Bakuman vol. 8

I put the seventh volume of Bakuman down around November of last year, and I almost forgot how much I enjoyed it. Fortunately, I've got an Amazon gift card, so I can enjoy the convenience without the guilt of actually sending "Booktopus, Inc." any money.

Author Tsugumi Ohba and illustrator Takeshi Obata teamed up before for the big hit series Death Note, of which I was aware, but not particularly a fan. In this series, they perform an almost postmodern twist, exploring the experiences of a young author-illustrator pair publishing manga in the real-world magazine Shonen Jump, published by real-world publisher Shueisha.

It's fun seeing behind the scenes in the business while enjoying all the stagecraft of manga at the same time. In this case, it's a combination of teen angst, romance, and social drama, with 15-year-old protagonist Moritaka suddenly - unexpectedly even to him - blurting out a marriage proposal to Miho, a girl he's admired from afar for years. Just as unexpectedly, Miho accepts (through her rather grand house's intercom system, no less), but on one condition: they put off even talking in person until they both reach their goals.

Miho is an aspiring seiyuu (voice actress), and possible screen actress, and Moritaka is an aspiring mangaka.

All this takes place in an avalanche of rash decisions that walks a fine line between realistically badly thought out teenage planning and crazy fantasy.

Moritaka's writing partner is Takagi, a wise-cracking high-achiever who's really tired of being admired for getting good grades. He gets the ball rolling at the beginning of the series - by suggesting he and Moritaka team up blackmailing Moritaka into teaming up with him in the first place, and then that they go talk to Miho about their plans - and provides plenty of impetus to the plot in each volume.

As of volume 8, Takagi's girlfriend Kaya (who goes casually by her first name Miyoshi most of the time) is my favorite character. She doesn't get as much "screen time" as the other leads, but in compensation, packs a punch, often literally. Kaya is fiercely loyal, emotionally mercurial, considered tomboyish and not pretty (hard to tell in the drawings, which make her look tomboyish, voluptuous, and cute all at once), but she proves to be not only the glue holding together the friendships of some of the leads, but also a catalyst in expanding the circle of friends in unlikely ways.

I got the delivery a couple of days ago, and read the whole thing last night. I waited so long to order it, volume 9 was ready, too, so I have something more to read this weekend.

Never A Dull Moment: Body piercing? Extreme sports? Teen pregnancy? Welcome to the action-packed world of hi/lo books

It's always nice to be mentioned in print, and even though it's indirect twice-over (my company, as part of a list), it can't hurt.

Michael Sullivan, in "Never A Dull Moment: Body piercing? Extreme sports? Teen pregnancy? Welcome to the action-packed world of hi/lo books,"
describes very recent changes in the world of high-interest, low-reading-level books for struggling and reluctant readers.

High Noon Books is the classroom materials imprint of Academic Therapy Publications. Our original focus, a quarter century ago, was on skill building, but the chapter books were an afterthought. The approach was to lower the bar to struggling readers' independent reading success by using frequently-occurring, and therefore more likely to be recognized, vocabulary.

Concern with reading frustration, and studies indicating a direct link with vocabulary familiarity, led us to recently adopt a strict vocabulary level and decodability formula for our hi/lo books. We also have invested a fair amount of time and energy into raising the interest level - the excitement - of our books through revision and new writing emphasizing contemporary, real-life experiences. It's hard to write about these with simple vocabulary, but I'm glad we're not the only ones trying.

As an exercise, take a page from the sequel of a novel you've been waiting to read. Copy the page, and have someone black out every twentieth word. That's 5% - the approximate border between successful independent reading and frustration, the fine line we're trying to walk, or rather write. Then read the page, and see how well you understand it.

Makes reading fun, right?

Unfair!

It’s totally unfair of me to consider Patricia Reilly Giff’sNewberry Honor Book, Pictures of HollisWoods (Random House, 2004), alongside Tim Green’s Rivals: aBaseball Great novel (HarperCollins, 2010).

Nothing says I have to be fair, however, or that either author would benefit. 

** Note: some spoilers below

Pictures of Hollis Woods is a literary novel for tweens. I’m not sure I’ve encountered anything like it till now. Sure, we’ve all read and/or avoided the sorry-for-the-poor-kid books that read like Saturday afternoon tv specials from the 19

70s. They give me a headache, probably caused by trying to digest the frosting cliché on the middling cake of a story.

And Hollis Woods, the protagonist, is the kid from those stories. She’s an orphan, difficult, twelve, vulnerable and hard at the same time, and oh, so deserving of a better life. However, that’s not how the story reads. Here’s why I think Giff’s book is a literary novel: structure.

The title means something (there’s a concept) – in this case, it’s a device for flashbacks, delicately revealing how Hollis’s past becomes her present, and Hollis’s own contribution to her story, the scenes of her life she draws to remember, someday perhaps to understand, as well as a way she can be herself while drawing, something she yearns to do, and does with remarkable skill and vision.

The current chapters all have the same title, indicating the present day, and the flashback chapters all are about the subject of a drawing, narrating the time leading into, and after, the events Hollis depicts. Giff executes this subtly and cleverly, rendering the flashback narratives in italics, and revealing just enough to keep the story flowing toward its goal.

The end isn’t a huge surprise. It’s not supposed to be. Of course Hollis finds a family. Of course it’s the Regans. Of course Josie is part of her life. None of this is in question after page 40 or so. It’s not a mystery, but a narrative of strands weaving together just as people’s lives intertwine.

This is a delicate slip of a novel, under 170 wide-lined pages, and all fitting together neatly. The characters all matter, are all recognizeable, all memorable. It’s about the easiest thing in the world to read, vocabulary aside (and that’s not too hard). If I taught sixth grade, I might assign it to the class.

So, what’s so bad about Tim Green’s Rivals? It can’t be “unfair” to compare it to a Newberry Honor Book like Pictures of Hollis Woods without being unfair to Rivals, can it?

 

Why, yes, it can.

Green’s a master of a different type of storytelling. There are few flashbacks. There’s no fancy structure. It’s great for baseball-crazy boys, and perhaps a few girls who don’t mind that baseball stories always focus on the boys. (There’s a strong girl character in here – hoo, boy, just wait.)

And Rivals is all about twelve-year-olds, too. These kids are doing pretty well for themselves. Josh LeBlanc is a baseball prodigy, six feet tall a bit early, and a skilled batter and infielder. He makes all the plays you want to see (if you like baseball, which I don’t , but which I started to, a little, on reading this). Josh is also gifted with insight, a great coach who is also a great father, and two awesome friends – Benji, whose over-the-top self-glorifying banter is never meant nor ever received as pridefulness, and Jaden, whose feelings for Josh lurk dangerously close to the surface of their friendship, without her or Josh ever really figuring it out.

Here’s the thing: Green’s characters all matter, are all recognizeable, all memorable. Green drives the plot relentlessly forward, which takes less concentration on the part of the reader, but with twice the pagecount, there’s a lot more story. It’s rollicking good fun, with danger, adolescent angst, athletic challenges, and clever dialog. It crackles with the intensity any successful novel for tweens has to have. But reading it is not like solving a puzzle. It’s like riding a roller-coaster.

So, what’s fair or not? In truth, I’m glad I read both books. If I liked only boyish books like Rivals, would I be open to reading Pictures of Hollis Woods? And if I favored the contemplative, sparse narratives of Patricia Reilly Giff, would I be open to enjoying the driving linear narrative of Tim Green? I hope so. The unfairness comes in part from the channeling we experience, our tribalism infecting (or shaping? I guess it matters which word I choose, and I’m not sure about my choice) everything we do or think. Even with all the clever ways these authors break boundaries, by including characters, meaningfull ones, of various tribes, in their narratives, we still read the book in a genre or demographic category.

My older son is in sixth grade. I imagine a classroom like his somewhere, where a boy reads Rivals next to a girl reading Pictures of Hollis Woods. I hope they talk with each other when they’re done.