Angieville

Retro Friday is a weekly meme hosted here @ Angieville and focuses on reviewing books from the past. This can be an old favorite, and under-the-radar book you think deserves more attention, something woefully out of print, etc. Everyone is welcome to join in at any time! Goodness, I love old covers. What I wouldn't give to own that glorious, garish killer unicorn cover in the middle. It must be the original. I happen to own the cover on the left, with the boy and girl talking on a New York City park bench. I love it so. And it probably gets to the heart of the book best of each of these. But I adore the Square Fish reissue because it features the cathedral, and I long to have the entire Austin Family Chronicles in those editions as well. I gifted them to my niece not long back, and they are as lovely in person as they are on the screen. So. I am a longtime Madeleine L'Engle devotee. It started back when I was 10 with A Wrinkle in Time and it has stretched out over the y...

It can't be just me, right? These reissues Square Fish has done of Madeleine L'Engle's Austin Family Chronicles are simply beautiful. Enough so that I'm actually pretty impressed at my unusual display of self control at not having purchased them the day they came out! I love the title font, the simple, solid colors, and the detail of the window box art on each one. I love this series and have done so for a long time now. My copies of The Young Unicorns and A Ring of Endless Light are extremely worn well-loved from having been read so many times. I love the way the siblings grow up and change and love each other across the arc of this five-book series. I love emotional Vicky and precocious Rob, tragic Zachary and grey-eyed Adam. And the music. The way the Austins love and play and appreciate music. They are happy books for me. Are there series you love so much and over such a period of time that they're reissuing them? And do you find yourself with the urge to o...

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...