Kelly Jensen's Blog, page 67

I’ve Sold Another Book

From Publishers Weekly, 1/5/17:

 

I went to New York City in late October, and one of the things I did was have lunch with my agent. She’d submitted my proposal for this anthology in August (maybe September?) and we’d had a really positive phone call with my editors at Algonquin about it. An hour after lunch, I had my phone in my hand and was walking, taking photos. I got an email notification and it was my agent — the anthology had officially sold and we had our terms and agreements met.

That was before the election.

When the election results rolled in, I’d been packing to go to New York City again, this time for Book Riot Live. The event was cathartic, even with the unbelievable questions of “what’s going to happen?” and “how?” lingering in the air. It was hard to focus, and I don’t think I mentioned to anyone that I’d sold another book.

(In a side anecdote, I’d had lunch with one of my editors on that trip and an hour later, when I was in The Strand, I got a call from her, wherein I got the new of my first starred trade review from Kirkus. New York City has been growing on me.)

Over the last couple of months since selling this anthology, I’ve been putting it together bit by bit. I’ve sketched out who I’d like to take part. I’ve researched and reached out to people I knew, as well as people I’d never met or talked to before, to start a conversation. It wasn’t easy. I wasn’t feeling particularly good about the process.

It wasn’t the people. It wasn’t the topics.

It was feeling the overwhelming weight of the question “what does this matter?”

I turned my computer mostly off for the last weeks of 2016. I read. I wrote. I took photos. I disconnected from being “on” in order to focus on turning inward. And somewhere in there, I realized that this anthology was exactly what I needed to be working on because it’s exactly the conversation that needs to be happening now, maybe more than ever.

And when the new year rolled around, my agent decided that yes, we needed to share this good news. I finished up my contributors list days before the announcement came out.

I’m honored and thrilled to be working with Algonquin Young Readers again, with two editors and a whole team who are unbelievably enthusiastic about this work. I’m also honored to share a complete contributor list for this collection as it stands now. There will be more pieces, reprints and perhaps another original or two, from celebrities and other “big names.” I’ve gotten permissions to two very exciting ones, and I am working hard to make more connections happen.

Adam Silvera
Esmé Weijun Wang
JJ Jones
Amy Reed
Libba Bray
Victoria Schwab
Christine Heppermann
Clint VanWinkle
Hannah Gomez
Emery Lord
Meredith Russo
Stephanie Kuehn
Susan Juby
Mike Jung
Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
Dior Vargas
Emily Mayberry
Shaun David Hutchinson
Heidi Heilig
Mary McFetridge
s.e. smith
Ashley Holstrom

Art from…
Gemma Correll
Monique Bedard
Yumi Sakugawa
Sharifah Williams

This process, with the knowledge I gained through building Feminism, felt like it wasn’t quite coming together because I wasn’t necessarily believing how well it was coming together.

But now? Now I cannot contain my excitement. This is going to be an incredible collection with brilliant insight into the landscape of mental health. The topics I’ve seen already are topics I can’t wait to read more about.

(Don’t) Call Me Crazy is, we think, a tentative Fall 2018 title. You can add it to your Goodreads shelf here.

 

This Week at Book Riot

 

Over on Book Riot this week . . .

 

170 YA books hitting shelves between January and the end of March. Talk about a huge TBR list. If this is overwhelming, I’m bringing back an old feature here at STACKED breaking these lists down month-by-month.

 

The first “3 On A YA Theme” this year is all about YA book which feature “Start” in the title.

 

In non-Book Riot writing, I’m making it a goal to work more on Size Acceptance in YA this year, since it got away from me last year. With that, here’s a look at some 2017 YA titles featuring fat characters or representation.

Get Social With STACKED

We’re still on hiatus until next week, but while we polish up our posts, we thought it would be worthwhile to let you know where else you can follow us on social media.

STACKED has launched an Instagram account. Both Kimberly and I will post to it, and it’ll be all books and bookish-related stuff. Nothing particularly brilliant but who doesn’t love book stacks or currently reading shots?

You can find us there as stackedbooks. And yes, we’d love to see your bookish Instagrams, too!

STACKED is also on Facebook. Though we haven’t been as regular posting our work and other fun things over there as much as we’d like, like all good bloggers, it’s our resolution to do better this year. You can find us on Facebook here.

We hope you had an excellent start to the new year and we’re glad you’re here to join us in our eighth (!!!) year of blogging about books, reading, libraries, feminism, social justice, and more.

 

Preorder Prize Pack Giveaway for HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD

I thought for a long time about what a nice “thank you” might be for those who preordered Here We Are: Feminism For The Real World. I wanted to do something special but tied into the book in some capacity, in a way that would make this a unique and special giveaway.

As I did a little searching around the internet, I realized my most amazing resources would be right in the book itself. Why reinvent the wheel when I can thank both those who preorder the book and those who took part in making the book what it is?

I’m giving away 2 amazing prize packs to 2 US residents who send proof of preordering Here We Are: Feminism For The Real World that look like this:

 

 

From left to right: a beautiful, full-color print of the piece that artist Michelle Hiraishi created for the anthology, a “Feminist with a To-Do List” pin (pictured up close below), a blank notebook with #feminist on the cover, and a lovely canvas tote bag featuring Tyler Feder’s intersectional Rosie art, which is also in the anthology.

 

 

The rules to enter this giveaway are simple, but because of legalities, they’re going to sound much more complex than they are. Dig? Here we go:

Open to US residents only, ages 18 and older. If you’re under 18 and want to enter, have a parent, guardian, or trusted adult enter on your behalf.

 

To enter, send proof of purchase of  Here We Are: Feminism For The Real World  to kelly@stackedbooks.org. Photos of receipts or computer screen purchases are acceptable, and those who order through vendors, such as librarians, can just shoot proof from your vendor receipt. If you took advantage of getting a bookmark, you can submit your proof of purchase for this giveaway, too.

 

Giveaway closes on January 25, 2017 at 12:00 pm, central time. If you purchase the book on publication date, January 24, you’re eligible, so long as the proof of purchase is in my inbox by this time.

 

Two winners will be randomly selected and contacted on the 25th and will have 72 hours to respond with their mailing information. If there’s no response in that time frame, another winner/s will be randomly selected.

 

Winners will receive all four of the items pictured above.

 

Thanks to everyone for sharing in the excitement of this book. I cannot wait until it’s out there and cannot wait to hear how and where teens find themselves fitting into the feminism party.

 

Cybils Shortlists Are Here!

It’s the first of the year, meaning that it’s not only time for a fresh start, but it’s also the day that Cybils shortlists are announced. I took part in a totally new-to-me category this year: middle grade and young adult nonfiction. For the last three months, I read a lot of nonfiction. I managed to get my hands on nearly every nominated title; just a few didn’t get read! It was a lot of fun and a lot of work and I learned a ridiculous amount about great nonfiction for young readers.

 

Here’s our roundup of middle grade short listed titles:

 

 

The titles include A Storm Too Soon, Fashion Rebels, This Land Is Our Land, Bubonic Panic, Sachiko, Ten Days A Madwoman, and We Will Not Be Silent. You can read the blurbs about why these were the selected titles right here (and you should!). Each of these titles I found to be great, engaging reads and the range of topics, writing styles, and layouts is really fascinating to see.

 

Here’s the Young Adult nonfiction list:

 

 

The titles include The Borden Murders, The Plot to Kill Hitler, Radioactive: How Irene Curie and Lise Meitner Revolutionized Science and Changed The World, Blood Brother, Every Falling Star, Blood Bullets Bones, and In The Shadow of Liberty. Again, you can read the reasons why each title was selected here.

 

I have to say that I’m a fan of every title selected and don’t feel there’s anything that I read that I wish had made it instead of any of these. A couple of other titles I read and thought were good and would make good reads, especially for readers who seek out nonfiction, include Women in Science by Rachel Ignotofsky (the only collective biography we read that I felt had merit from beginning to end — I found a lot of them to be written poorly and/or overlooked facts that should have been mentioned and/or had errors and/or were just not high on the appeal factor), The Totally Gross History of Ancient Rome by Jeremy Klar (I love social histories of ancient Rome, so this was a case of appealing to me!), All Better Now by Emily Wing Smith (which is a medical/mental health memoir with one of the most unfortunate and unappealing covers out there — you would have a hard time getting someone to pick that one up and know anything about it!), and Forward by Abby Wambach (it’s about her life pre- and post-soccer life and even though I knew nothing about her at all, her writing style and honesty in telling her ups and downs through life was engaging).

 

Some other interesting things of note from this year’s nonfiction reading: the feminist-angled nonfiction is not only very white, but when it attempts to be more intersectional, it has half-facts and overlooks other big issues (The F-Word title we read, for example, notes how some women of color fought for equal rights and suffrage, but then doesn’t note that the voting Amendment for women was limited to white women). The collective biographies, including the two fashion books, mined a lot of similar material and it was so interesting to see the biases and writing styles shine through each of them. And as noted before, many were not particularly great. I also found myself liking some of the titles in a bigger trim size and not being put off by it, though there was a lot of time spent these last three months thinking about the design of nonfiction and how information can be conveyed well or poorly depending on choices made in the design process.

 

Fun tidbit from this year’s cybils work on my committee was that we finished our discussion very quickly. Like, land speed record quickly. The setup for discussion throughout the reading period made the conversation happen efficiently, but also, there were a lot of clear-cut great reads and clear-cut not-great reads. More, one of the things Jennie, our organizer, mentioned to me was that often, literary merit and reader appeal can work against one another in nonfiction, and that seemed to be really evident in these titles.

 

I’m glad I took the leap and did this this year. You can catch up on all of the shortlisted titles for “best in kid lit” over on the Cybils blog. Now that my work is done, Kimberly gets to be on the super-secret judging side of round two for graphic novels.

See You Next Year!

 

 

I have a feeling that Kimberly’s vacation will look a little more like the picture above than mine will be.

We’re taking the next few weeks off to dig into our reading piles and generally let the rest of this (not so great) year crumble and fall apart. We’ll be back to our regular schedule beginning Monday, January 9. Any news or things of interest that we stumble across in the meantime might bring us back, but otherwise, we’ll see you next year!

Monthly Giving: Planned Parenthood

Last month, I wrote about my plan to donate money to a worthy organization each month in light of our country’s current path toward fascism and the further oppression of marginalized groups. My adult years in Texas have shown me that my state’s administration is generally happy to contribute to this destruction regardless of who holds the nation’s highest office, and it’s a 24/7 struggle to simply try to keep from moving backwards here. The latest in the crusade against women’s health is a fetal burial law, which requires all fetal remains to be buried or cremated instead of disposed of as medical waste. Yes, this means if you miscarry in a hospital after 8 weeks of pregnancy, that composition of cells that resembles nothing so much as a blood clot must be given a burial, and you’ll get to pay for it. Governor Greg Abbott is this law’s major proponent.

In light of this law, which goes into effect December 19, I decided to make my December donation to Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, which covers my area of the state. I encourage anyone who has the means to make a donation, too – either to the national organization or to your local chapter. You can set up a recurring donation or make a one-time gift.

Like with the national organization, your donation can be made in memory or honor of someone. Many donors have been choosing to “honor” Mike Pence in this way, who as governor of Indiana has been enacting similar legislation in his state. In that vein, I made my donation in honor of Greg Abbott. I’m sure he’ll never see the notification himself, but it feels good regardless.

Abortion is still in many ways a taboo topic in young adult and children’s literature, and often when it is written about, it’s done so in a way that’s punishing – the pregnancy is a punishment for a teen daring to have sex, or the teen is punished in some way (either directly by another character or just cosmically, by the universe in general) for choosing to have an abortion. So my book list this month strives to include those titles that tackle this tough topic in a compassionate, realistic, and honest way. It’s rather short; if you know of any others, please let me know in the comments. Descriptions are from WorldCat.

Every Little Thing in the World by Nina de Gramont

Before she can decide what do about her newly discovered pregnancy, sixteen-year-old Sydney is punished for “borrowing” a car and shipped out, along with best friend Natalia, to a wilderness camp for the next six weeks.

Girl Mans Up by M-E Girard

In Ontario, Pen is a sixteen-year-old girl who looks like a boy. She’s fine with it, but everyone else is uncomfortable–especially her Portuguese immigrant parents and her manipulative neighbor who doesn’t want her to find a group of real friends.

Ask Me How I Got Here by Christine Heppermann

Addie’s future is laid out in front of her–become the best runner in the state and go to college on a scholarship–but after getting preganant with her boyfriend her decision to have an abortion affects her life greatly.

And We Stay by Jenny Hubbard

Sent to an Amherst, Massachusetts, boarding school after her ex-boyfriend shoots himself, seventeen-year-old Emily expresses herself through poetry as she relives their relationship, copes with her guilt, and begins to heal.

My Life as a Rhombus by Varian Johnson

When the classmate she is tutoring in trigonometry admits she is pregnant, high school junior Rhonda must finally come to terms with the abortion her father insisted she undergo three years earlier and examine how it has changed her life.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston

At cheerleading camp, Hermione is drugged and raped, but she is not sure whether it was one of her teammates or a boy on another team. In the aftermath she has to deal with the rumors in her small Ontario town, the often awkward reaction of her classmates, the rejection of her boyfriend, the discovery that her best friend, Polly, is gay, and above all the need to remember what happened so that the guilty boy can be brought to justice.

I Know it’s Over by C. K. Kelly Martin

Sixteen-year-old Nick, still trying to come to terms with his parents’ divorce, experiences exhiliration and despair in his relationship with his girlfriend Sasha especially when, after instigating a trial separation, she announces that she is pregnant.

Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero

Sixteen-year-old Gabi Hernandez chronicles her senior year in high school as she copes with her friend Cindy’s pregnancy, friend Sebastian’s coming out, her father’s meth habit, her own cravings for food and cute boys, and especially, the poetry that helps forge her identity.

Uses for Boys by Erica Lorraine Scheidt

Anna remembers a time before boys, when she was little and everything made sense. When she and her mom were a family, it was just the two of them against the world. But now her mom’s gone most of the time, chasing the next marriage, the next stepfather. Anna gets used to being alone, until she discovers that she can make boys her family, from Desmond to Joey to Todd. But filling the void comes at a price.

A Sense of the Infinite by Hilary T. Smith

As her senior year of high school begins, Annabeth is anticipating the realization of everything she and her best friend, Noe, have been dreaming of, but soon struggles with such unforeseen complications as Noe’s new boyfriend and a long-hidden secret.

This Week at Book Riot & HERE WE ARE News

Before a round-up of the last few weeks of posts at Book Riot (whoops), a couple of awesome updates on Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World. First, the book earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly:

Blogger and editor Jensen compiles a scrapbook-style collection of diverse reflections on feminism’s past and present from more than 40 authors, poets, and artists. Each of the book’s seven sections (“Body and Mind,” “Gender, Sex, and Sexuality,” etc.) features thoughtful and challenging essays that consider the intersection of feminism with body image, disability, mental illness, privilege, appropriation, sexuality, gender identity, and creativity. Brief “FAQs About Feminism,” lists, reading suggestions, and artwork intersperse with longer pieces; most are original to this anthology, though well-chosen excerpts of published work from the likes of Roxane Gay and Mindy Kaling are also included. Laurie Halse Anderson and Courtney Summers discuss rape culture in life and their literature; Sarah McCarry, Kayla Whaley, and Erika T. Wurth offer compassionate appeals to their younger selves; and comics artists and poets are also represented (“We were taught that just because something happens/ doesn’t mean you are to talk about it,” writes Zariya Allen). Sophisticated yet entirely accessible, the collection is valuable both for the breadth of thought and perspective it represents and for the support it directs toward readers.

As exciting — maybe even more exciting — than that is that Algonquin has decided to push up the publication date. The book will now be available on January 24, 2017. Woo hoo!

 

 

A few things I’ve written over on Book Riot. As I began pulling this together I realized I have forgotten to do this pretty much all of November. Apologies for duplicates:

 

How reading only women over the last year changed my life. Not lying, this was one of my favorite pieces to think about and write in a long, long time.

 

YA read alikes for Moana. This isn’t a list of books “just like” Moana, but books which capture a number of the different appeal qualities of the movie.

 

Great bookish gifts for $20 or under. Because in my mind, a “stocking stuffer” isn’t anything more than $20. And honestly, most non-stocking stuffers are not, either.

 

2017 YA books with faces of color on the cover. There needs to be more, but at least this is the start of a really great reading list.

 

A look at the best of Barack Obama’s bookish presidency. Get your tissues.

 

Why is it that nonfiction for young readers doesn’t get the kind of love and attention that young adult fiction does?

 

A handful of “3 On A YA Theme” posts: YA books from 1956, YA books featuring adopted characters, and a curious YA cover trend featuring water towers.

Nonfiction Roundup

While Kelly has been busily plugging away at her Cybils nonfiction reading, I’ve also been delving a bit into the YA nonfiction world via my workplace’s Mock Printz committee. We had three nonfiction titles we were considering, all I highly recommend.

In Florence Nightingale: The Courageous Life of the Legendary Nurse, Catherine Reef takes her readers on a journey through the life of perhaps the most famous nurse in the Western world. Florence Nightingale is best known for her work in the Crimean War where she selflessly and tirelessly cared for the wounded English soldiers, but in truth, that’s only a small part of her long and extensive career. That career involved numerous reforms in how medicine was practiced and applied and the transformation of nursing into a vocation – a socially acceptable one for women of her time. She started the first secular nursing school and published many papers on her findings, which included graphs of statistical data, something not much done at the time.

Reef also gives her readers peeks into Nightingale’s personality. She had a prickly temperament and was a bit of a domineering manager. She considered marrying a man whom she cared deeply for, but ultimately decided her dedication to nursing, something she felt called to by God, was more important. Personal insights like these interspersed among her professional accomplishments give readers a well-rounded and fascinating overview of an important woman. This is a smoothly-written biography appropriate for older middle grade and YA collections.

Patricia McCormick delivers a biography of a very different but equally fascinating person, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in The Plot to Kill Hitler: Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Unlikely Hero. I had heard of Dietrich Bonhoeffer before, and knew he died due to his involvement in assassination attempts against Hitler, but beyond that, I knew very little. I’m not alone in this: of the many adults I asked about Bonhoeffer, I don’t think any even knew who he was. This book should change that. It’s written for a younger audience than Reef’s, solidly middle grade (maybe on the young side of middle grade, even), with short chapters and an intrusive (though not annoying) authorial voice on the part of McCormick.

McCormick traces Bonhoeffer’s life from a young, sensitive German boy who loved music to his decision to become a pastor to his vow to resist peacefully (Gandhi was his example) and ultimately to his decision to bring down Hitler by any means necessary – even violently. Bonhoeffer and his cohorts’ attempts all failed, and he and most of the others involved – including his brothers – were executed as a result. But McCormick asks her young readers to consider the question: “Does the fact that he didn’t succeed in his aims make him any less of a hero?” While the book itself is short and can feel slight to adult readers, this is weighty stuff for kids, and it’s incredibly moving for readers of any age.

Albert Marrin tackles the same time period from a different perspective in Uprooted: The Japanese American Experience During World War II. Marrin covers the Japanese-American imprisonment in American concentration camps (with an excellent explanation for why these were concentration camps, not internment camps, both legally and practically speaking). He also delves into Japanese-American participation as soldiers in both the Pacific and the European warfronts. He begins with a brief historical overview of the conflicts between Japan and the West and Japan and China, both vital to understanding the Japanese-Americans’ situation during World War II.

Marrin accurately uses the words “white supremacy” and “racism” when describing how Japanese-Americans were treated during this time period. He quotes people like FDR and other lawmakers repeatedly, using their own words to demonstrate how their own racism fueled the country’s racism and led to egregious human rights violations. Importantly, he also discusses how people can change, most notably Earl Warren, who strongly supported the uprooting of Japanese-Americans during World War II as Attorney General of California, but later deeply regretted his actions and went on to help usher in some of the most vital civil rights decisions as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education, Gideon v. Wainwright, Miranda v. Arizona, and Loving v. Virginia. Most importantly, Marrin highlights the lives of those Japanese-Americans who fought for or were imprisoned by their country, including Senator Daniel Inouye and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, author of Farewell to Manzanar.

Marrin’s book is not only an important tool for teaching us about our history; unfortunately now, it is also a call to action. In the last part his book, he draws clear parallels between how Japanese-Americans were treated after Pearl Harbor (until a few weeks ago, universally recognized as appalling) and how Muslim-Americans were and are treated in a post-9/11 America. Uprooted will only grow more important as the months go on. Marrin’s account is well-written, detailed, important, and should be required reading for all Americans.

Skip It: How To Keep Rolling After A Fall by Karole Cozzo

I believe in taking any genre of fiction seriously. This extends, too, to romance. I don’t mean that to say that genre fiction can’t be funny or sweet, but rather, genre fiction matters in the same way that literary fiction does and thus, can and should be held to high standards for quality. And in the case of How To Keep Rolling After A Fall by Karole Cozzo, a high standard for representation of disability.

It starts out with a scene that is a bit jarring: Nikki is approaching the end of the summer, and she immediately is in an argument with a boy at the Rehabilitation and Nursing center. She’s been “volunteering” there over the last few months, and as the book begins, that boy realizes who Nikki is. She’s Nicole Baylor, the girl who got kicked out of her old school because of a horrible cyber bullying incident.

He was angry she hadn’t been forthcoming with who she was or why she was volunteering. Fair enough, right? The girl had a reputation preceding her, and that boy , Jeremiah, is and will be the only level-headed character in the entire book.

He gets half a chapter of story.

As soon as the fight breaks out, Nikki takes a walk away from the orthopedic wing, wherein she is immediately face-to-face with the boy in a wheelchair named Max. I use that description not to belittle Pax but rather to give a sense of who Pax is to Nikki and who Pax is throughout the entirety of the story. Pax is the boy in the wheelchair. The sweet, inspirational boy in the wheelchair. The boy who is never more than the sweet boy in a wheelchair who, because of his status as the sweet and inspirational boy in the wheelchair, becomes the person who has to give Nikki her strength back after her terrible cyberbullying fallout and the person who, throughout the story, is offered no privacy or personal freedom as a character.

He exists entirely to prop up Nikki, a character who never sees a single consequence or arc in her character.

But let’s back up a second before getting into the problem of Pax. Or rather, the problem of how Pax is written in the story. First, let’s address the fact that this story begins with the knowledge that Nikki got kicked out of her high school at the end of junior year because of a bullying incident. The incident? A party Nikki threw at her own home, without her parents knowing, involved girls hooking up with boys and one girl being photographed during the incident. Those photos were then uploaded to social media via Nikki’s account, even though Nikki “had nothing to do with it.” Nikki’s four besties, of course, got off scot free because they claimed they had nothing to do with the incident, and, since the images went up under Nikki’s name, she was the one to get the consequences.

And that’s what we’re told of this incident. It is, of course, the Big Plot Point the entire story. It’s an emotional connector for Nikki and her new friend at her new (private) high school, and it’s the emotional connector between her and Pax, who forgives her without any question. Of course, he met her post-incident, so he knows only that aspect of her and he, like every person picking up this book, is expected to just accept Nikki’s side of the story to be the truth. Even though we’re also informed that the girl who had her images uploaded on social media attempted suicide. Of course, there’s no sympathy from Nikki when she lays this out to Pax. It’s just a thing that happened that ruined her life, no big deal.

Bullying, y’all, isn’t something to just accept that easily. Rather, Cozzo only offers this backstory to afford her character a way into her current situation and to offer a false sense of sympathy from the reader. But, when your main character has no growth and has no growth because we know nothing about the major preceding incident besides what she’s told us, there’s no way to sympathize. Further, the fact that Nikki’s parents are depicted merely as strict and upset after the incident and, throughout the book, they continue to cave on their strictness, we see no other side of the story. By showing us nothing, we see no growth.

If anything, we see regression because of the role Pax plays.

Pax is a good guy. A real good guy. Even though he’s in a wheelchair, he’s a good guy and bonus, he’s cute. He’d even be cute if he wasn’t in a wheelchair.

But Pax doesn’t want you to feel sorry for him at all. He wants you to understand he’s great and happy and he’ll play a mean game of wheelchair rugby. Pax is okay with having lost the possibility of getting a full ride to a college on a water polo scholarship because, well, as much as being disabled sucks, he’s okay with it! And he wants to be an inspiration for others to (wait for it, y’all) keep on rolling after a fall.

If Nikki knows anything, it’s a fall! And oh, Pax, he’s the perfect guy to show her how to pick herself up and keep going. A wealthy, privileged white girl has to have something (don’t worry — she will tell you she’s those things!).

There’s no character in Pax beyond his role as inspiration porn. He has no depth, and even when there is a moment for him not feeling well and fear falls into the heart of Nikki, he bounces back quickly and shakes it off as no big deal. Because he’s a guy in a wheelchair and he’s damn happy to be alive. Even his mother plays into the role of her son as inspiration porn, and it’s disheartening through and through as a reader to see the cardboard nature of each and every one of the characters in this book, but especially that each of them is there only to serve as a prop for Nikki. Perhaps had Nikki been developed or offered any sort of depth to her character or any sort of history or, like, anything, we’d feel differently as readers. And perhaps that would have allowed for Pax to be more than the cute guy in the wheelchair.

But alas, it only gets worse.

The thing that bothered me the most about this book and its representation of disability is that Pax is offered none of the privacy that other characters who are abled are provided. And while it can be “easily explained away” by the fact Pax is open and honest and loves sharing his story in order to help others, that is in itself the problem. To be specific, there is an entire scene involving Nikki and Pax at the Rehab center at night, wherein they’ve decided to go and have a private swim in the pool. Pax had previously mentioned that he wasn’t ashamed of much because he’s had a catheter and in this utterly painful to read scene, we’re given an entire opportunity to force Pax to talk about using a catheter. This scene becomes further uncomfortable when Pax says — no joke — he hasn’t been in a real relationship since the accident and has no idea whether or not his body is capable of getting it up.

Yes. Pax is upfront about a catheter and about being unsure whether or not he can have an erection.

This scene is an excellent example of what not to do with disability representation in a book, especially when written by a (presumably via internet searching!) able-bodied white author. As readers, this isn’t our business, just as it’s not our business in the world around us, unless we ourselves are the person who is disabled or close enough to earn that sort of trust from a person who is disabled. In this instance, it serves to answer invasive questions that Nikki nor readers are at all privileged to hear.

But worry not; when Nikki and Pax become a little more romantic later on in the book, she informs Pax that he can, indeed, get it up. Because we couldn’t let that go unexplored. Pax is here for one purpose and one purpose only. Never does he get the chance to be part of the story; never do we understand what it is that makes “a guy like him” (a terrible phrase that pops up far too often) attracted to Nikki. This is a book only about Nikki and the way Nikki wants to be seen.

A few cringe-worthy lines worth pulling to further why this is a book that’s a terrible example of disability representation and thus, a terrible example of a good romance for teen (or adult) readers. I flagged instances as I read, and nearly half the book is flagged:

“You will never be able to go anywhere without drawing some level of attention, without people wondering why you’re there with me”

— a line Pax throws at Nikki during a tiff they had. It’s almost as if the whole cyberbullying-and-getting-kicked-out-of-school thing we learned about in the first chapter no longer means anything in this town, but being around “a guy like Pax” would.

 

“‘There’s still so much good in her,’ he tells them. Then Pax looks back at my parents one final time before leaving my house. ‘And you know, it’s a damn shame that some boy she’s known for a few weeks gets to see it and appreciate it while the people who created her don’t.'”

— a nice little inspirational speech given by Pax the first time he meets Nikki’s parents. A chapter or so later, mom is moved and inspired by that nice boy and has a change of heart. So nice some boy she just met who has a heart of gold could inspire that kind of change. I have a few guesses as to why (what parent couldn’t be guilted by a boy with a wheelchair, right?).

 

“‘Number two, you didn’t mention crumbling sidewalks and a four-block walk.’ Then I stumble over my own feet and I realize my slip. ‘I’m sorry,’ I blurt out. ‘That was wrong.’

‘What?’

‘You know. Complaining. About having to . . . walk.’

Pax just laughs. ‘Aren’t we past that? In those shoes? You’re more handicapped than I am.'”

 

“I stare down at his limp legs. When I first met Pax, it kind of seemed like his self-assurance and big personality didn’t match up with the reality of his situation. Now it just seems like the uselessness of his lower body doesn’t match up with the reality of him. From the waist up, he is strong and capable in every sense of the word.”

 

All of the quotes are pulled from the final edition of the book.

Something I haven’t mentioned in this review but is worth sharing: I was sent this as a title for ALAN Picks. I’ve reviewed for them before, and even though romance isn’t my wheelhouse, I knew reading a romance and being able to write up a review for teachers, librarians, and other youth advocates wouldn’t be too hard (it’s what I do here, after all). ALAN Picks, for those who aren’t familiar, are only positive reviews. They highlight books that are good and worth knowing about.

I chose not to submit a review because I cannot recommend this book and even with some of the things that made the book feel “real” — things like name dropping brands and pop cultural references — don’t at all make up for the poor representation and lack of character development. Romance should be taken as seriously as other genres, and for a book meant to be light hearted, it fumbles before it gets anywhere. The kisses which should be swoon worthy are marred by the fact they’re only there because Pax is a tool of growth for Nikki. He is little more than inspiration porn for her, as well as for the reader.

To quote Kody Keplinger, who is one of the founders behind the incredible Disability in Kid Lit resource, a major problem with disability inspiration porn is this:

[E]ven if the intentions are good, it implies that the average disabled person is weak or lacks independence. So when people tell me I’m “amazing” for being out in the world, it implies the average blind person is a shut in. In reality, disabled people are people and want to be treated like normal people. This means not being seen as “brave” or “inspirational” for average, every day actions. Unfortunately, the news, modern lit, modern film, etc, seem to think this is the only way to tell the story of a disabled person. The plot is always “Character X has Disability Y, but she STILL MIRACULOUSLY MANAGES TO OVER COME IT.” Disabled people in the media are always treated as extraordinary and not ordinary. And, to put it eloquently, it sucks.

You can dig a bit more into the problems of disability/inspiration porn here.

I, like the author of this book, am white and able bodied. I, like the author of this book, am a writer and know the power of words. But what leaves me feeling unsettled is that this book lacks a sense of having done the work necessary to capture the reality of life for a disabled person. It lacks the sense of having considered that Pax should be more than a tool of Nikki’s growth. And it fails to even offer him a story he can call his own.

So much could have been done to save this book with just a little help from a sensitivity reader, a strong editorial eye, or even a few hours spent reading through the incredible resource that the kid lit community has about disability.

I choose to talk about this book with depth and criticism because this is a problem that emerges again and again in the YA world and beyond. The work isn’t being done, and critics aren’t speaking up — or they are and they aren’t being listened to by those who really need to hear it. How To Keep Rolling After A Fall doesn’t appear yet to have any trade reviews as of this writing, and I hope when those do begin to trickle in, that the reviewers are willing to do the work calling this what it is: a book to be skipped.

And there is no shame in not purchasing this book for a collection or recommending it to a teen romance lover because we are fortunate to have authors like Nicola Yoon, Jenny Han, Siobhan Vivian, Lauren Morrill, Sarah Dessen, and many more who are writing romances that also tackle meaty topics like bullying or eating disorders or struggling family lives and do them some damn justice.