I suppose I can go ahead and announce that What They Always Tell Us has won the Alabama Author Award for Young Adult literature for 2010. I found out a few months ago, and I still don’t know if there has been an “official” announcement. But the winners–in four categories–are posted on the Alabama Library Association’s web site.

I’m really excited to be honored by the fantastic librarians of my home state! It means a lot to me to be recognized in the state where I was born, where I was raised, and where I grew up. Plus, I’m excited to join a fantastic list of past winners including Watt Key, Angela Johnson, and John Green. Not bad company!

I am going to the convention next month to accept the award. I’m supposed to give a talk or a speech, so I better get to work on that!

A recent Google Alert informed me that What They Always Tell Us had made Lighthouse Policy’s “Library Book Alert” list. Um, so what is this list all about? Well, as I soon learned, it’s a list for parents warning them about all the books out there that “indoctrinate and seduce children into homosexual behavior.” Really?? Books can do that? One can be indoctrinated? See, I grew up reading books (not to mention) watching movies and TV shows that did nothing but promote heterosexuality. Men were always kissing women, sleeping with them. Boys loved girls, listed after them even–and vice versa. So sow come I’m not a big ole straight person? So how can something simple as a book make someone gay? It can’t, of course. But it can provide comfort to a teenager feeling confused, alone, and scared.

Here’s more from the list:

There is a deliberate campaign to indoctrinate and seduce children into homosexual behavior―and our schools have become ground zero. Homosexual behavior is dangerous and is far from normal. The following are some of the propaganda books that could be in your child’s school library. Their content includes homosexuality, bisexuality, pedophilia or bestiality.

Know what books your children are reading before they become victims of the plan to make them gay.

This would kind of hilarious and easily mockable if it weren’t also tragic. Tragic in that idiots like these people still exist in the world. Tragic because there are still thousands of confused gay kids out there who are told, day in and day out, that their feelings are “evil” or “wrong.” Told that their lives are worthless unless they deny their nature. Told that they will go to some fictional hell if they don’t renounce their urges and start fearing God and dating someone from the opposite sex.

The organization that puts out this list is called the Lighthouse Policy. They are “committed to shining light on darkness. The entire sexual orientation revolution has been been built upon lies.” Funny, because their entire organization is built upon lies. And I’m here to shine the light on their darkness. People are born gay–they don’t choose it. Why would someone choose to be persecuted daily by a sometimes strident dominant population? Kids need role models, gay kids even more so. They need to know that being gay is fine, healthy, natural, and wonderful. To use a cheesy rhyme, being gay is okay.

So, please check out this list if you want to get a nearly comprehensive list of all the worthy books out their that represent gay kids and gay people and the marvelous straight people who stand by them with humor, compassion, respect, dignity, and honesty. I’m actually proud to be on this list. Just like I’m proud to be gay. You can download it here.

Francisco X. Stork’s marvelous novel Marcelo in the Real World received universal acclaim when it was published late last year. It seemed to make every “Best of 2009″ list that I came across, and it was recently named a Top 10 Best Books for Young Adults by the Young Adult Library Services Administration.

The novel tells the story of Marcelo, a 17-year-old with a mild form of Asperger’s syndrome, one symptom of which is that Marcelo can hear music that no one else can hear. As the summer before his senior year of high school begins, his father, an attorney, wants Marcelo to work at his law firm–rather than with the Haflinger ponies at the special school that Marcelo usually attends. But Marcelo’s father insists he get some real-world experience. More than that, after the summer he wants Marcelo to spend his senior year at a “normal” school in the fall. None of this pleases Marcelo.

At the law firm, he meets Jasmine, a beautiful and feisty coworker who runs the mail room in which Marcelo works. He also meets Wendell, the spoiled son of his father’s law partner. What Marcelo learns during his summer in “the real world” will change his life in ways that he could never have imagined.

Francisco X. Stork recently agreed to answer some questions I had about the book, his writing process, what he’s working on next, and so much more. Enjoy!

Marcelo is a wonderful character, a normal teenage boy in almost every way except that he has a mild form of autism. Clearly, he’s on the higher functioning end of the autism spectrum, but he still has difficulty in “real world” situations.  Was it difficult to maintain his perspective consistently? How did you go about doing this?

Just before I began to write, I took a few minutes to “become” Marcelo. Once I was looking at the world through Marcelo’s eyes all I had to do was be very vigilant that I stayed there. Later, during the revision process, I would constantly ask myself: Is this something Marcelo would say or is it something I would say?

In an author’s note you discuss work you did with the Department of Mental Health when you were in college. You also mention your autistic nephew. This novel, I assume, must have been a very personal project for you?

The novel is personal in that I had to access memories and feelings from my life, but also in that it embodies a personal longing for Marcelo’s goodness and innocence.

Did you need to do any research, or could you write this novel solely based on your personal experiences?

Once I determined that Marcelo’s characteristics could be diagnosed as Asperger’s syndrome, I had to do the research. But I don’t think that research alone could ever give me Marcelo’s voice. Marcelo’s voice was a combination of personal experience, research and . . . gift.

I’m sure you’ve heard this a million times, but your book reminded me a little of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Marcelo is much more “functional” than the character in that novel, however. Have you read that novel, and if so what do you think of it?

I heard about Mark Haddon’s novel when I was about two-thirds done with Marcelo and I purposefully held off reading the book so as not to be influenced by it. Later, after I finished Marcelo, I read the book and liked it very much. The character in Mark Haddon’s book is younger and, as you say, less functional than Marcelo, but the book does an excellent job of letting us into the mind of an autistic boy.

Ideas of faith and religion run through the novel. But it’s a unique, personal kind of faith that Marcelo has. Is your faith very important to you? Were you trying to say something about religion in this novel?

Yes, my faith is very important to me. It’s what gives meaning to my life. One of the things I wanted to say about religion in the novel is that religion needs to be looked at the way Marcelo looks at it. He is interested in all religions. He is a Catholic who visits with a rabbi every week who names his dog after a Buddhist prayer. Marcelo has an innate sense of the universality of all religions.

I liked how the novel had a happy ending without being too pat and idealistic. Clearly Marcelo has many struggles ahead of him. Do you ever think about what his adult life might be like? Would you ever return to these characters in another novel?

I think Marcelo will be okay. I have a feeling he will find his own unique place in the real world where he can be who he is. I’m happy with how the book ended, but I do wonder sometimes about some of the struggles that await him.

Marcelo in the Real World is your third book. How long did it take to write? Was it more or less difficult than the earlier books?

I think the whole process of writing and revising took about three years. There were many times when it seemed as if I were just taking dictation and other times when I struggled on a paragraph for days. It was harder to write than the earlier books because it was a more ambitious and challenging book.

You have a new novel coming out soon called The Last Summer of the Death Warriors. Can you tell me a little something about it?

The Last Summer of the Death Warriors is about two very different young men who are brought together by circumstances. Pancho Sanchez believes his sister has been murdered and is out to avenge his killer. He is brought to an orphanage in Las Cruces, New Mexico where he is given the job of assisting D.Q. (short for Daniel Quentin), a seventeen-year-old who has a rare form of brain cancer. D.Q. is highly intelligent and philosophical and is writing the Death Warrior’s Manifesto, a statement of how to live life with dignity and courage. Pancho and D.Q. travel to Albuquerque, where D.Q is to undergo experimental treatments, where Pancho hopes to finds his sister’s killer and where they both fall for the same girl. It’s a story about courage and faith and the transforming power of friendship.

Can you talk about your writing process? For example, how many days a week do you write? For how long? Do you outline your novels? And so on.

I have a day job as a lawyer. I work with a State Agency that finances developments for low-income housing. I try to write a page or an hour a day in the evening but sometimes my brain is all used up. I then wait until weekends to catch up a little. I try to write out a first draft without thinking too much about it and then I go back and revise.

What are some of your favorite books? Who are some of your favorite writers?

I like Flannery O’Connor and Annie Dillard. Don Quixote remains my favorite book. It was an inspiration for The Last Summer of the Death Warriors.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a book written from the perspective of two young women. Wish me luck!

Last week, the ALA and YALSA announced their annual book awards. You know, the Newbery, the Caldecott, and the Printz, among others. Rebecca Stead–who’s a sometimes member of my YA book club–won the Newbery for When You Reach Me. This really didn’t surprise many people, but it did seem to delight everyone. By all accounts, the book is a knockout. It’s been on my “to read” list for ages.

As a YA reader, I’m most intrigued by the Printz Award winner and honor books. The Printz honors excellence in books written for teenagers. And here are those winners (pasted, I admit, from the YALSA web site):

Going Bovine
by Libba Bray
published by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House

2010 Printz Honor Books

The committee also named four Printz Honor Books:

Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman, published by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group.

Once Charles Darwin sets his rational mind to marry the religious Emma Wedgeworth, they both must take a leap of faith in order to build a life together.

The Monstrumologist, by Rick Yancey, published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing.

Will Henry, orphan and assistant to a monstrumologist, races against time to save his town (and himself) from the anthropophagi, a pod of monstrous creatures who prey on humans.

Punkzilla, by Adam Rapp, published by Candlewick Press.

Fourteen-year-old runaway Jamie, homeless and strung out, embarks on a harrowing journey to reach his dying brother.

Tales of the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance, 1973, by John Barnes, published by Viking Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Young Reader’s Group.

Karl Shoemaker wants to begin his senior year with a new identity separate from his counseling group, his alcoholic mother and the legacy of his dead father.

—

I’ve read none of these, but have heard great things about all of them. And of course they’ve all been added to my “to read” list. In fact, my book club just chose Punkzilla as its next selection.

I’m also intrigued by the William C. Morris Award winner and honor books. The Morris Award is given to a book written for young adults by a first-time, previously unpublished author. And here are those titles:

2010 Winner

Flash Burnout

By L.K. Madigan, published by Houghton Mifflin/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (9780547194899).

Blake’s life is way too complicated. He’s a sophomore in high school with a girlfriend and a friend who is a girl. One of them loves him. One of them needs him. Can he please them both?

2010 Finalists

Ash

By Malinda Lo, published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. (9780316040099).

Consumed with grief after the death of her father, Ash’s only escape from her harsh life and cruel stepmother comes from re-reading the fairy tales that her mother once told her and hoping against hope that the fairies will appear to her. When the fairy Sidhean appears, Ash hopes that he will steal her away to his enchanted world; but when she meets the King’s Huntress, Kaisa, she realizes that staying in her own realm can also lead to beauty, romance, and perhaps even love.

Beautiful Creatures

By Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. (9780316042673).

Sixteen-year-old Ethan has lived all his life in Gaitlin, South Carolina, a town that hasn’t changed much since the Civil War. While coping with the loss of his mother, a father who spends all of his time in his study, and high school, his world turns upside down with the arrival of Lena, a new girl with whom he seems to share a psychic connection. As they grow closer, Ethan discovers that Lena and her family share a dark secret and that she is headed for doom on her sixteenth birthday.

The Everafter

By Amy Huntley, published by Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers (9780061776793).

Maddy is a ghost, surrounded by things she lost when she was alive. By touching these objects, she relives the episodes in her life where she lost them. Even though Maddy’s dead, she explores the lessons these objects hold — and why are they still important.

hold still

By Nina LaCour, published by Dutton Children’s Books, a Division of Penguin Young Readers Group. (9780525421559).

After Caitlin’s best friend Ingrid commits suicide, Caitlin has a hard time making sense of the loss. She finds Ingrid’s journal and slowly allows herself to read it and learn about why Ingrid felt the need to end her life. Caitlin also grapples with allowing herself to find another friend, to let in a boyfriend, and to understand why her favorite teacher is ignoring her. It is the haunting story of dealing with loss, moving on, and finding peace and hope.

—

I also want to single out the Best Books for Young Adults, a longer list of the supposedly best books written for teens in 2009. The full list can be found here. From this list, committee members name the Top 10 books. Interestingly, these lists don’t usually match the Printz list. Perhaps the commitee members like to spread the wealth. A good thing, in my opinion. Here is their list, notable because it includes the excellent Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork, a book that had been bandied about for the Printz. (Stay tuned, because I’m going to do an interview with Francisco in the near future and I will post it here on the blog.)

• Brennan, Sarah Rees. Demon’s Lexicon. Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing/Margaret K. McElderry. 2009.

• Griffin, Paul. The Orange Houses. Penguin/Dial Books.  2009.

• Herlong, M.H. The Great Wide Sea. Penguin/Viking.  2008.

• Jinks, Catherine. The Reformed Vampire Support Group. Harcourt/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2009.

• Napoli, Donna Jo. Alligator Bayou. Random House / Knopf.  2009.

• Small, David. Stitches: A Memoir. W.W. Norton & Co. 2009.

• Stead, Rebecca. When You Reach Me. Random House / Wendy Lamb Books.  2009.

• Stork, Francisco X. Marcelo in the Real World. Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Books.  2009.

• Taylor, Laini. Lips Touch: Three Times. Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine. 2009.

• Walker, Sally M. Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland. Lerner/Carolrhoda Books.  2009.

One of last year’s National Book Award nominees, Jumped is told from the points of view of three girls at a gritty New York City high school. There’s Leticia, who’s bitter about failing and having to retake Geometry. Then there’s Trina, proud of her good looks and artistic abilities and just a bit full of herself. Finally, there’s Dominqiue, the volatile basketball player who has been benched by the coach for bad grades. The novel takes place over the course of one day, after Trina accidentally (and innocently) cuts between Dominique and her friends on the way to class, an event which Leticia witnesses. This does not sit well with an already pissed off Dominique, and she vows to “kick that ass at two forty-five.”

Williams-Garcia is a great writer, wicked with a turn of phrase, clearly in tune with the lingo of street-smart teenage girls. Here’s this typically sharp passage from Trina’s point of view:

Feel all this love. Popular. What? So many fans. So many friends and so many who want to be me. They either caught the shaky-shake and stomp in the caf or they saw my artwork in the gallery. I need a Princess Di wave. No diamond tiara because I have my lucky gold chain and all my subjects adore me. The love keeps pouring.

Each girl comes across as a distinct individual with a compelling back story. They’re by turns likable and unlikable–all of them–and this rings true. The dilemma for Leticia is whether or not she should warn Trina about her date with Dominique’s fists, since she overheard the threat. Trina, for her part, is clueless, wrapped up in her own narcissism (as demonstrated in the passage above).

The ending came as a surprise to me, because it’s not pat and preachy, nor is it predictable. It shows how random events–the slights, injustices, and annoyances of everyday high school life–can add up to produce a potent mixture. A great, fast read that makes me want to go back and check out Williams-Garcia’s earlier work.

Next in my NBA reading project: Claudette Colvin.

On Wednesday night, the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature went to Phillip Hoose’s Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. It was surely a special moment for the author, made even more so by the presence of Claudette Colvin herself. Was this nonfiction book the best children’s book of the year? Who knows. But I’ve decided to read four of the five nominees to render my judgment. (Since Stitches was not specifically designated as a children’s book, I’m going to skip it!) Though I don’t need anymore reading projects, on top of all the reading I do anyway, I think this will be fun and worthwhile. I’ll post my thoughts as I read each book, and then render the verdict. What will being the winner mean? Absolutely nothing, probably, unless the winner wants to slap on a sticker that says “Martin’s NBA Winner.” Somehow I think that is unlikely.

First up in the reading queue: Jumped by Rita Williams-Garcia. I don’t expect this little project to be completed by the end of the year, but hopefully I’ll have waded through the nominees by the time the ALA announces their Printz winner and honor books in January.

William Trevor is best known for his lovely, brilliant, crystalline short stories. Like all of his admirers, I am a big fan of his stories and usually devour them when they appear in The New Yorker and when they are collected in book form (his most recent collection is Cheating at Canasta). As amazing as his short stories are, his novels are equally wonderful: dark slim tales wrapped in exquisite prose. The novels are tight and precise, creepy, and lovely. The first novel of Trevor’s that I read was Felicia’s Journey, and it still remains my favorite, though I certainly haven’t exhausted his output yet.

A recent re-read reminded me why I loved the novel—and reminded me why reading Trevor is as pleasurable as sitting by a cozy fire on a cold stormy night, with a cup of tea and a plate of cookies at your side. (Though, to be honest, I’ve never done such a thing. But it sounds very British or Irish, and thus very Trevor-like, since he really is a dual citizen of both countries.)

Felicia’s Journey is the dual story of two very different characters whose lives intersect with life-changing consequences for both. Felicia is a young Irish woman, part of a large family, though her mother died when she was very young. It is, at first glance, a quiet but somewhat dreary life, especially since she shares a tiny room with her great grandmother, a widow of a man who sacrificed his life for Ireland during “The Troubles.” Felicia’s father never forgets to remind her of that heritage. But when Felicia meets Johnny, a once-local boy who is taking a break from his life in England to visit his protective mother, a bright ray of sunshine breaks up her rain-soaked days, making life seem a little more magical and a lot less ordinary. Trevor conveys the pangs of first love—the euphoria, the doubt, the moony fantasizing, the dread of disappointment, the hopefulness—with heartbreaking honesty.

This we all learn though Trevor’s seamless use of flashback, for when the novel opens, Felicia is on a ferry, heading to England. She is pregnant, by Johnny, and she is both trying to find him to tell him the news as well as escape her dead-end life in the Irish village she calls home.

Mr. Hilditch, our other protagonist, is a lonely, fat, fussy “catering manager” at a factory, somewhere in middle England. He lives alone in a large house, and drives a “humpbacked green car.” He chances upon Felicia as she is wondering the city, hoping to find Johnny, who supposedly works at a nearby lawnmower factory, though this proves not to be the case. Slowly, with subtle yet menacing clues planted deftly by Trevor, we realize that Mr. Hilditch is not the sweet, innocent old man he portrays himself to be. Felicia, you see, is an ideal target for his nefarious designs: She is young, pretty, alone, and somewhat helpless, even desperate, in a land without any connections. He finds a way to worm himself into her life, offering a helping hand when she needs it most. But the reader realizes Felicia is walking into a trap, because the other girls who Mr. Hilditch has helped in the past are all dead and buried.

Since I already knew how the novel ended, the tension wasn’t as taut as it had been when I originally read it. But I read on with pleasure anyway, admiring the way Trevor wracked up the sense of dread and suspense, page by page. Will Felicia fall into his clutches? What will happen to her unborn baby? Will she find Johnny?

The other impressive thing about Felicia’s Journey—which struck me both then and now—is the way that Trevor makes you feel sympathy for Mr. Hilditch, not just Felicia. Sure, he is a sick and disturbed man, a murderer. But Trevor knows that murderers are still human beings, with complex though messed-up inner lives. He doesn’t go in for cheap psychoanalysis about why Mr. Hilditch has become the way he has become, nor does he portray Mr. Hilditch as a one-dimensional portrait of unexplainable evil. In characterizing Mr. Hilditch, Trevor shows how the disappointments and slights of his long life have added to his troubled mind, creating a potent cocktail of obsession, delusion, and violence.

I won’t spoil the ending, of course, but Trevor withholds crucial information for a long stretch of time before the reader realizes Felicia’s fate. In lesser hands, this might seem a cheap trick. But Trevor pulls it off masterfully. This is, of course, a novel about a journey. And where that journey takes Felicia is both heartbreaking, exhilarating, and ultimately revelatory.

By the way, Felicia’s Journey was made into a movie in 1999, by Atom Egoyan. And though Bob Hoskins gives a pretty good performance as Mr. Hilditch, the movie overall is not very good. Skip it–read the book!

My essay on John Donovan has been published in Tin House. Alas, the essay isn’t available online, so if you want to read it you’ll have to buy a copy. But it’s a great, very cool issue. The theme is both hope AND dread, which is reflected in the issue’s design: One side is Hope, with its own table of contents (and in which my essay appears). If you flip the magazine over and upside down, then you have the Despair side of the issue.

I also came across a great story about, and interview with, a YA writer I’d never heard: William Sleator. The story was written by the writer Nick Antosca (who happens to be a writing-world friend), and you can read it here at the Huffington Post. Sleator’s creepy, sci-fi-ish books sound amazing. How had I never heard of Sleator? Well, I am always excited to explore a new author, so I promptly went out and hunted down a few of his books: Blackbriar, his first novel, which has recently been reissued in hardcover; The Boxes (“Don’t open them!” the cover warns); and The Boy Who Couldn’t Die, about, yes, a boy who literally can’t die. As if I need more books to read. But I can’t help myself.

Otherwise, I’ve been busy working on Novel 2. I am making great progress, but the next two months I need to really bear down and get a lot of writing done. I hope to finish a draft by early next year, which means the book will come out in 2011. But at least my paperback comes out in February 2010! I’ll be sure and post if I have any paperback-related events planned.

The National Book Award nominees were announced last week. The finalists are an eclectic lot (see below). Indeed, the only book I had heard of was Stitches, which wasn’t even published as a YA novel. Is this fair? I’m all for inclusion, and “crossover” books are wonderful, but this nomination kind of irks me. It seems like this book robbed a true YA or children’s book of a spot on the list. Would a YA novel make it to the adult category? No. It would be ghettoized to its own category. So why can “adult” books invade our category? Publishers Weekly has an interesting story on this controversial nomination. What do you think? Either way, the nominees are below. I’m going to try to read them all by the end of the year.

YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE

Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith
(Henry Holt)
Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
David Small, Stitches (W. W. Norton & Co.)
Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic)
Rita Williams-Garcia, Jumped (HarperTeen/HarperCollins)

This week brought great news: Flux, a Minnesota-based publisher, will reissue John Donovan’s I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip. in fall of 2010! Publishers Weekly broke the story, which you can read here. I’ll Get There is considered to be the first YA novel to deal with homosexuality.  It was originally ushered into print in 1969 by legendary editor Ursula Nordstrom. The new edition will include a few introductory essays as well. My essay on I’ll Get There is about to be published in Tin House. I’ll post a link or a teaser soon. Anyway, cheers to Flux for rediscovering this wonderful and essential novel.