| From
the March/April 2004 issue of The Horn Book Magazine
Editorial
:-( !?
 oing
through the carts of new books last week, Martha Parravano and I
were struck pink. It was like walking down the Barbie aisle of Toys
“R” Us. The color assailed us from the shiny covers
of new readers' copies of chick-lit-lite: YA novels related in a
breathless logorrheaic rush of diary entries, CAPITAL LETTERS, emoticon-laden
text- and instant-messages, quizzes, and e-mails that allegedly
capture what it’s like to be a girl today. While I think that
the generalized theme of female empowerment is a worthy one, the
giddy loquaciousness of these books subverts their message. (I’m
grumpily reminded of Fran Lebowitz’s remark that “women
who insist upon having the same options as men would do well to
consider the option of being the strong, silent type.”) And
is it really true that boys, bra size, and “feeling good about
yourself” are what it’s all about? Girls — and
boys — who read know better.
But while we all regularly note and tolerate with
varying degrees of patience the passing trends of popular fiction,
it’s worth remembering that literary fiction has its fads,
too. We had the second-person present-tense thing going there for
a while; a greater toehold has been claimed by the free-verse novel.
This form has had its successes (Make Lemonade, Locomotion),
but too often it seems like a lazy default, aiming for spare but
settling for sparse.
In haranguing one kind of book for talking too
much, and another for saying too little, I suppose there is no pleasing
me. But just when I thought enough, already, two books
showed up and restored some of my faith. Direct your gabby girls
to Jaclyn Moriarty’s The Year of Secret Assignments;
lovers of moody poetry should head for Kevin Major’s Ann
and Seamus. Moriarty’s book has a brain and assumes that
readers do, too; Major understands the echoing space that can be
found between the lines of verse. Both books are reviewed in this
issue.
• • •
Listen up: we’re expanding our audiobook
review coverage to every issue, and those reviews can now be found
grouped together at the end of the book review section.
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