Narrative Pleasures in Young Adult Novels, Films, and Video Games. Margaret Mackey. Houndmills, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 237 pages.

Huget, Jennifer LaRue. The Best Birthday Party Ever. Illus. LeUyen Pham. New York: Schwartz & Wade Books, 2011. Print. “My birthday is 5 months, 3 weeks, 2 days, and 8 hours away. Today I started to plan my party.” And so the planning begins for the 5-year-old soon-to-be birthday girl in this charming picture book. She has to start planning early if she wants the best birthday party ever. She is going to invite all 57 of her friends including the mailman and the invitations will be sprinkled with fairy dust. She will have 9 thousand balloons, streamers and napkins: all in pink. On the menu is a 17-layer cake, each layer a different flavour, with 6 zillion candles on top. Not only will there be: a magician, camel rides and a Ferris wheel, but each lucky guest will receive a hamster as a party favour. In a kid-friendly countdown style towards the big day, our sweet party planner gets more and more excited as her birthday approaches and the plans get more and more grandiose. Only after her mother comments that this birthday party is “getting out of hand” does she agree to skip the sparkly necklaces. The day finally arrives and while it may not be the party she dreamed of, she is appreciative and enjoys her day so much that she immediately begins plans for her next birthday. This beautifully illustrated read-aloud captures the excitement of a child as she looks forward to her special day and will appeal to lower elementary grades as well as preschoolers. The whimsical mostly-pink drawings may be initially off-putting to boys but they are certain to relate and enjoy the story. Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Debbie FeisstDebbie is a Public Services Librarian at the H.T. Coutts Education Library at the University of Alberta. When not renovating, she enjoys travel, fitness and young adult fiction.

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Open World Empire: Race, Erotics, and the Global Rise of Video Games. By Christopher B. Patterson. New York: New York University Press, 2020. x, 349 pp. ISBN: 9781479802043 (cloth).

The Journal of Asian Studies ◽

10.1017/s0021911821002163 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 80 (4) ◽

pp. 1158-1159

Author(s):

Keita C. Moore

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Video Games ◽

New York University ◽

Open World

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Immaturity: Reflections on the “Great (Queer) YA Debate”

10.14325/mississippi/9781496830982.003.0009 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 171-180

Author(s):

Derritt Mason

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Children's Literature ◽

Young Adult ◽

Young Adult Literature ◽

Children’S Literature ◽

New York Times ◽

New Yorker ◽

The New York Times ◽

High Profile ◽

The New Yorker

This book’s conclusion reiterates the argument that queer YA is an anxious genre that perpetually rehearses a nervous uncertainty about its own constitution. Mason steps back to consider queer YA’s relationship to children’s literature more broadly, entering the discussion through a concept developed in Beverley Lyon Clark’s Kiddie Lit: the “anxiety of immaturity” that circulates around and within children’s literature and its criticism. Mason revisits the “Great YA Debate” of 2014, which followed a Slate piece by Ruth Graham entitled “Adults Should Be Embarrassed to Read Young Adult Books.” This debate included high profile pieces by Christopher Beha and A.O. Scott in The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker, both of which evince a profound ambivalence about whether or not adults should be reading young adult literature. These conversations, Mason concludes, illustrate how young adult literature continues to be an unceasing source of adult anxiety.

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