2008 Honor List—A Shifting of Paradigms
Every year after we have looked at the prize winners and the annual “Best Book” lists coming from the American Library Association committees and from editors of such publications as School Library Journal, Booklist, the New York Times, and Amazon.corn’s teen books, we settle down for a month or so of wonderful reading. What struck us about this year’s crop of most highly acclaimed books is how different the books are both from each other and from what many people Tag Heuer Replica assume to be “the genre” of young adult literature, i.e., first-person stories of kids in high school struggling with emotional problems.
As more and more people pay attention to young adult books—which for the moment are being described as a bright spot in an otherwise flat era of publishing—we see less agreement on what is “the best.” We were surprised, for example, that we did not see the book given the Printz Award by the American Library Association, Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta (Harper), on other lists. Books that did appear on other lists, but not often enough to make it into our top seven or eight, include Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels (Knopf), John Green’s Paper Towns (Penguin), and Nancy Werlin’s Impossible (Penguin). We assure you that these books—as well as many others published in 2008— are worth reading.
Schools teaching the Revolutionary War in integrated units are fortunate to have not only Laurie Halse Anderson’s Chains but also the more advanced Octavian Nothing books by M. T. Anderson. By the end of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume I: The Pox Party, we have watched Octavian survive the madness of the Novanglian College of Lucidity with all its experiments in rationality; endure the horrors of the Pox Party in which invited guests played cards, danced, and drank copious amounts of spirits while they inoculated themselves with contaminated matter from the pox-sores of the dead; and escape with the help of Dr. Trefusis to British-occupied Boston and safety.
Volume II opens with little that suggests safety. A boat that seems to promise safety offers no help until Dr. Trefusis in a scholarly gesture addresses the boatman as “Gentle Charon” and adds, “I have obols on my tongue.” The boatman, no scholar he, threatens violence until Octavian immediately translates, “My master offers you money,” and Octavian and Trefusis are on their way to Boston.
But Boston is a disappointment. Octavian seeks work without success, but a skill that Octavian learned at the Novanglian College of Lucidity saves them. At the school, Octavian’s ability with the violin had earned him praise. Now it provides a job in an orchestra playing for British troops.
Soon Boston comes under attack from Colonials. Then Octavian hears that Lord Dunmore is raising a troop of African soldiers, the Royal Ethiopian Regiment, to fight for the British. Octavian flees Boston for the safety and freedom of Norfolk, Virginia. But before long, Dunmore and his ilk seek shelter on their own ships, leaving those behind to deal with the smallpox epidemic.
On the ship, Octavian has temporary, if precarious, safety when he becomes friends with several other African Americans. However, he is generally something of an outsider—he is known as “Buckra”—a word for a white man because he can read, and reading is a trait belonging to white men. But even this temporary haven ends when Lord Dunmore sells half his regiment back into slavery.
Anderson is a master storyteller. His impressive accomplishments include the descriptions of the horrors of wars and contagions, his Tag Heuer Replica Watches portrait of the insanity of the Novanglian College of Lucidity, his picture of the Revolutionary War that is a terrible contrast to anything we learned in school, his creation of Octavian Nothing as a believable human that we care about, and his skill at writing in something that approximates an 18th-century style. Any work that includes words and ideas from philosophers John Locke and Thomas Hobbes is a start. Any work that mentions musicians still as significant as Arcangelo Corelli and William Boyce and Thomas Arne is worth reading. Finally, any work that mentions “Our Polly Is a Sad Slut” and reminds us of the joys of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera ought to be encouraged. (KLD)
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