Kansas
In
Kansas
Dorothy
Loved Aunt E.M.
A
Cyclone
Took her to
The munchkin land
Bad
Witch died
Ruby shoes
Good witch told her
Go
To the
Wizard through
Yellow brick road
The
Scarecrow
Tin man and
Lion killed witch
Got
Courage
Beating heart
And diploma
Shoes
Remind
Dorothy
There’s no place like
Home…
David Levithan’s YA novel, Every Day, harkens back to the show Quantum Leap. Remember when Scott Bakula would jump to a new person’s body every week, and have to live out their lives until he solved a problem?
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“Spot-on satire or earnest picture of youth in transition?…”
“Coy’s voice is strong and sure; he captures Neil’s voice and tone with specificity and confidence. However, readers’ tolerance for Neil and his impressions of the Nashville scene may strongly depend on whether they see the novel as a satire of the hip, ironic detachment and self-reflexive views of the millennial generation or an earnest attempt to capture their thoughts and hopes in the second decade of the 21st century. Those who see Coy’s work as being meant seriously will likely find the characters vacuous and talkative to a fault, and the thrust of the narrative will be greatly diluted. For those who see a satirical purpose to Coy’s prose, the narrative will likely carry more resonance, and the end result of Sedgwick and Oberlin’s relationship will have a particular melancholy weight, even when seen through the satirical lens.”
“A well-defined social milieu and articulate characters make Coy’s is it/isn’t it novel an interesting, if uncertain, experience.”
–Kirkus Reviews
[Bold emphasis mine]
You can find the full review here
I now present to you samples from a graduate level English textbook, which I’m pretty sure were written by a high schooler:
“George Orwell was not a novelist.”
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Jonathan Franzen has said of fiction that if it “isn’t an author’s personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown” it “isn’t worth writing for anything but money.” The author’s passion we read in his the novel Freedom was hardly an adventure for money. This novel hurts to read. It makes you ache. It makes you depressed. I makes you yearn for the freedom of having finished it.
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“Never use epigraphs, they kill the mastery of the work.”-Orphan Pamuk
Is Pamuk right? Are epigraphs necessary before a great work of art? Do I need to hear a completely different artist sound the most prominent note of a masterpiece before the featured artist plays?
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“Forever is composed of nows.”-Emily Dickenson
Part 3: The Vessel
[read Part 1: Strings and Part 2: Grass]
Quentin Jacobson had been searching for Margo Roth Spiegelman, but he had yet to go on a journey. Like Whitman, he needed to travel across the country, become exposed, truly listen for Margo. He needed to experience and understand that paper towns existed all over, with paper people living in all of them. “The world is full of people,” he comes to say, “full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently mismanaged.”
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PART 2: Grass
“You shall no longer take things 2nd or 3rd hand…nor feed on the specters in books.”-Walt Whitman
Who is Margo Roth Spiegelman? Is she a popular elite brat? Is she a culturally hip closet poetry nerd? Is she a deviant runaway? Is she a selfish drama queen? Is she damaged goods? Or is she just a tangled up girl whose strings are broken?
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“Doing stuff never feels as good as you hope it will feel.”
Part 1: Strings
John Green’s novel, Paper Towns, soon to be a film, can be read as a kind of spiritual parable. With the exception of TFIOS, his three other novels seem to follow a similar formula: Eccentric yet normal teen boy falls for unattainable and eccentric girl because she is such a mystery, and she becomes a puzzle for him to solve as much as a love interest to pursue. Academic references must follow. Were it not for the occasional sexual controversy, Green seems to be begging for his books to be taught in school, pushing aside bulky classics less relevant to teens.
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CALEB COY 