Welcome Back to YA Cafe, where book lovers can gather and chat about teen literature. I’m your barista, along with Ghenet from All About Them Words.

Each Friday we pick from a menu of topics and share our thoughts on our respective blogs. We’ve also got plans brewing for interviews, events and even some exciting giveaways, so stay tuned! Join the discussion by responding in the comments, on your own blogs or on twitter using the hash tag #YAcafe.

This Week’s Special: Banned Books Week

As many of you may know, this week is Banned Books Week, and all week long there have been events–online and off–celebrating banned books and our First Amendment right to read what we want.  But why address this topic on a YA Cafe day?  Well, one quick look at the banned books lists and you’ll notice that somewhere around half of the banned books fall under the umbrella of teen literature.  Now, when you consider that teen literature is only one small slice of the literary pie (a fast-growing slice, to be sure, but still just one small part of the whole) the number of banned books from this category seems grossly disproportionate.

So this week, Ghenet and I thought we’d look over the most recent Banned Books List from the ALA and tell you which books on that list we’d read.  (To find this year’s full Banned Books List, go to this link and scroll to the bottom of the page.  There are PDF downloads for lists from the past seven years).  According to the ALA, the top ten most banned books in 2010 were: (books with * are ones I have read)

1) And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
2) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie *
3) Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley *
4) Crank, by Ellen Hopkins
5) The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins *
6) Lush, by Natasha Friend
7) What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
8 ) Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
9) Revolutionary Voices, edited by Amy Sonnie
10) Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer

But for me, the banned book from the full 2010-2011 List that had the most impact was Vegan Virgin Valentine by Carolyn Mackler, which was challenged at the Quitman, Tex. Junior High library (2011) by a parent who described one scene as “on the verge of pornography.” (Source: Jan. 2011, p. 8.)

First off, let’s just chuckle at the irony that a book with the word “virgin” in the title gets challenged for being too “pornographic.”  I mean, did said parent actually read the book?  Because there isn’t an actual sex scene in it, and trust me, when it comes to make-out scenes this book might have some steamy ones, but nothing even nearing “pornography.”

Secondly, I can see why over-protective parents might feel threatened by this book, and it’s not because of sex.  This book is about a girl who does everything her parents want her to do.  Then one day, she says “enough” and starts thinking for herself.  Frankly, I think the message about independence is far more scary to parents than the alleged scene that’s “on the verge of pornography.”  It’s not so much that the main character has a steamy make-out session with her boyfriend, but that she’s doing it behind her parents’ backs and with a boy they wouldn’t approve of.  I’d be willing to be that this is what freaked out that outraged parent, not the so-called pornographic scene.  I mean, teens having minds of their own… such a scary concept, right?

Forgive me, but isn’t the whole point of kids reading books like Vegan Virgin Valentine for them to figure out their own opinions about important life topics?  What’s the point of teens having their own brains and free will and all that good stuff, if they never get to use it?  And honestly, the kids reading these banned books are not the ones I worry about.  After all, they’re reading.  The ones I worry about are the kids who don’t read anything at all. *Steps down from soapbox.*

Soapbox is free; anyone else want to hop up? And while you’re at it, tell me: how many books from this year’s banned list have you read? Did any one book really hit home for you? Which book was it?

To read about Ghenet’s pick from the Banned Books List, check out her YA Cafe post.  Also, don’t forget to tweet about YA books that you love on Twitter, using the #YAcafe and #YAsaves hash tags.

Welcome Back to YA Cafe, where book lovers can gather and chat about teen literature. I’m your barista, along with Ghenet from All About Them Words.

Each Friday we pick from a menu of topics and share our thoughts on our respective blogs. We’ve also got plans brewing for interviews, events and even some exciting giveaways, so stay tuned! Join the discussion by responding in the comments, on your own blogs or on twitter using the hash tag #yacafe.

Today, I’m going to get a little bit personal and I hope you bear with me.  Because, let’s face it, body image IS personal and for me, this topic has long been intertwined both with my emotional identity and my identity as a writer.  So here goes.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been an observer in my own life, an outsider, a perfectly-acceptable-looking but nothing-special kinda girl.  In fact, I think it’s no random coincidence that my current work-in-progress happens to be about a girl who’s totally ordinary.  Because that’s the role I often played as a teen.

I think this is why Halloween was such an important part of my teenage life.  I only stopped dressing up when I was well into graduate school.  From my very first Halloween as a baby where I dressed as a fortune-teller, through my teen years and early twenties, Halloween was one of the most important nights of my year.

I can still remember the Halloween costumes I wore as a teenager.  Age 13: Phantom of the Opera.  Age 14: Nathan Detroit from Guys and Dolls.  Age 15: A Brazilian soccer player (in honor of the World Cup the following summer).  Age 16: Hobbes from Calvin and Hobbes.  Age 17:  Robin Hood.  Looking back to the Halloween costumes of my high school years, it strikes me that they were all male personas, which is interesting in and of itself, but what’s more interesting is that the costumes themselves were complete opposites of my personality.

Phantom of the Opera: crazed-in-love and melodramatic.  Nathan Detroit: bumbling but charming New York gangster.  Brazilian soccer player: um, I’m the kid who purposely got “out” first when playing dodgeball so I could sit on the sidelines and read.  And Hobbes?  Well, I’ve always been more Calvin than Hobbes.  Robin Hood was the only costume I related to on some level… I don’t know why but taking from the “haves” and giving to the “have-nots” has always been a theme that really resonated with me.  (Those of you who’ve been around this blog long enough, will probably get a chuckle from that last understatement.)

Anyway, back to Halloween.  I think the reason Halloween was so important to me was that being somebody else for the day gave me permission to step into the limelight.  It was a way for me to abandon the quiet-Gabriela persona and take on a whole other personality.  It pulled me out of my usual observer role, making me an active participant in the world around me.  It was as though as long as I was in costume—as long as I was being somebody else—it was OK for me to draw attention to myself.  It was perfectly acceptable for Robin Hood to take center stage, but not so for ordinary Gabriela.

The truth is that, Halloween costumes or not, I never fit in.  It’s no coincidence that high school was about the time when I started keeping a regular journal, or as one of my classmates used to call it: “the b*tch book.”  When I was writing, nobody judged me based on how I looked.  It didn’t matter whether I’d mastered the art of eye-liner or if I was wearing the latest fashions from some teenie-bopper magazine.  Writing didn’t have visual and audible cues, like facial expression or even tone of voice.  All I had to work with were the words I put on the page and I was in complete control of what those words were.  Writing allowed me to be another person and I could see the world through her eyes.  Through this adopted identity, I could say and do things I would never do in real life.  It let me act out all the daring, crazy or even downright-bad behaviors I wished I could do without actually suffering the negative consequences.

My journal collection has now reached a total of close to thirty notebooks with the earliest one dating back to when I was in fourth grade.  I rarely reread these journals, and do so only when I need to remember a particular person or event.  Otherwise, I prefer to leave the past in the past and simply keep these journals as totems marking the various landmarks of my life.  They’re evidence, like existential graffiti.  “GABRIELA WUZ HERE.”  These journals are the proof.

I’ve often wondered what I would want done with them when I’m gone.  If someone else were to read them I would die of embarrassment, even if I was already dead.  At the same time, though, I couldn’t bear the idea of them being destroyed either.  No, I think I would want them to be locked away someplace, maybe in a glass case in a library where no one has the key.  That way people could know that they were there, but not actually see what was in them.  Then even in death, I could be pseudo-invisible.  The journals would exist and with them a record of my thoughts and opinions, but they would always be out of reach.  Of course the irony is that if this did happen, people would only see the covers of the journals and they would never know what’s inside.  I would be nothing more than a book being judged by its cover, and is that what I really want to be?

To read Ghenet’s take on body image as a teen, check out her YA Cafe post.  Also, don’t forget to share what makes you beautiful and embrace your awesomeness with the hash tag #whatmakesmebeautiful on Twitter.

Welcome Back to YA Cafe, where book lovers can gather and chat about teen literature. I’m your barista, along with Ghenet from All About Them Words.

Each Friday we pick from a menu of topics and share our thoughts on our respective blogs. We’ve also got plans brewing for interviews, events and even some exciting giveaways, so stay tuned! Join the discussion by responding in the comments, on your own blogs or on twitter using the hash tag #yacafe.

Today, Ghenet and I are really excited to unveil our very first video interview at YA Cafe.  A few weeks ago we met up with debut YA author Julia Mayer in New York and got a chance to chat with her about her first book: Eyes in the Mirror.  Some of the topics we covered:

• Julia’s adventures in publishing Eyes in the Mirror
• 826NYC, the awesome program where Julia wrote her first draft as a teen
• Writing from different points of view
• Seeing situations from multiple perspectives
• And, of course, Julia’s best advice for aspiring authors

Now, without further ado, here’s the interview!

We hope you enjoyed watching the video interview!   Guess what?  There’s also a giveaway!  Ghenet and I managed to score an ARC of Eyes in the Mirror, which we got Julia to sign an now we’re going to give it to one of you.  Just leave a comment either here or at Ghenet’s blog and we’ll let Random.org pick a winner.  Contest is open until Wednesday, September 21 at 11:59pm ET.  We’ll announce the winner next Friday.

Keep reading.  Keep writing.  Keep being awesome!

Hello all,

Today is just a quick post to give you an update about YA Cafe.  Ghenet and I have been brainstorming lots of fun new things to do on Fridays and we’re really excited to kick-start the new-and-improved YA Cafe next week, with a special feature on author Julia Mayer and her new book Eyes In the Mirror.  We’ll also be doing a giveaway!

Later this fall, we’ve got other fun things planned.  Also we were so excited by the YA Cafe Book Club that we’re planning to continue it, only with a slightly different twist so more people can participate without being limited by the book choices.

As always, we love hearing from you so if you have any suggestions of topics or YA-related issues you would like to see us cover, leave a comment or shoot one of us an email!

A huge thank you to everyone who’s supported this project so far!  You rock!