Yes, A.S. King Airline's "Ask the Passengers" flight is scheduled to launch tomorrow, and it's time to get on board. This book has generated a lot of buzz in recent weeks, and it deserves all of it. A.S. King was gracious enough to answer my interview questions about ATP last month, and here is the link. But today she blogged about the book so much more eloquently than I ever could, so here is that link too. Her message is deeply simple: love is love. And I will quote Janis Joplin, who is the only person I ever heard sing "Get It While You Can," so to my mind, she owns that song, even if someone else wrote it.
In this world - If you read the papers, darlin' -
Everybody's fighting - oh! - with each other,
And there's no one you can count on,
Not even your own brother.
So if anybody should come along
Wants to give you his love and affection,
I say: get it while you can. Get it while you can.
Don't you turn your back on love.
Astrid Jones in "Ask the Passengers," out of all the options available to her, chooses love, and I think you will find it impossible not to love her in return. I know I did. Do yourself a favor and get to know her too.
Showing posts with label Ask the Passengers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ask the Passengers. Show all posts
Monday, October 22, 2012
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Ask the Passengers
Yes, I hope to soon be able to post an interview with A.S. King, author of Everybody Sees the Ants (YALSA Top Ten Books for YA, Junior Library Guild selection, many starred reviews), Please Ignore Vera Dietz (Printz Honor Book 2011, Kirkus Reviews Best Books for Teens), and, most recently, Ask the Passengers, due out on October 23 and the subject of the interview. Here's my review.
The people of Unity Valley, Pennsylvania, like most people who populate our planet, think they know everything there is to know, at least about their community. For example, they all know that Kristina and Justin, the most beautiful, popular couple in the senior class, are going to get married someday and have beautiful, popular children. But Astrid Jones, Kristina's best friend, knows the truth: Kristina and Justin will never marry each other because they're both gay, and are serving (with great success) as each other's beards.
Astrid, on the other hand, isn't gay. Last year she had a boyfriend she was crazy about, until her mother started rumors that broke them up. Well, Mom couldn't let it go on too long between her daughter and a fat boy, now could she? What would people say? Mom's answer to living under a microscope in Unity Valley is to get perfectly dressed, groomed, and made up each morning, and then never leave the house. Dad's answer is to disappear into the garage each evening in a haze of pot smoke. And Ellis, Astrid's younger sister, has an extremely demanding 24/7 job called Trying to Merge Into The Crowd. All of which leaves Astrid on her own, except for the passengers in the airplanes that fly overhead.
It's a real relationship that Astrid has with the passengers, although it's a bit one-sided. Astrid lies on a picnic table in her back yard and sends love up to the people in the planes, because her love is not a popular commodity in her family, or anywhere in Unity Valley ( a place name which the reader soon learns to surround with air quotes). And Astrid also directs her questions to the passengers, because she has to ask someone, not because she expects them to answer. How would the passengers know, for example, why Astrid's mother loves Ellis, but not Astrid? How would they know where Astrid's life is headed? And how could they possibly know why, if Astrid is straight, she's lately been deriving such intense pleasure from her kissing sessions with Dee, her female co-worker?
The only thing Astrid knows is that everyone, including Dee, wants to put her into some kind of a box, to categorize her, to assign her a number. She doesn't know what she wants, but she knows she doesn't want that, nor does she want to live a lie like Kristina and Justin. So she doesn't have much choice but to set about learning who she is and where she belongs, no matter what it costs her.
A.S. King gets her hands dirty. She gets down into the trenches with her characters, down where she can't fake it or look away, because they can't. I can see this book saving a life or two. Please read my interview with her when it posts, and in the meantime, pre-order the book. Then, in the two months until it arrives, read up on the Greek philosophers.
The people of Unity Valley, Pennsylvania, like most people who populate our planet, think they know everything there is to know, at least about their community. For example, they all know that Kristina and Justin, the most beautiful, popular couple in the senior class, are going to get married someday and have beautiful, popular children. But Astrid Jones, Kristina's best friend, knows the truth: Kristina and Justin will never marry each other because they're both gay, and are serving (with great success) as each other's beards.
Astrid, on the other hand, isn't gay. Last year she had a boyfriend she was crazy about, until her mother started rumors that broke them up. Well, Mom couldn't let it go on too long between her daughter and a fat boy, now could she? What would people say? Mom's answer to living under a microscope in Unity Valley is to get perfectly dressed, groomed, and made up each morning, and then never leave the house. Dad's answer is to disappear into the garage each evening in a haze of pot smoke. And Ellis, Astrid's younger sister, has an extremely demanding 24/7 job called Trying to Merge Into The Crowd. All of which leaves Astrid on her own, except for the passengers in the airplanes that fly overhead.
It's a real relationship that Astrid has with the passengers, although it's a bit one-sided. Astrid lies on a picnic table in her back yard and sends love up to the people in the planes, because her love is not a popular commodity in her family, or anywhere in Unity Valley ( a place name which the reader soon learns to surround with air quotes). And Astrid also directs her questions to the passengers, because she has to ask someone, not because she expects them to answer. How would the passengers know, for example, why Astrid's mother loves Ellis, but not Astrid? How would they know where Astrid's life is headed? And how could they possibly know why, if Astrid is straight, she's lately been deriving such intense pleasure from her kissing sessions with Dee, her female co-worker?
The only thing Astrid knows is that everyone, including Dee, wants to put her into some kind of a box, to categorize her, to assign her a number. She doesn't know what she wants, but she knows she doesn't want that, nor does she want to live a lie like Kristina and Justin. So she doesn't have much choice but to set about learning who she is and where she belongs, no matter what it costs her.
A.S. King gets her hands dirty. She gets down into the trenches with her characters, down where she can't fake it or look away, because they can't. I can see this book saving a life or two. Please read my interview with her when it posts, and in the meantime, pre-order the book. Then, in the two months until it arrives, read up on the Greek philosophers.
Friday, May 18, 2012
The Art of Pissing off People You Don't Even Know
So you say you want to learn how to alienate total strangers whom you actually admire? Really, when you think about it, who wouldn't? Well, you've come to the right place. Come sit at the feet of the master.
Remember how, on April 20th, I published a post describing my admiration for YA novelist A.S. King and her novels, "Please Ignore Vera Dietz" and "Everybody Sees the Ants?" Sure you do. In fact, I've been really looking forward to reading her next release, "Ask the Passengers," due out in October, and wondering whether I could summon the courage to ask her for an interview afterward. All good so far, right? And, of course, I've been following her blog because I like the off-kilter way she thinks and the values she novelistically espouses. I mean, you can tell when an author is anti-bullying, or anti-crushing-weight-of-conformity, or anti-stupid-prejudices, right? She's clearly all of those things, and more. And here is where the plot thickens.
Yesterday morning I read her latest blog post, "A Week In My Cave," in which she asserted that she "doesn't give a shit about politics," and it started to eat at me. And it kept eating at me all day. Now, here's where the instructional part comes in: what did I choose to do in response? Why, I chose to post a condescending, self-righteous comment on her blog (my very FIRST comment on someone else's blog, no less), advising her that it would behoove her to give a shit about politics, because whom we citizens choose to elect to public office actually affects our lives and those of others we care about. To which she responded with a politeness I did not deserve, explaining that I had taken her offhand remark out of context and that she does, indeed, read newspapers, vote, write often to her congresspersons, and act in many other socially conscious ways which I might have known something about if I had cared to do my homework before blasting her on her blog. And then I apologized. And here's what we would have said in New York when I was growing up about the value of my apology: "that and a token will get you on the subway."
So there you have it. I've publicly called out an author whom I respect, and I was wrong. And here's a little quiz: what would you now say are the odds that she would agree to my interviewing her after "Passengers" comes out? Zero? Far too generous. The odds, my friends, are now deep into the negative numbers, and likely to remain there throughout eternity.
End of tutorial. Additional pointers are available upon request. You know who should be banished to a cave and not allowed out to interact with other humans until she can learn some rules about courteous discourse? Here's a hint: it's not A.S. King.
Remember how, on April 20th, I published a post describing my admiration for YA novelist A.S. King and her novels, "Please Ignore Vera Dietz" and "Everybody Sees the Ants?" Sure you do. In fact, I've been really looking forward to reading her next release, "Ask the Passengers," due out in October, and wondering whether I could summon the courage to ask her for an interview afterward. All good so far, right? And, of course, I've been following her blog because I like the off-kilter way she thinks and the values she novelistically espouses. I mean, you can tell when an author is anti-bullying, or anti-crushing-weight-of-conformity, or anti-stupid-prejudices, right? She's clearly all of those things, and more. And here is where the plot thickens.
Yesterday morning I read her latest blog post, "A Week In My Cave," in which she asserted that she "doesn't give a shit about politics," and it started to eat at me. And it kept eating at me all day. Now, here's where the instructional part comes in: what did I choose to do in response? Why, I chose to post a condescending, self-righteous comment on her blog (my very FIRST comment on someone else's blog, no less), advising her that it would behoove her to give a shit about politics, because whom we citizens choose to elect to public office actually affects our lives and those of others we care about. To which she responded with a politeness I did not deserve, explaining that I had taken her offhand remark out of context and that she does, indeed, read newspapers, vote, write often to her congresspersons, and act in many other socially conscious ways which I might have known something about if I had cared to do my homework before blasting her on her blog. And then I apologized. And here's what we would have said in New York when I was growing up about the value of my apology: "that and a token will get you on the subway."
So there you have it. I've publicly called out an author whom I respect, and I was wrong. And here's a little quiz: what would you now say are the odds that she would agree to my interviewing her after "Passengers" comes out? Zero? Far too generous. The odds, my friends, are now deep into the negative numbers, and likely to remain there throughout eternity.
End of tutorial. Additional pointers are available upon request. You know who should be banished to a cave and not allowed out to interact with other humans until she can learn some rules about courteous discourse? Here's a hint: it's not A.S. King.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Wanna know a YA author whose books I really, really like? You do? Cool. I was recently at my library and stumbled across two novels by A.S. King: Please Ignore Vera Dietz, and Everybody Sees the Ants. They both really got me. One, I'm a sucker for twisted humor. Two, I like books about teens who are struggling not only to figure themselves out, but also to figure out their own weird, flawed parents, and the unique mix of loving/damaging their kids that each one of them brings to the table. Because, let's face it: I don't know one parent (and I'm totally including myself) who doesn't fit somewhere on the loving/damaging spectrum, and where each one falls on that spectrum can change from day to day, or even hour to hour. Depends how much sleep we've had, what the traffic was like on the way home from work, how we're feeling about ourselves at the moment, whether something our kids said reminds us of something that somebody we don't like once said... The list goes on and on. Vera Dietz's mother took off for Las Vegas with her podiatrist six years ago, when Vera was twelve, and hasn't been seen since, unless you count the card and check that arrive from her each year on Vera's birthday. So it's Vera and her dad, a recovering alcoholic who believes that high school students should hold full-time jobs in their spare time. Lucky Linderman, the 15-year-old boy who thinks he's the only one who sees the ants, will tell you that his mother is a squid and his father is a turtle, and that's only the beginning of what's wrong with them. Vera and Lucky both have complex relationships with other kids too, but the ways they handle those relationships are informed by the way they handle their relationships with the adults they have to learn to live with - or without. And vice versa. Lucky's most complex relationship of all is with someone he never met: his Granddad Harry, MIA in Vietnam before Lucky's father was even born, but who has been showing up in Lucky's dreams since Lucky was seven, and the bullying he was enduring became unbearable. The dreams focus on Lucky's attempts to rescue his grandfather from jungle imprisonment, but through them Lucky begins to realize that Harry is not the only one in need of rescue. I found both Vera and Lucky to be irresistible, and now I can't wait for King's next novel, "Ask the Passengers," which is about a girl who's focused on sending her love to the passengers flying in airplanes overhead. A.S. King rocks, but don't take my word for it. Read her books yourself.
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