Feb
19
Read this week’s free YA essay on Smartpopbooks.com:
My Boyfriend Sparkles
Each night I ask the stars above Why must I be a teenager in love?
–Dion and the Belmonts
Bella Swan thinks of her relationship with the vampire Edward Cullen in great sweeping terms–Romeo and Juliet, Catherine and Heathcliff. And their story certainly has echoes of those iconic lovers; they are star-crossed, ardent, destined for each other, eternal, doomed. But as extraordinary as their relationship is, it is also quite ordinary, and familiar. The overwhelming intensity of their romance makes sense because Bella and Edward are teenagers, and never is the rhetoric of star-crossed love and eternity so plausible as at that time in life. And while Edward isn’t exactly human, their relationship is very much so, and its course closely follows familiar tropes of teen love, for better or for worse. Bella Swan’s relationship with Edward Cullen is immortal, dangerous, forbidden, impassioned, allconsuming–in short, exactly like first love.
I Was …
Available Until Wednesday, October 7th, 2020
Continue Reading “My Boyfriend Sparkles”»
Feb
19
Read this week’s free YA essay on Smartpopbooks.com:
Introduction: The Girl Who Was on Fire
You could call the Hunger Games a series that is–like its heroine–on fire. But its popularity, in itself, is nothing new. We live in an era of blockbuster young adult book series: Harry Potter, Twilight, now the Hunger Games. It’s more unusual these days for there
not to be a YA series sweeping the nation.
All of these series have certain things in common: compelling characters; complex worlds you want to spend time exploring; a focus on family and community. But the Hunger Games is, by far, the darkest of the three. In Twilight, love conquers all; Bella ends the series bound eternally to Edward and mother to Renesmee, without having to give up her human family or Jacob in the process. In Harry Potter, though there is loss, the world is returned to familiar stability after Voldemort’s defeat, and before we leave them, we see all of the main characters happily married, raising the next generation of witches and …
Available Until Wednesday, September 30th, 2020
Continue Reading “Introduction: The Girl Who Was on Fire”»
Feb
19
Read this week’s free YA essay on Smartpopbooks.com:
What Does That Deviant Wench Think She's Doing? Or, Shadowhunters Gone Wild
“So, technically, even though Jace isn’t actually related to you, you have kissed your brother.”
–Simon Lewis in City of Glass, telling it like it is
I hope, with this saucy title, that everyone has flipped right from the table of contents to this essay. Hi, guys! Almost every other essay will be more coherent and intelligent than this one, but if you want dirty jokes, you have come to the right place. Welcome to Sarah’s School of Deviant Literary Analysis, where everyone gets to canoodle, including Magnus Bane’s magnificent self.
And since I invoked Magnus Bane’s name because I was shamelessly cribbing off a phrase he used in
City of Bones (nobody canoodles in his bedroom but his magnificent self), let’s begin my list of shameless debauchees (otherwise known as Cassandra Clare’s cast of characters) with a look at Magnus: warlock, Downworlder, fashion icon. Though the angel Raziel says that …
Available Until Wednesday, September 23rd, 2020
Continue Reading “What Does That Deviant Wench Think She's Doing? Or, Shadowhunters Gone Wild”»
Feb
19
Read this week’s free YA essay on Smartpopbooks.com:
Behind the House of Night Names
by
What’s in a name? Well, after reading how P.C. Cast discovered and wove the
Cruithne myths into her tales, you now know that much time and research has
gone into creating the intricate plotlines of the House of Night novels. The
same is true for the names of the characters.
Below is an appendix of the more intriguing names in the series. You won’t
find everyone’s here; with some names, like Heath Luck or Erik Night, what
you see is what you get. But for others, we’ve untangled the historical, mythological,
and pop culture ties–intentional and incidental–that give these
characters’ monikers a little extra magic.
The Fledglings
Zoey Redbird
Zoey (Greek) life; Redbird in Cherokee myth, the Redbird is the
daughter of the Sun
In the House of Night . . .
During their first meeting in Marked, Nyx calls Zoey u-s-ti Do-tsu-wa, or “little
Redbird.” Redbird is also the last name of Zoey’s grandmother Sylvia, and
when Zoey enters the House …
Available Until Wednesday, September 16th, 2020
Continue Reading “Behind the House of Night Names”»
Feb
19
Read this week’s free YA essay on Smartpopbooks.com:
As Bad as They Wanna Be
I Heart Hades
I’ll admit, all the gods get decent marks on the “coolness scale,” but in my book, Hades is top dog, or top hellhound in his case. Sure, he’s a little bit on the brooding side and in need of a quality self-tanner, but still, the dude sports some serious swagger. Percy may have no love for the guy, but even he admits in
The Lightning Thief that Hades was the only god he’d met so far that appeared godlike.Think about it–he’s the essence of cool, clad in black, long-haired and lanky, hanging out in his alternative night-clubby underworld palace. Sure, there’s that raging smell of sulfur and those bothersome bloodcurdling screams, but I’d imagine that’s easy for Hades to stomach with his glitzy goddess wife Persephone at his side. To boot, he’s richer than all get-out, making Zeus and Poseidon look like minor players on the who’s-who-of-godly-wealth list. …
Available Until Wednesday, September 9th, 2020
Continue Reading “As Bad as They Wanna Be”»
Feb
19
Read this week’s free YA essay on Smartpopbooks.com:
Just Another Crazed Narnia Fan
When I was in the sixth grade, I loaned my copy of
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to Lisa Miller and never got it back. Not that I hold a grudge. Lisa had a surgery that required breaking both her legs and resetting them, putting her in a wheelchair for the good part of a year. Flimsy excuse, yes? I mean, this was my beloved and cherished copy, part of the ENTIRE SET of the Chronicles of Narnia that my parents had given me for Christmas when I was ten. An entire set of Narnia books without
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe–it’s like an entire set of dishes without the, well,
dishes.
I still remember getting those books. For some reason, my mother had hidden them, unwrapped, inside a set of decorative drums that were underneath the Christmas tree. One day I was messing around, as any …
Available Until Wednesday, September 2nd, 2020
Continue Reading “Just Another Crazed Narnia Fan”»
Feb
19
Read this week’s free YA essay on Smartpopbooks.com:
When Laws Are Made to Be Broken
“We Shadowhunters live by a code, and that code isn’t flexible.”
–Jace Wayland, City of Bones
Imagine that your best friend came to you one day, brimming with excitement because she’d met these super-awesome new friends who suggested she come live with them, follow a bunch of arcane and unquestionable laws, and cut ties with all her old friends because they’re incapable of understanding her new super-awesome life.
If you’re a child of the ’80s like me, reared on a steady diet of Jonestown horror stories and trashy novels about brainwashed teens, you would immediately recognize the situation for what it was: Your best friend has joined a cult.
If you’re not a child of the ’80s but not completely oblivious, you’d still clue in pretty quick: definitely a cult.
Simon Lewis is far from oblivious.
As he tells his best friend, Clary Fray, in
City of Ashes, “The Shadowhunter thing–they’re like a cult.” …
Available Until Wednesday, August 26th, 2020
Continue Reading “When Laws Are Made to Be Broken”»
Feb
19
Read this week’s free YA essay on Smartpopbooks.com:
Sweet Caroline
I’ve prepared a speech about Caroline Forbes. Please don’t interrupt me, because I have a lot to say on the matter, and I really want to get this right.
By this point, you may already be wondering why I would choose to write about Caroline when there are brooding vampires and butt-kicking heroines to be discussed and a dark and twisty Damon Salvatore to be pondered, adored, and dissected. The answer is simple: in a world of vampires, witches, and tragically beautiful girls who never asked to be loved nearly so well as they are, Caroline is an exception to nearly every rule–even the ones she tries desperately to follow. Tactless, shallow, materialistic, and quick to judge, our Miss Forbes is the latest in a long line of loveable TV bitcas, heir to the throne of
One Tree Hill’s Brooke Davis,
Gossip Girl’s Blair Waldorf, and
Available Until Wednesday, August 19th, 2020
Continue Reading “Sweet Caroline”»
Feb
19
Read this week’s free YA essay on Smartpopbooks.com:
My Dragon, Myself
Confession time: I love dragons, and have since the first time I heard of the mythical creatures who liked to kidnap princesses and test the princes who would rescue them. Only the best, bravest, smartest–smartest was always the key–could beat the evil, ravening, blazing beasts and free the princess. This appealed to me, maybe because I loved to doodle and the only recognizable thing I could doodle was a princess: billowing triangulation for a base, round head with long flowing hair, stick arms, and a pair of slippers peeping out under the skirt. Easy peasy. I must have doodled a million princesses in my time in school. Occasionally I’d try a dragon (theoretically a snake with scales and wings, right?). But my artistic talent was limited, so I always went back to princesses.
I can’t remember when I first learned about dragons, but I recall they were all vicious, cranky creatures …
Available Until Wednesday, August 12th, 2020
Continue Reading “My Dragon, Myself”»
Feb
19
Read this week’s free YA essay on Smartpopbooks.com:
A Special Hero
In fiction, heroes and villains are usually main characters, often in opposition to one another. Heroes are distinguished by their exceptional courage, fortitude, and boldness, while villains are depicted as egregiously wicked, corrupt, or malevolent.
In the Uglies series, Dr. Cable is clearly the villain. Her lust for power and control is right up there with that of our world’s most notorious bad guys, Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler. And like those historic villains, Cable is a sociopath who will do whatever it takes, even murder, to maintain the status quo, convinced that the end–keeping the population in its cage to protect the world–justifies the means. When Special Circumstances attacks the Smoke at her instruction and kills the Boss, the cantankerous middle-aged ugly who looks after the Smoke’s collection of old Rusty magazines, Cable displays neither regret for her troops’ excessive use of violence nor remorse over the old man’s death. …
Available Until Wednesday, August 5th, 2020
Continue Reading “A Special Hero”»
Follow us on Twitter
Become a fan on Facebook
Subscribe