Since this is the last blog . . .

I will go all out and (gasp) answer both questions. Maybe someone, someday will find this obscure blog and realize how special children's and young adult literature is. To all those nonbelievers out there, you can't have read the books we did this semester. I already discussed the idea of children's and young adult literature as being lesser in my first posting, but one can never praise amazing authors enough. While I never completely abandoned young adult literatue, for the past couple of years I have been reading mostly British and American literature from way back when. Maybe that's why I tend to talk about works of literature in the past tense. The novels we read took me back to my past as well as bring me to the present. Some of the authors we read -Avi, Lois Lowry- were reminders of books I enjoyed as a child. However, the books we read this semester were completely new to me. I found myself enjoying them not as light reads but works of literature that are revealing and often revolutionary.

There are two books we read this semester that I won't forget. How can I, after I actually went out and spent the money to buy them after I read borrowed copies from the library? The first one is Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret. When I first saw the book on library displays after it won the Caldecott Medal, I looked at the cover and thought, "I'll pass." It looked like it would be a bright, crazy story about a boy who made things, perhaps things that got him in trouble. I ended up having to read it for class anyways. And am I glad I did. This is one of the most amazing books I have laid eyes on. The story itself is full of interesting facts that most people wouldn't know, yet it is made accessible through the story of a young boy. The book, though, is ingenius. The way Selznick picked up the story in pictures like movie slides then swtiched to text was seamless and unique.

The other book I can't get over is Lois Lowry's The Giver. I don't know how I missed it as a child, but I don't think it lost any of its effect when I read it as an adult. I was absorebed into Jonas's world. The story provoked so many thoughts and questions that I will probably still be thinking about many years from now. The distopia of the utopia was done in a way that, while we have to agree that Jonas's world is no utopia, it turns our world upside down and makes us question those same values that make the "community" so horrifying.

These are only two examples of a long list of young adult books that we read in class and I read outside of class that show the greatness of their writers. Hugo Cabret is truly a great piece of work that required a lot of skill and talent. I don't even think that "skill" and "talent" completely describe what Selznick had to have had in able to think of, let alone create, this book. There have to be better words somewhere, but I can't think of a fitting one right now. The same goes for Lowry, an incredible writer whose books, especially The Giver, continue to provoke and affect readers today. I would love to know what she was thinking when she wrote The Giver. People who create such works cannot be "inferior" writers. They just chose a different and equally important medium to let out their genius. Granted, there are some books I think young people could do without (*cough* Twilight saga), but works like the ones we read in class flood the gateway of literature and beyond with rich ideas. Just imagine how much thought has to go into books like the ones mentioned if we are able take so much from them. If people like us consider the authors of children's and young adult books as inferior writers, what do we call ourselves?