Rome, 1683 – What do you get when you imprison an Englishman, a Jesuit, a courtesan, a guitarist, a castrato singer, a physician, an apprentice, and any number of spies together in a small hostel?

The occupants of the Donzello, an inn popular with travelers from all over Europe, are confined to their quarters following the mysterious death of one of the lodgers. Quarantined under suspicion of plague, the residents must convince the authorities on guard outside that they are not infected in order to regain their freedom. But everyone has a secret, and the inn is a hotbed of opposing allegiances and personal vendettas that mirror the political turmoil in the outside world.

Narrated by the inn’s oddly well-educated serving boy in journal form, the mystery story becomes ever more complicated as the serving boy investigates, leading him into Rome’s underground network of catacombs and beyond.

Meticulously researched, this book contains a fascinating take on European history and politics of the period. This historical suspense novel would appeal to readers who enjoy multi-layered storytelling, complex plot lines, and characters within unknown motives. One caveat, though: however realistic and well-researched it is most of the way through, some suspension of disbelief is necessary for some of the plot leaps.

Originally published in Italian and translated into English, the book caused controversy in Italy and was boycotted by the Italian media due to some of its conclusions about past popes. Of a planned seven-book series, the sequel Secretum is currently available in English.

Read-a-likes

Also written as a memoir, The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco takes place a few centuries earlier in Italy, exploring religious  and political intrigue in a monastery. A murder mystery of philosophical proportions, but so much more than a murder mystery.

The Baroque Cycle novels by Neal Stephenson deal with a similar period in history and beyond, following a cast of fascinating characters as they navigate the political theatre of Europe and America. Complex, layered, and impeccably constructed, with added mathematics, science, and alchemy for good measure. (Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World)

Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, this parody film follows ordinary losers and unlikely heroes as they bumble through the zombie apocalypse. Slapstick, comic violence, and hilarity ensues.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen
The original literary mash-up, this book combines Jane Austen’s classic social comedy with a pernicious zombie plague. With the Hertfordshire countryside overrun with undead, the battle-ready Bennet sisters must defend their land against the invasion, between marriage proposals, dancing, and sparring in the dojo. See also the prequel Dawn of the Dreadfuls  and sequel Dreadfully Ever After by Steve Hockensmith.

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, by Seth Grahame-Smith
Uncover honest Abe’s secret double life tracking down and slaying the bloodthirsty vampires of America. Pieced together through letters and diaries, this action-packed alternate history is a serious retelling with a side of absurd. See the book trailer and look out for the film in 2012.

Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story, by Christopher Moore
Forget about the recent spate of vampire love stories in books, TV, and film. Before all that came Bloodsucking Fiends, the story of newly-undead Jody and the night clerk who loves her. Set in San Francisco, Moore’s character-driven novel shows the underbelly with its vampires,  slackers, frozen turkey bowling, homelessness, AIDS, and murder. Other books in the trilogy are You Suck: A Love Story and Bite Me: A Love Story.

A lot of things have changed since I last posted in 2009. Here’s a summary:

Finished my MLIS in 2010
Moved to Scotland shortly after
Looked for jobs
Went to interviews
Got rejected
Repeated those last 3 over and over and over.
Having so far failed miserably at gaining employment in any field including libraries over a year after finishing my degree, I’m starting to feel a bit out of touch. So, what started as a blog for a class on Young Adult Materials that I took as part of my MLIS will now be some sort of book-materials-library- related blog that I plan to use to keep up with library/information things not restricted to YA. This blog’s new purpose is to help me stay relevant, explore new and old topics, connect with other library-types, and generally be an outlet of my wannabe-librarianness, and hopefully soon proper-librarianness. (No promises I won’t make up words and use sentence fragments. You have been warned.)

Expect book reviews, topical discussions, library visits, programming ideas, interviews, and anything else I come up with. These are exciting times, my friends.

Anyway, because I want to get in on the zombie debate without having read a YA zombie book, I’m turning again to webcomics. Big surprise.

Something I’ve observed in webcomics is that zombies have been pretty popular for a while: there’s a cliché about webcomics that as long as it has zombies, pirates, ninjas, robots, and/or monkeys it will be successful. There are lots of comics that exploit the full array; these days, usually ironically. In any case, zombies in webcomics, as in YA lit, aren’t always lumbering, incoherent monsters.

I’ve mentioned Dr. McNinja before, but in a couple of storylines, zombies feature prominently. The doctor’s mentor, Ben Franklin (yes, THAT Ben Franklin), has been thwarting death in interesting ways throughout the comic, and this time his antics spawn this awesome t-shirt of zombie Ben Franklin dancing to Thriller with a bunch of dead presidents. (Yeah, so now you all have insight into my sense of humour.) Anyway, these zombies are the incoherent, mostly dumb type, but some of them used to be ninjas, so you never know…

Way back in chapter 4 of Scary Go Round by John Allison, one of the main characters, Shelley Winters, spends some time as a zombie after being murdered and brought back to life through  demonic means. Zombie Shelley is intelligent, beautiful, and far from lumbering; she works for a shady import/export business, and staves off her cravings for brains by feasting on raw cabbages.  This is the whimsical zombie just trying to make it on her own; almost no blood and gore, but plenty of creepy underworld dealings. Scary Go Round is over, as previously mentioned, but the archives are available.

Radioactive Panda is an old one that finished a few years ago, but the archives are still online and it’s worth a peek. This one does actually have a radioactive panda, as well as mad scientists,  werewolves, and a pack of zombies. In this one the zombies are sidekicks that co-exist mostly peacefully with the rest of the gang, and cheerfully grave-rob in the name of mad science. Lots of cartoon guts and gore in this one.

There are loads of webcomics that feature zombies in major and minor roles, and I’m sure many of them would appeal to YAs. I think the variety of zombies out there is refreshing. There’s only so far you can go with slow, brain-munching, monsters, in my opinion, so it’s interesting to see the different ways people write and draw zombies.

First, Paulette shared a link to a neat blog post on webcomics for teens, after which I spent several hours reading (almost) the entire archives of Allan, one of the comics mentioned. This is a daily autobiographical comic drawn by a college student who started it while he was in high school. The strips are sometimes doodles, sometimes anecdotes, and sometimes wisdom, and it’s all strangely absorbing (hence my reading nearly the entire archives all at once). Definitely worth a look. I’m enjoying it, and I suspect it would appeal to both boys and girls.  The artist, Allan Wood, also has a fiction comic called Red Future; I haven’t had a chance to read much of it, but it looks kind of post-apocalyptic, and it’s a very different art style.

Next, El Santo from the Webcomic Overlook shared Awkward Zombie, also written by a college student who started it in high school. It has a lot of videogame content, and it may or may not actually involve zombies: looks like fun, although I’ll admit the gaming jokes mostly go way over my head. I thoroughly enjoy the creator Katie Tiedrich’s bio, which illustrates some of the reasons I had trouble finding teen comic artists–Googling “teen comic artists” doesn’t pick up things like, “Katharine Chandler Tiedrich XIV was born to wealthy Russian aristocrats in 1823, where she was trained in swordsmanship, honor, and how to play the accordion.” Excellent!

Anyway,  El Santo also shared this School Library Journal article on teen-oriented webcomics that mentions several organized by genre, which is worth reading for another perspective on the value of webcomics in libraries. It also mentions some resources to consult find webcomics.

Jules Verne vs. H.G. Wells – battle of the mini-dirigibles

Because the journal’s focus is on materials for school-age young people including children and young adults,  is not a strictly YA material resource, so librarians looking for YA information will have to navigate through the articles about child-specific topics.  This is easier to do on the website than in the print issues, because the website’s menus provide access to some of the information by age range, theme, or material type.

Age range is expressed in terms of school grade, since this publication has a school focus. This isn’t necessarily the most helpful to public librarians, but no way of assigned books to age ranges is foolproof. Unfortunately, in the Reviews drop-down, the “Adult Books for High School Students” category is the most specifically teen-oriented review category.  For YA books specifically, we’re stuck with “Grade 5 and Up.” I think the addition of another age range category or two to describe the reviews would be helpful for YA librarians. On the other hand, the age thing is always so subjective, so maybe adding more age indicators would actually confine the materials that YA librarians see. Am I overthinking this?

Despite the title of the journal, the articles and information contained are often applicable to public library settings as well as schools. The columns and articles also describe real-life conflicts and situations in school and public libraries. For example, the recurring column “Scales on Censorship“ gives suggestions and advice to librarians dealing with censorship issues. Librarians facing challenges can consult these articles to prepare for their own difficulties.

A particularly interesting feature in the November 2009 issue is the supplementary section on nonfiction series, which contains reviews of series about controversial world issues, environmental topics, earth sciences, and health among other things. Since these are reviewed by theme as opposed to grade level, not all the themes reviewed have any young adult titles included, which is unfortunate for YA librarians, but I like the fact that a spread of nonfiction series is covered.

While I like the fact that there are drop-down menus to narrow down topics, the website is a bit cluttered and does not have the most logical layout. It’s better than nothing, however: I accessed the latest issue online through Western Libraries as well as through the SLJ website to see if the experience was any different and I much prefered the website.

In any case, SLJ is a good resource for showing the spectrum of materials available to school-age youth. While it is not precisely focused on YA materials, it would still be useful: it isn’t necessarily a bad thing for youth services librarians to be aware of new resources for younger people, although they may be annoyed at having to sort through them.

Does anyone have any teen-created webcomics or other favourite webcomics suitable for young adults that you’d like to share? If so, leave a comment.

In a lot of ways, Airborn reminded me of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series – both include spunky female characters defying societal conventions in vaguely Victorian alternate histories, for example. Also, airships, adventure, and independent young people. Airborn is a little less dark and likely less controversial since it doesn’t deal with religious topics, but both are well worth reading. 

Airborn also has an impressive web presence: check out Airborn.ca - an interactive website for the Airborn series including maps of the airship Aurora, Benjamin Molloy’s journal, and information on the air pirates, in old-timey newspaper format.

There are two more books in the series: Skybreaker and Starclimber. 

Also, there are rumblings about an Airborn movie in 2011…

Part of the Genreflecting Advisory Series, Reality Rules is a concise reference source to nonfiction for teens. The book covers genres such as true adventure, true crime, memoirs and biographies, as well as materials on a range of subjects from history to sports to the arts. Each section has several chapters, and each chapter is further divided into more specific topics. Chapters begin with a definition of the genre or subject represented and notes on the appeal of this subject matter for readers.

Each chapter also includes fiction read-alikes to the nonfiction subjects. This is an interesting way of connecting readers with particular interests to other genres and formats of literature, and while the read-alike lists tend to be short, they may give some idea of where to begin.

The book annotations are generally several sentences long, giving enough space to adequately describe the book’s general content and appeal. Some entries have an additional paragraph attached called Now Try, which mentions a related book, to connect the reader to a book that further develops the subject or explores a different angle.  Awards are also mentioned, and there are several symbols geared towards various specific audiences, such as reluctant readers, or books for boys.

There are suggested age ranges accompanying each annotation, but this is where the guide gets confusing: M is for middle school, ages 6-8; J is for junior high, ages 11-13; H is high school, ages 14-18; and A denotes books that both teens and adults will enjoy. What happened to 9-10-year-olds? Perhaps a better question is why do 6-8 year-olds have a place in a guide to nonfiction for teens?

Many of the books have multiple age ranges suggested, for example MJ, or JH, but others include only M. Glancing through the book, I saw that some of the books marked M also include the symbol RR for reluctant readers, and I began to see some rationale in including books for much younger readers in this volume. Perhaps some of these titles are Hi-Lo books. However, there are several instances of books recommended for middle school readers that aren’t specifically aimed at reluctant readers.

Aside from the puzzling question of age ranges, something that is hard to pin down for YA materials in any case, this book would be a helpful resource for readers’ advisory and collection development for teen nonfiction. There are some sections in particular that I imagine would get dated pretty quickly, such as the Beauty & Style section of the How To chapter, but nonetheless it’s a good place to start.