life has it’s way of getting between me and my blogging…

[checkoutmybookshelf]

I mean...this combination of depth and toilet humor is literally Shakespearean, so A+ for Eoin Colfer.

[otteranha]

The kids all read to Eddie, it’s good for him to hear their voices the doctors say. And Steve wants to, he wants so badly for his usefulness not to be over already. But even with all his old tricks from school, with all the underlining and going line-by-line, he struggles with the language and tiny print in Tolkien, and Herbert might be even worse. Usually he ends up moving the bookmark ahead more than he’s really read just so Dustin won’t look at him like that.

He feels foolish, useless, like a big dumb drag on the group, not doing his part when Eddie needs this, needs to hear people, his people. And when Steve runs out of things to say he can’t even read to him like everyone else can. Hell, even Wayne comes after 12 hour shifts and reads until he can’t stay awake. Steve’s failing Eddie again and it’s making him crazy.

He’s walking past the hospital gift shop when he sees the book. It’s a kiddie book. Obviously, it’s way too childish for Eddie, there’s a mouse on the cover for crying out loud. But the title is printed in that old-timey font, like something Dustin would use to write ~spells~ for their little game and when Steve skims the first chapter it’s easy to read. He brings the book back to Eddie’s room with him. 

Later, Eddie swears that he absolutely heard the first part that Steve read, coma be damned, he just made Steve start from the beginning because he wanted Dustin and the rest of them to hear the whole thing. Later still, when they bring home their first foster kid, Eddie will pull a battered copy of Redwall off the shelf and ask if she wants to hear a bedtime story.

[jesncin]

Indu, the Lunar Boy. Child from the sky.

[ultrakeencollectionbreadfan]

Considering the success of the Percy Jackson TV series, I do hope this graphic novel series is adapted at some point.

[kayleerowena]

THE WITCH'S WINGS & OTHER TERRIFYING TALES, an 'are you afraid of the dark?' graphic novel with three stories based on hispanic urban legends, comes out october 3rd 2023!!!

kick off the halloween season & ✨ preorder it now ✨ if fun, spooky middle-grade horror is your jam!

i'm so excited for people to get to read this book; everyone involved put so much love into it, and i can't wait to hear what people think once it's out in the world. to celebrate how close the release date is, here are a few preview pages from my segment of the book, the tale of the haunting of bus #13!

[tkingfisher]

New book! Coming Friday the 25th! You can pre-order the ebook online starting...well, as soon as it gets approved on the various sites, or get either ebook or hardcopy directly via Argyll Productions!

This is not a horror novel, it’s a middle-grade fantasy, in the same vein as Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, although shorter and I think lighter, so if you just need something fluffy and cozy to unwind with that will not force you to grapple with trauma or cause you to develop any new phobias, I think this one’s safe! Probably!

(...I’m such a lousy judge of these things...)

[finelythreadedsky]

cannot say i recommend reading sixty-year-old scholarship on sex work in the ancient world

[vavandeveresfan]

Plot of almost every new middle-grade novel I've read this year (prose & graphic novels).

MC moved to a new state/city/school.

One parent is dead/absent.

MC is outsider.

MC is bullied by Popular Kids.

MC is befriended by other outsider(s). She/he and her/his new BFF bond over a skill/talent/fandom they love but which Popular Kids mock.

MC is wooed by Popular Kid to join Popular Kids.

MC wants to Fit In and Belong so bad she/he joins the Popular Kids.

MC participates in mocking former new BFF.

MC sees that The Cool Kids Aren't Cool At All (TM), realizes how horrible she/he's become, and leaves the Popular Kids.

MC and new BFF make up. Their skill/talent/fandom impresses classmates so they get lots of new friends. The Popular Kids are jealous.

Story ends with a successful prom/holiday dance/fundraiser.

Almost every. single. fucking. MG novel has this plot.

i know some kids like these because it's like eating a big bowl of popcorn. You like it, you want more of the same.

But there's got to be kids out there who don't want regular popcorn. They want Flaming Hot Crunchy Cheetos. Or Raisinets.

Publishers need to publish more Flaming Hot Crunchy Cheetos and Raisinets.

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[magical-book-lush]

The Bewitching Of Aveline Jones • Book Review.

Hello everyone! Welcome back to my awesome blog 😂. It’s not that awesome but why can I not think that it is? I have a migraine attack going on right now and I have a mediocre day going on too. I wonder what’s wrong with me but I don’t feel very well. I am working hard on my blogs and just working more and more on them because I want to get back on track here. It’s been so long since I was…

[kanerallels]

Do any of my beloved mutuals have any recommendations of books I can read on my spring break trip?

I'm shamelessly tagging some people who I know have excellent or similar taste to me in books: @ghosts-and-blue-sweaters @magpie-trove @fairytale-lights @kazoosandfannypacks @misscrazyfangirl321

[checkoutmybookshelf]

From Criminial Mastermind to Fairy Tale Hero: The End of Artemis Fowl

Here we are, everyone: The final Artemis Fowl book. It has been a journey revisiting the first series I was old enough to follow and fandom, and it's wild to me that we're finally at the end. Especially since I picked up the first Artemis Fowl book in late elementary school (I'm genuinely not sure when though, because the first book came out in April of 2001, when I was in fifth grade and it's very possible I didn't pick the book up until sixth grade, which would have put me at 11, same age as Artemis in that first book) and the final book came out in 2012, when I was in my junior year of undergrad. So at that point, Artemis, Holly, and Butler had been part of my life for a long time. And now here we are, to say goodbye to them again after this leisurely re-listen/read. Let's talk Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian.

Artemis grew and changed so much across eight books, which makes sense because holy cow do kids change a LOT between 11 and 15. We get so busy living life in those years that we don't really think about how much we truly learn and grown between prepubescence and full-on teenagerhood, but that is a time of massive change, and I think that more than anything else really justifies how Artemis goes from a chillingly vampiric child to a teenager with enough compassion and empathy to understand that sometimes the right choice is a heroic self-sacrifice for the people that your people (both humans and the people, in this case) love. Artemis also did a really interesting version of that thing so many teenagers do where they hit a point where they can't just phone in their abilities anymore and have to actually put effort in, but for Artemis it was emotional rather than intelligence. And yet even when making said heroic sacrifice, we have the absolutely beautiful callback to the end of book one, where Artemis drugs his mother, Butler, and Juliet to keep them from being harmed by the bio-bomb. To stop Holly from preventing him from stopping Opal, Artemis sedates her. The more things change, the more they stay the same...

Except where best villain ever Opal Koboi is concerned. By this book, Opal is so disconnected from reality that she is willing to risk literally going nuclear to escape captivity, and then just...casually sparks off the apocalypse because if there is one thing our girl wants, it's to be Empress of the World, and if that means using spirit zombies and an ancient fairy doomsday device, then I guess it's a good thing she's already versed in black magic. Or something. Opal is fully and completely off the rails at this point, and if you catch yourself referring to yourself as "Mommy" in reference to the spirits of several scores of ancient elven berserkers who would--barring a geas--murder you for it, you might want to stop and take a long, hard look at your life choices. And maybe don't forget that you've cloned yourself, because that's the kind of little detail that can completely ruin your chances of being Empress of the World.

Holly quite possibly deserves every medal that exists for managing to drag Artemis's extremely out-of-shape butt through increasingly dangerous and high-stakes missions while navigating fairy politics and *checks notes* breaking up with her commanding officer after a disastrous date where they both got kicked out of a crunchball match. (And once again...HOW DARE Colfer leave this in exposition and not show us this amazing disaster of a date!?!?) Holly has also just been through the emotional wringer with Artemis and every time he decided to double-cross or lie by omission to bring off a plan and every time he does something infuriatingly human that drives up her blood pressure and yet makes the mission succeed. And then she has to sit there and watch him die to save humans and fairies. Seriously, the fact that Holly Short is a functional being rather than a hot mess is nothing short of a miracle.

And then we come to Butler. Long-suffering, super fucking over it, broken-hearted Domovoi Butler. Artemis got DAMN lucky that the whole "put my spirit in a clone of me" plan panned out, because if it hadn't, Holly was entirely correct: Butler would never have recovered. Butler and Opal might be my two favorite characters in the entire series at this point. That's not where I started--for a very long time, Holly was my favorite character, and Commander Root still gets an honorable mention--but as a grown-ass adult (I'm not doing that math for you, if you want to know that I'm old, you do the math), I cannot escape how dedicated, competent, kind, and just AWESOME Butler is. I feel like the vibe here is very similar to the thing that happens when you watch Sound of Music as a kid and either Maria or one of the kids is your favorite character, but when you come back to it as an adult, Captain Von Trapp is EVERYTHING (RIP Christopher Plummer, we loved you). Butler has a similar vibe but in a different genre.

So, I was an adult and had enough experience of watching fandoms to see the mixed reactions to this book being released. People were sad the series was ending, people were disappointed because the series had seemingly drifted, and people loved it. My reaction was pretty mixed, because I had a lot going on, I knew there were good things here but I was also kind of missing the heisty, criminal mastermind vibes, but also OPAL KOBOI. So I was pretty unsure how to feel about this book when it came out, and then I didn't reread it for literal years because I went to grad school.

Returning to this book now, I have suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch respect for how Colfer tied up the series and how he pulled off a new Irish mythological cycle, but updated for the twenty-first century. I have enough life on me to appreciate the changes Artemis goes through, and enough literature degrees to have a new and deeply fulfilling perspective on the series structure. Last Guardian is not my favorite book of the series--it's not even in the top three--but I think that what it does is genuinely impressive and I love how you can finish this book and go instantly back into the OG Artemis Fowl. The story does not, strictly speaking, have to end. And that is a vibe I can 100% get behind.

I deeply love the Artemis Fowl books, and I cannot recommend the series enough. They have so many strengths, are incredibly well-written, and they live rent-free in my head even now as an adult.

[newlevant]

I worked on Becoming Who We Are as a co-editor and artist! It's a great book. Please consider backing the Kickstarter to preorder a copy, and tell your friends about it!

@naomiyaki @fruityhag @vicomart @sagecoffey @vagrats