It’s Monday, and I’m reading Code Name Verity

Posted on by Ann Stampler

Yes, I know that it’s brilliant and I know that I should have read it long ago, but I approach World War II books with trepidation. Because, there somewhere, even at the distant edge, the Holocaust is going to be looming. My European family didn’t have survivors. My husband and children are here because my husband’s parents managed, against all odds, to survive. And even when the work of art with the Holocaust — front and center or lurking at the edge — does a wonderful job, the horror of it always feels candy-coated. For a long time, the only things I’d read about it were well-researched non-fiction or first person survivor accounts; no Life is Beautiful or Boy in Striped Pajamas for me.

So here we have Code Name Verity, and I am cracking open the cover. I want to read this book, and I’m not going to let doctrinal rigidity stand in the way of me reading it. Here goes.

236 Days To Afterparty + a Guess the Name Giveaway

Posted on by Ann Stampler

All right, so I’m obsessed. I am counting down the days to the release of Afterparty on January 7th. And I can tell it’s really happening, the book is actually finished because 1.) my wonderful editor sent me the book jacket, which is completely gorgeous, and 2.) I am starting to collect book-related swag for giveaways. Swag in the half weird/half charming category, such as a very cute (Well, I think it’s cute!) handbag with an English Bull on it because (Afterparty hint #1) there are two English Bulls in the book. These are male bull dogs named after a famous set of male buddies. Signed poster for the first person who guesses their names before the ARC’s come out!

Happy Update: The Blogger Who Excluded Submissions of “Gay and Lesbian” Books Has Changed Her Mind

Posted on by Ann Stampler

Last month, I blogged about my decision not to participate in the blogaversary of an otherwise fine YA blogger who said she didn’t want to receive submissions of books she characterized as gay and lesbian. I felt, and feel, very strongly that it’s wrong to offer support to a blog with a philosophy I consider hurtful to a segment of our YA community that already has enough on its plate.  And in a broader sense to all of us.

Well, I’m happy to say that when I visited the blog recently, the restriction was no longer there.

I have no idea what lead the blogger to change her mind. I hope that when she gave her policy some thought, and considered how hurtful it could be, she realized that this was inconsistent with her own values. I hope that she will be open to reviewing books that she rejected previously. And I am very happy for her, for her blog, and for the YA community.

Things I Need to Know For Writerish Reasons

Posted on by Ann Stampler

I am down to the wire with the final, final finishing touches of Afterparty. I have been so immersed in this book, especially for the past year ,that for a while @GabbyGardiner‘s tweets stopped because Emma’s voice was so entrenched in my head I could barely speak as myself half the time. So here we are, on the brink of the new book, and here are some things I’d love to know soon, as in yesterday:
1.) Have Chinese characters devolved into the realm of the cliche for male tattoos? (Unless, of course, you’re Chinese.)
2.) Can English bulldogs tunnel under fences or are they entirely the wrong shape?
3.) And as long as we’re talking about dogs, has the Airedale lapsed into such unpopularity that it is virtually extinct?
4.) How many times can a person watch Tickle Penguin on YouTube without being declared officially insane?
5.) If you smoke Gitanes, is the singular a Gitanes (with an “s”) or a Gitane (without the “s”) or do I just go with godawful French cigarette?
Given my propensity for somewhat tongue in cheek posts over at Novel in the Oven, I want say: Not kidding. If you know, do tell.

What I’m Not Participating In: The Blogaversary of a Blog That Won’t Review “Gay and Lesbian” Books

Posted on by Ann Stampler

Where It Began

Last week I was invited to donate a book or swag to the blogaversary of a YA blog. Anyone who has ever heard me expound on the subject knows I love YA blogs and bloggers (whether or not they love me back; I love the passion for books and the vitality of the community). This blog seemed lovely and the blogger terrific.

But as I went through the blog, I was struck by the fact that the YA books she doesn’t want are listed as “horror” and “gay and lesbian.”

And as much as I’d love to support the blogger and the blog, I just can’t go there.

I grew during in a period when it was largely illegal to be gay or lesbian in this country. You could be arrested; you could lose your job; you could lose custody of your children. This extended past the era when African-Americans were consigned to the back of the bus, and it was legal for a family in Syracuse, New York to refuse to sell my family a house because we were Jewish.

To me, the battle that gay and lesbian Americans are fighting for equal rights and recognition in this country is the contemporary frontier of the Civil Rights movement. And this struggle extends to books with gay and lesbian characters which are right now, at this moment, being banned from some of our libraries and schools.

Am I suggesting that this blogger is a homophobe who wants to push gay men and lesbians back into the closet? No, I don’t know the motivation behind her decision. But when I think of gay or lesbian youth in the YA book community coming upon the “no gay or lesbian books” proviso, it makes me very sad.

So, I’m backing away. Just as I would back away from a blog that won’t review books it labels as African-American, or Jewish, or Hispanic, I am backing away from this blog.

The question of whether a book in which a protagonist’s gayness, or Jewishness, or Blackness is part of a whole separate genre is a bigger question, one that my family has been debating at the dinner table for the past couple of days. For a while I felt that I had to resolve the question before I could write this post. But in the final analysis, where you come down on this question doesn’t really have a bearing on my decision.

Because we’re not really talking about a genre here, like the horror books the blogger doesn’t choose to review. We are talking about marginalizing and excluding people, ghettoizing literature that touches upon or addresses their experience as a central theme. By supporting this blog, we are saying that excluding books that, to a greater or lesser degree, probe the experiences of gay and lesbian teens is okay with us.

It’s not okay.

And I know, it’s just a bookmark, a signature, a paperback book. But it’s also complicity with something that is unacceptable to me and I hope to my YA book community. I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that this blogger will open her blog to books that reflect the experience of the entire YA community. Until she does, I, for one, am not coming to the party.