Much has already been written about the eating disorders anorexia and bulimia, but none in such an intensely vivid and personal way as Wintergirls.* Eighteen-year-old Lia tells her story in journal format with heartbreaking honesty. The book begins with the death of her former best friend Cassie, whose many calls for help went unanswered – and we feel Lia’s guilt, despair, and loss throughout. Her compulsive quest for the perfect size zero and her self-punishment push her further and further into a nightmarish world that we experience too. We hear the pain and sorrow resonating in her poetry:

   Dead girl walking, the boys say in the halls.

   Tell us your secret, the girls whisper.

   I am that girl.

   I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through.

   I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame.

This book will stay with you long after you’ve finished reading it. For young adult and adult readers. (Laura H., The Loft/RA)

*Also available on Playaway, CD, and eAudiobook.

When The Lovely Bones was published in 2002 it took off like a shot, catapulting its author, Alice Sebold, high into literary stardom. This dark, wrenching novel of disquietude and loss is the story of Susie Salmon, a 12 year old girl who is raped and murdered in an underground den by a neighbor one afternoon when she takes a shortcut home from school. Susie narrates the story from a place of solitude – her own personal heaven – where she observes her grief-stricken, traumatized family as they come to terms with her death while searching for answers about the crime. She also watches as her killer evades justice. Written in spare, at times lyrical, at times graphic, prose, Sebold’s novel is unsettling in its evocation of a conflicted afterlife, as well as its depiction of a terrifying, brutal crime that tears a family apart.

Now, seven years after it appeared as a book, The Lovely Bones will be a film. The bestselling novel has been brought to filmic life by Peter Jackson, the director behind the Lord of the Rings trilogy, with an impressive cast that includes Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon, and the amazing young actress, Saoirse Ronan. It’s even scored by Brian Eno. Watch the trailer below. To me, it’s one of the most compelling, artful trailers I’ve seen in a long time, and promises a deeply emotional experience with a searching tone and eerie, almost painted, beauty to it.

Are you a fan of Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak? Then don’t miss Alice Sebold’s first book, Lucky, a memoir about the rape she experienced her freshman year at Syracuse and the unlikely justice she eventually saw served, also available in the Loft.

In observance of Banned Books Week, I picked up Laurie Halse Anderson’s Twisted to read.  It’s been challenged in a high school in Kentucky – Anderson’s blog has been tracking the details of the challenge – and earlier this week it looked like it was going to return to the AP English classes in which it was offered.  But, now the superintendent is holding the book back.  He wants “evidence” that this book is relevant, that it’s worthy of being classified as “college level” material. Well, here’s my best defense.

Twisted is a book about what it means to be a son, what it means to be a man, what it means to be a family.  It’s a book about what it’s like to stand on the cliff’s edge overlooking hell, feeling burned, tortured, seared, blistered by the heat, and then, instead of running, instead of submitting and throwing yourself into the inferno, choosing to face it, to fight back against it, to stand tall, to do what’s right and to fight for the light.

Like Anderson’s first novel, Speak, and her latest, Wintergirls, this is a book about a teen’s descent (in this case, a boy named Tyler) into isolation, humiliation, self-loathing, and pain, and the events that brought him there.  It’s about the high school (and corporate) cultures that harm, shut out, falsely accuse, mock, punish and fear the person who struggles, who acts out of conscience.  These are the systems, so easy to disappear into, that easily believe the worst about a person, that worsen or animate his fall with a leg stuck out to trip him, a fist in his face, and a pint of milk poured anonymously down his back.

This is a book about the cruelty of the suburban economic ladder, how its rungs deform people, and the false belief that final entry into the upper class – the outward appearance and acquisition of American wealth – will save your soul and your family’s soul.  It’s a book about the invasive pathogen of that mistaken belief, the invasive pathogen that can eat a family up, almost kill it dead.

But, Twisted is also about love, humor, and hope.  It’s about the few nourishing souls – a friend, a sister, a teacher, a mother – who try to get through to Tyler, who stick with him even when he’s at his worst, who care enough to believe the best about him, who are unimpressed by postures, but who understand the need to let the rage out.

Anderson skewers those false creeds of masculinity that subtly or overtly beset boys everywhere – that you must be unfeeling, that you must “bag” a girl no matter what the circumstance, that respect for the opposite sex is optional (even disposable), that you must be physically strong to have worth, and that the drive for power above all else is the worthiest pursuit.  “The only thing on was commercials. Buy our razors and be a man. Buy our pit sticks and be a man. Spray this junk down your shorts and women will crawl all over you. Get a second mortgage. Buy a second car. Buy our razors.”

A “real man,” Anderson’s book argues, admits he’s weak, does the dirty work of standing up for what’s right, challenges loved ones when they’re hurting you, and doesn’t take advantage of others.

And it says all this with a funny, wry, fast-moving plot led by a really likable, believable character. Like in Speak, Anderson knows how to make us laugh, how to point up the absurdity in, well, life, even in the midst of a serious downward spiral.  See how the family, after a visit from the police and Tyler is tacitly accused by them of sexual misconduct, stalking, being generally a pervert and a freak, and after he’s pounded and snatched at and mocked and beaten in school for what he didn’t do to the most popular, beautiful girl around, just see how the family still dons reindeer antlers and bright red sweaters that Friday and forces themselves to pose happily for a Christmas photo.

The end of Twisted is full of hope.  Tyler, baseball bat in hand (because that’s the sort of weapon it takes to smash through the anger, cruelty, lies, and false fronts of angry detachment and criticism constructed by his father), descends into the basement to save his family’s life.  He’s a boy owning up to his weaknesses and fighting off his demons (real and imagined) and his story is told in the language of real, young adult life.

I don’t know what it means that a book is “college level” material. Did the book make me take a hard look at myself and past choices I’ve made in my life? Check. Did it make me think hard about the choices I will make in the future as a parent, a husband, a brother, and a son? Check. Did it make me wrestle with questions of family and the responsibilities of parents and teachers and each of us to be decent and assume the best of each other? Check. Did it make me resolve to face tough emotional conflicts instead of shrinking from them? Check. Did the book make me cast a harshly critical eye at the pursuits of money and sex and image that distract us and alienate us from one another? Check.

I don’t know if these are “college level” issues. But, I know that they’re deeply human issues and they’re evoked here with layered, engaging, and enjoyable writing. I don’t ask for much more in a book.

The sad irony in banning Twisted would be in the fact that those who would seek to censor it only prove the ultimate point of its story – that the more we hide from who we are and what the world is really like, the more small, rigid and twisted we become.

(Jarrett, The Loft)

September 26th – October 3rd, 2009 is Banned Books Week.  This annual event was founded to celebrate the freedom to read and to raise awareness about the book challenges and bans that threaten that freedom.  Banned Books Week serves as a reminder that we must protect the availability of unpopular, even radical, viewpoints to all who wish to read them if we are to preserve our basic rights to speak, to pursue knowledge and to express ourselves – whatever the content.  So, celebrate with us – pick out a title from this list of banned and challenged books, check out this national map showing the locations of book bans and challenges that occurred in 2007-2009, read about the Laurie Halse Anderson and Ellen Hopkins book challenges going on right now, stop by the Loft to pick up a free “I Read Banned Books” button or to hear an impromptu “banned book reading” by one of our staff, and, above all else, speak your mind.

“The truth screams to be told in its native tongue.”

-Chris Crutcher

(one of the most censored writers of all time).

Just last week YA author Laurie Halse Anderson received notice of 3 attempts to remove 2 of her books: TWISTED & SPEAK.

Speak was called “smutty” and “pornographic” by a complaining parent in California, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times. (Warning: if you haven’t read Speak, the article includes some spoilers) The school board, however, found great merit in the book and voted 4-1 to keep the book in the core list of books taught  in high school English classes.  The school district’s Director of Curriculum read the book twice and loved it, affirmed its literary value and believes it is a story that teens can relate to.  Read this letter that KRRP (Kids Right to Read Project) sent to the Board of Trustees at Temecula Valley Unified School District in California in response to the possible censoring of Speak.

Twisted will remain on the Downington High School reading list. Twisted has also been challenged at Montgomery High School in Kentucky because one parent thinks the book is inappropriate, and the committee discussing that challenge is meeting tonight.

Banned Books Week officially begins this Saturday (September 26-October 3). Defend your freedom to read!

UPDATE: Laurie Halse Anderson reports a cautious victory with Twisted in Montgomery High School in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky. The challenge committee voted to keep the book in literature circles, but none of the 7 books on the list has yet been returned to the classroom. The other titles that were officially challenged are Unwind, by Neal Shusterman, and Lessons From a Dead Girl, by Jo Knowles. The others that were pulled from the teacher’s classroom are: Deadline by Chris Crutcher, What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones, What My Girlfriend Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones, and The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds.  Read more on Laurie Halse Anderson’s blog.

Camp Minnetonkahaka in Wisconsin . . .  gonna be a blast!  Can’t wait to kayak, and I get to bring my cell phone and flat iron!  We have internet, too!  No parents for eight weeks plus my older cousin Suki is a head counselor!  She is so cool!  I’m bringing aaallll these books cuz they look good!!!

Lovestruck Summer by Melissa Walker

If I Stay by Gayle Forman

Sleepaway Girls by Jen Calonita

Carbon Diaries by Saci Lloyd

Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

I can’t decide, so I’m bringing a ton of stuff!  How do I know what I’ll be in the mood for?!

ooohhh, I also have the whole Twilight series on my ipod.  huge sigh . . .

(The Loft-Mercedes) *p.s. I’m just playing pretend!

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson, 2009.

What is it like to be a wintergirl?  ”Caught between (two) worlds . . . (freezing your butt off,) a ghost with a beating heart.”  All I have to say is it’s got to suck.  Lia looks like a disgusting haunted toothpick, and Cassie is totally dead.  This book is about them.  It’s wicked good. That’s why I’m blogging about it.

Cassie will be hot gossip for another couple days.  Maybe she od’ed on heroine.  They found her in a seedy motel all alone.  It is so tragic.  Lia used to be her best friend, but they stopped talking like 8 months ago. Who knows why.

I heard they made a pact to be the skinniest girls in school.  Cassie was tiny, but Lia is all skin and bones. So not hot.

Anyhoo, Lia lives with her dad and step-mom and their daughter Emma when she’s not in rehab with hoses in her nose being stuffed like a pig.  Why can’t she just eat and be healthy?  What is her deal?

The other latest that I’ve heard is that Lia started cutting again.  Even I have bad days, but cutting my own skin is gnarly.  I’d never go there.

“Wintergirls” glitters if you put it in the light just right; just don’t read it without someone to talk to.  I am totally here if you want to talk.

(Mercedes-The Loft)*I’m a librarian with creative writing tendencies!

Speak author Laurie Halse Anderson (see also Twisted and Chains) releases the first of 3 videos of her latest book: Wintergirls - due out on March 19.  Place a hold on one of our copies today!

Anderson illuminates a dark but utterly realistic world…this is necessary reading. –Booklist, starred review

As difficult as reading this novel can be, it is more difficult to put down. –Publishers Weekly

Readers will be absorbed by this gripping tale… —BCCB, starred review

The intensity of emotion and vivid language here are more reminiscent of Anderson’s Speak than any of her other works…an almost poetic stream of consciousness in [a] startlingly crisp and pitch-perfect first-person narrative. –School Library Journal, starred review

As part of Reel Reads, the Teen Summer Reading Game, you can submit a book trailer for a chance to win one of several grand prizes, such as a video camera. For more information, click here.

YA author Laurie Halse Anderson is also hosting a book trailer contest for a chance to win an 8GB iPod Touch. Enter both, and increase your chances and your fun!

1. Create a book trailer for SPEAK or TWISTED. You may not use clips from the SPEAK movie (it is copyrighted, that’s why). Your trailer must qualify for a PG rating. Try to keep it under two minutes long. For more information, click here.

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