New YA titles and Diversity

Like many school librarians, we have been working to increase the diversity of titles in our collection.  Here are two young adult novels which seem written with that goal in mind, but which, sadly, failed to live up to their initial promise. 

MEET ME IN OUTER SPACE by Melinda Grace starts out as a particularly strong example of an #OwnVoices type of book. The main character is Edie Kits, a college student with an auditory processing issue who encounters a less than helpful French professor as she struggles to qualify for time abroad in pursuit of her fashion-related degree. 

Initially, Melinda Grace does build empathy for Edie and her situation, as in this conversation between Edie and her roommate, Serena: “I shouldn’t have had to do extra just to get what I needed to learn, but I did and I wasn’t about to complain. Complaining wasn’t action. I recited the words I’d heard my whole life. ‘Fair doesn’t mean equal.  It doesn’t mean everyone should be treated the same, because what is fair to you isn’t fair to me.  Fair is getting what I need, and if that means I have to show up ten minutes early to class, then that’s what I am going to do.’ ‘I guess I never thought of it that way,’ Serena said, her forehead scrunching. ‘Well, right. You’ve never had to.’”

Instead of continuing to portray Edie as a strong self-advocate, she is somehow morphed into an immature girl who refuses to honestly talk about feelings because she is overly (and unrealistically) concerned about starting a relationship before traveling abroad for an extended period.  Of course, her crush is on her French Teaching Assistant and his actions (generally ignoring her attempts at keeping the relationship on a more platonic level) further reinforce the lack of control Edie has over her situation.  Overall, MEET ME IN OUTER SPACE begins with a unique premise, but the potential is not fully realized. 

IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF TRUE by Susan Kaplan Carlton takes place primarily in Atlanta in 1958 and offers an opportunity to explore what it might have been like to move there from the North while a teenager and after the unexpected death of one’s father.  Further complicating the efforts at adapting to a new Southern culture and the strong set of regional traditions is the fact that the main character, Ruth, has few traits in common with her new classmates. Or, as she muses to herself: “I’m a Yankee, a brunette, an Adlai Stevenson Democrat, an aspiring journalist, and Jewish.”

Ruth has to learn to say ma’am when addressing her elders as well as hide her religion, and begin to understand that in the neighborhood of true is what Southerners say “when something’s close enough.” Rather self-centered and superficial, Ruth develops a crush on a boy (Davis Jefferson), deals with some mean girls and struggles with her mother’s push for activism. It seems to take roughly half the book to set up this scenario at which point many students will have lost interest or still strain to appreciate the historical period. It is important to recognize that IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF TRUE was inspired by the 1958 bombing of an Atlanta synagogue and if that was an earlier and bigger part of the book, it could spark some important discussions, especially in light of the attacks on synagogues and other places of worship in recent news events.  

I Can Hear You Whisper by Lydia Denworth

I originally started reading I Can Hear You Whisper because I thought some of our students might be interested in this book as a non-fiction reading selection.  I was fascinated by Denworth’s description of the discovery and reaction to her son’s hearing loss. A science journalist herself, Denworth interviewed numerous experts, including neuroscientists, language specialists, and educators.

This is a book about hearing, but it is also about listening, speaking and reading – with a chapter on the reading brain which stresses the value of rhyme and poetry to develop reading skills and presents research on how hearing and dyslexia may by intertwined. Denworth provides numerous references to past and current research while being very forthright in explaining the various perspectives regarding choices like sign language and use of cochlear implants. She includes scientific findings and language, but also is a talented enough writer to succinctly describe issues related to hearing in memorable, easy to understand ways:

-- “Speech production is a motor skill like kicking a ball or picking up a raisin. We don’t think of it that way …”

-- “When you speak or sing, you hear yourself in two ways: through air conduction and bone conduction.  The recorded sound of your voice sounds unnatural to you because only airborne sound is picked up by the microphone and you are used to hearing both.”

-- A startling statistic?   “95 percent of deaf and hard-of-hearing children are … born to hearing parents …”  

Says Dentworth, “I realized that my son might have a cultural identity – should he choose to embrace it – that I could come to appreciate, but I could never truly share.”  This book deserves wide readership, and will be especially valuable to families with members who are deaf or who have experienced hearing loss.

Update: 7/23/2015:  A new study shows ways to use hearing tests to predict literacy.Full academic study, "Auditory Processing in Noise" is published in PLOS Biology.