Young Adult Literature without Apology

Amy's assessment of contemporary young adult literature, organized by author and title, censored by noone.

Realistic | Romance | Science Fiction | Historical Fiction | Fantasy | Horror | Mystery

Anderson, M. T. (2006). The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to a Nation, Volume One: The Pox Party. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press. ISBN: 0763624020.

I have to admit, when I found out that Anderson's new book had won the National Book Award and was a likely candidate for ALA's Printz medal, I was hesitant to read it. I have had lukewarm feelings about Anderson's novels; I really enjoy some of them and I don't get why others are so popular. Burger Wuss? Hysterical! The Game of the Sunken Places? Not so much. When I started the book, however, it immediately gripped me. The language was "periodized" in an attempt to evoke the pre-Revolutionary setting, but remained readable, and, while the narrator did make some pretty heady allusions, they seemed appropriate in context and not at all gratuitous. By this time, you probably all know that the novel is the story of an African-American boy, the son of a young woman brought to North America as a slave, who is purchased by a private "community of learning" and studied by the school's scholarly inhabitants. The book is very long, and incorporates historical detail related to the Revolutionary War, the growing American slave trade, and colonial life in general; however, these details never seem like didactic insertions, perhaps because they are so aptly slipped in. (Excuse me while I make an allusion of my own). Eagleton writes that historical fiction is an attempt to capture the sense of historicity appurtenent in any historical text by nature of its literal age; Anderson makes this attempt with Nothing and sets the bar high for those authors who would follow his lead.