1. My new column went up last week at Bookslut and included several titles of the "coming-of-age" variety. In particular please note Tales From the Madman Underground by John Barnes, a recent Printz honor recipient that I have not heard nearly enough about around the blogosphere. Go. Read. You will fall so hard and fast for this one that you really will not believe it.

2. Other titles in the column (all of them fabulous) are: Age 14 (gritty WWI drama); Stunt (spec fic/family drama mashup from one of my favorite small presses all about missing parents, bad parents and a discovered grandparent who is a trapeze artist); Shine, Coconut Moon (or what I like to think of as an Indian twist on the Gilmore Girls, including post-9/11 drama); A Very Fine Line (manages to be about clairvoyance, home schooling, cross dressing and family secrets all at once - plus BONUS crushing on the teacher); and the Colors gn trilogy from First/Second which is as pretty as it gets and very funny and also all about growing up in Korea. Nicely done, each and every one.

3. In the midst of January chaos there was also a new issue of Eclectica. (Read here to see how my editor is still waiting on one of his adopted children to arrive from Haiti - they have been in the process for Evans for about two years now). I had three review pieces for kids up in the issue, including one on Myths, one on learning books (that you don't realize are teaching you things and thus are supposed to be boring) and one on biographies of many people I did not know much of anything about. Amazing what you can learn reviewing picture books!

4. Oh - and bonus, another review of Shine, Coconut Moon from Eclectica contributor Niranjana Iyer.

5. I just finished reading Raina Telgemeier's delightful MG graphic novel Smile. I didn't intend to do more than give it a quick glance (it showed up unrequested) but after turning just a few pages I was completely sucked into this one. It follows the real story of the author's trials and tribulations after falling and severely damaging her two front teeth at the age of 12. All through middle school she is alternately tortured and healed by a variety of dentists, orthodontists, etc. and must deal with the physical discomfort and all too familiar emotional dramarama. Nothing truly exceptional happens in this book except growing up but it's told so well that you can't resist it. In terms of plot it is a perfect MG vacation book - add a sandwich, some chips and lemonade and this the 2010 winging in the hammock version of The Penderwicks. The bonus here is the fantastic multicultural cast - Telgemeier has truly drawn Raina's school in about the most realistic manner I've ever seen with all shades of brown and beige portrayed with great fun and aplomb.

Smile is a true winner - could very well be a dark horse award winner later this year (I'm thinking the Cybils are doing to love this one.)

6. Bonus - See much more about Smile at Raina's website.

7. Cory Doctorow YA SF alert! For the Win is due out from Tor this summer. Set in the future, it's about gaming, unions, and a "vast shadow economy, running electronic sweatshops in the world's poorest countries, where countless 'gold farmers,' bound to their work by abusive contracts and physical threats, harvest virtual treasure for their employers to sell to First World gamers who are willing to spend real money to skip straight to higher-level gameplay." Basically a novelization of his short story "Anda's Game".

Although I was not completely sold on Little Brother as the greatest YA SF title to hit the ground in forever, I do think he's a solid writer and has lots of teen appeal, so I'll be looking for this one. (Not a very good title though - sounds like a sports book which it certainly is not.)

In case you missed the recent fabulous bookish news, Libba Bray has signed a four book deal to write a series that sounds fantastic:

In The Diviners, a supernatural fantasy series set in Manhattan during the 1920s, Bray follows a teen heroine she says is reminiscent of two of the era's most famous literary women—Zelda Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker. Bray, who admitted to having always been fascinated by the Jazz Age, said she's looking forward "to offering readers a wild new ride full of dames and dapper dons, jazz babies and Prohibition-defying parties, conspiracy and prophecy—and all manner of things that go bump in the neon-drenched night.”

The idea of teenage girls being exposed to Zelda and Dorothy (even a fictional/fantastic version) is a dream come true for me. I learned about Zelda only in the context of Scott's "drunken and crazy wife". I never knew Zelda wrote a book or was a dancer; in my English classes she existed solely in the context of Scott's greater genius. Zelda was the one who made Scott's life difficult and Zelda was the reason why Scott never achieved as much greatness as he should have. (She also apparently put the endless glasses of alcohol in his hand - even when they were apart. She was truly a devil woman.)

Dorothy Parker was a complete mystery to me until I left college. Although we spent a considerable amount of time (again and again) discussing many great white men of American literature, the women were not so much part of those conversations. (Five minutes of Alcott and Dickinson and maybe St Vincent Millay then we were done.) I don't think any of my teachers or professors were sexist - they were just all teaching general interest English and American Lit courses and there never seemed to be much room for women in the textbooks or lectures. When I did find her though, Dorothy was a revelation.

When did women stop being witty and passionate and creative? Remember all those fabulous movies from the 1930s? Yes, they wanted to capture men (specifically Cary Grant or Spencer Tracy or William Powell) but remember when women weren't determined to appear silly or foolish to get a man? Remember when they were smart and proud of being smart? And I don't mean smart in a "you betcha/Real Americans" kind of way, but intellectually smart, book smart, Katherine Hepburn in Desk Set and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday kind of smart.

Dorothy and Zelda were smart. They were born in a time that wasn't so easy on smart women and they had trouble with love and they didn't find all of their hopes and dreams so easy to pursue they turned to liquor for solace from all that was wrong with the world. And I hate that. But what possible reason do I have to ever complain about my life when these two amazing women were not lauded nearly enough in their lifetimes?(Zelda was committed to an institution and died there in a fire; Dorothy passed away from a heart attack and her ashes remained unclaimed for nearly two decades.)

I hope that Bray's series introduces millions of today's young women to the real Zelda and Dorothy - that after reading her fiction they go looking for the women who inspired it. That's the kind of thing that makes me excited about reading - and also, to no small degree, about writing as well.

[Post pics of Zelda top, then Dorothy. See The Paris Review interview with Dorothy here and a new scrapbook of Scott and Zelda's life here.]

I will not be posting on diversity in MG & YA fiction again for awhile. I'm tired of everybody arguing about it. And I'm tired of the time I spend going from one place to another to explain what I meant, or explain what I think, or try to make a point via email and comments when really it's always hard to do that without having something sound wrong.

I'm going to review books with diverse characters, just as I always have. I'm going to review books written by People of Color, as I always have. And I'm going to keep on reviewing books about Caucasian kids and written by Caucasian authors just as I always have. But right now as I am struggling so much to find any books at all about Native American kids for the TBD wishlists, it is beyond frustrating to be arguing with fellow book people about who is saying something wrong about diversity or who's fault it is that there aren't enough diverse books or what some random White kid will read as opposed to some random Black kid.

It's all opinions. That's all. Unless we had definitive numbers of books sales and marketing budgets then it is all and will only ever be opinion. And we aren't going to get any answers beyond our own.

I'm just tired of arguing all the many points of something so important when really, our arguments mean nothing. We're griping at each other over who is more or less right and I don't care anymore about any of that. I'm just going to try and cover excellent books that might be lost in the shuffle otherwise.

Otherwise, quite frankly, I'm going to lose my fucking mind.