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Goth Wear Optional
Oct. 5th, 2005 07:56 pmSo I’m supposed to review a teen book for the library web site for next month. I think, “I could review another fun fantasy, but maybe I should see if the teen librarian has any good ideas.” So I go ask her. Lesson One: Do not, I repeat, do not, ask the teen librarian for assistance picking a book unless you have at least 15-20 minutes to spend listening to her talk about at least one book on every shelf in the section. Lesson Two: Teen literature can be really awfully depressing. Oh, wait, I already knew lesson two. That’s why I so often stick to fantasy.
Chanda’s Secrets by Allan Stratton Note that this book won a Printz award, the highest ALA gives to literature for young adults. As the book opens, 16-year-old Chanda, who lives in an imaginary but representative sub-Saharan country, is out shopping for a coffin for her 18-month-old baby sister, which the family can’t afford. And events do indeed go downhill from there. Chanda’s best friend starts skipping school to turn tricks to earn enough money to bring her scattered family back together, her parents having died of AIDS, though no one will admit it. Her drunken stepfather, her third since her father and two brothers died, leaves and looks to be very ill. She suspects her mother may have AIDS, too. It tries to end hopefully, will Chanda working for people not to be so ashamed of AIDS that they refuse to try to prevent it or treat it. But really, I can only recommend this book to people – probably teens – who feel that they need to drown themselves in a very depressing and very real problems not their own.
I’m not even sure I want to go so far as to put this one on the web site.
Chanda’s Secrets by Allan Stratton Note that this book won a Printz award, the highest ALA gives to literature for young adults. As the book opens, 16-year-old Chanda, who lives in an imaginary but representative sub-Saharan country, is out shopping for a coffin for her 18-month-old baby sister, which the family can’t afford. And events do indeed go downhill from there. Chanda’s best friend starts skipping school to turn tricks to earn enough money to bring her scattered family back together, her parents having died of AIDS, though no one will admit it. Her drunken stepfather, her third since her father and two brothers died, leaves and looks to be very ill. She suspects her mother may have AIDS, too. It tries to end hopefully, will Chanda working for people not to be so ashamed of AIDS that they refuse to try to prevent it or treat it. But really, I can only recommend this book to people – probably teens – who feel that they need to drown themselves in a very depressing and very real problems not their own.
I’m not even sure I want to go so far as to put this one on the web site.
