Fuse #8

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

The Mehta Machine: Or Why You're Going To Have To Rethink Your Love of Ann Brashares

Like I've said before, the whole Opah Mehta scandal touches on YA literature, and I am not a YA specialist. However, thanks to an especially amusing post at Read Roger, I was pleased to read an article in the New York Observer that delves a little deeper into Alloy Entertainment. Alloy, you will recall, was the company behind Viswanathan in the first place. And since Alloy was responsible for The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (which is sort of kiddie lit), I read it through. Not only will you end up never trusting author Ann Brashares again but it contains this first rate quote from Francine Pascal:
But for all the tangled dealings in the Alloy book-packaging world, for a few, the more depressing concern is the content of some Alloy books. “Emotionally, there’s no progress,” said Francine Pascal, the creator of the Sweet Valley High series and an Alloy author. “It doesn’t touch on the classic values that Sweet Valley did—love, loyalty, friendship.”

snicker snicker snort

4 Comments:

At 9:05 PM , Blogger bookstore girl said...

Is Francine Pascal totally insane?! Like, completely, needs to be committed insane?!

 
At 9:21 PM , Blogger web said...

I found that depressing, too. I didn't think TTP books were great literature or anything, but I did really enjoy the second one. And now I feel vaguely suspicious of every YA author. :-\

 
At 12:19 AM , Blogger fusenumber8 said...

Yup. Moral of the story: Stick with children's authors.

Kidding! Kidding! But isn't the world of children's literature that much more calming in comparison? Sweet innocent children's literature. The biggest scandals WE have involve removing old timey authors' cigarettes via Photoshop.

 
At 1:05 AM , Blogger bookstore girl said...

Books today written by committees or marketing departments or whatever are still a million times better than Sweet Valley High. A MILLION. I don't care if Brashares came up with the concept behind the Travelling Pants, they are still more worthwile than a whole stack of Sweet Valley High books.

 

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