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Four Young Adult Novels |
Over the summer I read four LDS novels. One contains a haunting grisly scene of executing a child deserter from an army of children, one contains an extended reflection on torturing and castrating a young teen, one contains a brief section about what it's like to occupy the cell next door to the execution chamber and on Thursday mornings hear the screams and pleading of the condemned, and guillotine blade striking home. The fourth was a romance, I suppose, but the ending has more to do with Jesus' admonition about leaving home and loved ones for the Word's sake than with the romantic couple uniting.
All were written for children (or young adults).
Including the one where the circle of children undo their trousers and pee on a man who's just been kicked to the ground (author is a kiddielitprof at BYZ).
I don't know how they're doing in the LDS market, partly because I don't know how to define the LDS market. Three have explicitly LDS characters. So is anyone who buys them part of the LDS market, or just the people who buy them in Utah and other Zion Curtain places?
They were all published by national publishers--even the conversion story, so maybe the LDS market is bigger than we thought. Or should I invert that. Maybe the market for LDS writing is bigger than we thought.
So here are four interesting novels:
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Soldier Boys
Atheneum, 2001. | |
This novel reminds us that much as we hear of children soldiers in Africa children in war is nothing new, including the Hitler Youth. But there were children in the American army as well. That fact resonates for me. About a year ago I woke up one morning to see flashing lights outside my bedroom window, and thought, "Ernest." My neighbor 2 houses up who would bring the snow blower around the neighborhood. I learned at his funeral that Ernest's mother died when he was a child and his stepfather died when he was 16 or 17. He didn't have anywhere to go, so the navy recruiter petitioned the judge for permission to enlist him. He and Connie were married 56(?) years and still in their 70s as opposed to my parents, 61 years and in mid to late 80s.
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Brothers in Valor
Holiday House, 2001. | |
Marvelously compact fictionalized story of Helmuth Huebener and friends who wrote and distributed anti-Nazi flyers in Hamburg. Memorable scenes sketched in brevity. The appendix is utterly chilling.
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Mississippi Trial, 1955
Phyllis Fogelman Books, 2002. | |
A man moves his family to Arizona after the War to get them away from the racism in Mississippi. His son goes back for a visit 10 years later and meets Emmett Till, who is brutally murdered and tortured.=20
I'd love to see a companion piece about racism in Arizona. Crowe has moved the family there at the right time for a celebrated case where a brutal white police officer was killed when he illegally followed some Indians onto the reservation to harrass and arrest them. Widely used incident. I think N. Scott Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain retells it. Paula Gunn Allen includes another story based on the incident in The Song of the Turtle: American Indian Literature 1974-1994.
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The Shakeress
Front Street, 2002. | |
Wonderful scene about how someone gets revelation, something about imaging God as a person and studying the problem out then asking the person you're imaging about the conclusion you've drawn. Shows great affection for the Shakers, though it also shows how difficult the Shaker life can be to someone who wants to form a family and why someone might leave the Shaker community for a family life.
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H. Soderborg Clark October 23, 2003
| Reviewed: 23 October 2003 | Copyright © 2003 H. Soderborg Clark |