Yes I know, I'm on a reading roll tonight! I have officially finished another book, Dead Girls Don't Write Letters. It was a very easy read, which really helps when I'm trying to read War and Peace at the same time. The book kept my interest and had me flipping pages so much so that I forgot I was at home and when my mother would attempt to talk to me I was so immersed in the book that I didn't even realize it. The ending was confusing but after letting it sink in for a few minutes I understood what was being conveyed.
I have noticed a trend in many of the adolescent books I've been reading. Most of them either mention other book titles or the importance or advantages of books in general. In this book the main character, Sunny, explains, "Books were my best friends. They are there when you need them, and when you shut them they stay closed." Though she is talking about books being the only friends because she was such an outcast because of her sister, Sunny really is foreshadowing the rest of the book.
Another thing I've noticed lately is I've been enjoying stories told from the perspective of a child rather than an adult. I'm not sure if it is because the simple language seems like a relief after reading Tolstoy and Homer or because the voice of a child makes it seem like a more relaxed work for me. Either way I realized that a child narrator really is a powerful thing that many authors have explored and something I really do enjoy.
What you just said about child narrators is so interesting. I was just writing about Anne Frank's voice to Kayleigh and comparing it to Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. While neither of those books was written to be YA literature, they're both classic texts in that genre because they speak from an innocence that adult narrators can rarely touch. Not everything is happy by any means, but those narrators are absent the edge that comes from adulthood. One of powers of YA-literature is that for our students, it speaks to where they are rather than where they will be. That's a powerful point to consider!
ReplyDeleteI actually just finished To Kill A Mockingbird and that is what got me thinking about the child narrator. I realized that having a child narrator opens up a lot of doors for the book to reach many different audiences. I have also read Anne Frank and I loved that book as well. I feel like having a child narrator puts me at ease because children say things how the see them. They may seem like unreliable narrators to some, but I feel that the naiveté of the characters tells the reader that we can trust them to tell the truth. I'm becoming more and more interested in the idea of the child narrator as time goes on!
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