Hooray for YA!

Literary agent Janet Reid on why she refuses to apologize or feel like a second-class person for reading, representing and selling YA books. She comes up with a great list of the reasons so many of us think YA books are important and why we love them:

Cause in the world I live in, kids are people too, and reading this kind of "crap" is how they learn to be people in the real world.

Cause YA is about kids learning that bad stuff can happen to good people. If something bad happens to you, it's not cause you ARE bad.

Cause YA is about kids learning to be brave.

Cause YA is about kids learning to affect their own lives, not just be affected.

Cause YA is about kids failing, and not giving up.

Cause YA is about being able to read about fearsome frightening things, and come out on the other side unscathed.

Santa Cruz Pride Parade

That's me in the purple dress, behind the sign.

We had about an hour of sun, just in time for the parade, before the sky got gray and unhappy. By the time I got home, it felt like winter all over again. Usually the parade ends with a festival in a park; this year, because of the unseasonal rain, it got moved to the Civic Center Auditorium. This meant there wasn't enough room for everyone who'd reserved a table inside the auditorium itself, so some (including us) got shuffled into corridors and back rooms where nobody went.

I wandered out to the main floor where, in between way too loud music (amps set for park outdoors), I had a series of delightful conversations. Talked to the folks at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, which is performing Henry IV, about the Henry V novel I'd just finished (review forthcoming), written by a former Shakespearean actress. Chatted with a man about the Adult Ally Project, a sort of booster club for Santa Cruz County School Districts GSA (that's Gay-Straight Alliance)s. Also a young woman at the PFLAG table, who it turns out has the same name as a character in one of Diana L. Paxson's "Avalon" books (we talked about Marion and Darkover as well). Met one of the physicians at Planned Parenthood, which is one of my friend Bonnie's causes, and somehow the discussion led to transgender health issues, and it turned out the doc went to UCSF and has been promoting better understanding of said health issues - gave me her card for follow-up networking. Outside, dropped by the Wo/Mens Alliance for Medical Marijuana, where we talked about the dismal failure of prohibition, regulation of dispensaries, and strategies for changing the legal climate.