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All tagged Verse Week 2014
I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump since last year when I read Love and Leftovers for this very blog. So imagine my surprise when I managed to finish Far From You by Lisa Schroeder in nearly two hours. The novel flows together so seamlessly that I was surprised when it ended.
Like it or not, our kids take drugs, self-harm, think about suicide, get abused, suffer from mental illness, are victims and perpetrators of violence, and lose friends. All of these dark topics are suitable for young readers, but may need to be presented in subtler ways than in adult literature. Verse is a way of achieving that. Its reliance on metaphor, sparse language, and contained form allow these issues to be explored without overwhelming the readers with heaviness.
Take sex for example. Not a dark theme (it’s fun and healthy!) but one that frequently raises eyebrows in relation to books for young readers. But again, like it or not, young people, teenagers, even pre-teens have sex drives and sex lives. Many YA books have a “fade to black” policy when it comes to sex. Characters might have sex, but rarely are the scenes depicted in any detail.
You ever laughed so hard
nobody in the world could hurt you for a minute,
no matter what they tried to do to you?
Viginia Euwer Wolff's groundbreaking novel, written in free verse, tells the story of fourteen-year-old LaVaughn, who is determined to go to college--she just needs the money to get there.
When she answers a babysitting ad, LaVaughn meets Jolly, a seventeen-year-old single mother with two kids by different fathers. As she helps Jolly make lemonade out of the lemons her life has given her, LaVaughn learns some lessons outside the classroom.
Fan Art didn’t start off that way. It began as a short story in verse, and later turned into a proposal for a novel. But the day after my editor said, “Yes, we’d be interested,” I received a second phone call. In order to reach more readers, Fan Art was not to be a novel in verse. I understood. A LGBT love story and a verse novel was narrowing the market too much.
Viola leaves war-torn Sudan for a new life in the United States. Such a great story of strength and loss of innocence. Beautiful cover! Beautiful writing!
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
This week's Recommendation Tuesday is part of our Verse Novel Week celebration! View all of the past recommendations over here.
And the pomegranates,
like memories, are bittersweet
as we huddle together,
remembering just how good
life used to be.
— Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall
Under the Mesquite is one of those books that will just suck you into its words and rhythm, and the verse format adds so much to that feeling as Garcia McCall weaves together Mexican American immigrant Lupita's story of family, loss and hope.
THE CROSSOVER is the kind of book I never would've picked up when I was younger because I didn't like sports. There is the sports story promised by the cover, all leading up to a big championship game, but it is far from the only plotline. Nor is it the most important plotline. That's reserved for all the family stuff.
Not only do we chat extensively about writing in verse and some of our favorite elements of verse novels, but because Lisa is as big of Friday Night Lights fan as I am (true story: I found out about Lisa's books because she wrote an awesome post about FNL that the entire world sent me), we chat about that show a bit as well. As one does...
Lisa Schroeder is the author of six teen novels (four of which are fully in verse, one that's half verse and another that includes poetry as an important storytelling device) including THE BRIDGE FROM ME TO YOU; I HEART YOU, YOU HAUNT ME and CHASING BROOKLYN; and the Oregon Book Award finalist THE DAY BEFORE.
To folks who aren't verse novel enthusiasts, it may seem strange that we devote so much page space, as well as time and effort, to spreading the word about a specific format of novel. And, I guess, it kind of is weird.
Verse novels are often the red-headed stepchildren of book formats. If you peruse the Goodreads reviews for verse novels, they're peppered with complaints about the very existence of the format, and many readers seem to expect verse novels to prove themselves at a higher level than those written in prose.
We've already got an extra-special podcast episode planned with an extra-special Guest of Awesome and we're spotlighting some wonderful verse novels from a number of genres. As we did last year, we're opening up Verse Novel Week for guest contributions.
So, if you'd like to write about your favorite verse novel, sign up to read a verse novel for the first time or if you're a verse novelist, fill out the form below and we'll be in touch to coordinate!
