YA Wednesday: Poor Holden, YA Propriety, and Pullman's 40
In this edition of YA Wednesday, we link to a lot of books, many of them not YA at all.
Caulfield too tame for most American teens?
There's been a fair amount of buzz about Anne Trubek's article in GOOD magazine about J.D. Salinger's 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye. Trubek, professor of English at Oberlin College, merely suggested that it may be time for Holden Caulfield to step down as the go-to representative for disaffected teens. 
If you've been following this, or if you just plain love Catcher and want to get in on the discussion, it's definitely worth listening to Trubek's comments from NPR's Weekend Edition (found via the GOOD blog):
"I don't have a problem with The Catcher in the Rye, but it's often assigned as the end-of-the-year, as it were, contemporary novel that's supposed to resonate with high school students.... It was written in 1951, and I think we should start looking at what novels might do a better job of reaching high school students and talking about their experiences."
Here are some of the titles she nominated as possible replacements:
Freaks and Geeks (oh, wait, that's not a novel)
Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson
Drown, Junot Diaz
Project X, Jim Shepard
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
These are all great, but I don't see a solid Caulfield replacement here yet. Thoughts? Other suggestions?
John Green discusses Catcher
Back in May, Tom posted about YA author John Green's video projects on YouTube with his brother Hank. In the midst of all this Salinger talk, I found this video of Green discussing The Catcher in the Rye...
There are several video responses, most of which are unrelated to the book. At least one teen here was totally able to relate (although she says "Colden Haufield," a mistake she highlights.)
No uncrossable lines in YA?
Green also had an interesting post yesterday on his blog responding to complaints about sexuality in his book Looking for Alaska, particularly to one reviewer who asks "Are there no uncrossable lines in YA anymore?"
"In fact, all that matters is why and how the line gets crossed. See, for instance, the sex in Coe Booth's brilliant new novel Kendra, which is so incredibly sad that you cry while reading it; sex is a vitally important part of the book..."
(A review of Green's forthcoming Paper Towns was included yesterday on ALAN's Picks for September.)
What would a YA author take to a deserted island?
My favorite thing about His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman's list of 40 favorite books, blogged in a few places this week, was his detailed description of how he came up with the list. This tidbit was especially fun (confirming again that Brits are way more into poetry than Americans)...
The hardest area to select from was poetry. How could I leave out Coleridge? Wordsworth? Keats? Or Donne, Marvell, Herbert? Or - and so on. In a list of 4,000, of course, they would be there automatically. But then they'd be there in everyone's 4,000.
And, if you haven't read the list yet, here are some highlights (and by highlights, I mean books that are also my favorites, plus some kids' books that seemed particularly exciting):
Complete Poems, Elizabeth Bishop 
The Anatomy of Melancholy, Richard Burton
The Complete Fairy Tales, the Brothers Grimm
The Castafiore Emerald, Herge
Finn Family Moomintroll, Tove Jansson
Lavender's Blue, edited by Kathleen Lines (nursery rhymes)
The Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft
The Complete Maus, Art Spiegelman
The Magic Pudding, Norman Lindsay
The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James
Quick links...
Freakonomics offers some interesting teen pregnancy stats and facts.
Paper Cuts points readers to "Two weeks of Friday Night Lights," an ongoing discussion of H.G. Bissinger's book about high school football on The Quad, the Times college sports blog.
The Guardian reports on the shortlist for the 2008 Booktrust teenage prize in "Sharp words: knives out in teenage prize shortlist." 
Notable Fine Lines from the last couple of weeks: Lizzie Skurnick on Bridge to Terabithia and on her insistence that a friend read the book I remember most vividly from my pre-teen reading years, Flowers in the Attic. (Hmm. Maybe I shouldn't admit that.) --Heidi
Christine Farro on September 04, 2008 at 09:57 AM
Here in Lompoc,CA, the alternative high school recommends books like House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros. They require students to read Viktor Frankel's Man's Search for Meaning. While Frankel's book is also from the 50's, it is still relevant today.