Angieville

R etro Friday   is a weekly meme hosted here at Angieville and focuses on reviewing books from the past. This can be an old favorite, an under-the-radar book you think deserves more attention, something woefully out of print, etc. Everyone is welcome to join in at any time! I include roundups from participating bloggers in my post every week. I never would have discovered this hidden gem if it weren't for my booktwin Martha  reviewing it so glowingly a few years back. Not only had I not heard of Garret Freymann-Weyr  before, but I'm pretty sure neither of these covers would have induced me to pick it up. Seriously, what in the world were they going for with the one on the left? I just...I have no idea. But I know they missed. And the one on the right is sort of cute, but really not indicative at all of what's inside. So. The Printz Honor award, on the other hand, always draws my eye as I've been quite impressed with the majority of  Printz picks over the last f...

A couple of days ago Kmont over at Lurv a la Mode posed the question: What's with all the crappy parenting in YA novels? I had to smile when I read her thought-provoking post as it's an old, familiar trope of young adult literature--remove the parental units and BANG! You've got free reign. It makes sense to a certain degree, right? In the absence of authority figures and/or the adults in the teen's life most likely to object to all manner of shenanigans, your protagonist can get up to scads of mischief, thus providing the crisis/plot/problem what have you. Better yet, kill off or mysteriously disappear one parent and you've got some juicy material for teen angst and conflict. This is an old trope stretching back to when orphans were prime protagonists in young people's literature and I do think things have changed over the years. But it does seem to still hold true in a large section of YA fantasy novels, since a kind, involved, non-self absorbed set of paren...