Nonfiction Monday: Authors Teens Love

These two books were nominated for MG/YA Nonfiction Cybils in 2009.

Vivian Vande Velde: Author of Fantasy Fiction by Candie Moonshower

Amy Tan: Weaver of Asian-American Tales Ann Angel

While these are certainly well-written and informative biographies, they don't have a lot of pick-up-and-read appeal. They're more "report books"-- things libraries should have for curriculum support but not really something that teens are going to pick up for pleasure reading.

I thought the Vande Velde one was a bit repetitive and while it mostly focused on her works for teens, the reading level/tone was a little younger. But I liked that she's included. Vande Velde has written a ton of books with solid appeal and circuluation but is often overlooked.

I love the fact that Amy Tan is included in this series-- she doesn't write books for teens (with the exception of two picture books, all of her titles are for adults.) BUT, The Joy Luck Club is often assigned in schools and with so much of her work focusing on mother/daughter relationships, it has broad teen appeal. (I know I was a huge fan of hers when I was in high school. I still am, but that's when I fell in love with her writing.) My one complaint is inconsistent romanization of Chinese place names. Pick a transliteration system and stick with it! Why have authors and editors failed to do this? It's annoying for those of us who know what's what and very confusing to those who don't!

I think these two biographies are also nice because both authors came to writing later in life. Vande Velde took a class at the local community college to get out of the house one night a week when she was a stay at home Mom, Tan started writing after she realized that her therapist kept falling asleep during their meetings.

The series in general is very readable, contains TONS of photos and author quotations, as well as pull-out boxes with further information about the author, the time period, or the author's books. In the back matter, the books contain a time line, a list of published and upcoming works, a list of awards won, a glossary, extensive source notes (which are marked in the text)* and an index. The Vande Velde volume also has an interview transcript between Moonshower and Vande Velde. The Tan volume has a selection of Tan's quotations on writing and reading.

*Swoon. Endnotes!

Today's Nonfiction Monday round-up is over at Apples With Many Seeds.

Book Provided by... the publisher, for Cybils consideration

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Opposite of Fate Recap

Currently Reading Longitude Dava Sobel

Ok, I finished up Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan yesterday. I liked it. It's a bunch of essays by Amy Tan, not all of them new. She's fairly neurotic and it's a bunch of essays about herself so it might not be everyone's cup of tea.

If you've ever wanted an (auto)biography of Tan, then you'll like it. If you like Amy Tan and want to seperate fact from fiction (for instance, her mom's life story plays out in Joy Luck Club and Kitchen God's Wife fairly heavily) then, hey read this book. If you want to feel better about your relationship with your mother, read it, because to say Tan and her mom have issues is putting it mildly.

It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but if it is, it's pretty good.

I've moved onto Longitude. I'm not that far into it, but so far, so good, except for one glaring omission. How can you write a book about the history of LONGITUDE for chrissakes and not include a map. I mean really. These navigation stories would be a lot more interesting if I could remember my Age-of-the-Explorers geography. Which I can't, because I'm no longer in 8th grade.

Qing ni fanyi ma?

Currently Reading The Opposite of Fate Amy Tan

Major pet peeve time:
I have noticed that Chinese-American authors, whom I assume haven't studied Chinese on an academic level, but picked up bits and pieces from their Chinese-speaking relatives, make up their own transliteration system, so those of us who actually speak Chinese need to translate the transliteration. Grrrrrrr.

I can understand that the author hasn't studied Chinese, so how would they know proper transliteration methods, but surely, someone in the editing department can figure it out! If not, they should hire me.

Examples:
In her essay arrival banquet Amy Tan talks about her mother teaching her cousin English.

" 'Bu-shr har!" my mother says to him. 'Don't say "har." How. How, how, how--like hau, hau, hau.' Good, good, good."

Except in the pinyin system, the first word (which translates as a general negative, in this case, "no" or "wrong") is bu-shi if you want to put a Beijing accent onto it (which you don't, because Tan's mother is Shanghainese) you can write bu-shir. And good is hao.

Further on in the essay:
"Meigwo-ren... Jyou jin-shan" (American... San Francisco)

Should be Meiguo ren... jiu jin-shan and it wasn't until she directly translated the Chinese name for San Francisco as "old gold mountain" that I realized what she meant by jyou.

The Dim Sum of All Things by Kim Wong Keltner did the same thing. A lot.

I know it's stupid, but it gets to me, which is why it's a pet peeve, no?