Lumberjanes, Vol. 1: Beware the Kitten Holy by Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, Shannon Watters, Brooke Allen
My rating: 3/5 cats
i am a fan of the spirit and the messaging and the energy of this book but i’m not personally crazy about either the artwork or the story.
when this book first started making the rounds here on goodreads, for some reason i didn’t clock that it was YA. i saw that people were adding it to their YA shelves, but i’ve come to terms with the fact that as long as there’s a teenage character in a book, people are gonna shelve it as YA on goodreads regardless of whether it’s intended for teen readers, or even appropriate for them.
so when i finally decided to board this lumberjane-bandwagon and found it officially categorized in the teen section of the bookstore, it threw me for a loop for a second, but then i was all “i am glad i am now so broad-minded in the scope of my reading that i am not unwilling to read a book for a teen audience.”
and yet.
it just read so young to me. young enough that you could probably get away with marketing this to a middle grade audience without any comprehension/content concerns. and having already adjusted (not lowered, mind you, but adjusted) my expectations to teen mode, i found myself requiring additional mental adjustments to try to fit in with the enthusiastic fans – to be the thoughtful reader this book deserved.
maybe i’m just accustomed to the way teens in the YA novels i read sound like they’re twenty-five and maybe this is a more accurate representation of how teens really speak and behave, but it still felt really childish and i don’t think me-as-teen would have liked it. i think i would have felt talked-down to, the way religious material directed at teens misses that target of age-appropriateness by presenting unilaterally shiny and morally flawless characters who are perky and great at everything and willing to pitch in and fight fire and succor the needy, perfect and unstoppable like a fifties housewife on benzos. without, naturally, the benzos.
as a female-person, it’s hard not to want to love a book that’s so oohrah girl power and full of smart math-loving girlnerds who say things like
and that’s emphasizing confidence and empowerment and athleticism and building strong female friendships, but it’s just so excessively “HOLY ROLE MODEL, BATMAN!” that it becomes off-putting.
it’s a little too much of that tone that irked me in Boy Meets Boy where everything’s acceptable! and girls can do anything! and conflicts are easily resolved! in this hunky dory goody goody role modelly wonderland!
there’s no tension here, and you know what happens when things are too relentlessly positive, right?
when other perfectly normal emotions go unacknowledged?
it’s not at all bad, i guess i’m just too much of an old shriveled husk of cynical coal to not be filled with double-rainbow x chromosomes in response to this. i’m perplexed. i don’t know how old these characters are meant to be, i don’t understand how the magic works or what the blend of reality and fantasy is meant to serve, i don’t know why everyone’s going crazy for it.
and that makes me feel lonesome.
things i did like –
fox tummies:
every part that had to do with discovery channel-inspired phobias of blood-sucking catfish, river monsters, murder rivers etc…
the fact that the pungeon master badge looks deeply ashamed and disappointed in itself. as it should.
titillating subtext
and pretty much every loud, adorable thing ripley says.
ripley reminds me of a special girl i knew in the wayback – someone i was very close to and who rubbed off on me a bit, so i guess ripley also reminds me of ME, which makes me like her even more.
here is a celebration of ripley
whose “hungry” posture is the same as her “i have to pee” posture
who is a marine biology enthusiast
who likes kittens
and also puppies
who is willing to fight a rude bird for some chocolate
and this especially made me misty, thinking about my old galpal, who was so refreshingly free from social niceties that when someone pissed her off, she’d just pee in their car at a party or something.
my wonderful little beastgirl.
i’ll probably keep reading because sisterhood, but i’m not fangirling it yet.
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3.5 stars cats for the reader-who-is-me, but i definitely love and respect it more-stars cats as an objective overseer acknowledging its important contribution to the bookworld.
