Faith and Fiction Roundtable: Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker

Lacey Anne Byer is a perennial good girl and lifelong member of the House of Enlightenment, the Evangelical church in her small town. With her driver's license in hand and the chance to try out for a lead role in Hell House, her church's annual haunted house of sin, Lacey's junior year is looking promising. But when a cute new stranger comes to town, something begins to stir inside her. Ty Davis doesn't know the sweet, shy Lacey Anne Byer everyone else does. With Ty, Lacey could reinvent herself. As her feelings for Ty make Lacey test her boundaries, events surrounding Hell House make her question her religion (summary from cover).

The Faith and Fiction Roundtable hosted by My Friend Amy recently read and discussed the YA novel Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker, which focused on perennial good girl Lacey's coming-of-age during her church's annual production of a Hell House. I had a hard time relating to Lacey as a character, and her voice never really rang true for me. I also found the characters a little flat and one-dimensional, especially the adults like Lacey's father, the church's children's pastor. However, I appreciated that Walker left Lacey's spiritual journey open-ended at the conclusion of the book. Faith is such a complicated and personal thing, and I think we'll never have all the answers or our doubts fully resolved this side of heaven. This questioning made Small Town Sinners seem much more authentic.

I personally have never been to a Hell House, but I remember being absolutely terrified after hearing about one my friends went to when we were in middle school (one room involved a young girl screaming for her mother and being told she'd never see her again or something to that effect). I appreciated that this book brought up the subject, because I think hell is a topic that many people have differing opinions about and often find hard to comprehend, myself included. Rob Bell's recent book Love Wins caused a stir when it was released because of his interpretation that Hell is caused by bad choices and that God sentencing someone to Hell for rejecting Him goes against His loving nature. I've found a lot of comfort reading the writings of C.S. Lewis and Dr. Tim Keller on the subject, and of course the Bible. The idea of a Hell House being such a big part of a church's outreach and mission was definitely interesting to think about, whatever flaws I may have found with the writing and characters.

Check out some of the other Roundtable members' thoughts: Heather, Amy, Ronnica, Carrie K, WordLily,
Julie

Source: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Meghan Gurdon, I Agree With You!

I'm a little late joining in the fray relating to Meghan Cox Gurdon's June 4 article about the state of YA fiction, "Darkness Too Visible," but with the author releasing a follow-up article today, I felt like offering my take on it (for the record, I am not a parent or in the YA demographic, I'm just speaking from my own experience as someone who cares about what the kids in my life are reading.) The original article, where Gurdin argued that "teen fiction can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is", caused an uproar and spawned the #YAsaves hashtag on Twitter, where opponents have written things like "Thank you to my mother 4 respecting me enough as a kid to leave me alone w books & choose 4 myself" and "I find some YA books 2 dark&depressing 2 read myself.My 13-yr-old loves them.Parents don't always know what's good for their kids."

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a stable, loving family, where reading was encouraged and I didn't have to grow up too fast. I understand that for many teenagers, this is unfortunately not the case, and some may find solace in dark YA literature that mimics their problems. I'm certainly not advocating censoring books with darker themes, or making the generalization that all YA books dealing with tough topics like bullying or rape are bad. I just disagree with the tone that many of these books take, and I'm not sure that it really helps struggling teens to read books where the protagonists are going through cruel and unnatural experiences with sex, alcohol and drugs. As Gurdin says,

"For families, the calculus is less crude than some notion of fictional inputs determining factual outputs; of monkey read, monkey do. It has more to do with a child's happiness and tenderness of heart, with what furnishes the young mind. If there is no frigate like a book, as Emily Dickinson wrote, it's hardly surprising that parents might prefer their teenagers to sail somewhere other than to the lands of rape, substance abuse and mutilation."

The idea of protecting a child's "tenderness of heart" really struck me. When I think of the books that I read as a kid-- the Saddle Club series, Nancy Drew, Harry Potter, The Yearling-- I think of learning about friendship, bravery, ingenuity and working to overcome obstacles. That doesn't mean that these books were filled with characters free of trouble or heartache. Harry Potter certainly endured a great deal of sadness and loss, and even the saccharine Nancy Drew lost her mother when she was a baby. But these stories are uplifting and provide the comforting sense that even when things seem darkest, good triumphs and all is right in the world.

The bottom line is that this doesn't seem to be a trend that is going away any time soon. I just glanced over Publisher's Weekly's reviews of upcoming children's novels, and they include books featuring teen pregnancy, a teenage drug addict with no parents, a foster child in a group home, "grisly murders" and a teen "scarred and silent years after a childhood disappearance." That means it is up to parents to take responsibility for what their children read, and determine whether something will enrich their child's understanding of life, with all its good and bad aspects, or whether it only subvert it.

What do you think?

In Defense of the Sentimental

The Wall Street Journal ran a lovely article last Saturday on the enduring popularity of Maud Hart Lovelace's books from the 1940s and 50s, which have recently been re-released by Harper Perennial. I never read the books as a child, but this article and reviews by other bloggers has made me want to read them now. It also makes me long for more YA literature that doesn't contain vampires, mean girls, abusive parents, adolescent sex or other topics that seem currently to be popular. I know that young adults are not immune from troubles and that realistic and gritty books have an important role. But there's also something to be said for not exposing children and teens to weighty issues before their time. While Lovelace's novels might seem sentimental, Alexandra Mullen says that "one of the pleasures of reading Lovelace's work, in fact, is witnessing the many varieties of happy families and seeing in particular the kindness of fathers."

"Lovelace's books show people discovering how to be good, but the books themselves are not goody-goody or preachy. They focus on everyday matters, from playing with paper dolls to keeping a diary to feasting on midnight sandwiches in the kitchen with high-school friends. Within such activities, Lovelace reminds us, we learn a great deal about the ways of the world and the governing of our hearts." 

Did you read Lovelace's books when you were younger? Do you plan to read them now?

You can read the full article from the Wall Street Journal here.  

Review: Zan-Gah and Zan-Gah and the Beautiful Country by Allan Richard Shickman

Zan-Gah, seeking his lost twin brother in a savage prehistoric world, encounters adventure, suffering, conflict, captivity, and final victory. In three years hero passes from an uncertain boyhood to a tried and proven manhood and a position of leadership among his people. The prehistoric saga continues in Zan-Gah and the Beautiful Country... in this story, Zan's troubled twin brother, Dael, having suffered greatly during his earlier captivity, receives a ruinous new shock when his wife suddenly dies. His obsession is the destruction of the wasp men, his first captors, who dwell in the Beautiful Country. When he, Zan-Gah, and a band of adventurers trek to their bountiful home, they find that all of the wasp people have died in war or of disease. The Beautiful Country is empty for the taking, and Zan's people, the Ba-Coro, decide to migrate and resettle there. (summaries from goodreads)

I liked that Shickman's writing was intelligent and not dumbed down or gimmicky like a lot of current YA novels seem to be. Instead it uses a mix of action and multi-dimensional characters to pull the reader in. When Zan and the other members of the tribe are preparing to trap a lioness in the first novel, you can feel the ratcheting up of tension as the drums beat and the animal circles the ring of people. In Zan-Gah and the Beautiful Country, Shickman makes you feel Dael's anguish and the pitch of battle as they fight the Noi warriors. However, sometimes I found the writing awkward, like when he describes the living conditions of the prehistoric humans in the first book:  "Darkness was indeed darker to them then, coldness colder, and the cruelest passions somehow crueler and more deeply passionate." This wordiness sometimes worked against the narrative pull of the story.

As a character, Zan is extremely honorable and heroic and always tries to do the right thing. Boys will enjoy how independent he is and how he manages to take care of himself and his friends, and will dream about killing a lion single-handedly, catching fish with their bare hands or fighting off enemies with a weapon of their own imagining. Zan also is able to deal with serious issues with a wisdom beyond his years, like a brother deeply scarred by the loss of his wife and many years in captivity. I thought it was fascinating to have one of the characters struggling with what would now be diagnosed as PTSD. Dael's trauma added a deeper level to the story than just Zan fighting off animals and competing tribes.

Author Allan Richard Shickman

Rating: Zan-Gah and Zan-Gah and the Beautiful Country: 4 out of 5 stars for both. I would recommend these books to anyone who is looking for intelligent and exciting YA novels for a 10-15 year old boy. The violence is not gratuitous and the action will keep them reading past their bedtime, and it tackles issues like trauma and loss in a thoughtful and age-appropriate way.
Source: I received these novels from Earthshaker Books in exchange for my honest review.

Review: The Healer's Apprentice by Melanie Dickerson

Rose has been appointed as a healer's apprentice at Hagenheim Castle, a rare opportunity for a woodcutter's daughter like her. While she often feels uneasy at the sight of blood, Rose is determined to prove herself capable. Failure will mean returning home to marry the aging bachelor her mother has chosen for her.When Lord Hamlin, the future duke, is injured, it is Rose who must tend to him. As she works to heal his wound, she begins to understand emotions she's never felt before and wonders if he feels the same. But falling in love is forbidden, as Lord Hamlin is betrothed to a mysterious young woman in hiding. As Rose's life spins toward confusion, she must take the first steps on a journey to discover her own destiny (summary from goodreads).

I had read lots of great reviews about this retelling of Sleeping Beauty and decided to check it out when it became available at the library. While The Healer's Apprentice is technically inspirational YA, that shouldn't deter adults from reading this updated fairy tale that comes complete with a handsome hero, evil villain and mysterious secret. Dickerson's writing transports you to medieval Saxony and I was soon completely involved in the story and the period details. Though I figured out the big secret by around Chapter 5, it was still very entertaining to read how the characters come to rely on God for assurance and direction on their way to a happy ending.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars for adults, 5 out of 5 for YA. Though I found Rose to be a little too passive and Lord Hamlin a little too perfect, that didn't spoil my enjoyment of an otherwise wonderful and engaging tale. I would have raved about this book when I was 15 and as a twenty-something I still really enjoyed it.

Source: library copy.