Page Created: 03/16/11. Last Updated: 05/12/11.
SUSAN FICHTELBERG
Books:
Primary Genreflecting: A Guide to Picture Books and Easy Readers
Encountering Enchantment: A Guide to Speculative Fiction for Teens
Encountering Enchantment 2: A Guide to Speculative Fiction for Teens (forthcoming)
With Bonnie Kunzel:
Tamara Pierce: A Teen Reads Student Companion to Young Adult Literature
Official Site: http://www.encounteringenchantment.com/Home_Page.php
MEETING SUMMARY
Meeting Date: April 9, 2011.
Meeting Site: Saddle River Valley Cultural Center. Upper Saddle River.
Official Attendance: 18.
Meeting Program: Talk by Writer / Librarian / Critic.
Notes:
Books Recommended, Contemporary Fantasy:
Holly Black
..........WHITE CAT (Curseworkers # 1)
..........RED GLOVE (Curseworkers # 2)
Kristin Cashore
..........GRACELING
Beth Fantaskey
..........JESSICA'S GUIDE TO DATING ON THE DARKSIDE
Kamie Garcia & Margaret Stohl
..........BEAUTIFUL CREATURES
Ingrid Law
..........SAVVY (forthcoming)
Books of Note, Mainstream
Robert Cormier
..........The Chocolat War
S E Hinton
..........The Outsiders
Contraversial
Lauren Myracle
..........TTYL (Talk To You Later - Internet Girls)
..........(Book is contraversial both on sexual content and as having been done in all text)
Resource:
Voya.com: The Voice of Youth Advocates / Library Magazine for Childrens' Librarians
Notes, Miscellaneous which did not make it into the Newsletter:
Susan Fichtelberg was born in New York City. Her parents moved to New Jersey when she was one year old because there had been a murder in their apartment complex. She considers herself a true Jersey Girl.
Lord of the Rings was the first fantasy movie done right. Jim Freund would play Baird Searles' reading of the Council Scene in Elrod's forest once a year for a many years.
Our guest is a Star Trek fan. She attended the first New York City Star Trek Convention. The event had Gene Roddenberry and the entire cast present. She did not really get into Next Generation and felt it lurked the core which anchored the original series (Kirk/Spock/McCoy). She enjoyed Voyager, particularly Kate Mulgrew, but the series did not really take off until Seven of Nine came aboard. She also enjoyed Enterprise, especially in the third season which tied in more closely with the Trek history. Episodes were like "little kisses of history."
Other interests of Susan Fichtelberg are cars, dinosaurs, science and space.
Newsletter Account
The following account is reprinted with permission from THE STARSHIP EXPRESS Copyright 2011 Philip J De Parto:
The monthly General Meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County was held on Saturday, April 8, 2011. Librarian Susan Fichtelberg, who has written several non fiction books about young people’s literature, was our speaker.
The first three episodes of SAMURAI SEVEN, an anime retelling of Akira Kurosawa’s classic movie of the same name, were shown at our 6:15 PM Animation Associates pre meeting gathering. As usual, there were only a couple of viewers present for the start of the event, but others drifted in over the next 1-1/2 hours.
The same pattern played out at the Ice Nine discussion on the main floor.
Works from television (FRINGE, THE EVENT), cinema (MARS NEEDS MOMS, RED RIDING HOOD), comic books (STAR TREK), and books (The Wheel of Time series), were examined by those attending.
Susan Fichtelberg has written or co-written three books: TAMARA PIERCE: A STUDENT COMPANION TO YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE (with Bonnie Kunzel), ENCOUNTERING ENCHANTMENT: A GUIDE TO SPECULATIVE FICTION FOR TEENS, and PRIMARY GENREFLECTING: A GUIDE TO PICTURE BOOKS. The three works are reference books for librarians.
Ms Fichtelberg is a children’s librarian by profession. She has been president of the Children’s Services Section of the New Jersey Library Association and twice chaired the Garden state Children’s Book Award Committee. She believes that anyone who does not like to read has not found the right book.
The first genre book our speaker recalled reading was the Lord of the Rings trilogy when she was twelve. Other early reads were the Narnia books, Lloyd Alexander’s THE BOOK OF THREE and its sequels, and works by Tamora Pierce and Robin McKinley. She was also a fan of the STAR TREK television series.
Our guest’s first book was the Tamora Pierce volume she penned with Bonnie Kunzel. Feedback on the work was very positive and led to her first solo book, ENCOUNTERING ENCHANTMENT. ENCHANTMENT was a much more ambitious work, serving as an overview of young people’s fantastic literature to help librarians who were unfamiliar with these works select and recommend worthwhile and appropriate material. The work is almost ten years old and the author has recently received a contract to produce another volume to cover the past decade.
Susan Fichtelberg singled out three authors as being especially important: J K Rowling, Stephanie Meyer and Philip Pullman.
Rowling and Meyer are important because they fundamentally changed the landscape for young people by making reading cool. Although Harry Potter ages as the series progresses, our guest maintains that the ending of the series clearly marks it as a work of Children’s literature. A Young Adult book would not end in that manner.
Ms Fichtelberg believes that the Twilight series could not have become big without Harry Potter having blazed the trail for super-selling works targeted at the young. She says that the books are not well written. She mentally edits them any time she reads them.
Pullman is a completely different affair. Our guest feels that his books are brilliant and points out that Pullman is the only children’s author ever to win the Whitbread Award in the U.K. for best book--not best children’s book, but best book, period.
A good place to get a bead on worthwhile young people’s books is voya.com., the Voice of Youth Advocates magazine website for children’s librarians. Ms Fichteberg mentioned a number of recent titles as good reads. These will be listed on this meeting’s Page on the club website.
Someone asked if Carrie would be considered a YA novel if it came out today. Our guest did not directly answer the question, but did state that King is very popular with teens (dystopias are also hot). She stated that for a work to be considered a YA, as opposed to a book which happens to have a young protagonist, it must be a coming of age story in which things happen. Readers will overlook clunky writing as long as the story moves.
Larger societal trends greatly impact young people’s literature. One consequence of the “No Child Left Behind” act was that teachers no longer read to kids in class. The mandate is “teach to the test.” Nothing else matters.
We thank Ms Fichtelberg for spending the evening with us and to everyone who helped with the set up, clean up, and other aspects of making the meeting work.