So Many Books... - Post a comment

lady_schrapnell

10:16 am

You know - that reminds me of one criticism I had that I forgot about in making all the other criticisms: when Johnny's cornered in the bathroom at school by the big, psychotic bully (who actually hates Johnny so much because he used to date Maria and is jealous) and the bully-side-kick, he suddenly finds the whole thing funny and starts laughing and says he's laughing at them: 'Look at you two. How come I never see you apart?' and is just saying 'I think you two are in lo-" when he gets thrown onto the mirror. And I know- like all the rest that isn't meant that way - it's not MEANT to suggest it would be okay to make fun of them if they were gay, but that is nonetheless what it ends up doing.

In all fairness about the 7 Imp thing, I think most of that is because, whatever about the relative lack of gay characters in YA fiction, there's a complete and total lack of TG characters in YA fiction. A lot of people would know little to nothing about transgender and would feel that to understand that it's possible to be transgender and heterosexual (actually more common), would be to increase their understanding about a sizable group of the population, which would be a Good Thing. And I agree entirely, and think TG representation in YA is about where that of gay characters was - what - 20 years ago? But it's especially unfortunate for the one of maybe a(n Irish) couple of books to get it so badly off.

I *love* your pithy description of the muddled texts, which is just right. And as this book is pretty clearly well-intentioned, I really wonder why the author didn't do it from the POV of the girlfriend, which might have worked out much less muddled.