Young and In Love
RSSJoyce Adams Burner, Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal, 02/02/2010
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Teens swoon over stories of star-crossed lovers, first kisses, crushes, and broken hearts in classics from Jane Austen to contemporary novels featuring vampires. While hearts and flowers attract readers, complex plots and engaging characters keep them turning the pages. Tap into these freshly spun tales of love and longing, and let Cupid liven up classroom discussions and reading lists.
Old Tales Newly Told
“‘True love,’ [Miranda] said ... ‘Do you even believe in it? I don’t. It’s a trap.’” Lovingly raised by foster parents, Lucy Scarborough, 17, is ashamed of her mentally ill, homeless birth mother Miranda in Nancy Werlin’s Impossible (Dial, 2009; Gr 9 up). Raped on prom night, Lucy becomes pregnant, and understands Miranda’s warnings of a family curse—generations of Scarborough women get pregnant by 18, give birth to a daughter, and go mad, because their ancestress Fenella once spurned the Elfin Knight. The curse will be broken if Lucy performs three impossible tasks laid out in a variant of the “Scarborough Fair” ballad.
Werlin casts this modern fairy tale, set near Boston, with strong women and feminist-leaning men who bring fierce love and modern technology to Lucy’s defense in a potent mix of magic and reality. As her childhood friend Zach helps her uncover family secrets and attempt the impossible, they fall in love in a tender romance interwoven with themes of folklore, teen pregnancy, mental illness, and the need to believe in oneself.
Walter Dean Myers recasts the 19th-century classical ballet Swan Lake, setting it in an urban housing project in Amiri and Odette: A Love Story (Scholastic, 2009; Gr 7 up). Myers’ hip-hop verse runs graffiti-like across the colorful pages as Amiri spies Odette watching him play basketball. They proclaim their love for each other, but Odette is a drug addict and belongs to crack dealer Big Red.
Javaka Steptoe’s gritty collages swarm with bodies, foreshadowing the violent, tragic ending. “A twist of wrist, a swinging fist,/a cracking bone, a sudden groan./One man is falling!/Now he is crawling/From the park and out of sight./So Big Red at last is beaten down./There is a stench as he slinks from town.” Incorporate this passionate story into literacy and drama studies of tragedies, mythology, art, and poetry.
Malinda Lo’s Ash (Little, Brown, 2009; Gr 8 up) re-imagines the Cinderella story. The orphaned Aisling, or “Ash,” left to the mercy of her cruel stepmother, is forced to work in the kitchen. To relieve the oppressive drudgery, Ash recalls her mother’s fairy stories, and eventually escapes into the forest. There she encounters the beautiful fairy Sidhean, beginning a dangerous flirtation with him. When Ash meets Kaisa, the King’s huntress who teaches her to ride, the women’s friendship becomes romance, and Ash must choose between the magic of the fairy kingdom and true love in the real world even as she turns to Sidhean for help. “It did not seem quite right to think of Sidhean and Kaisa at the same time—there was something disloyal about it. But though she tried to separate the two of them in her mind, she could not, for the bargain, she knew, included all three of them.” Exquisitely written, Ash is full of fairies, curses, magic, and love triangles, with strong themes of medieval life, folklore, bargains and their consequences, and personal transformation, and will be useful for women’s and GLBTQ studies and history and literacy classes.
Contemporary Complications
In Sarah Dessen’s Along for the Ride (Viking, 2009; Gr 8 up), Auden was raised by parents obsessed with academia and themselves, and missed out on mundane things like bowling and bike riding. Spending her post-graduation summer at the beach with her dad and his new family, she meets fellow insomniac Eli, an enigmatic loner and competitive bicyclist. The two spend their nights roaming the coastal town on a quest to plug the gaps in Auden’s experiences.
A quiet romance springs from their friendship as Eli comes to grips with his best friend’s death. “It wasn’t any one thing, but many strung together: long nights, trips to Park Mart and Builder’s Supply, pie with Clyde, bowling in the early morning, and my quest. We didn’t talk about our scars, the ones you could see, and the ones you couldn’t. Instead, I was having all the fun and frivolousness I was due in one summer, night by night.” Humor and warmth mark this low-key romance and its look at divorce, second chances, friendship, living a balanced life, and getting back on the bike.
“...I can feel how intensely Toby wants me. I steal a glance at him, and … he’s watching me watch Joe, his eyes clamped on to me…I see that Toby’s and Joe’s eyes have locked. Something passes silently between them that has everything to do with me, because as if on cue they look from each other to me, both saying with their eyes: What’s going on, Lennie? Every organ in my body switches places.”
In Jandy Nelson’s The Sky Is Everywhere (Dial, March 2010; Gr 10 up), Lennie is caught in a love triangle with Toby, boyfriend of her recently deceased older sister, and Joe, consummate musician and hot new guy in their northern California town. Lennie and Toby, lost in grief over Bailey’s sudden death, console each other in a quickly physical relationship, while Lennie and Joe bond over band class and develop a powerful, emotional love. Buoyantly written and brimming with humor and life as it plumbs the depths and ambiguities of grief, full of music and the poems Lennie drops all over town, The Sky Is Everywhere explores betrayal and forgiveness through a vibrant cast of characters.
“I loved Carl. Carl loved Paul. Paul maybe loved Miranda. I wasn’t sure Miranda loved any of us. She just wanted us all to love her.” Next-door neighbors Carl and Sylvie grew up devoted to each other, creating the secret kingdom of Glassworld, in Jacqueline Wilson’s Kiss (Roaring Brook, April 2010; Gr 7 up). Now they are at separate high schools and Carl withdraws, focusing on his new friend Paul, while Sylvie longs for him to kiss her. Sylvie’s new friend Miranda, self-absorbed and popular, uses Sylvie to gain access to both Carl and Paul, and the relationships grow tangled. When Carl reveals his feelings to Paul, he is bluntly rejected and mercilessly tormented at school. Sylvie, in turn, tells Carl she is in love with him, and he gently lets her down, confirming his homosexuality. Wilson’s delicate treatment of sensitive topics and adolescent yearning makes this a great choice for younger teens, with themes of emerging sexuality, friendship, first love, and heartbreak.
Romancing the Dark Side
Francesca Lia Block de-fangs Twilight-style romancing in Pretty Dead (HarperTeen, 2009; Gr 9 up). In her grief, after the death of her twin brother, Charlotte Emerson is easy prey for a seduction by vampire William Eliot. After a century of traveling the world together, Charlotte leaves William and lives a lonely, wealthy life in a southern California mansion, forever perfectly 17. When her only friend Emily is found dead of an apparent suicide, Charlotte pursues a relationship with Emily’s boyfriend Jared, and shares her story with him as they fall in love. She notices physical changes in herself—a broken nail, a pimple, tears, and sweat—and realizes she is becoming human again, just as Jared decides he wants to join her as a vampire. Sudden horror and grim humor are laced through Charlotte’s lush yet barren world, in a sparely written coming-of-age story exploring the nature of love, art and beauty, and the utter emptiness of vampire immortality. “I love beautiful old things. They create the illusion that they will last forever, that I will not be alone.”
Ethan Wate, 16, longs to escape Gatlin, South Carolina, where he is being raised by the family’s tarot-reading housekeeper, in Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s Beautiful Creatures (Little, Brown, 2009; Gr 7 up). When orphaned Lena Duchannes arrives, driving her reclusive uncle Macon Ravenwood’s hearse, strange occurrences follow, including aberrant weather, time-traveling dreams, and a Winter Formal scene reminiscent of Carrie, but Ethan is hooked. Lena is part of the Caster world that lies below and among Gatlin society, a secret, sophisticated magic culture that will claim her as light or dark on her 16th birthday. Beautiful Creatures stirs Civil War re-enactments, voodoo, plantation houses, high school cheerleaders, and small-town life in a rich southern gothic stew full of complex, and surprising characters, as impending doom threatens Ethan and Lena’s romance.
Highly imaginative with an ironic edge balancing the steady rise of suspense and danger, the novel treats bullying, social ostracizing, and the consequences of personal choices, and considers free will and fate. Choose it to enliven a study of southern folklore, literature, and history. Consider Macon’s observation, “‘Mortals. I envy you. You think you can change things. Stop the universe. Undo what was done long before you came along. You are such beautiful creatures.’”
Give students the valentine of great romance reading this month—they’ll love you for it!
