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The “Ick” Factor in YA Fiction

A trend I’ve noticed lately in YA fiction, especially the paranormal titles aimed at teen girls, is something I call the “ick” factor.

When I’m reading a YA paranormal and all of a sudden I’m knocked out of the story because the situation is so wrong I can’t buy it, or because the characters are acting in ways that make me want to shake them…. usually, that’s because of the “ick” factor.

“Hush, Hush” is a great example of this. Nora, the narrator, intuitively KNOWS that Patch, who she’s been paired with for a school unit on human sexuality is creepy. She asks to change partners, and the teacher not only refuses, he singles them out in class and requires her to tutor her partner. This goes beyond just icky behavior to disturbing. And that doesn’t even touch on the way Nora starts to act when she is around Patch. He acts creepy. He’s a jerk to her. He even tells her he’s a threat to her. Yet she constantly puts herself in danger to be with him. “Hush, Hush” is a bestseller, so lots and lots of girls are reading about Nora and Patch. I’ll also say the cover art is amazing, and screams out “pick me up”! A lot of people obviously have.

But that’s just one outstanding example of the “ick” factor. Sometimes the “ick” factor is almost under the radar. I hate to pick on Jackson Pearce, but the age difference of five years between the romantically involved characters in “Sisters Red” (he’s 21, she’s 16)… well, frankly, most people who see a 21 year old getting involved with a high school aged girl wonder what’s up. I like “Sisters Red”, but the age thing bugs me.

Now, I don’t see this in all YA books. The Generation Dead books by Daniel Waters are great, with strong protagonists and organically flowing plots… I don’t get that icky feeling (even though many of the characters are zombies… THAT’s an accomplishment}. So I know those books, the YA books I can feel good about reading and recommending, are out there. The question is, are they finding their way to those voracious YA-I-loved-Twilight readers? I would hate to think that a lack awesome cover art and marketing are keeping good YA books from getting into the hands of people who would love them, if they only knew.

Suggestions, anyone?

Posted on March 1, 2011 by , Reply

What Happened Next?

I just read Stuart Little to my five year old. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a book about a child who has the looks and size of a mouse, born into a normal family. Naturally there are many struggles in life when you are mouselike, and you see the world a little differently. Stuart’s family rescues a wounded bird, Margalo, who becomes his friend, but in the middle of the night, Margalo disappears without a word. Stuart decides to go on a journey and attempt to find Margalo. You’re probably wondering what this has to do with horror fiction. Here’s the thing- and I didn’t remember this- after many adventures, Stuart drives off. And that’s the story. “What happened next”? my son asked. Well, we don’t know. Did Stuart ever find Margalo? Did he ever go home? We can only imagine. E.B. White never wrote a sequel, although my son is convinced the sequel, “Stuart and Margalo”, is out there somewhere. After all, there are at least three Stuart Little movies.

There aren’t too many books that end this way anymore- books that end with the reader asking “Wait, what happened next”? These days if you have that question after you’ve turned the last page, you can be pretty sure there’s a sequel out there, especially in the YA market.

Do you prefer for your books to come in series, where you know a sequel will deal with the loose ends? Or do you get frustrated that everything seems to come in series that never end? What do you think about books that leave you with uncertainty at the end?

Posted on January 27, 2011 by , Reply

Guest post: I Heart Libraries by Melissa de la Cruz

I Heart Libraries

by Melissa de la Cruz

What author does not love libraries? Being an author means that you are immediately drawn to them. I’ve noticed that many writers even include libraries in their books. One of my favorite fictional libraries is the one Ben Hanscom creates in Stephen King’s “IT”. Ben grows up to be an architect, and he bases a lot of his work on the beautiful building that was a safe haven for a “nerd” like him. That always stayed with me. When I was in Seattle recently, and visited the public library designed by Rem Koolhass, I thought immediately of Ben, Stephen King, and the library in that book, I thought, “I wonder if Rem had read that book and if he was thinking about it when he designed it.” It’s a wonderful library, gorgeous, light-filled, orderly, well-stocked. A reader’s dream.

I was the kid who spent her lunch hours at the library. When I was in elementary school, I read every book in our little library. Every. Single. One. When I was done I re-read them. When we moved to America, my dad took us to the library every week, and we would marvel at the wealth of this country – a public library! For everyone! What riches! (Only private schools had libraries in the Philippines when I was growing up. My dad used to joke that if there was a public library it would be empty in an hour. Everyone would borrow books and never return them.)

The library was the place where I discovered my favorite writers, Stephen King, Anne Rice, Dean Koontz, Peter Straub, JRR Tolkien. I never even owned a copy of the Vampire Chronicles until I was in my thirties and could afford the special edition hardcover one. It still saddens me that I couldn’t afford to own those books, it’s like a memory loss, not having them on my shelves. So I’m really grateful that I was able to read them in the library.

In college, I worked at several libraries, both of them inspired the Blue Bloods books. At Columbia I worked at the main library, at Butler, in the reference department. The Columbia library is one of the largest libraries in the world, and there are six million books in the stacks – in the basement – that aren’t even out in the lending shelves. If you want a copy of a book from the stacks, you have to request it, and one of the library workers like me, would take this rickety cage elevator (okay so maybe it was a normal elevator but it felt like a cage elevator) down into the deepest dungeons (I mean floors) of the library and retrieve it. It was kind of creepy and it freaked me out a little, being alone underground, hunting for books. It inspired the Blue Bloods’ Repository of History, and the core-scrapers, upside-down skyscrapers built underground. Then I worked at an Art History library, where I steamed blueprints and archival material. I spent a summer steaming Stanford White’s blueprints. Pretty cool. In my new book, Witches of East End, one of my characters is a librarian and an archivist. Libraries are in my blood, and in my books.

Monster Librarian note: Check out our review of Melissa de la Cruz’s latest Blue Bloods novella Bloody Valentine.

Posted on January 27, 2011 by , 3 comments
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