Addicted to Her

-
by Janet Nichols Lynch follows the short-lived but intense relationship between Rafa and the girl he has long fantasized about, Monique. Wrestling and helping his family were his passions before his brief hook-up with Monique, but all those other things fall by the wayside as he pursues her. She's totally hot, but usually goes out with guys who, well, have better cars. And she lets Rafa know that, while he lets her know that she has his heart. It doesn't take a very astute reader to see that Rafa is projecting a whole lotta good things onto Monique's hot body while disregarding her strikingly selfish side. When Rafa's stepdad is deported back to El Salvador, he is pulled back into the reality of his mom's struggle to provide for him and two other kids. As he steps up to be "el hombre de la casa," Rafa is finally struck by how manipulative and shallow Monique really is: "I take one last look at Monique. Creamy brown thighs. Beautiful breasts riding high in the blazing yellow halter dress. Full pillow-soft red lips. I avoid her eyes. Inside those eyes lives a horrible person."

This is solidly in line with the heritage of the YA problem novel, but more honest about sex and sexual attraction. A few posts back I was being cranky that no books ever did, well, this, showing that sexual attraction can be just that, sexual attraction, without any deeper substance. This probably won't sell paperbacks, probably will remain a hit among Mexican-American teens and librarians, but it's an excellent book for showing Rafa's love-blinded perspective in a sympathetic light.

Popular posts from this blog

ALA and the Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians

-
Image
So ALA sent out their email to invite members to come to ALA Annual in Chicago this year, and they selected five sessions to highlight. Ours is one of them!   As the US struggles with an onslaught of book banning like we have not seen in my lifetime, our project, the Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians , aims to get ahead of what we expect to come next: local battles over the existence of public and community college libraries. In fact, this battle has already begun, with some community college libraries in my state losing up to 2/3rds of their former staffing levels since the Covid-19 pandemic. We are right on time. This concern about defending libraries launched my research on understanding data storytelling in librarianship, with a pilot project in 2019 funded by the Center for Social & Behavioral Science at the University of Illinois--an article on obstacles to library data storytelling is in press with Public Library Quarterly, likely to be published in summer 2023. ...
Read more

Bad Information: What's wrong with the story?

-
New article in Information Matters is out! Here's a brief excerpt: "We all love a good story, and storytelling is a central way that human share experiences, from what happened at work or school today to the most meaningful moments of our lives. We tell stories about everything, from what we know to be true to what we fear might happen someday, and stories always involve emotional engagement. How do we know if a story is accurate or inaccurate, rational or exaggerated, correct or misleading, especially when an untrue story may be more gripping than the truth? When misinformation is spreading as people retell fake stories, stopping it requires a better understanding of how stories work and what specific information errors lead to the crafting—deliberate or accidental—of compelling misinformation stories."  https://informationmatters.org/2023/04/storytelling-dynamics-and-misinformation-the-bad-s-dikw-framework/
Read more

What Storytelling Is (Not)

-
Image
Everybody is talking about "storytelling" lately... When you hear the word "storytelling" so much, it seems like anything and everything can be storytelling. But it's important to define it so you know what I'm talking about. As written previously, I define storytelling as a dynamic exchange between the tale, the teller, and the audience. Understanding what is not storytelling--according to the definition I am developing based on the tradition of storytelling in librarianship--may help to further illuminate what storytelling is. But perhaps I should start with a quick definition of what storytelling is. Stories are fascinating; lots of  people are deeply interested in story structure, but I focus most on storytelling. To understand the "telling" part, I see benefits to focusing on the dynamic of storytelling as a three-part interchange. We learn about listening from this model in ways that other models miss by focusing solely on the story....
Read more