Comic Book Resources has an excellent article on the demise of Minx, with comments from many of the author/illustrators involved. I'm not surprised that the line suffered from being shelved in the graphic novel section of the bookstores - gn readers were never the target and for someone who reads both comics and YA it was clear that this was an imprint looking for YA readers. This is not to suggest that gn readers wouldn't enjoy Minx, but the readers DC was looking for were the ones searching for coming-of-age titles in the YA section. Cecil Castellucci's readers were perfect Minx readers, which was why I was so happy to see her Janes titles. (See my review of her Janes in Love in my teen political books piece in the new issue of Eclectica.) If bookstores had really wanted the Minx books to sell then they should have shelved them in the YA section, plain and simple. Anyone who writes or reviews books for teens knew that; why it escaped the logic of the major chains I'll never know. (Unless of course they are so stuck in their classification rut that they don't care if a book sells or not, just that it "fits" in which case they should get out of the book business and start selling widgets.)

In case you missed it, Little Willow had an excellent piece up at Guys Lit Wire last week on The Great Gatsby. She talked to a lot of different people about why the book still matters and presented her case for the timelessness of its significant contribution to literature. This is exactly the sort of post I was hoping to see over there and combined with Alex's look at a new Ambrose Bierce gn, Leila's review of Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box and the recent list of recommended horror titles, it has just been a great week at the site.

Kelly Link was interviewed at the Boston Phoenix where her latest book, Pretty Monsters is rightfully saluted for all its fabulousness. (My review will be up in the annual October Country column any day now at Bookslut.) Here's the bit on the title story:

It’s partly a tale of a teenage girl named Clementine whose life is saved by a blond-haired boy named Cabell, partly a tale of girls at a private school enacting an initiation rite on one of the new kids, and partly an examination on the act of reading and how stories can be shape-shifters. Plus latent-lesbian urgings. Also: werewolves.

I didn't get the "latent-lesbian urgings" but maybe I missed it in all the mean girl awesomeness. And the werewolves bit - if you liked Martin Millar's take then you will like Link's more subtle but still intense take as well.

The WSJ interviewed Sarah Vowell and makes me even more eager to read her latest, The Wordy Shipmates (totally on my birthday list) (Yes, my birthday is looming large) (It is a major birthday, in case you're wondering...). A bit of the interview:

I'm a huge fan of the Constitution, but it's continually being betrayed. I have enormous admiration for Lincoln, but the reason for his greatness was that he had to confront the ugliness of slavery. This book looks at the roots of American exceptionalism through the eyes of a person who's seen the photos from Abu Ghraib. I'm incredibly hard on this country the way I would be if I had a child who had a lot of potential and kept messing up.

If you haven't read her earlier books, get on it.

I first read about Samira Bellil several years ago when Paris was on fire during the riots. I've been waiting for her book, To Hell and Back, to be translated ever since. Booklist just mentioned it last month, and even gave it a YA recommendation:

Bellil grew up in Seine-Saint-Denis, a multiethnic suburb of Paris rife with housing projects and street gangs. Raised by Algerian parents, she rebelled at an early age, choosing the streets over her father’s strict, often-violent rule. At just 14 years old, Bellil is gang-raped. Although she is utterly traumatized, she maintains the community’s unwritten “law of silence� for fear of retaliation. When Bellil is raped again, she learns that her friends have also been sexually abused by the same gang members. Choosing to speak out, she files charges against her aggressors, which also means confronting indifferent legal representatives and unsupportive parents. Years of street living, substance abuse, and emotional and physical turmoil follow, as Bellil struggles to restore her self-worth, long clouded over by degradation and humiliation. Bellil’s colloquial narrative is straightforward and urgent. Although Bellil died of cancer at 31 in 2004, her memoir has brought widespread attention to the increasing sexual violence within these French communities, and her words give a voice to other young women who are silently suffering abuse.

An intense book to be sure, but a very important subject and I'm pleased to see it finally in English.

Lots of folks have been weighing in on the SLJ article about the Newberys and I agree with all those who say it is all a matter of taste and/or opinion and really one person's great book is another's rubbish so there's no way we're all going to agree on this. In my mind what makes the Newbery's so frustrating though is that over the years the awards have attained such cache with adults (primarily teachers and parents) that they carry an extra weight. This is not at all the fault of anyone involved - it's just what happens when you have one primary award for a certain age group that has been around for a long long time. I think a lot of people outside the library world have perhaps forgotten that these are just the picks of some adults. That might seem silly but in the bookstore where I worked the Newberys were considered incredibly significant as far as what kids should be reading and when a kid said they didn't want the book the adult with them was usually surprised. ("How could you not????") I take the choices with a grain of salt, much as I do the National Book Awards. Doesn't mean the article isn't a very interesting read though.

Hope you're all planning to watch the debate tonight - and working on those posts for November 3rd and Blog the Vote.