Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Nice Try

I read 2 of the Printz books; Punkzilla and Tales of the Madmen Underground. Saying that I "read" them is a bit of a stretch; I read only 2 pages of Punkzilla and skimmed much of Tales. Punkvilla hit me immediately with sexual content and bad language. Tales waited a bit longer to get dicey but still was replete with sexual content and incredibly bad language. Like Megan, I continued to read for the story but skimmed a lot of it. I can't say about Punkzilla (the first few pages made it seem a bit On The Road-esque) but Tales actually had a great story with compelling characters. It's really sad to me that it included so much graphic content and bad language. I guess the author was trying to give an accurate portrayal of what he thinks teens are like (and it's probably accurate for most but certainly not for all). It deals with a lot of good themes; abusive parents, death, poverty, to name only a few, but I could not in good conscience recommend the book to anyone.

Did anybody else try to read these or did anyone actually read the Charles Darwin book? My hold was never filled on that one.

2 comments:

  1. According to one writer I know, 53.2% of high school students haven't had sex by the time they graduate (not sure where the stat comes from: http://tamarahartheiner.blogspot.com/2009/11/respecting-those-that-take-stand.html ). Apparently the Printz Medal isn't for that audience.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Monstrumologist is really the odd man out of this group. There were so many similarities between Bovine, Tales and Punkvilla... I think Printz books in the past have been for good YA literature, not really books young adults would necessarily like. No offense to Monstrumologist, but it probably falls in that category. The other books seem so... popular.

    ReplyDelete