Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley
SPOLIERS!! (sort of)
In "Graffiti Moon" by Cath Crowley, Ed and Lucy hate each other after a disastaurous date in 10th grade. Lucy never thought much of Ed but agreed to go on a date cause she thought he was cute enough. She had no idea she meant so much to him. He was shadow, a spray painter who hides behind his name and his work. Lucy fell in love with shadow, never knowing it was ed. She fell in love with his paintings and the way he expressed himself. Not happily, Lucy ends up on a journey to find shadow after Ed says he knows him. Something i really enjoyed about this book was the way different things symbolised the characters.
Lucy was represented by her mind. That was something that carried her off and made her an interesting character. For example, there was one seen in which Lucy is dancing and Ed is watching her. Ed explains it as Lucy seems to be dancing to her own melody. Lucy danced differently. She didn't go with the music everyone else her. It all seemed to be in her mind. Another example of this is when Lucy is examining a piece of shadows. Because Ed painted it, of course he knew what he was thinking and what it was. But Lucy thought about it differently. The book explains Lucy stared at the picture for a long time, seeming to really bath is its ideas. The thoughts she had about this painting were very different from Shadows/Ed's, but Ed believed them. He believed that was actually what Shadow was trying to say.
Ed is represented by his spray can. Its his identity, his emotions, his personality. Its everything he needs to hid behind. Anything he feels is expressed through his spray painting. It isn't just an art to him. One example of this is shown when after he starts to develop feelings for Lucy, he feels the need to paint her. During any crush, their all you can think about. So he can't completely enjoy that feeling. He need to paint her. So he does. He expresses all those emotions through his paint. He doesn't need to be smart or good or emotional. He needs to paint.
In the Article "Has young adult fiction become too dark?"
By Mary Elizabeth Williams, Williams responds to Meghan Cox Gurdon's take on young adult fiction these days. Gurdon argues that young adult fiction has become too dark for tweens and teens to be reading. While Williams may agree on a few things, overall Williams finds many flaws with Gurdon's piece and still finds a way to add on to the idea.
Gurdon seems to want to get the idea of how horrible young adult fiction has become and says Parents should censor it. In other words, the book should be banned so kids can't read it. Williams argues this is the direction young adults emotions are heading and they need to learn how to deal with it. These books do that while making the reader feel less alone with her/his problems. Also, while parents may not like it very much, this is going to be the great literature of our generation.
I believe that Williams takes Gurdon's topics and ideas, but puts them in a better light. One idea that was brought up multiple times was this idea that this generation's young adult fiction is much. much worse that "great literature" from the 1900's. While i don't totally agree with this thought because i think that our generation's "great literature" could be just as good, only a little darker, I wonder is the story lines will ever change again. Will the next generation's "great literature" be even darker, will it be sillier, or will it go back to our parent's sense of "normal"?
"Darkness isn't the enemy, but ignorance always is." This quote interested me. It's basically says, Teens may need to read this to understand these issues that they'll face in real life. This is why i disagreed with Gurdon's idea that YA has become too dark. I very much like the way Williams states this. This darkness is the way many teens/tweens cope with things. Like not feeling their the only ones that feel the need to cut themselves. Its the way they need to deal, and isn't that what books are for? To get away from our troubles?
In the story, "Faithful Elephants" by Yukio Tshuchiya, A young boy (or girl, the story makes it unclear) notices something not many stop to notice anymore. "Not far from the cheerful square, there stands a tombstone". The child seems to take interest in this monument and all of its beauty the zoo keeper, who is polishing it, seems to Cherish. The zoo keeper tells the child a story of three elephants who, by command of the army, needed to be starved to death to keep the people of Tokyo safe.
This story speaks of little setting, yet the cherry blossom tree that hangs over the tomb stone is an important factor that is brought up twice throughout the story. I believe the cherry blossom tree symbolises the life of the elephants. These elephants needed to be killed, but who could kill these magestic creatures with the "loving eyes". Like the cherry blossoms, once the elephants were trained, or "blossomed", everyone enjoyed seeing the elephants perform their banzai trick and sharing their beauty.
The army and the war i believe represents Winter, when the cherry blossoms die. The cherry blossoms begin to wilt in the winter. This is also what happened to the elephants. They stopped being fed. Although it was very hard for the zoo keepers, they weren't allowed to feed the elephants anything. In the text, it says "everyone was hoping that if the elephants could survive only one more day, the war might be over and the elephants would be saved". I think this also represents how they were wishing if the cherry blossoms could hold their beauty for a few more days, spring would come, bring all its hope to the people.
But spring didn't come. The Elephants died from starvation. Like cherry blossoms, they floated gracefully down. But when blossoms fall, they aren't forgotten. They spread out new seeds and decompose to become new life. Tonky, Wanly and John were never forgotten. They lie peacefully under their cherry blossom tree.
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Maeve
