Book Review: "The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks" by E. Lockhart

After reading and loving We Were Liars, the most recent bestseller from E. Lockhart, all I wanted to do was read more of her stuff. So, naturally, I looked up her other titles right away. And to my great surprise—though it shouldn’t have been!—I actually already had one of her first books—one of her biggest, most well-known books, no less—on my shelf, just sitting there unread. It had been used as an example in a children’s lit writing class I took at Gotham Writer’s Workshops years ago, and I had purchased it instantly after that session. I just hadn’t read it. *hangs head in shame*

So I remedied that ASAP.

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14: 

Debate Club.
Her father’s “bunny rabbit.”
A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15: 

A knockout figure.
A sharp tongue.
A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston. 

Frankie Laundau-Banks.

No longer the kind of girl to take “no” for an answer.
Especially when “no” means she’s excluded from her boyfriend’s all-male secret society.
Not when her ex boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places.
Not when she knows she’s smarter than any of them.
When she knows Matthew’s lying to her.
And when there are so many, many pranks to be done. 

Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16: 

Possibly a criminal mastermind. 

This is the story of how she got that way.

I didn't really know what to expect from this story, but I quickly found myself sucked into Frankie's world of elite boarding schools, secret societies, humorous antics, and life-changing lies. I mean, it's always fun when secret societies are involved, let's all just admit it, and Lockhart weaves in some really interesting true facts about real-life societies, just upping the intrigue. In some regards, the story is a little unrealistic and over-the-top plotwise, but this exaggeration is necessary to serve the purposes of the story, making me give Lockhart a pass. ;)

Lockhart's voice is accessible and smooth in this story, as well, and her use of the omniscient POV was one of the best I've seen in ages. It's not any easy POV to use successfully, but she managed to execute it in such a way that I really felt like I was overseeing the whole scene through a pair of binoculars, which is kind of exactly how you would spy on a secret society. I found it to be very fitting and very effective. 

In fact, I'm not sure I would've enjoyed the story as much if it had actually been from Frankie's POV. While the reader, of course, gets a lot of insight into Frankie and her thoughts/feelings, I didn't want to be in her head any more than I already was. Part of this was because I found Frankie to be a difficult character to truly like. At least not once she moved into the "In" crowd. However, someone Lockhart made me still care about Frankie, and I think the use of POV is largely why. I was able to find her relatable from an outside perspective, particularly in her need to belong and to do something meaningful even if she didn’t get the credit. 

More than any of those things, though, I found this story to be a surprisingly honest and realistic take on relationships, both friendships and romances alike, in terms what it means to know and love somebody, needing more than just “getting along,” and wanting someone to truly connect with. It really spoke to me on that level, even amidst all the high school drama, prank pulling, and sneaking around. The concept of social change also runs rampant in the novel, working itself into the story in a way that not only leaves you simultaneously impressed and appalled, but also leaves you pondering the ethics of it all.

The Last Word: A fun and quick read that will leave you thinking long after the last page. 

Ethics Police: Editing Huckleberry Finn

When I heard that Mark Twain's classic novel Huckleberry Finn was being edited to remove two non-PC words--"nigger" and "injun"--I was somewhat livid. I kept myself away from blogging yesterday I was so upset, knowing I would probably just rant and rave about it if I tried to put figurative pen to paper.

But today, my head is a little clearer, though my heart is still distressed by the news. And I'm not the only one. The New York Times published a lengthy piece yesterday slamming the new edition, and I'd never have guessed I'd agree so wholeheartedly with Michiko Kakutani:

“All modern American literature,” Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “comes from one book by Mark Twain called ‘Huckleberry Finn.’ ”

Being an iconic classic, however, hasn’t protected “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from being banned, bowdlerized and bleeped. It hasn’t protected the novel from being cleaned up, updated and “improved.”

A new effort to sanitize “Huckleberry Finn” comes from Alan Gribben, a professor of English at Auburn University, at Montgomery, Ala., who has produced a new edition of Twain’s novel that replaces the word “nigger” with “slave.” Nigger, which appears in the book more than 200 times, was a common racial epithet in the antebellum South, used by Twain as part of his characters’ vernacular speech and as a reflection of mid-19th-century social attitudes along the Mississippi River.

Mr. Gribben has said he worried that the N-word had resulted in the novel falling off reading lists, and that he thought his edition would be welcomed by schoolteachers and university instructors who wanted to spare “the reader from a racial slur that never seems to lose its vitriol.” Never mind that today nigger is used by many rappers, who have reclaimed the word from its ugly past. Never mind that attaching the epithet slave to the character Jim — who has run away in a bid for freedom — effectively labels him as property, as the very thing he is trying to escape.

Controversies over “Huckleberry Finn” occur with predictable regularity. In 2009, just before Barack Obama’s inauguration, a high school teacher named John Foley wrote a guest column in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer in which he asserted that “Huckleberry Finn,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Of Mice and Men,” don’t belong on the curriculum anymore. “The time has arrived to update the literature we use in high school classrooms,” he wrote. “Barack Obama is president-elect of the United States, and novels that use the ‘N-word’ repeatedly need to go.”

Haven’t we learned by now that removing books from the curriculum just deprives children of exposure to classic works of literature? Worse, it relieves teachers of the fundamental responsibility of putting such books in context — of helping students understand that “Huckleberry Finn” actually stands as a powerful indictment of slavery (with Nigger Jim its most noble character), of using its contested language as an opportunity to explore the painful complexities of race relations in this country. To censor or redact books on school reading lists is a form of denial: shutting the door on harsh historical realities — whitewashing them or pretending they do not exist.

Mr. Gribben’s effort to update “Huckleberry Finn” (published in an edition with “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by NewSouth Books), like Mr. Foley’s assertion that it’s an old book and “we’re ready for new,” ratifies the narcissistic contemporary belief that art should be inoffensive and accessible; that books, plays and poetry from other times and places should somehow be made to conform to today’s democratic ideals. It’s like the politically correct efforts in the ’80s to exile great authors like Conrad and Melville from the canon because their work does not feature enough women or projects colonialist attitudes.

Authors’ original texts should be sacrosanct intellectual property, whether a book is a classic or not. Tampering with a writer’s words underscores both editors’ extraordinary hubris and a cavalier attitude embraced by more and more people in this day of mash-ups, sampling and digital books — the attitude that all texts are fungible, that readers are entitled to alter as they please, that the very idea of authorship is old-fashioned.

Efforts to sanitize classic literature have a long, undistinguished history. Everything from Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” to Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” have been challenged or have suffered at the hands of uptight editors. There have even been purified versions of the Bible (all that sex and violence!). Sometimes the urge to expurgate (if not outright ban) comes from the right, evangelicals and conservatives, worried about blasphemy, profane language and sexual innuendo. Fundamentalist groups, for instance, have tried to have dictionaries banned because of definitions offered for words like hot, tail, ball and nuts.

In other cases the drive to sanitize comes from the left, eager to impose its own multicultural, feminist worldviews and worried about offending religious or ethnic groups. Michael Radford’s 2004 film version of “The Merchant of Venice” (starring Al Pacino) revised the play to elide potentially offensive material, serving up a nicer, more sympathetic Shylock and blunting tough questions about anti-Semitism. More absurdly, a British theater company in 2002 changed the title of its production of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” to “The Bellringer of Notre Dame.”

Whether it comes from conservatives or liberals, there is a patronizing Big Brother aspect to these literary fumigations. We, the censors, need to protect you, the naïve, delicate reader. We, the editors, need to police writers (even those from other eras), who might have penned something that might be offensive to someone sometime. According to Noel Perrin’s 1969 book, “Dr. Bowdler’s Legacy: A History of Expurgated Books in England and America,” Victorians explained their distaste for the colorful, earthy works of 18th-century writers like Laurence Sterne and Henry Fielding by invoking the principle of “moral progress” and their own ethical superiority: “People in the 18th century, and earlier, didn’t take offense at coarse passages, because they were coarse themselves.”

Read the rest of the article HERE

Kakutani's insights and arguments ring 100 percent true in my ears, and it's baffling to me how people can see it otherwise.

I understand that these words are no longer socially acceptable, but Huck Finn wasn't written yesterday--it was first published in 1884. Back then, it's how things were; it's history. Whether it's something we agree with or not, it's part of America's past, and our past helps us grow and improve as individuals and as a society. Teaching our children about the way things were, remembering the past and learning from it, is the only way to stop it from repeating itself. Some of us--aka me--even have tattoos to that effect. There's a West African Andrika symbol called a Sankofa on my right shoulder blade, representing the importance of learning from the past. It's something I strongly believe in and never want to forget.

I've also got to give Kakutani props for actually using the word "nigger" in her article (*gasp* I just did it too! AGAIN!). Many pieces have been calling it the "N-Word," making me feel like Hermione Granger as she maintains that "Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself" in regard to He-who-must-not-be-named. I may not like the implication behind words like "nigger" and "injun" and even "Voldemort," but using them out of context does not mean I condone their meanings. The whole censorship argument aside (that would take up an entire blog post in itself, if not a series of them!), it's just a word. There's nothing to be afraid of. It might offend people, but it can't really hurt you unless you let it.

But clearly, people are letting it. And as a result, Twain's classic is getting the shit end of the stick, to put it bluntly.

Ethics Police: Pedophile Author Arrested for Obscenity

Some of you might recall back in November when a self-published book on pedophilia popped up on Amazon. The book, which was a how-to guide for pedophiles by a Colorado man, was pulled off the site as soon as it was acknowledged.

Now, the author--Phillip R. Greave--has been arrested on charges of obscenity, opening a huge Bill-of-Rights can of worms, no matter how morally justified it may be.

The Associated Press reports:

A Colorado man who wrote a how-to guide for pedophiles was arrested Monday and will be extradited to Florida to face obscenity charges, after deputies there ordered a copy of the book that has generated online outrage.

Officers arrested Phillip R. Greaves at his home in Pueblo on Monday on a warrant that charges him with violating Florida's obscenity law. During a brief court appearance, Greaves waived his right to fight extradition to Polk County, Fla., where Sheriff Grady Judd claimed jurisdiction because the author sold and mailed his book directly to undercover deputies. Judd said Greaves even signed the book.

"I was outraged by the content," Judd told The Associated Press. "It was clearly a manifesto on how to sexually batter children ... You just can't believe how absolutely disgusting it was."

The book — "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct" — caused a flap when it showed up on Amazon in November. The book was later removed from the site.

Greaves, who has no criminal record, writes in the book that pedophiles are misunderstood, as the word literally means to love a child. He adds that it is only a crime to act on sexual impulses toward children, and offers advice that purportedly allows pedophiles to abide by the law.

Judd said he was incensed when he heard about the book and that no one had arrested Greaves for selling it. The book, Judd said, included first-person descriptions of sexual encounters, purportedly written from a child's point of view.

"What's wrong with a society that has gotten to the point that we can't arrest child pornographers and child molesters who write a book about how to rape a child?" said Judd, who keeps a Bible on his desk and is known throughout Florida as a crusader against child predators.

Florida' obscenity law — a third-degree felony — prohibits the "distribution of obscene material depicting minors engaged in conduct harmful to minors." Pueblo County sheriff's spokeswoman Laurie Kilpatrick said Greaves would leave for Polk County later in the day.

Legal experts questioned whether Greaves' right to free speech would come into play if there's a trial. If prosecutors can charge Greaves for shipping his book, they ask, what would prevent booksellers from facing prosecution for selling Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita," a novel about a pedophile?

"As bad as this book may be, the charge opens a very big Pandora's box," said Dennis J. Kenney, a former police officer in Polk County and a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. "The charge sounds to me like a significant overreach."

Greaves was among a group of prisoners who made brief appearances before District Court Judge David Crockenberg in Pueblo on Monday, all of them represented by the same public defender. He was the only one not wearing a striped prison uniform although his wrists were handcuffed in front of him.

Dressed in a cream colored T-shirt and khaki pants, Greaves said he understood the extradition process. When Crockenberg asked him if he understood he would be taken to Florida, Greaves responded, "That is correct, your honor."

Judd said his undercover detectives got Greaves to mail the book to them for $50; he told officers it was his last copy.

"If we can get jurisdiction ... we're coming after you," Judd said. "There's nothing in the world more important than our children."

Read the article on Yahoo! News HERE

It's unbelievably disturbing to me what people are capable of. And as Judd points out, we have a responsibility to protect our families and society's youths, and I agree that we should do whatever we can--within reason--to do so.

But I'll admit it is a blurry line to toe given our country's "freedoms." The question is: what is "within reason"? The conditions set out by our founding fathers seem more detrimental than anything else in cases like this, but what can we legally and morally do about it?

As our country is wont to do, I'm sure they'll find other, more "just" and "appropriate" charges on which to take action against Greaves, but they may be sticking their hands into a giant honey pot in doing so.

The Ethics Police are baffled...and sitting here with the creeps, to say the least.

Facebook Sues Educators Over the Word "Book"

"What's in a name? A rose by any other word would smell as sweet?"

At least that's what Shakespeare's Juliet (of Romeo and Juliet, that is) thought. The creators of Facebook think otherwise.

It seems the ever-growing Fbook Inc. is claiming that the "Book" in Facebook" is theirs and theirs alone. According to Wired, a lawsuit has been enacted by the social networking site against the site Teachbook, a similar site for educators and school administrators:

Facebook has sued a little-known website for educators called Teachbook, claiming Facebook literally owns the “book” when it comes to naming social networking sites.

“Misappropriating the distinctive book portion of Facebook’s trademark, defendant has created its own competing online networking community in a blatant attempt to become a Facebook for teachers,” (.pdf) according to a filing in San Francisco federal court.

Facebook, with some 500 million users, is policing its trademark in a bid to prevent others from capitalizing on its famous name or diluting its value.

Facebook is not alone in pursuing trademark actions to protect household-name recognition.

Facebook’s lawsuit follows recent threatened litigation by Best Buy against a Wisconsin priest who outfitted a Volkswagen beetle to look like Best Buy’s “Geek Squad” vehicle. The priest had painted “God Squad” on the beetle, but has since agreed to remove it.

Facebook’s lawsuit Wednesday seeks unspecified damages and demands a judge order Teachbook, of Northbrook, Illinois, to immediately cease using “book” in its name.

This begs the obvious question: Would Facebook sue a social-networking site for priests named Goodbook? Or a librarian-networking site named Librarybook?

Barry Schnitt, a Facebook spokesman, pointed out that “we have no complaint against Kelly Blue Book or Green Apple Books or others.”

“However, there is already a well known online network of people with ‘book’ in the brand name. Of course the Teachbook folks are free to create an online network for teachers or whomever, and we wish them well in that endeavor,” he said in an e-mail. “What they are not free to do is trade on our name or dilute our brand while doing so.”

Teachbook declined immediate comment.

It bills itself as a “professional community for teachers” where they are encouraged to share lesson plans and instructional videos, and to manage “communications with parents and students.”

No hearing date has been set.

See the full article HERE

Now, I don't know about you, but this seems a tad extreme to me. We all know what Facebook is. Raise your hand if you'd heard of Teachbook and actually confused it with Facebook? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

I didn't think so. The word "Book" is not up for grabs. Yes, Facebook was the first site--that I know of, at least--to coin that type of naming convention, but these things happen all the time. People are always trying to capitalize on others' successes. It's the way the cookie crumbles. Besides, it's not reducing Facebook's popularity or usage levels. It's an entirely different audience for an entirely different purpose. So, who really cares?

I am curious to see, however, just what happens with this debacle. Facebook as a corporation has a lot of power, whether we want to admit it or not. Could they actually force all other networking sites from using the word "book" if there's no space between it and the previous word in their name? Should they?

What do YOU think?

The Cranky Critic, Gloria Loman: S&S Needs R&R After Karp Sets Up Firing Squad

Hey Booklanders -- There's a shit-storm brewing over at Simon & Schuster.

Approximately 50 measly days after John Karp replaced David Rosenthal as publisher of Simon & Schuster, the original imprint of the CBS-owned publishing house of the same name, Karp is already earning himself a bad rep, both in house and out.

Rumor has it that Karp, the previous head of Warner's Twelve imprint, was brought in to revitalize S&S after some stagnant profit margins. President and CEO of S&S, Carolyn Reidy told the New York Times of Karp back in June:

Jonathan Karp is one of the most versatile, talented and creative publishers working today [...] At every stage of his career he has shown a true gift for finding and making bestsellers of quality. Having competed against him to acquire books in which we were keenly interested, and then watching as he published them with great flair, I’m delighted that he will now bring his abundant editorial and publishing skills to the Simon & Schuster imprint.

While Karp certainly has a solid resume, his expertise doesn't quite fit S&S's hardcover trade titles and an extensive paperback list. As a result, this "changing of the guard," as the New York Observer calls it, took many by surprise and left them feeling wary and somewhat off-kilter.

And apparently for good reason!

According to Publishers Marketplace's announcement of the switch on June 3, Karp told the Associated Press, "I'm going to take a cue from one of Simon & Schuster's most successful authors, Hillary Clinton, and I'm going to go on a listening tour for a very long time and listen to what people at S & S think and we'll figure out the next step together."

He is also quoted as saying, "I'm definitely not coming the[re] to clean house. I'm coming there to build upon a foundation." On the fiction publishing program in particular, as raised above, "I hope that we will broaden the sweep and impact of the S&S fiction program."

But word on the street is that cleaning house is exactly what Karp is doing, breaking his word only one month in.

Early last week, Publishers Weekly announced the hiring of two new editors, Ben Loehnen and Jofie Ferrari-Adler, both of whom are well-versed in nonfiction, but not as fluent in trade fiction, S&S's most lucrative genre.

Then, just last Thursday, The Observer reported the firing of long-time S&S editor Amanda Murray, who worked with a number of bestselling authors including Mary Higgins Clark and Sandra Brown.

And people are pissed about Murray's dismissal. I hear she was a beloved presence at S&S, not to mention significant. While new acquisitions were not Murray's main focus, her plate was chock-full, making her an integral member of the editorial team. So, while Murray's absence won't change the acquisitions at S&S, she’ll be missed, and Karp will now need to hire a fiction expert to fill her very big figurative shoes. Word has it that someone has already been lassoed for the job.

But that's not all. More pink slips are expected to be handed out at S&S in the coming weeks, indicating that "cleaning house" was on Karp’s agenda from the get-go, despite his bullshit (pardonnez mon français) claim that he’d be "build[ing] upon the foundation."

Karp had also told the AP, "I think that a big publisher can be focused and passionate, especially if the editors have the latitude to do their best work and champion the authors they believe in. S&S has a culture of great editors."

"Great editors" who Karp is now firing.

It looks like bringing Karp in may not be working out exactly as planned—or as claimed. With employees who now struggle with trusting their publisher and a huge disconnect between what the imprint stood for and what it's now morphing into, perhaps the decision to set Rosenthal free may not have been a good one.

Maybe it would have been more productive to deal with the rumored issues of a disappearing marketing department, a somewhat strained publicity department, and overpaying for projects, rather than replacing a well-respected publisher who Reidy herself calls, "A truly original thinker [who] brought a wealth of creative and inspired ideas to the entire publishing process, and [who] has been a trusted and valued colleague who made many contributions to the overall success of our company."

No one knows how it will all shake out, but one thing's for certain: Karp hasn't started off at S&S on the right foot. And people are not happy about it.

I wonder what the Ethics Police would think about this one...

Guest Blogger, LG: Children's Author Arrested for Child Pornography

Children's author K.P. Bath--author of The Secret of Castle Cant (2006) and Escape from Castle Cant (2007) (I've read neither)--has been arrested and convicted on child pornography charges.

Yes, you read that right.

Children's author K.P. Bath has been arrested and convicted for child pornography!

According to The Oregonian, Bath collected photos of children being raped, sodomized, and tortured. That seems almost to go beyond child pornography. Assistant U.S. Attorney Gary Sussman noted that Bath "had collected thousands of photographs and more than 125 videos of child pornography." Bath also, according to The Daily Beast, worked in a children's library.

Once your stomach stops churning, read on.

Bath's first two Cant books seem to have garnered decent reviews--at least according to his Amazon.com author page. His publisher, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, dropped Bath and his next book, Flip Side, upon his arrest in April 2009. Disturbing as it is that he wrote children's books (popular or not), I find it even more disturbing that he was a "Homework Helper" in the library. Though no one has thus far come forward saying that Bath molested or touched them, and library officials were quick to say that he was never alone with children, it's easy to imagine that something, somewhere might have happened. Although, it seems that Bath never made face-to-face contact with children in any kind of sexual manner.

Big sigh of relief.

But this post is not to debate the sickness of pedophiles or the horrifying concept of one writing books for children. The question that immediately sprung to my mind? What is a publisher's role when it comes to authors' pasts? Private lives? Legal convictions?

With this thought in mind, I immediately shot an email off to several colleagues in publishing who could find out whether or not their houses legally vet authors. According to my sources at Simon & Schuster and Macmillan, manuscripts are vetted as necessary, not authors (unless, as I was told in one instance, an editor suspects an author of lying about his or her credentials). Publishing houses are concerned with copyrights and content, not personal legal woes unrelated to the material.

LBFYR obviously did the right thing by dropping Bath from their list when the first arrest was made. In this instance, even a legal vetting wouldn't necessarily have uncovered details about child porn. But what a children's author with a violent past? Someone convicted of assault? What about other books? Reality TV producers do background checks on everyone who could be a potential cast member or show character, especially after the horrific "Megan Wants a Millionaire" / Ryan Jenkins murder scandal of 2009.

To quote an anonymous source at S&S: "Gotta watch the company’s back, at the end of the day."

Indeed.

When it comes to adult books, there are many authors with a history of violence, drug abuse, and legal woes--look at the majority of memoirs and 'hood lit. Not to mention the fact that refusing to publish a book based on an author's past would be discriminatory. And denying publication of a great book because of its author would just be ludicrous. Sometimes a shady past can even be a selling point for a publisher.

But when it comes to children's literature, should publishers be more careful?

Winston Ross at The Daily Beast phrased it perfectly:

What’s unexplained is how a guy who writes books designed to educate and illuminate the lives of grade schoolers spent a healthy portion of his free time consuming sexually exploitive images of them.

It's truly baffling.

It looks like Bath will spend the next 6 years in prison, followed by a great many years as a registered sex offender. Thank God.

What do YOU think?

Should Little, Brown Books for Young Readers pull all copies of Bath's books from libraries, shops, and online seller?

Don't forget to check out LG's blog, "Big Girl, Bigger City"!

Ethics Police: Depicting the Holocaust in a Graphic Novel?

It seems more than just fiction titles and biographies are being adapted into graphic novels these days. Now, the industry is moving toward memoirs, and some with much more serious subjectmatter...starting with Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl.

The Associated Press reported this morning that The Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam released a graphic novel of the well known Holocaust biography:

The Anne Frank House Museum launched a graphic novel version of the teenage Jewish diarist's biography Friday, hoping to bring her story and death in a Nazi concentration camp to a wider audience.

Spokeswoman Annemarie Bekker said the publication is aimed at teenagers who might not otherwise read Anne Frank's diary, already the most widely read document to emerge from the Holocaust.

"Not everyone will read the diary," she said. "The one doesn't exclude the other."

Using the style of comic books to illustrate serious historical topics, even genocide, is not new. "Maus," Art Spiegelman's graphic biography of his father, a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp, won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992.

The Anne Frank biography, authorized by the museum, is a collaboration between American author Sid Jacobson and artist Ernest Colon. They also co-produced a best-selling graphic novel, The 9/11 Commission Report.

Publisher Hill & Wang will launch the graphic narrative in the U.S. later this month and MacMillan in Britain in the fall. Translations in German, French and Italian also are planned.

Bekker said the biography would be included with classroom teaching materials about World War II. The museum decided to commission the work after the success of a similar educational project, "The Search," about a fictional family in hiding.

Anne Frank wrote the diary from her 13th birthday shortly before her family went into hiding from the Nazis, and during the two years she and her family remained in a concealed apartment in Amsterdam. It was published after the war by her father Otto Frank, the only survivor. Anne Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

See the AP release HERE

I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I find this kind of offensive. And I haven't even read Anne Frank's famous work (I somehow got out of reading it in school...I think I was afraid to read it...though now want to and might get it from the NYPL today in fact). The Holocaust is not a time that should be taken so lightly as to illustrate its happenings.

I understand that the Museum wants to get Anne's story out there to even more people, to appeal to teens and what not. I also get that it's been done before and to great success (something I didn't know until this release, however). But I still don't support this choice. To me, it trivializes something that should not be trivial.

Please don't misunderstand, I'm not saying that comics aren't to be taken seriously. I respect and appreciate graphic novels. And I know that some graphic novels do address difficult and complex issues about humanity and what not, but somehow this just feels wrong to me because it's history, not speculation or straight fiction.

Is it okay to graphically depict historical genocide in a comic?

Tell us what YOU think!

Musings from Beyond the Grave

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."

That's what Marilyn Monroe once said about herself showing a startlingly strong take for a woman who lived from the 1920s to 1960s.

After her death August 1962, a significant amount of mystery has cloaked the secret life of the famed blond bombshell. But now, FSG--an imprint of Macmillian--plans to reveal some of Marilyn's inner-most thoughts in a new collection of Marilyn's own writings, according to EW.com:

The candle in the wind just keeps burning. Farrar, Straus and Giroux has announced that they plan to release a collection of Marilyn Monroe’s own writings. Fragments will include poems, correspondence, rare photos, as well as reproductions of documents handwritten by the blond bombshell herself. It is set to hit bookstores this fall.

The book will purportedly show the seldom seen facets of the breathy pneumatic icon, who was in actuality a whole lot smarter than her coquettish image suggested. What do you think, Shelf-Lifers? Are you interested in getting a glimpse of the Norma Jean behind the Marilyn Monroe?

Check out the post HERE

Seeing this deal news today, it got me thinking, not only about what Marilyn might have to say, but also about posthumous publications in general. While I think they can certainly be interesting, I'm not sure how I feel about them ethically. (There's an interesting blogpost on the topic HERE and a thought-provoking Wall Street Journal article HERE.)

Should our heirs just be free to publish our work, whether it be a drawing, poem, or grocery list? Or should our obvious choice NOT to publish be honored? It also brings up the question of authorial intent--if an author didn't want to publish something, why would you do it for them?

I was discussing this very topic last night with a big J.D. Salinger fan. While I'd heard the rumors that many unpublished works were discovered upon Salinger's death, what I didn't know though was that it's also rumored that he left instructions along with said documents. His notes are said to include things like "This is done," "This one needs to be edited," "Leave this one alone," etc. etc.

Personally, I hope that both rumors are true.

But I also hope that whoever's in charge of his estate abides by his very clear wishes.

What are your thoughts on posthumous publication?

Would you release it if you found unpublished works by some well-known, long-dead author?