Strange, maybe, to post in my reading log about a book I have not read - have not even started reading or, honestly, decided whether or not I will bother to read - but it was on my mind.
I'm not a fan of Veronica Roth, but I can't stop thinking about how she keeps writing about what happens after the end.
Her new book, Poster Girl is, like Divergent, in conversation with The Hunger Games. (It's quite generous to say Divergent is "in conversation" with The Hunger Games; more like, it is a shameless trend-chasing knockoff that didn't understand any of the nuance in an admittedly rather shallow premise.) But, I mean, Poster Girl is about what happens to the Mockingjay (ahem) after the end, if the Mockingjay worked for the Capitol. It's not particularly subtle and I have nothing against books in conversation with bestsellers; I'm picking up an old project again that I pitch as "It's The Princess Diaries but if the diarist's best friend was the princess and everyone was queer."
It's very interseting to me that, after Carve the Mark was not very well recieved, she's written books about what you do after you've already lived out your adventure. She published a poorly written bestselling book at, what, 22? and now she has to live the rest of her life knowing she's already peaked. Carve the Mark got so-so reviews and she got called out for the chronic pain thing.
… and then she wrote Chosen Ones, which is onstensibly about ex-YA fantasy protagonists living out the rest of their lives but, oops, they have to (get to) go on another adventure! (I was very disappointed and I made the same observation about Roth's existential "now what?" when I wrote about it.)
I haven't really enjoyed any of the books I've read by her but her oeuvre, itself, a rich text.
edit: Why did nobody mention that Carve the Mark is a Star Wars knockoff? I mean, "[T]he theory is that the current, which is this kind of energy that is present in the galaxy, that it flows through each person…" Oh, the Force? That? (I know Star Wars did not invent this idea - it's basically qi - but given Roth's history with, uh, borrowing… )
Outside of work, I haven't been reading much lately. I wrote about that a bit on Dreamwidth (🔒) but it's not the point of this post, merely an observation and a statement about why the last time I wrote about a book I've actually read (instead of speculating about a book I have not read) was over a month ago. I suppose I could (should) be writing about the books I read for story time, too.
I took three books home from my work library over the weekend, from a series called Suddenly Royal. It's published by Darby Creek, an imprint of Lerner Books - so, intended for the school library market, not the consumer market. This isn't a series you'd probably see in, say, a Barnes & Noble. (Remember those?)
It's a high-low series, a concept I've seen called high interest-low ability/high interest-low level/high interest-low readability*, but basically, it's that thing where it's for older readers (Grades 6-12, according to the website) but written at an easier reading level (Grade 4) for struggling/reluctant/pick-your-terminology readers. (I don't mean to be dismissive of the contradictions and tensions around the terms we use for students who are not reading at the expected level for their grade. I don't know much/anything about this, which is a failing on my part as an educator.) It seems to be written by real people (presumably, work-for-hire), not an amalgamation like Carolyn Keene or Daisy Meadows.
I started with Next in Line, by Vanessa Acton, and I assumed she wrote the whole series until I was updating my reading log and I noticed that Royal Treatment is by a K. R. Coleman. There's also a Raelyn Drake involved in the series, although we don't have any books by Drake.
Honestly, Next in Line and Royal Treatment read so similarly that they could have been written by the same person. There's no flavor. For some reason, I find that easier to excuse when it's "Daisy Meadows," but annoying when it's different authors writing in the same series. Give me a little spice! Honestly, I assumed Vanessa Acton was a psuedonymous collective (à la Carolyn Keene) until I read the bio, which says, She "is a writer and editor in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She enjoys stalking dead people (also known as historical research), drinking too much tea, and taking long walks during her home state’s annual three-week thaw." It's a little too cheeky to be a fake person although I suspect it is a fake name - her only books are with Lerner.
Obviously, there is some restriction if you're trying to write at a Grade 4 reading level but here's a random selection of recommended books for fourth graders: Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, by Judy Bloom (Lexile: 470); The Girl Who Drank the Moon, by Kelly Barnhill (640), The Crossover, by Kwame Alexander (750). Next in Line is 650, so higher than Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, about the same as The Girl Who Drank the Moon, and OK, significantly lower than The Crossover, so maybe that wasn't the best example. However, no one would accuse The Girl Who Drank the Moon (640, vs 650) of being bland, dry, or flavorless. It's a Newbery Medal winner! It is absolutely possible to write at a fourth grade reading level** and write well.
What if students are reluctant to read because the books they can access are horrible? I had the same problem with the Biff, Chip & Kipper books we used when I was a first grade teacher's assistant. I hated those books; they're insulting. I learned to read because I was entranced by the beautiful Guinevere in Young Guinevere, a book that was way out of my "reading level." Onbiously, that's an N of 1 (me), but I don't think it's wrong to say that struggling readers deserve high quality books.
I admittedly don't know much about the high/low book market. I've always worked at schools that prioritized high level readers and, honestly, often kicked out kids who didn't live up to their standards. (I think that's shitty and I had 0% input on the practice.) I get more requests for low/high readers, which I don't think exist? Books written at a Grade 6 reading level for a first grader who can read at a very high level for their age but isn't emotionally ready for (or interested in) higher level content.
So I've spent the morning reading a bit about that, wondering about it as a librarian and as a writer. Could I write a book like this? It seems arrogant to assume that I could, as someone with no background in controlled vocabulary books - as a reader or as a writer. It's probably like picture books, where it's actually quite difficult to pull off such a seemingly simple sentence structure. (Look at this entry; do I seem like someone who can write concisely?)
Maybe that's what made me pick up the series; it's totally different than anything I've read and I guess I've burned myself out on microhistory audiobooks. I've read the good ones and my standards are too high now. (I've written about this before.) So I tried something new, and I picked this specific series because it's in conversation with/a knockoff of The Princess Diaries - a poorly written (imho) but culturally significant book that I can't stop thinking about and am constantly mulling over my own retelling of. Unlike (I hope), the "Not-a-Princess" book (as I call my WIP), Suddenly Royal isn't really saying anything to or about The Princess Diaries, just, uhm, "borrowing" the concept and writing it at a simpler level.